If you’re good, you’re already looking. If you’re not good or you don’t think you’re good, you’re waiting. Severance, unemployment, etc. Broadly speaking of course, exceptions as always.
If you have a family to look after, you cannot casually have your partner quit their job, your kids to switch schools in the middle of the year, break your lease/ mortgage and move states overnight.
There are real transaction costs for employees that do not allow for proper free market function
Remote work will drive wages down, not up. The company can get a remote worker from overseas. Remote work is to the office worker what NAFTA and container ships are to the manufacturing worker.
NDAs don't work in different countries. We've already learned what hassles there are offshoring IP to China -- who promptly stole it. Ditto for non-competes, stock grants, etc. -- these get very messy across borders. That's fine for L2 support drones or QA box checkers but no way I'm hiring anyone I care about for this purpose.
AI is coming for those roles before they end up in India or PI.
Speaking of NAFTA, that's one of the reasons we're seeing Mexico City as an offshore hub. Better timezone overlap, can usually trust that their credentials are legitimate, and it's not hard to find a (Mexican accented) Spanish speaker in much of the US.
Plus the NAFTA TN visa means if they're good you can easily bring them across the border with no H1B headaches. Cheaper flights, too.
Yeah, obviously, or they'd just be offshoring whole teams/departments at a time already. The reason they don't do that is because there's a market rate for good engineering. When an offshore contractor gets good enough, they figure out the market rate and start charging it.
I've been hearing this sort of doom and gloom since the 90s, yet here I am making bank in the USA still
Cannot make generalizations, but anecdotally I have experienced situations where senior engineers have to spend half of their time to coordinate work due to this.
Things that can be resolved in 5 minutes have to wait for a day.
Organizations are currently able to use remote workers from foreign countries. The relevant legal change would mandate them to accept them from their own country.
If remote work would "drive wages down", it would already do so -- since that's an option available to employeers now
I know you don't mean it this way, but it should right? It's fundamentally cheaper - no commute on the employee part, no office space on the employer side. Greatly enhanced flexibility all round. Both sides should definitely splitting the dividends.
I agree actually. Stated differently, commuting is a pain for workers, so they're willing to accept a lower wage to avoid it.
This also means the worker can live where the cost of living is lower, and be willing to work for less--thus pushing down wages. Arguably the worker still comes out ahead though if she can live where she wants to...assuming she likes working remotely from a low cost-of-living place. If she'd rather live in NYC and go to the office, she might not be happy to see her wage go down.
> If she'd rather live in NYC and go to the office
yep - in the short term there will be some discontinuities like this. But longer term - more staff working remotely is going to take pressure off real estate prices in cities, so it will actually be justifiable even there that salaries can fall. Unfortunately since so many office space leases are long term, and rezoning of land use even slower, this can take a very long time to flow through.
They're not. "Free market" is an unstable phenomenon that exists only when dynamically stabilized by appropriate regulations. Without that, it collapses on itself.
The tech labor market would not exist as it does today without substantial very specific regulations of various parties' behavior; e.g., stopping me from:
1. copying my employer's codebase, or
2. exfiltrating my employer's customer and pricing lists, or
3. holding two jobs at competing companies at the same time, or
4. shorting my employer's stock then actively sabotaging the company.
To say nothing of the even more basic stuff like squatting in my employer's office or even just using force to take what I want from the company or its executives/sharholders, for example.
Labor markets can't exist without lots of strong legal guardrails, and in the case of tech those property rights and contractual obligations are highly fictional and extremely unnatural. Intellectual property, non-competes, non-disclosures, securities regulations on insider trading, laws about industrial espionage and sabotage, the list goes on. All of it highly fictional and unnatural.
Modern markets are, definitionally, just a dynamical process playing out that is governed by an enormous collection of state-backed rules. Nothing like what you might consider a "natural" market, such as early civilized man bartering at the bazaar.
