Echoing the HP employee, submitting claims monthly for remote work expenses (phone/internet bills, office supplies, travel) is normal. Ive worked as an apps engineer at a couple BigCos with same policies and the process never bothered me, I submit my claims as soon as a trip ends or when I get the bills.

The thing I would press is to get paid fairly, and bi-weekly. I’ve never had a salaried job that was paid monthly.

Google let's you choose. But yes common practice.

A huge benefit of fronting the costs is getting points on the spend, it adds up quickly

I'm currently a software dev getting paid monthly, and fronting around 3 grand this month. It happens.

Isn’t this why you have a corporate card?

> I’ve never had a salaried job that was paid monthly.

Interesting. I'm Dutch and I've never heard of a permanent job that was not paid monthly. If someone told me they were not paid monthly, I would assume they are a temp with variable hours.

Bi-weekly, or every 2 weeks, is norm in US as far as I know. It's easier for everyone in my opinion, except maybe employers that want to take advantage of their employees.

It's just a cultural convention, nothing more. Monthly seems to be the norm in Europe, bi-weekly in US and Canada. I've done both, and there's no practical difference.

It’s always beneficial to have your money faster. No reason employer should get to hold on to it longer and get interest and liquidity. In the extreme case, at least you’re not working a whole month before finding out employer has no money to pay you. And while you may legally be entitled to it, who knows how long the legal system delivers it to you.

> Is this standard in the software world?

This is standard in every world. Corporate credit cards are usually reserved for senior executives or people who travel/entertain a lot (e.g. sales reps). Cash advances aren't a thing outside of small companies.

Huh? Google made it super easy to get a GCard, you just request it on a web form and it arrived a few days later. It was pretty common for L4 engineers (that's the level below senior) to have them.

I am also a former Google employee. I also had a GCard, and it is exactly as easy to get one as described.

Google is the exception here, IMO. Every other employer I have had has generally required the employee to front the cash for expenses, and used something like Expensify to get reimbursed. There are some exceptions, such as hotels or airfare, which I've booked through corporate booking systems; these only let you see "approved" flights/hotels, and once booked, is charged direct to the company.

Same story at Amazon but most people I know prefer to use their own cards to churn points.

FB is similar, especially in remote offices.

Same at Cisco.

And corporate credit cards aren't blank checks. Employees will generally have to pay back any spend on their corporate card that is not approved as an expense.

It may prevent the employee from holding the bag if the company goes bust. But some "corporate cards" are issued by banks in a way that makes the cardholder jointly liable.

I had an AmEx @ Deloitte as an intern

I had one at Bank of America as an intern, too. Booked first class transcon tickets on it, no less.

I work for a small (<20 employees) software company. Every single employee has a company AmEx card they can use for any expense.

It's actually quite unusual to make employees anything except for incidental expenses (like meals) up front. Generally, making employees pay big-ticket expenses (including travel) and seek reimbursement is a legal and accounting nightmare, so it's something that a well-run business tries to avoid. (In some states, it's even illegal to require employees pay for necessary business expenses.)

The exception tends to be law and accounting firms, which issue cards to their employees for business use. The employee "pays" up front using the cards, but the card is connected to the employer's expensing system and the funds are deposited to the employee's account the payday following his submission of the expense report.

My employer wanted us to pay upfront and then claim. I was an Indian h1b. One time, they forced me to relocate to another state even though I didn't want to. "I will snip you" was my ex-manager's words when I refused. My moving expenses was about $3500k. I paid everything from my pocket. When I tried to claim, finance team refused to pay and agreed only after a lot of escalations. I finally got the money after about 1.5 months. This plus many other bad experiences made me literally throw away everything and come back to India.

At lockheed we were given unlimted limit cards for certain roles.

You would rack up your tab, submit your expense report and then they would issue you a check with which it was your responsibility to pay the tab.

One guy racked up like $50,000 on his card, got the check and then quit and never paid off the card...

Dont know what ever happened to him.

My employer issues corporate Visas to any employee expected to incur >$500/year in expenses. Which means most of us have cards, at least in the US. We still have to complete expense reports, but we don’t pay anything out of pocket.

This is how it has always worked for me. When I was more junior and didn't have a corporate card, I had a person who booked all my travel on the company account. At worst, I might have to cover a few incidentals like food or taxis.

This is the way it should be done. No employee should carry the burden of loading up their own credit or paying for big ticket items up front no matter how trustworthy the company.

Sony Computer Entertainment does this, but then they don't pay back for 6-9 months, forcing your personal credit to be their credit cushion. One of the reasons I quit.

When/where did you work? Corporate cards are normal at SIE, even engineers on my team have them. I don't dispute your experience, just curious.

Edit: As an addition, the expense isn't paid by the employee. Costs over $2000 need justification above your boss, but your immediate boss can approve up to $2000 no issues.

Worked in Santa Monica Studio, and was sent to Tokyo several times. Each trip was in the $8K range, as each trip was for weeks at a time. Their slow payback was killing me.

I don't understand, if it's a corporate Visa, there's nothing to pay back - the bill goes to accounting, not the employee.

I have a corporate Amex card, and even though its a "Corporate" card, given to me by my employer, it is in my name and I am legally responsible for it. My company will reimburse me for my expenses if approved by my manager. I have always thought this was a liability and weird, but everybody else at the company (a 500 company) thinks it's normal. So any expenses not approved at the end of the month are my responsibility. Anybody else have similar experiences?

What major expenses do you have in a WFH software position? Other than one-time office set up?

Sorry, neglected to include important details.

Approximately one week a month on-site at client(s) location. So, flights, food, accommodation.

