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Re:Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay ever...
by sokoloff on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @12:33PM
(#16053478)
Well, you're right that it does that.
We, like most for-profit companies, generally try to do things that increase profits.
Re:Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay ever...
by wagecuck on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @03:01PM
(#16055035)
Increasing profits is fine. Having workers that are not owners is despicable.
Re:Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay ever...
by sokoloff on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @04:10PM
(#16055675)
As a public company, many of our employees are shareholders (literally: owners), some via share-based comp, some via secondary purchases.
We don't enforce that, as a condition of employment, you must accept share-based compensation. Employees are mostly [1] paid in cash and we let employees decide how much of that cash they want to invest in the company.
[1]-some executives are "forced" to accept share-based compensation as part of their comp.
From the company's perspective, the conditions are not equal, try as we might (and do) to make them so. They are working on the other side of the clock from much of their peers and technical leadership. They are 18 hours of flight away when it comes time to visit on-site. They spend more time, on average, commuting to/from work. They face weather conditions that preclude reliable commuting several weeks per year.
They face disadvantages inherent to their location and related to the fact that their location isn't the HQ. It's not their fault, but to make the economics make sense for the company, they are paid well for the local market, but less than the Bay area market. If wages in India were Bay area wages, we wouldn't have started new dev teams in India.
The condition of one experienced dev moving away to a different location (I don't care whether higher or lower cost) is different from trying to build a de novo team in a different location. You take with you the experience and relationships you developed and that makes you different from your hypothetical identical twin who is applying to work remotely from wherever you are contemplating moving.