Google lowered its salaries in North Carolina. Now workers are protesting
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It strikes me that these sort of practices where employers share salary data with each other with the aim of keep salaries low is pretty sketchy and shady. A load of companies get together with the aim of making sure they don't pay a penny more than anyone else etc.
In finance salaries and bonuses are to rocketing to attract and keep talent, yet in tech all the companies get together and basically implicitly agree not to compete. It is a shame that this appears to be legal.
I guess we can vote with our feet/keyboards.
How would a union work here if the company just turn around and say "sorry - your members are already at the top of the rate in this market. Our policy is not to pay more than the market rate. End of discussion."? You could move to another company, but they also only pay market rate etc.
Are you referring to a general suspicion you have, or a specific case? Because this is categorically illegal, and has been punished before [1] to the tune of $415 million.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...
None of the companies are explicitly getting together and saying "let's keep pay at this level", but there's definitely some fishy stuff going on.
Totally outside of the HR realm, when I was a computer system product manager pre-Web, we had a consulting firm that we paid way too much money to and when we were going to have a product launch, we asked them to, yes, fax us data sheets on various products we were positioning against. Later, there was another firm that collected pricing information which we needed for our pricing proposals.
I guess the answer is that, assuming the union were national, they would try to set nationwide salaries and enforce them across the board.
Expect a fine for their current behaviour that's a tenth of the money they saved, in ten years time.
I don't believe many companies can compete with Google on salary. Paying "market rate" is well... market rate. The discussion would in fact end there, because if you could easily seek employment for more than that elsewhere then it would no longer be the market rate. The alternative is to settle for the same or less elsewhere which brings into perspective that Google is no more wrong than any other employer.
In my broader circle, I see a lot more movement towards the likes of Google than away from--and most of the latter are senior people who don't need the money (or really didn't click with the job). Most companies that can will do creative things to snag or hold onto the people they want but I expect that most people who can land a Bay Area-salaried Google etc. position will just take that if money is the deal-breaker. Because most companies won't match in general.
Unless you're in sales, a major league sport, or a C-level position. Then you're paid according to the "value" you bring to your team.
I can work like crazy and not have an idea on whether I'll get a bonus, and if I do, how much. And I still have to work regular hours.
Someone in sales has a much clearer idea how much extra he can make and how to get there.
And it's a common occurrence that a top performer simply takes it easy for a few weeks (e.g. not come in to the office or work only 3 hours per day) as they made so much money after a big win. Their hours are a lot more flexible. Of course, most are not top performers and do end up working long hours.
What is the job worth? Outside of sales (or dealing with money directly like finance), it becomes hard to pin an exact $ value on the worth of a particular job. The reality is, almost all salaries are market based. What I expect to see over time as more companies move remote, is for the salaries to normalize to a country/region market which means less money in SF, but more if someone lives in the south.
Total profit divided by the number of employees?
Doesn't matter.
Pay is set by what they need to pay you to keep you in that seat. Company will (rationally, from their perspective) pay you the least possible that won't make you walk out.
Viewed that way, it is inherently location-based. I'd be more than happy to stay for, say, 100K if I live in a very cheap area since that's enough to live very very well.
But if I'm in silicon valley it'd better be more like 300K due to cost of living.
The union could organize a strike and demand different policies. Choosing not to work is the one piece of pressure that employees can leverage. Of course if you ask politely it won't change things. AWU does not yet have the scale to really make that happen yet, though.
Then you have to change the market rate by withdrawing supply. That's essentially how strikes work. Sure, if they can sack everyone and find and onboard several hundred programmers overnight at the same rate, it's not going to work. Tends not to be that easy.
Of course, the main reason programmers are already paid quite well is that the supply is short and the market rate is pretty high.
I mean, it does and it doesn't. In my limited experience, it works both ways almost exactly the same percentage of time.