I expected company payment card. If everything turns to shit one month the employee, in this sort of situation, could be left holding a fairly hefty bag.

In my experience, the norm is minor expenses are, well, expensed. Dinner, taxis, whatever. The big ones that require planning, sometimes HR just take care of - i.e. booking your flights and hotel for you. That being said it isn't unheard of for that to be something you "expense" as well. If they fuck you, sue them. They probably won't though.

Side note: if you're in a situation where you're loading up a credit card with business expenses that are later reimbursed, you may consider looking into a credit card that offers rewards like airline miles. It's essentially a "free reward no fee ATM." I always volunteer to grab the company lunch tab for this reason.

A company who values inclusion and diversity should understand that people who are unable to float a monthly expense buffer are very often those same demographics that have been marginalized by those working in the software industry.

Getting credit card points while you know your employer is almost certainly going to reimburse you is a nice benefit, but the industry should definitely seek to improve by making this optional. Especially for prohibitively large large expenses (flights, lodging) default to paying these upfront.

Well put.

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Are you actually paying cash? Assuming you're using a credit card, and assuming your company isn't looking to defraud you, using a card with decent cash back makes it a nonissue and "fronting the cash" for expenses is just a way for you to get a kickback from your credit card company for using them as a payment processor for work expenses. (And kind of a net positive relative to if you had a company credit card where the company claims any kickbacks.)

I do not possess a credit card for ideological reasons.

I do have two debit cards, one Visa and one MasterCard, for redundancy.

I see what you are saying and it makes sense. I’m just ideologically opposed to the use of consumer credit for regular / recurring / general living expenses.

If you're ideologically opposed to consumer credit because of the cycles of debt it incurs just pay off your credit card in full every month (which is what I do). No interest will be paid.

I do not have the self control to make that work.

I bet I’m not alone.

Submitting claims monthly is fairly standard, at least in my experience. At HP, they gave us a corporate AMEX card but I was responsible for paying it while I waited for the outsourced^2 HR operations to cut me a check.

Definitely need more pay not less to work remotely. Also, biweekly is better than monthly as another here stated. As for expenses, can’t talk much on that but it’s best if you get them paid up fast or if they are fairly typical in terms of the amount each time, ask for a payment up front to cover the bulk and make up the difference later. Employee does not mean you cannot make demands. Make all the demands you want and if they say no then you can say no too. It’s a 2 way street.

Yes. Fronting your expenses and then getting reimbursed after is pretty normal practice. Every employer I've had has done this with the exception of certain major purchases like airfare where the company has just purchased it for me directly, but some employers I had to front large costs like that as well.

Unfortunately, yes

Software engineer pay at tech companies in the US tends to be $150k for junior engineers to $300k+ for senior engineers.

Both of those numbers are possible, but much higher than average by my estimation. Glassdoor says average ~$111k for software engineering as a whole[0]. A more realistic expectation for a 'good' compensation package would be ~$80-95k for junior engineer and ~$180-250k for senior. Obviously there are many factors to account for, and both those numbers can vary widely, but the ones you gave are not what one should be expecting outside of a very select few 'elite' companies, and even then they are on the high end.

[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...

At least for big tech companies, Glassdoor has notoriously low numbers. Last I checked, levels.fyi was closer to the truth.

May I ask (in good faith) how you know what the real "truth" is? I would totally believe Glassdoor is a bit low. Levels.fyi, which I didn't know about but just checked, seems really high. I believe both are based on real data points, but is there any reason to believe either is a better reflection of the actual numbers? (My relatively poorly-informed speculation is that Glassdoor is using old/irrelevant statistical data while levels.fyi is suffering from some pretty extreme selection bias being a comparatively obscure site relying on self-reporting.)

Glass door either only shows base salaries or is completely out of touch with tech companies.

Sure, the lone "web developer" at a small nonprofit might make $80k, but at a FAANG? Please.

FAANG is 5 companies. Granted they have a lot of employees, but they do not make up a significant portion of all developers in the US.

> they do not make up a significant portion of all developers in the US

I'm not sure that's true, but I will admit that most of my friends work at FAANGs (outside the bay area). So let me add that I know at least one senior engineer at a non-FAANG tech company that left a $300k job for a "significant pay bump".

Frankly, no large tech company could survive if it didn't pay competitively with other large tech companies.

I fully agree that pay is less in small, non-tech companies in rural areas, but I would be surprised if such businesses hire the majority of developers. Big tech hires a LOT of engineers.

All numbers from statista.com

Alphabet - 98,000 (2018) Facebook - 35,000 (2018) Apple - 123,000 (2018) Netflix - 5,500 (2017) Amazon - 647,500 (2018)

Total - ~909,000

That is total number of employees worldwide. so lets conservatively take off a third. Also Reasonably only a third of those employees (probably a lot less at amazon) are actually developers. That gives us ~200,000. The Bureau of Labor statics says there are 1,200,000 software developers in the US in 2016.

FAANG does make up a lot more software development jobs than I thought, I would have to say a significant portion. Very interesting.

Microsoft hires junior engineers out of college at ~$80k in Seattle. FAANG might be a bit higher, especially with COL in the Bay Area, but plenty of people get hired by the big companies in that range.

They don't get bonuses or RSUs??

That's not true at all. That's bay area large companies. The rest of the country is nowhere near those numbers.

I know a handful developers in this pay range and only one of them is in the bay area.

No, this is false. The top paid junior engineers might be paid $150k in base salary PLUS bonuses and stock/other compensation. Same goes for the 300k+ for senior engineers.

Why would you think bonuses don't count as pay? All financial compensation is pay.