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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

The $20k covers relocation costs. Whether or not you'd be 'underwater' depends on cost of living in your new location. San Fran and New York are very expensive.

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If it's indeed just a 10% cut, you're likely going to be coming out ahead wherever you move, at least in the short term.

In the longer term, it depends on raises. Historically a big cost to moving to work remote in a low cost of living area is receiving much stingier raises indefinitely. I suspect that will continue to be true, though who knows.

Yea, CA income taxes are in the range of 10%, right? Move to a state without income taxes and you’ve already avoided taking a net salary reduction.

Nobody ever stops to ask "why does this state have no income taxes"?

And the answer is almost always that if they had an income tax nobody would want to live there.

That’s a dumb posthoc justification. You’re suggesting nobody would want to live in Washington state if it had income tax yet Oregon has very similar climates and cultures (both in the east and West) with an income tax and people live there.

Oregon also has no sales tax, so real tax burdens between washington and Oregon are extremely similar in practice for most people - same with laws and culture. Norcal, oregon, washington and BC are similar enough culturally that many want them to form their own nation (cascadia)

As someone who has lived on the east coast, west coast, Sweden, and Germany...I've gotta say I disagree. The best overall quality of life I've experienced has been in Nevada. My money goes farther, the people are less of an obstacle (NIMBY, zoning, traffic, homeless issues, etc), politics is basically a non-factor, and the commute times are measured in minutes instead of hours.

>The best overall quality of life I've experienced has been in Nevada.

As someone who lived on the East Coast, the Midwest, and Nevada, I'm surprised by this. Could you elaborate further?

It's hard to really elaborate because everything is a package deal. California is silly expensive, but comes with a lot of social problems. New York is the same to a large degree. The midwest is cheap, but opportunity is more scarce. Most places in Europe just don't pay well, charge way too much tax, and then don't provide nearly the quality of social service many Americans believe they do.

Nevada is the middle ground of a lot of these places. You have mountains if you like snow, you don't have to deal with snow (ever) if you don't want to. You have pretty good infrastructure if you want to work remotely, you can fly to LA in 45 minutes if you have to for work. (I'm convinced there are instances where it's faster to commute from Las Vegas to LA than from...outside of LA to LA). Typical commute time in Las Vegas is probably on the order of 15-20 minutes. Under normal traffic conditions you can make it from one end of the city to the other in 45 minutes or less.

Socially, there's less politics here in general. Less of the NIMBY folks pushing for poor policy and zoning. Less protesting/rioting/looting. If I had to guess, the average person here owns a firearm, but nobody ever really seems to notice or care. Crime is comparable to California overall but there's more places in LA that I would put on my "never go to" list than in Vegas. And, while we definitely have homelessness, it's substantially less than when I was recently in LA.

With all of that having been said I think the most important thing is cost. My fiance, at 22 (and with no college degree) makes 17/hr doing admin work for a local construction company. She just bought her own house and is living comfortably. She did that without any financial assistance from me, or her parents, because it wasn't necessary. Her mortgage is under 1k/m for 1800(ish?) square feet of a reasonably modern house.

This is very belated, but thanks for the answer. I only asked because I lived in Nevada only to move back to the Midwest for a job opportunity. I kind of miss it, as it is much more scenic than where I am in the Midwest, but at the same time the jobs are simply not there.

>I think the most important thing is cost

I completely agree, where I live houses aren't exactly cheap, and we have high state property taxes. It gets even worse if you move towards the local college town which has seen a huge bump in housing prices along with additional property taxes added on. It's a shame that western NV doesn't have more UX jobs, but at the same time, remote work may change that.

Florida has no state income tax, but it does have sales taxes that are largely paid by tourists visiting the state.

> San Fran and New York are very expensive.

Maybe before covid. I am not so sure anymore though.

This is anecdotal, but for reference, I am going to save 1k$ a month on rent for my 1 bedroom apartment, when it renews.

As someone who still lives in SF right now, it and NYC are still expensive relative to the rest of the country, even if people are getting better deals on rent at the moment.

Same here. My rent went down by a bit more than $1k when I renewed.

Are tenants moving out? Where are they going? Obviously many will be finding it harder to pay, but that alone surely hasn’t caused this large of a drop?

I’m very remote from this situation so please excuse my ignorance.

Yes they're moving out. I know for a fact that the complex isn't even posting all of their vacancies as my friend's now-empty unit has never been listed. I don't know how this will play out in the long term but lots of my teammates at work (3/18) have moved out of the Bay Area, at least for the short term.

Many of my friends moved back to their hometown to be near their parents as well. It's much cheaper and probably a once in a lifetime chance to really interact with your parents daily after college.

You're saving 1k/month, but out of curiosity, what is the total rent?

In 2016 I lived in adequately nice 2 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom apartment in Ames, IA (home of Iowa State University) for $820/month before splitting with my roommate. Internet, cable, and water were included. The highest end apartments I heard of in town were ~800/month per tenant in 4 bedroom swanky apartments right across the street from the university.

Obviously total comp can more than offset cost of living differences, but the difference in cost continually blow my mind.

> The $20k covers relocation costs

I didn't read the article and thought it was a bonus. If it's relocation costs, that's an even worse offer than it sounds. The company will probably save that much money in the first 2 months of the employee leaving NYC and the Bay Area.

EDIT: I didn't know about the 10% pay cut. That's what I get for not reading the article.

Saving $20K in 2 months would be an annualized $120K/year. A 10% pay cut might represent a savings of $25K - $50K/yr. Where's the rest of the savings to the company coming from?

I didn't know about the 10% pay cut and assumed salaries would be adjusted to the local market. You're right.

However, if the employees move to smaller markets they presumably have fewer employment options and less bargaining power in the future. So the company will save money over the long term too.

That's 10% off your current salary. They never say anything about what future raises will look like.

It might be possible that you start off at 10% less, but the people in the Bay end up getting higher raises than you do and eventually you lose a lot more than just 10%.

Of course. My comment was to share some math around the claim that the company would save the $20K in the first two months, nothing about the long-term.

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