- Developers who want to move and work remotely in low cost areas but want to keep high salary
- Employees of any kind who move to a bigger city and want cost-of-living wage increase, even though their job is the same
Further more, "What job is worth" is so incredibly dependent on the market, I don't even know what other feasible (as opposed to theoretical) definition there may be. "Paying what the local market offers" and "what the job is worth" might as well be synonyms in a practical sense.
OTOH, Anybody who wants to say we should pay salaries based on global market, should be aware that vast vast vast majority of developers worldwide get tiny fraction of SV salary. Even up here in frozen Canada, I have zero understanding of the salaries HN team members post. My understanding is that UK is similar - and that's without going to Easter Europe, or any other continent.
Outside of things like sales, no one knows what your job is worth. Not you, and not your employer. It's incredibly hard to figure out how much your contributions affected the bottom line. Your accomplishments are dependent on many other employee's efforts. There's no good way to disentangle that.
That's why everyone just looks at the market value.
If Facebook or Apple offer more money than Google in North Carolina, isn't that what would happen? If Google is already the top, and is just offering less than it is in other markets, it's not like they have much competition for top talent. Actually, it also works out that someone might be able to get a position at Google in one market and not another because more open headcount is available in the former market...and I don't think many people would complain about gaming the system that way.
In this case, both options are available: switching employees or switching to a city with higher pay
It’s a market. You can create millions in value but if someone else can create the same value and will take the job for $100k, why not just hire them?
Yes, it kinda sucks. The alternative though, seems worse.
It's nice to be able to move to a low cost area and still have a very good salary vs. local cost of living even if it is lower than in silicon valley. It's also nice to be able to live in silicon valley or NYC and get a living wage (much higher since it's needed).
What's the alternative? Same pay scale everywhere? Sure, but it won't be the silicon valley scale. It would be based on the lowest cost of living location the company cares to cater to, making it impossible to live in silicon valley. That's worse.
If you moved based on what the calculator said and then they cut your pay that's pretty messed up. I don't think the workers should expect to be paid the same as higher cost of living areas, but transparency in how these calculations are made should be available to them (especially if the rates can change year-to-year).
Why not? You're paid to create value for your employer. If (and let's handwave and say if) you're creating the same amount of value in location A as location B - why shouldn't _you_ get to pocket the difference in the cost of living?
I'm all for arguing about value creation by having spontaneous meetings and interactions that are easier when people are relatively closer together - but cost of living should have no bearing on what an employer compensates you for my labor - your ability to create value is literally the only thing that should matter.
So instead of working-from-home in Vancouver, he moved 200 km south to work-from-home in Seattle, and now they pay him more. (Cost of living is lower, too.)
Strange, if you ask me.
Their purchasing power is significantly higher; their dollars are just worth more. We're not talking small amounts, either – a difference of 25% or more in purchasing power is easy to find when you're comparing CA to the South. [1]
So, when you look at it like that... why shouldn't Google pay less? Even a 10% pay cut would amount to Southern workers still making an effective 15% more than their Bay Area counterparts.
Again: I'm playing devil's advocate here. In another comment on this thread, I totally agree with you: the argument of "same work, same pay" is very hard for me to dismiss, and I really don't have any argument against it. I just think there are very convincing arguments in both directions.
Edit: another counterargument for anyone who is stridently in the "same work, same pay" camp: What if you were working at a job in North Carolina, and your company told you that you needed to move to New York in order to keep your job, and they weren't going to give you a pay raise? Do you still feel that "the same work deserves the same pay"?
To google, who is paying its workers, the dollar is the same no matter where you work, if you're working remote either way.
> someone who is in NC (or a lower cost-of-living area), if they're paid the same as someone in the Bay Area, is effectively being paid more for doing the same work.
Yes. This is true. Also, someone who lives in a small apartment and doesn't own a car is paid more, even within just the bay area. Someone who has a child and pays for childcare, or a parent in a nursing home that they pay for, is getting less purchasing power for the same salary.
