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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

A better option: shift it's engineering to everywhere else in America, and go full-remote, but pay less.

Imagine if Uber told it's developers: we're cutting salaries by 40%- but you are now full-remote, and we want you to live somewhere less expensive than SV. Spread out across America!

A lot of folks would quit. But some would see the incredible opportunity. In that situation, I'd move somewhere like Chattanooga TN- average rent at around $1000/month, vs SF's $3000-5000. Food is cheaper too. And being a city, it's far less conservative than you'd think (well, okay, it is TN).

They could cut their engineering costs dramatically while improving the overall lifestyle of their developers.

And given we're soon going to be in a post-pandemic world where tightly-packed open offices don't exist anymore, they'd probably just be ahead of the rest of us by a few months if they did it.

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This is not as good as it sounds just because it works for you.

People don't love moving, and they usually move for better work opportunities, not to accomodate a pay cut at their current job. Moving to a lower cost of living area also means moving to an area with less opportunities, and not to mention moving away from your social circles and the life you have established somewhere.

The only way I can see this working if uber started hiring bew remote engineers in the US, but asking their current ones to move from SF so they can take a pay cut?

To add to this when I worked remotely for two years I was always worried that if I move to a low cost of living city and I lost my job I will be screwed. No one would hire me at the rate I was paid with the SF company.

This has happened to me. Ended up working for a very scary company because they were the only local option that came close to matching my bay area salary. Moved back to the Bay Area less than a year later.

Lesson learned, I won’t be moving again without a relocation package

> very scary company

What did they do?

This has always been my big concern with leaving a major tech city ( even to go to the suburbs ). your opportunities shrink.

I'd be curious if this will change as more companies offer full-time remote.

Silicon Valley (mostly) is "the suburbs." Although there are more tech jobs in downtowns than there used to be, in a lot of areas most of the tech jobs are in suburbs/exurbs.

It's a bit different here on the East Coast. While there are plenty of options in the suburbs - the number within an individuals commuting radius drops.

There are a lot of pretty bad commutes in SV too.

I live (well) outside of Boston. About 20 years ago, there wasn't a single real tech employer in the city. That's changed primarily with Kendall and the Seaport. But there's still a huge amount in Metrowest and some in the northern suburbs going up to southern NH.

I've been lucky that through several jobs I've never had a really bad commute except into Boston for a time--but I didn't have to do it every day and there is a commuter rail.

Imagine if they didn't have to move for better opportunities but could stay living where they grew up in flyover country.

> In that situation, I'd move somewhere like Chattanooga TN- average rent at around $1000/month, vs SF's $3000-5000. Food is cheaper too.

That rent difference turns out to be $24000-$48000 a year. If salaries are cut by 40%, it would only make economic sense to move if you earned less than $60000-$120000 a year (not accounting for cheaper food).

Whether the lifestyle differences would be positive or negative is highly dependent on the individual. And that's without getting into other opportunities available if you stay in SF.

Add other bits of cheaper living: lack of commute, cheaper food, etc. It's not just the rent.

Also think how much is an extra hour every day (or however long you commute) worth to you in quality of life.

> Add other bits of cheaper living: lack of commute, cheaper food, etc. It's not just the rent.

At this point, people arguing for moving to lower cost of living area should just show the math.

> Also think how much is an extra hour every day (or however long you commute) worth to you in quality of life.

Just live close to the office. You can literally pay thousands of dollars a month and still be better of financially.

And really, how much is it worth? Is it worth $100K a year? Because that's how much less disposable income/savings some of the people with higher salaries would find them selves with in the proposed scenario.

You can't really show the math beyond personal experience and even then it's all relative to your lifestyle.

Living in the city near the office also depends on the area. I can get out off my town in ~5min at any time of the day. There's no traffic on my street. I've got a creek and walking paths nearby. I have time to cook at home and save on takeaways and potentially improve my health. I wouldn't exchange this for an extra $100k and daily commute.

Living in a smaller city will be different. Having different hobbies will have an impact. I don't see any way to show this makes sense in general. It will be make sense for some people though.

I don't deny that some people prefer living in smaller cities. That's why I initially said "whether the lifestyle differences would be positive or negative is highly dependent on the individual".

What I object to is people saying that cheapness of such places will make up for massive salary reductions. It won't.

The issue with your arugment is that you are looking at it from a "cost" perspective only. Companies have a lot more problems to worry about. Local laws, regulations, is everyone cut out to be able to work remote ? etc etc. In the US, you also have to deal with shit load of laws state wise. For most companies that don't have the pockets of FAAANgs or well funded companies, it is just not viable to go "fully remote anywhere". It sounds exciting but logistically it is not that simple.

Also, you cannot just assume that just because the company decided to cut salaries by 40%, everyone will be excited to pack their bags and move to say "Kansas" or "Idaho" or wherever in the world. Not everyone wants to be a nomad. Lot of us like the stability of a home, a city where we live and have made friends/family and many other reasons. If that was the case, I am sure a lot more people would be moving out of NYC/LA/SF already. Not the case.

I say this as a small bootstrapped founder who has team members in 3 countries and we are only 15 or so. Remote teams are NOT easy. Not at all. I personally would love everyone to be able to work together in 1 office and call it a day. Yes, I am all up for flexibility to work remotely if needed from time to time. I just don't want to deal with the hassles I explained in my first paragraph.

Finally, lets say that we do look at it purely from a cost perspective. On an average, a "good enough" engineer in India will always be at least 10x cheaper than a good enough engineer ANYWHERE in America. It is just the facts of how the global world is. Don't compete on cost. You cannot beat that. Compete on other things.

I’m genuinely curious why companies don’t do this? It seems like a great deal, many cities in US are great with decent cost of living. I used to live in Kansas before & home ownership is cheaper and time zones are usually better. Maybe the total cost of hire is still higher? idk

Because the cost of living delta is mostly just home ownership. Yes, that trickles down to somewhat higher prices for contractors, child care, etc. but it's mostly rents and houses. So $50K/year say is probably a pretty reasonable cost of living adjustment between the Bay Area and most reasonable low CoL areas. Cut more than that and you're also cuttings savings and spending power for things that are priced similarly across the continental US.

Just looking at annual pay, lets say you pay devs a reasonable 75K USD in Chattanooga. Thats 56 Lakh INR annual pay in India. You can get a top engineer for that kind of pay.

This doesn't even account for the difficulty in hiring an engineer of the same caliber in Chattanooga and all the associated overhead like health insurance, etc.. which are much lower in India.

If you already have experience building a high quality engineering team in India (thus know how to overcome cultural barriers), its pretty much a no-brainer.

Asking people to take a pay cut that means they need to uproot their families to make ends meet is completely unreasonable. I think they’d suddenly find themselves spending much less on engineering staff but probably not for the reason you think.

I drove through Chattanooga earlier this week during a cross country move. Gorgeous, underrated part of the country.

Close to Nashville, Huntsville (huge aerospace & engineering base has fiber) & Atlanta.

Pretty sure they also have municipal fiber.

Yes. We have EPB, a municipal fiber provider.

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