The amount of propaganda/brainwashing required to believe that something like a modern equity or labor market is a naturally occurring phenomenon... oof.
I'm absolutely serious. Try to take the things you know about the free markets, supply and demand, etc. and simulate them in your head. Like, run them in a game loop for a couple steps. It should become apparent that the ideal free market is not even an equilibrium state.
So were weekends at one point. No intent of derailing the thread, but everything is impossible until it’s done.
Would you have thought a few weeks ago that California and the federal government could apply enough pressure to the largest pharma companies to set the price of insulin at $35? Me neither, but here we are. Come out swinging, we have nowhere to go but up.
Edit: Looks like California has gone so far as to contract to have it manufactured and set the price at $30, even better. Thesis is “change is possible.” Please excuse the length this example took to demonstrate the point.
And it showed also how much unthinkable is possible if we want it.. however here we are already again, not being ok to give up false luxuries and who cares about the environment ;)
Easy. $10,000/month city taxes to the employer for each employee in office. Proceeds will be used to offset carbon emissions and fund transportation infrastructure.
The city wants people in the offices, because those workers get taxed by the city whenever they buy anything else while in the city. Having a large population of people in your city promotes commerce like nothing else. The exact last thing a city would do is deter people from coming into it.
I remember a Dilbert comic from 30ish years ago where the perfect employee (cube shaped to fit into the cubicles of the time) said something like, "Having a personal life is like stealing from the company".
I’m expecting to hear that a lot. A lot of people spent more time with their families during the pandemic and now they’re seeing that as a direct tradeoff for going have to work. People were used to that but now every day they’re sitting in traffic thinking that they’re doing that instead of being with their kids, just so they can sit in a cubicle looking at the same computer.
"The problem doesn't exist for the very best" is really not much of an answer. Besides, even the best may not have much luck right now. Tons of employees from what are considered the top companies are looking for a new job. I have a very solid CV and I'm getting ghosted when applying for jobs I could have taken for granted a year ago.
I’ll give you the point of view you won’t like but it’s the truth: Candidates from “top companies” come with a lot of baggage. They’re going to expect a continuance of the massive inflated salaries they enjoyed at those top companies along with all the associated perks and amenities. They tend to be very egotistical, don’t want to be burdened with doing interview tests, white boards, or take-homes, and generally have this annoying holier-than-thou HN-level of arrogance.
So why in the world would I want to hire an overpriced ex-rest-and-vester when I can instead hire someone hungry with a track record of making a difference at small to medium companies?
I actually agree totally. My experiences doing hiring and then subsequently working alongside folks for the past decade or so have led me to view FAANG experience on a resume as a moderate negative signal. It’s not at all that I don’t think the folks who work there aren’t smart or talented- they have just disproportionately been difficult in the interview process and had impossible salary demands while being not being stronger performers than their peers.
Are those “with a track record of making a difference” also ok with interview tests, white boards, and/or take homes? I don’t know if viewing excessive tests with disdain is a characteristic solely exhibited by ex top tech; I feel like that’s a universal sentiment among top talent regardless of their background. Not wanting to be burdened with unnecessary burden is a good thing!!
I also don’t think people generally have a problem with interviews. You have to be assessed somehow, obviously, and people at top companies still get interviewed when jumping to other top companies. I’ve really only seen serious complaints (that is, beyond mild grumbling) when interviewing is a huge time sink for a specific company, especially when that company’s compensation is lower and/or the communication process is poor (e.g. ghosting).
Why in the world would anyone interview with you if your company offers less than top tech for equal or harder interviews? (Spinning your rhetoric back at you for added effect. I don’t know what your hiring is like.)
Why in the world would anyone interview with you if your company offers less than top tech for equal or harder interviews?
People who need job will apply. Its not like some one is forced to apply when otherwise they could get million dollar a year job to develop deep machine learning AI at Google.