The cost of living varies by location, but also by lifestyle, life circumstances, and many other things. What things do we change it for? The exact same argument you make above could be used to argue that we should pay workers with a child more, workers with college loans more, or workers who choose to live in downtown SF vs the outskirts of oakland more.
On the other hand, making the pay identical for the same work done, irrespective of life circumstances and location, is straightforward and has none of these weird questions associated with it.
> Someone who has a child and pays for childcare, or a parent in a nursing home that they pay for, is getting less purchasing power for the same salary.
This is not what purchasing power means.
It's true that different people have different lifestyles and different costs of living, but even given that fact, different areas simply have different purchasing power outside of that.
To be a little clearer:
Bay Area worker A lives in a 1BR apartment with no car.
Bay Area worker B lives in a house with a kid.
A and B have different costs associated with their lifestyles, but their dollars go just as far. A just has more money left over. If A has a kid, or decides to get a house, they will end up in (roughly) the same situation as B.
Meanwhile, North Carolina worker C lives in a 1BR apartment with no car. They have a lot of money left over.
But if C decides they want a house and a kid, they will still pay less than B does, and less than A would have to pay to upgrade.
Do you see what I'm getting at? Workers in a lower-cost area simply get more for their salary, independent of their life choices.
I would argue that where you live is about as much of a life choice as whether you have a child.
Is "I live in oakland vs downtown SF" a life choice, or is that independent of life choices? That seems like it has the same tradeoff more or less as living in SF vs NC, but doesn't have a change in pay because it's "close enough" to SF still.
> different areas simply have different purchasing power outside of that.
I agree that avocado toast is $15 in SF and $8 in NC, so you do have different purchasing power. This applies less and less to stuff though. The latest PS5 or a month of a c5.xlarge AWS instance for your side project or month of netflix all cost the same no matter where you live.
Why do we care about the cost of living wrt location though, and not wrt any other factors? I choose to live in NC, so things cost less. Why pay me less?
I didn't choose to have some illness that maxes out my deductible each year, but I get paid the same total amount as my coworker without this illness, and thus my effective salary is lower. My cost of living is higher because of this immutable characteristic (a health problem), which is far less a lifestyle choice than where I live.
There are many factors that change the effective value of a dollar to a worker, and it seems quite weird to care about location only, and nothing else, from the perspective of "fairness".
To be clear about my opinion as to why this happens: I don't think this is actually about CoL or financial fairness, as you seem to espouse. IMO, it's entirely about competing with other companies for the same talent pool, and those other companies currently being either local, or also doing CoL adjustment. That's the only thing that makes sense (that it's done because everyone does it). This also neatly explains the Oakland/SF split being different than the SF/NC split.
Thus the workers in SF aren't being paid less, but choose to spend the pay on the bay area lifestyle
I live in a moderately HCOL area--although not in a particularly expensive part of it--and have no desire to move for essentially a one-time moderate windfall.
I'm in a HCOL area because my in-laws are no longer fully independent, so I get that this isn't everything, but I would suggest that a lot of bay area residents are there because they either like the area directly, or like the opportunities living there affords, in which case the HCOL is justified.
If an employer wants the work done _from and in location X_, the location is part of the value created. If they want employees to work in location X, then they will have to pay according to location. If employees decide by themselves, that they want to relocate, assuming that remote working is possible, or that the employer has offices in the new location, then that is their own decision, with all the consequences, including getting more or less out of their wages in the end.
They're paid the same in fact, they just spend it poorly (on expensive Bay Area real estate, mostly, but also other services the area makes more expensive.) Why should Google help subsidize SF Bay Area real estate? Historically, the answer is just, "because so many employees are here and we like them here", but will that cut it going forward?
What are their other options? It's pretty hard to work in the Bay Area and not spend money on Bay Area real estate. Remote work notwithstanding.
Yeah, yeah, avocado toast and Teslas, etc. etc.; but you can't argue that simply being a human in San Francisco costs more than it does elsewhere, lifestyle aside.
