I fully expect Twitter, for example, to come out with salary adjustment policies for people who want to work from home from an entirely different city and state
Suddenly I didn't mind seeing zeroes falling off the salary.
A better move would be to move laterally, to a place with the same benefits that the one you are in gives you, be it leisure activities or a network for your field. That might limit you to metros, and particular metros that are most favorable to your activities (skiers might like CO, sailors might like FL). Suddenly your options become limited, and you find among these limited choices the same housing issues that have plagued states like CA as demand ramps up, because everyone had the same idea as you. No city in the U.S. actually builds sufficient supply for their influx in labor; even the ones that we applaud are doing quite poorly in terms of how much housing should be built and where. The ones that don't seem to have a housing crisis are experiencing a contracting local economy, and that doesn't bode well with your networking prospects and career options.
And of course by moving outside a greater metro area, you're also saving money by choosing not to consume any amenities of private schools, airports, large hospitals, high infrastructure recreation, etc.
And your IQ drops by 50 points. Instantly. It's weird.
As far as airports go, there are two connector airports about an hour away, to the northeast and west, and a major hub two hours east. (As it turns out, even when I've lived in major metropolitan areas, I've never been closer than an hour to an airport.)
There are two regional hospitals relatively close (plus trauma helicopters if you need that sort of thing). Then there are major hospitals an hour west, plus Birmingham and Nashville---both of which I've known people to go to for specialized care.
I honestly don't know what you mean by "high infrastructure recreation"; if it's outdoor sporting and recreation, it's as good here as anywhere (and fishing is better than most).
There is a dearth of bars and live-music venues, but then I didn't partake of those even when I had easy access.
So, when you write "And of course by moving outside a greater metro area, you're also saving money by choosing not to consume any amenities of private schools, airports, large hospitals, high infrastructure recreation, etc." you seem to have a very wrong idea of life outside a "greater metro area", one that is either extremely naive or deliberately insulting.
And I'm not irritated, just cranky.
There are network effects as well. I live 15 minutes from an airport with daily direct flights to the my parent’s home country. There are only a few such airports in the USA. Places with that kind of infrastructure also tend to have other valuable infrastructure. So even though I don’t benefit from the live music venue 2 blocks from my home, it’s part of the deal of being able to return home on short notice in emergency.
Keep in mind: that asset your company is paying for can be sold and the difference will be kept by the employee, which will let them set themselves up for a much better retirement in a lower cost of living area.
It reminds me a bit of the SF Giants. They couldn't pay high salaries because they had to pay for their ballpark. But the value of that ballpark is part of the value of the club, which would be realized if the owner ever sold it. So it still was a lot like the owners pocketing the money. But not exactly.
Some of the arguments I don't really buy (for example, I don't think you need to hire anyone from very high cost of living areas to build a world-class engineering org at GitLab's scale) and others (e.g., the golden handcuffs argument) I think are just a consequence of fully remote teams currently being rare. But it's still interesting to see their rationale.
[0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...
Both are simply regional adjustments for the price of a resource. That resource could be a product, or it could be labor.
If you pay Kansas rates for an employee in NYC, you're not going to get qualified candidates. This doesn't make a difference if the employee is driving to an office or not. Both remote and and onsite employees live somewhere. When you hire someone in NYC remotely, you're also competing with employers onsite in NYC, paying NYC rates. If there's anything that results from the shift to remote, it's going to be that companies hire fewer people in high COL locations.
[0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...
Lying to your company about things like that is a great way to get fired.
Everyone should ignore this terrible advice.
It's definitely not possible to have a mail forwarding box as your primary residence.
> But I'm curious what people do in more dynamic housing situations.
In situations where a primary address is ambiguous based on number of nights, many tax authorities will consider other aspects, such as the address you have listed on government documents, where your family lives, whether you use any of the properties for income or pleasure, where you work, etc.
Also, if you change primary residences, many tax authorities will simply pro-rate your taxes for the period of time that you lived there.
If you are a software engineer and you show up to work in an office in Alabama, you already make less than the same software engineer showing up to work in an office in Manhattan.
The only difference here is that you don't show up to work in an office, you show up to work in your pajamas and the office is at home.
Companies can do this because so few of them hire remote. If it gets normalized, the practice will not be sustainable.
20 years ago, tech was still a toy to the average person and lawyers were the ones in high demand.
The thing about markets is that they communicate relative scarcity, which tends to bring new people into the market.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.
"So move somewhere else, maybe?"
"But I won't make as much money!"
Well, there you go, then.
Based on this assumption, I think it's actually more likely that the Staff level engineer at Twitter who moved to Kentucky for a lower cost of living will still be making the same range of salary and the SWE 1 in SF would make significantly less.
https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...
Ex. SF to Dayton, OH: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+compari...
If your bills were cut in half, what percentage pay cut would you accept?
So, even though the Bay Area is 3x more expensive, and you're only earning 2x the salary, you're still taking more money home at the end of the year by accepting the job in the Bay. In this scenario you need to look at absolute cost, not relative cost.
(Obviously there are also other factors to take into account like quality of life, etc - but that's highly dependent on the individual)
My question fails at the lower end. I was imagining 200-300k Bay area salaries. Is that reasonable?
It seems like if you want to move to a low cost area, there is a salary that is smaller but provides you the same discretionary income.
Or alternatively they could just decrease salary across the board and those who want to stay in expensive areas are out of luck.