I'm actually dealing with this right now. I have a previous-FAANG new hire into my organization and when they came for their drug test they started complaining and "providing feedback" about the package they signed (pay, benefits, WFH policies, etc.) to the poor recruiting person who was just performing the test.
If that attitude persists, it doesn't matter how good they are, their toxicity will override that skill and they'll be out before long.
I'm saying this as someone who came here from FAANG companies and put in a lot of personal effort to not become the FAANG brat.
You’re likely not overpaid at Amazon vs other FAANGs based on changes to equity comp. If you’re somewhere where you were overpaid, I hope you saved accordingly now that you’re going back to a $150k-$200k/year job.
As others have mentioned, you might not be able to find a $300k-$500k/year job, but you should be able to find something.
At $150k in the Bay Area you’re going to be renting and spending 2 hours a day on public transit. Those roles made sense as a career stepping stone up to homeownership & family supporting roles. I don’t anticipate too many senior folks taking them unless they get exceptions to go remote or they already have mega home equity / rent control.
I'm curious and asking in good faith, $150k in CA seem to translate to just over $100k take home. Looking at Zillow there seem to be an abundance of places all over the bay area around $2.5k (1bdrm) and $3.5k (2bdrm) which sound not too bad on one and 2 incomes respectively, just like what everyone else is doing, around a third of your income. I don't get why you're assuming one would have commute 2 hours a day. Is transit that bad even if you're close to where you work? I honestly don't get it fully. Don't get me wrong, it sucks and I wish housing was cheaper but I think that's just the way it is now for everybody that has to work in person somewhere. And 25% of your take home income spent on housing isn't too bad at all and that's at the lower end of the spectrum GP is talking about here ($150k-$200k).
I've spent most of my career in the Bay - $150k in the Bay Area without child expenses in a single-earner household with the following common lifestyle choices will about break even month-to-month while fully funding a 401k (in the "core" Bay Area - SF, the Peninsula, parts of Oakland/Berkley):
Eats out frequently, goes out for drinks occasionally, travels a few times a year, owns a new mid-range car, lives in a modern apartment complex or small home/condo near a downtown area (with a < 30 minute commute). New electronics, big TV, minimal but high quality furniture.
Pairing back on those choices you can begin to save every month, but not at a pace to buy a home in a reasonable time frame.
On dual income assuming consistent earnings YoY you can start to buy a house in a cheaper neighborhood later in life, around the time many are starting to have kids.
I have to imagine kids can put a 5-10 year delay on buying a house without various kinds of assistance.
> Pairing back on those choices you can begin to save every month, but not at a pace to buy a home in a reasonable time frame.
That’s what I’m saying.
> On dual income assuming consistent earnings YoY you can start to buy a house in a cheaper neighborhood later in life, around the time many are starting to have kids.
Dual tech income folks are in a great spot, but with gender ratios as they are, there can’t be very many such couples. Also this could be a function of social circle but I find many women (even in tech) expect a husband to provide for them while the kids are young.
Well, when I first came to US, I lived like first 8-9 years without a mattress. I found carpeted floors and 2 comforters more than enough comfy setup. I also stayed with people who had to buy a mattress before spending first night in apartment.
Point being whats luxury living for one could be basic, minimum living standard for others. And I am talking about people doing roughly same IT type jobs.
So that below living wage of 150K in bay area is from that school of thought where having single family home, 2 car garage, a bit of front/backyard and 30 min leisurely commute by personal car is basic minimum standard of living.
To be clear my spouse would also consider this as basic things despite spending far fewer years than me in US. And after decade and half in US I still think these facilities/perks are matter of great fortune that I ended up with and not just oh everyone has it type.
The point is less what's a "basic minimum" or what you "deserve" but what your alternatives are. The US is big. The vast majority of its regions are less insane than the Bay Area. All of them employ skilled-with-computers people to some degree. And in most of them, even lower-status and lower-paying computer jobs would support a comfortable house in a decent school district much better than these kinds of jobs would in the Bay Area. The reason FAANG has historically had to offer $300-500k is because that's what it takes to entice people away from those lives into this housing market. Housing prices are down a bit, but not that much.