The argument that "the same salary is worth more in NC" is still pretty convincing to me.
Somebody working in Raleigh-Durham is paid considerably lower than somebody working in "Remote-NC." In fact, the Raleigh-Durham office currently pays the least of any location in the US because their equity calculations are also affected.
Would you apply the same reasoning to two people both living in the Bay Area? The cost of living of different people in the same area isn’t the same. Should Google decrease your pay if your mortgage is lower than your coworkers’?
"Erratum: Utility Monster Georg, who derives trillions of utilons from every dollar paid and accounts for 99.999% of our compensation expenses, was an outlier and should not have been included in our HR planning."
When I pay $x for something, I pay $x because I am betting I will not be able to get that something for less than $x. If I think circumstances have changed and I can now get that something for less than $x, then I will try to get that something for less than $x.
I might fail, or I might succeed, but at any given time, it seems prudent for me to be shopping around for the best price for me.
I assume others also behave in the same manner.
This pretends that there isn't a market for labor, with its own supply curve.
For example, the relative value you generate is not enough to value your wages. Else Marketers and Sales teams would make MUCH more than engineers. But for a given level of quality, there are a lot more marketers that can do as good of a job, and the elasticity is low (e.g. skills are "easy to learn" or develop in a short time frame) - hence why marketers tend to be paid lower than the average engineer with same level or years of experience. In the latter case, engineers are in short supply and supply elasticity is high (you can't just move from barista to engineer overnight.)
I mean, the logic clearly doesn't work because if you instead ask "why shouldn't the employer pay the same low salary in both locations", the argument immediately goes right back to cost of living being different. For the argument of pay correlating to value creation to hold, it must hold in both scenarios, not just the one you happen to like more.
This goes further than tech salaries. By all accounts, the people in a factory that built the device you're using to be on HN right now should also be paid bay area level figures since they clearly are a very important part of the supposed value creation you're partaking in. But if they did, your computer would cost $500,000 instead of $5,000. And your shoes would similarly cost a fortune, and probably your mangos and pretty much everything else too, which is effectively the "low" salary scenario I brought up above, except with more zeros on the right side of the price tags. So something's gotta give, and taking the pay-for-value-creation argument to a logical conclusion frankly doesn't seem all that appealing.
If an employee doing Job X in San Francisco is worth $500k/yr to Google, then paying an employee doing the exact same job in NC $250k/yr because the CoL is lower there is padding Google's profits at the expense of the second employee—and, indirectly, all employees in the sector, because that depresses market rates.
As I said in another post, I don't care about what's "efficient", or what makes Google the most money. I care about how they treat people.
Google and its execs would not have their lives change in any meaningful way if they were to pay everyone who does Job X the same that they have to pay to attract people to that job in the Bay Area. But it might change the lives of some of their employees, and of employees of other tech-sector companies, if they were making an extra $100k, $50k, or even $10k/year.
It feels a bit out of touch to say that when they literally do make top-of-band salaries compared to other local companies even after pay cuts. As others have brought up, $250k in NC is pretty darn good pay.
We're not talking about a company squeezing out their janitors where an extra 1k/mo might mean they can quit a second night shift job or afford insuline or whatever. We're in "I want to be able to afford a Ferrari instead of a Tesla" territory. And I don't think I'd be alone in thinking that the latter is harder to sympathize with.
Your argument boils down to "pay me more", and I already took that to its logical conclusion: yes, of course you want to be paid more, get in line. Everyone wants to be paid more, but if that happens, then through the magic of inflation, everyone loses. What people really want is to be paid more while everyone else doesn't, because that's the only way that they get to keep the purchasing power of their money. And forgive me if this is too brutally blunt, but that's just selfishness masquerading as social justice.
Not quite. You're retained to create value for the company, but you're not paid based on that value. You're paid based on what it takes to keep you there and not quit. In some (many?) cases that may be far lower than the value you create.
