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Comment by thrownaway954 | Hacker News Reader

this is ridiculous, "the workers who take up the offer will have to take a 10% cut to their compensation." so you get 20K up front, which as jdavis mention, could be used up in moving, then you have to accept a 10% pay cut. so in reality, you're losing all around. just because someone moves to a new area, doesn't mean they should be punished by having a decrease in salary. this is way a scumbaggish way for a company to make money. anyone working for stripe better rethink things and go work for another company.

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That's a pretty ridiculous statement. Workers that are paid massive salaries in the likes of SF & NYC is because the cost of living in those cities justify it.

So you're on 150k in SF say, you move to, I don't know some small city in Texas, you get 20k to move, you make 135k a year and your cost of living has probably dropped by 70%. That doesn't sound like a "scumbaggish" move to me. That sounds like a company trying to entice it's employees to get out of the crazy expensive cities.

>Workers that are paid massive salaries in the likes of SF & NYC is because the cost of living in those cities justify it.

This is incorrect. Workers are paid massive salaries because those same workers have an option of going to other employers who are willing to offer massive salaries.

So your logic here is, "they're paid a lot because everyone else pays a lot as well".

That sounds like circular reasoning to me. What's the base reason for employers offering massive salaries?

Employers offer massive salaries when they can't find anyone cheaper. Just like people pay more for desirable beach front or mountain view property. Not only does it have to be desirable, but it has to be in relatively limited supply, such that the seller has options and so the buyer has to compete to win the seller, and obviously payer has to be able to pay.

Edit: If you continue down the road of reasoning, the desirability of an employee is related to how much net income the employee contributes to. The employer is betting that the work a specific programmer does will be integral to yielding billions in profit, so a few hundred thousand is a no brainer.

In contrast, a hotel on a desirable piece of land does not need to offer housekeepers massive salaries even though the work the housekeepers do is integral to the hotel's profits, because the housekeepers individually are more replaceable than a programmer.

Edit #2:

Note that doctors get paid more in rural, low cost of living areas than in high cost of living areas.

Supply and demand in the Bay Area. If I moved to Alabama, my TC would hands down drop unless I got lucky with a remote position.

It's a market economy. No one decided one day to offer a certain salary, the market has figured it out over time (and will continue to do so as conditions change).

you know what's pretty ridiculous... your 25 minutes old account attempting to call me out. you work for stripe or at another company that's doing or planning this?

>you know what's pretty ridiculous

Attacking the messenger because you have no rebuttal. Also, it is ridiculous reading comments that have the sentence structure of a person still in primary school.

Under this logic, the "same" job shouldn't pay more in more expensive cities; But it does. Why doesn't the reverse hold as well?

People are calling this out as the company taking advantage, but it's a least plausible that it's win-win for some employees.

They could easily be paying half their rent (and could approach paying just 20% depending on the situation.) Most people will probably save money.

>They could easily be paying half their rent (and could approach paying just 20% depending on the situation.) Most people will probably save money.

I was offered this "choice" back in 2013. Despite the fact that I (and my co-workers) were almost completely remote already, we were told that if we didn't relocate to Tallahassee, FL from NYC and accept a 20% pay cut, we would need to find new employment.

Even worse, should we accept this "generous offer" we would be guaranteed employment for 12 months (presumably long enough for them to find and hire locals who are compensated less, then have us train them).

I did the math and while I could certainly save on rent, the costs of an automobile, its fuel and maintenance, including insurance made the transition close to a wash for me.

I'd also point out that NYC is a wonderful, urban place to live. While Tallahassee is a typical sprawling, suburban place with limited (although more so than some other parts of Florida due to UofFL and it being the state capital) culturally diverse stuff.

I chose not to do so (as did all but one of my colleagues -- who did so at great personal sacrifice to make sure she could continue to support her family) and haven't looked back.

My experience is that such plans tend to be a salary dump by the company, made worse by the ability to slowly replace those who relocate with much cheaper local resources.

Why would you want to uproot your life (and that of your family, if you have one) just so you can be replaced by someone cheaper in the not-so-distant future?

That's not to say such a plan isn't a good thing for some people, but I found it to be not worth it.

I think you're overreacting. If you're making, say, $400k in total comp at Stripe in San Francisco (which doesn't seem unreasonable[0]), you could move somewhere with drastically lower cost of living for a cut of only $40k a year. There aren't very many opportunities to live wherever you want and make $360k, period, so it's still likely a net win for the employees.

[0]: According to levels.fyi - https://www.levels.fyi/company/Stripe/salaries/Software-Engi...

What's the income tax like in California?

https://www.tax-brackets.org/californiataxtable

Roughly 10%

California also has one of the highest state sales tax rates, and individual counties also put their own sales taxes on top of that, which can add up to 10.5% in the worst case, so you get taxed "coming and going".

The administration of sales tax was baffling to me when in California. Things had a price on them and when I got to the counter the price paid was different. However the amount paid seemed to vary across California. How this came to be and how it is tolerated remains a mystery to me.

In the US, sales tax is not listed in the price unlike VAR in Europe. Counties and Cities often have additional and varying sale taxes in addition to the State's percentage.

I don't live there, but a quick search shows it in roughly the 10% range for the salaries we're talking about (as a single tax filer).

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