Agreed, you can buy a good 2000 sqft house on a 1/4 acre within 1 hour of the peninsula on 150k. I did it last year. My wife is just starting a bootcamp + software career and we will be quite happy and comfortable if she brings in an extra 75k/yr.
For larger lots you generally wont be looking at city centers unless you are rich, but almost all bay area cities have larger lots on the outskirts or adjacent areas.
It is all a matter of tradeoffs and the level of urbanization you want. I cant walk to a bar or music venue, but I can still walk to a grocery store and a smaller number of restraints.
Interest rates are up, but property prices are down quite a bit (my house is down about 15%). While last year may have been better, I think is a still a decent market if you have a few 100k saved from a 150k salary, better if you saved more.
It’s more than enough to rent, which is fine for folks just starting out, mid-late 20s getting their first promotions, or those who plan to move back to LCOL when they are done saving up. It’s less fine as a terminal level for someone at a homeownership/family stage of life.
I don't have kids and won't have kids, but I definitely didn't have those things growing up in a suburb. It's not at all required unless you're homeschooling.
This is a case of lifestyle inflation and then complaining about lifestyle inflation. Public school is good enough, your kids aren't better than the rest of the people in SF.
> But I also live in the bay area now, and have kids, and can confidently say that it's a different experience for kids than what you are talking about.
The different experience is that you make more than your parents did at your age and thus have lifestyle inflation.
The IT guy for a car dealership in Milwaukee is allowed this kind of "lifestyle inflation" no problem. The point of Silicon Valley is that high level and differentiated computer skills can make you rich. Part of that might be slumming it a bit during the early stages of your career or startup, hence the commandment against lifestyle inflation. But in a career role, your Silicon Valley TC better give you a better lifestyle than what’s generic computer guy gets from a non-tech business in a normal metro area. And given prices here, that’s a big number.
Obviously Bay Area amenities are worth something. Are they worth descending an entire social class? Maybe to some. But I think most rational people will go fix the computers at that car dealership, and put their kids on the travel team. You are not obliged to live an austere life just because someone offered you a (locally) mediocre job in the Bay Area.
The IT guy at a car dealership isn't expecting to pay full price for private schools and then complaining when it wipes out almost all of their take home pay. That's probably because the IT guy for a car dealership is making $70k not $500k a year.
Nobody's "descending a social class" by sending their kids to public school or having them do normal stuff, this is hysterical.
I grew up on the Peninsula and my parents were not paying for any of this stuff. Public school parents organized soccer games and park days and other times we just road cheap bicycles around and went to each others houses and occasionally caused trouble.
Felt relatively safe and of course once we got older we would just hop on caltrain for super cheap and head up to SF. Told our parents we were going to "the movie theater". New Years in San Francisco at age 13 was definitely interesting
To most people, Cisco would be considered a high paying employer. If anything, people are giving up middle class lives in other countries and relocating to San Jose for Cisco.
Living 5 adults to a house in San Jose might genuinely be better than living in India. I wouldn’t know. The point is if you have moved to Wisconsin or whatever, it would be foolish to move back to San Jose for that.
FAANG's overpay made many of the local talents leaving their long term employers in no time, nobody can resist 2x or 3x pay, per my observation, FAANG the monsters destroyed those small and middle size players too quickly.
I'm not looking, I plan to smile and do my own two things that I've been dreaming of doing for awhile (but it's somewhat hard to justify walking away from good steady pay) and now can due to financial independence as soon as either this layoff smokes me or RTO isn't rolled back.
Or you're good, pragmatic, and riding out the storm. You can be a new guy at a tech company who will likely layoff or you can continue to do good work as an established employee who may get a hefty severance.