Folks were initially told one number and then it was adjusted to a much lower number. They were the only group in the US that had their equity refreshes adjusted down. And people working at the actual research triangle site are paid a lower rate than people working remotely in the rest of NC, which has a lower cost of living than Raleigh-Durham. The people at the Raleigh-Durham office are the lowest paid engineers at any location in the US right now. Lower than "middle of nowhere Montana."
Yah, it stinks. The alternative is moving to the valley; it used to be that the calculation was in the tune of a 30% pay raise or similar, but nowadays it's likely closer to a 2x or 3x difference in pay. I have no doubt that those working in North Carolina, or in similarly "remote" areas, will find their wages stagnate as well.
I think the passport makes a pretty huge difference. The barriers to moving from North Carolina to California – while high – are nothing compared to the process of immigrating to the United States (at least from everything I've ever read about that process).
But as will likely be similar for individuals from North Carolina, my anchor to this geographic location is the social and familial network that my family relies upon. Moving to another geographic location is appealing, and a great option, when young and lacking in responsibilities; but I'm quite hesitant to uproot my children and wife, placing them far away from their friends and extended family, in order to live in a location that lacks the qualities that makes raising a family here so appealing.
Guess what this does to pay equity between races within Google?
Put it another way. You are a firm that needs steel as an input. You can buy identical steel for $1000/ton from supplier A, or $800/ton from supplier B, who saves on costs by locating their steel mill in a cheaper geographic area. Would you say, actually, that's not fair to supplier B, "same steel same price"? No, of course not.
An even better (more direct) example is that of offshore IT labor costs. I would expect anyone here arguing for "same job same pay" would support equal (100% of SV pay) for any offshore labor their company employs, all else being equal with respect to individual labor output.
I get that people aren't used to thinking of themselves as participants in a market for their labor. But unless we want to do a revolution or something I don't see this going away. In fact, it's only going to get worse, because as remote work becomes more and more normalized the competitive advantage of "locality" will erode entirely and you'll be competing in a global labor marketplace, with potentially much slimmer margins.
Disclaimer: I'm someone who recently joined a large tech firm and saw my salary location-adjusted pretty significantly. It still blew away my previous compensation with local firms.
I'd expect that you wouldn't go on buying $1000 steel from supplier A?
You deserve better.
On an average, Long Run, By collaborating with Silicon Valley minds, in-person, you'll generate more value than sitting Remote or hanging out in North Carolina.
These would have been never been possible if Jeff and Sanjay were remote https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...
Workers are just market participants, competing with other workers. One way they can compete is by lowering their living costs, so that they can get by for less and afford to offer their services for lower rates.
Likewise companies compete and try to make their products more affordable.
This is how we arrived at the situation of extreme surplus in Western countries. Not by some entity (or internet commentators) setting arbitrary price points for things.
I'm very confused here. The value theory of labour is based upon time spent in labour, and not value produced.
The argument was if for whatever reasons, the value produced before moving to Arizona allowed the employer to pay a certain wage, the value provided to the company is still the same post-move, and wages should not change.
This has nothing to do with the value theory of labour, and the employer's stance here more or less aligns with an "input costs determine output" theory of value. This is beyond silly.
But the Raleigh-Durham office situation is bullshit. They are paid less than US-REMOTE-NC. They are the only location in the US that had their equity refreshes cut directly rather than ratcheted down. It is the lowest paid location in the US and the research triangle isn't like 2009 Detroit in terms of housing prices. And teams were moved there so if you prefer working on site then it wasn't like it was an optional pay cut for a different location.
On the one hand, the logic of the employees is pretty irrefutable: why should anyone be paid less money for the same work, just because they have a different zip code?
On the other, it's hard for me not to agree with the employers' basic arguments. In a capitalist sense, they're gonna pay what they need to, nothing more: market-based pay is just that. PR aside, they're running a business.
Probably the argument that makes the most sense to me in favor of pay adjustments is that a worker making a Bay Area salary in North Carolina is effectively being paid more than their SF-based-counterpart, because while the nominal value of their compensation is the same, the NC worker's purchasing power is much higher. In one view, they are (almost!) literally being paid more.
But I just can't get over the very basic logic of "same work, same pay." It seems deeply, critically unfair to me – and beyond unfair, it seems like a quick way to make anyone outside SF feel "lesser-than."
I don't know. Does anyone have links to convincing arguments you've read one way or the other? I think this really is a kind of unsolved question, and one that is only growing in importance with remote work.
I'd also add that the value of being able to work in-person is not zero - some roles can go fully remote, but things like user research are much more difficult to conduct remotely (particularly with hardware).
Finally, the reason the Bay Area / NYC cost the most are because they attract on the whole, highly qualified talent. It's not unexpected that the salary scales would be where the senior, high performing talent is implicitly located.
Well when same people are taking advantage of not only cheap goods (housing and all) but also cheap services, they may have some slick sounding arguments on their side but not some moral high ground for equal pay.
> I don't know. Does anyone have links to convincing arguments you've read one way or the other?
There can't be any. Unfairness against one's self feels visceral but against others it is mostly along "Well they don't work in IT industry so they are different" or even better "Well this schmuck could go ahead get ML PhD and earn million dollar/year. No one is stopping them."
So what services are you talking about?
> plumbers aren't working for free either.
Not working for free vs paid equal in NYC/SFO/Raleigh/Columbus makes a world of difference.
That's just categorically untrue. In a smallish city in Portugal the food is drastically cheaper than in Paris. For some concrete data, look at the Bic Mac index ( the eurozone kind of screws the comparison up, but it's still valid for Canada vs US vs UK vs EU )
Same goes for rent ( a studio in Paris is as much as a 2-3 room apartment in Montpelier, let alone a small city in Sicily), or associated services.
Would you pay a plumber more if you could get another plumber to do the same work for less?
Would you pay more for groceries if another grocery store is selling at 50% cheaper?
> On the other, it's hard for me not to agree with the employers' basic arguments. In a capitalist sense, they're gonna pay what they need to, nothing more: market-based pay is just that. PR aside, they're running a business.
Everyone pays what they (feel) they need to and nothing more, not just employers.
Trying to derive compensation from worth, value, or fairness is tantamount to a category error.
Arguments that you are paid the value you bring to the company. If that's true, then companies that profit are ripping off their employees to some extent.
Arguments for "same work same pay". How does that apply to manufacturing where clearly overseas workers making the exact same clothing are paid less than their American counterparts, the exact reason manufacturing moved overseas in the first place? If you think this is deeply, critically unfair, well there are generations of blue-collar workers that agree and probably don't feel a lot of sympathy for tech workers when nobody gave a crap when it happened to them.
Arguments you are paid your market-based replacement value. You get paid less in a cheaper COL area than an expensive COL area, if you actually live in said areas. This makes the most sense to me, just from a competing for talent perspective. Sadly all this does is enrich property owners in high COL areas.
As far as how it applies to remote work, well that falls into the market-based replacement value bucket. If the corp is willing to hire remote workers, then you as a remote worker are also competing against the entire world of remote workers, some of who live in even cheaper areas. This is one of those "be careful of what you wish for, you might get it" situations. I don't see how, long term and outside truly world-unique talent situations, corporations will agree to pay Bay Area wages to remote workers wherever they are. Especially when tech workers aren't unionized, indeed most vehemently oppose being unionized.
The median household income was $67k in 2020. That means 50% of all families, potentially with both adult members actively working, earned just over half of what your typical software engineer earns.
In a nation with such massive wealth inequality, in a city where people are living in tents under highways, I see people complaining about $300k TC as a "lowball offer."
From an individual perspective, I get it: why wouldn't you want to strive for the maximum you could possibly get? People are motivated by money, that's fine.
But man, it sure feels like the guillotines should be coming out pretty soon.
OP is not arguing that Bezos is totally and completely deserving of his billionaire status.
They're just saying that it feels a little gauche to bitch and moan publicly about losing 10% of your 200k compensation in a time where 60% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Maybe those workers do deserve more! Maybe much more! But man, it's hard to not feel a little tone deaf.
Obviously, this is only one small facet of a large and complicated discussion. No one is "fighting for" managers and owners here. The OP isn't even explicitly anti-union! Just pointing out the "bad taste."
Maybe that's what they meant (I don't know, I'm not a mind reader). But what they wrote was that location-based salary ranges were "great", when clearly they're just one way of giving employers more power in the employer-employee relationship. And they won't do much to address entitlement -- you still get those big bucks living near SF.
Also super long, to the point where I feel like this will just be like shouting into thin air.
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My intended message was that in the much broader context of the labor market as a whole, tech workers make enough money that instead of trying to scratch out another $30k in bonuses or some arbitrary perks... they should focus on ways to better generate & distribute the wealth in the economy to match their perception of "fair & just".
I would say the same thing to lawyers, doctors, and other highly paid skilled professions if the article was about them. Take the capital you have, whether it is financial or political, and do something to help someone who actually needs it.
If you feel like you should be paid more, that's a private discussion between you and your employer. Save the blogs, articles, disgruntled forum comments, and general bellyaching for a professional discussion with your manager/HR/whatever.
So when I say I think this is a good thing, I mean that in the same way I would say that my young son tripping and falling on his face is a good thing after I told him for the 20th time to stop running in the damn house. He's a tough kid, he's got plenty of energy and won't have any problems recovering from the fall. Maybe he will bleed a bit, maybe he will cry, and just maybe.... he will slow the fuck down and be a bit more mindful of his surroundings.
Unlike my son though, we are whole ass grown adults who don't need a hug and a pat on the head after tripping a bit.
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Honestly the meat of the problem I am (poorly) trying to communicate is that EVERYONE just seems too damn loud, too damn entitled, and never actually focused on even just identifying societal scale solutions to perceived issues, much less implementing any useful change.
It sounds & feels like noisy chickens pecking for higher place in the order, using real (business owners hoarding $$$$$x100+ of easily liquidated assets) and fabricated (managers making $$, while engineers make $) adversaries to justify their "unselfish" desire for an ever growing slice of the pie.
(1) How about we look at fixing the (supply/cost) issues preventing young adults earning the median income for their demographic from purchasing a starter (2bd 1ba) home/apartment/loft in the vast majority of metropolitan areas?
Well this would require big government to start regulating and taxing property ownership more, which affects only the individuals who are in a position to bitch about how it isn't fair to them.
(2) How about we address the sheer inadequacy public education's curriculum on personal financial literacy?
Well to do that we need to pay teachers more, and now we're in the weeds about state budgets, federal spending, corruption in education departments, etc.
(3) How about doing something about the predatory college system that places young adults in a position of either not being able to earn enough for rent (See 1 & 2) or unable to save enough capital to try their hand at becoming an entrepreneur (the American Dream?!) due to their crippling student loans?
Well, you can't fix it going forward without someone complaining about how it doesn't help those already affected. Then you get into debates about personal accountability versus unfair lending practices, etc.
(4) How about we address the culturally ingrained expectation of a globally unsustainable standards of living created by minimally regulated, generations deep, deceptive marketing practices?
Here you are up against an ARMY of people whose relationship with the truth is best described as abusive, spinning things around and around until somehow it is the consumer's fault for thinking they could possibly afford to be the statistical average joe. If you do manage to open a dialogue for even identifying the problem scope, you'll end up down another rabbit hole about personal accountability & how those who have everything are somehow morally superior to those left longing for the image of eden they're constantly followed around by.
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I could go on and on about issues that are both important AND urgent that make this "problem" a tiny insignificant blip affecting only the lives of people who could do more if they weren't so focused on so little.
But to be fair, I don't do anything about these problems either, so full steam ahead I guess.
It's possible for each individual to do more, but there's a limit to what we can realistically expect. No one is changing the world for the better even a little by being less assertive when it comes to their own salary, although they could allocate part of that salary to worthy causes. When you write this:
> EVERYONE just seems too damn loud, too damn entitled, and never actually focused on even just identifying societal scale solutions to perceived issues
I don't understand how not displaying what you feel is the requisite amount of gratefulness (by seeking a higher salary publicly) prevents people from identifying societal scale solutions to perceived issues. And I don't see how having every individual identify societal scale solutions to perceived issues really helps; that's a lot of cooks in the "let's fix society" kitchen. There's room for division of labor, right? I don't need to save the Amazon from deforestation, free Uighurs from detention camps, reduce food insecurity in rural Alabama, lobby US congresspeople to improve affordable housing, and try to rescue abandoned house rabbits in Columbus, OH. I can pay someone to do that stuff (because I've extracted enough value from my multibillion dollar market cap employer).
I don't do a very good job of clearly explaining the why aspect of my comment, however I did write an unreasonably long response to multiple comments further down that probably clarifies nothing but at least expands on my original comment. You can see it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449521
Maybe it's uncharitable, but one could interpret that as you thinking it's a great thing that Google gets to keep more of its profits rather than sharing them with its employees. Is the solution to tech worker entitlement really to let big tech companies have the advantageous position in salary negotiations?
As a long-term non-SF tech worker, companies are going to move out the Bay Area whatever they do.
Scenario A: they pay less but receive the same quality of workers (and no, Bay Area folks you are not especially talented compared to the national or global pool.)
Scenario B: they pay the same, and pull much more senior people many of them could not afford in a higher cost of living environment.
Scenarios A and B both rapidly push labor outside of the Bay Area. Frankly, this is irreversible at this point.
Low and behold, salaries were never brought back to pre-pandemic levels.
I suspect the reason pay is lower in North Carolina is that not enough people are switching employers - this is what helps the market find the equilibrium point in terms of pay.
And clearly Google isn't paying too low - people are taking the jobs after all.
I can think of one reason is to be keep employees in few locations concentrated to get some political leverage.
Mr.Senator from CA, if you are doing this X, there are 50K of our employees in the State of CA paying taxes so we may have to move them to AZ kind of lobbying. May be some tax rebates or other incentives from state or city.
Google wants to maintain a certain strength in certain states -- if their workforce is diluted across US - they may not have these kind of levers. So, they are using COLA based pay to get people to move to their favorite location(s).
Or it could be down right -- hey employee X will be paying $10K in less taxes -- how about we get $8K of that. May be petty or may be not!
Definitely agree. My only concern about maintaining pay across the world -- does it contribute to inflation in those areas? Would this be bad for the areas? Or does it help by adding revenue?
There are real quality of life implications for living in an expensive city. Companies that want a physical presence there should pay a premium for it because employees should have the option to live close to their office as a default option.
The biggest expense is typically housing. And if you bought the house, it means the biggest expense is... building equity into an asset you can sell afterward.
Keep in mind the engineer who purchased a 2 million house in Palo Alto can sell it for two million, and then move to Ohio to a much cheaper house purchased in cash. The reverse isn't true.
Now, let me tell you a little secret. These "official prevailing wage calculators" are all "corporate policy from HR" and aren't real. There are a lot of engineers that have special deals with their organizations and keep the same salary bands, no matter what HR says. Just make sure you are at a profit center.
It isn't. It's cost of labor, not cost of living. "How much do we have to pay you to keep you from switching to a plausible competitor."
(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
Also a Googler.
If people do not quit, then Google’s bet was correct.
That said, europeans have been getting an even worse deal on compensation for years and years.
They should simply go work for an European FANNG.
Instead, the problem is inaccuracy in estimating cost of labor. That is, they are trying to base it on cost of labor and failing.
Why wouldn't corporations take advantage of this?
Take the L and the downvote.