I skeptical of most of the tech stuff too -- fewer tech roles require the skillsets/social connections only found a big tech hub than in the past. For many years, IBM was able to run successful tech operations in places like Minneapolis, Austin, Binghamton NY, Hudson Valley NY, North Carolina, Tampa, etc.
The median home price is Pittsburgh is literally 90% less than many California locales. Even with a 40% pay cut, in many professions moving to one of these places will be a neutral in terms of money and probably a positive impact on the employee's quality of life.
Can you give some data around this? 90% seems like a hyperbole. Or are you comparing the most expensive zipcode in the bay area (e.g Atherton) with the cheapest in Pittsburgh?
I can tell you that I live in a small northeastern city, and a 3 or 4 bedroom mid 20th century, single family house is around $130/sqft in a nice neighborhood. In the burbs, it's about $150/sqft. When your mortgage+taxes is <$15k/year, you don't need to make crazy salaries.
I don't know bay area real estate, so looking at Gilroy, CA, which would be a hella commute to SFO, you're looking at $400-450/sqft for 3/4br single family. That's alot of cash.
This is what "Going full remote" post-covid is going to look like for a lot of companies.
>“ Most of the layoffs will take place in September and those affected will have the opportunity to relocate and stay with the San Francisco-based company.”
Is that not true? If it is true, how do you relocate a remote worker?
To think that less than 4 months ago People were ridiculing Andrew Yang and other proponents of UBI. I admit having it be, initially anyway, State sanctioned bothers me a great deal; but the fact is gainful employment is no longer a reliable aspect of modern Life for many in Society. This will continue to cut deeper and deeper, and for anyone not paying attention these protests and riots in the US have a much deeper sense of resentment than just Police Brutality against black males. And it's felt throughout the spectrum of underemployed, highly indebted underclass. Its like the bottled and pent up anger from the Occupy movement coming back.
In many ways this reminds me of the London Riots of 2011, when London police killed a young black male named Mark Duggan [1] and it exposed a myriad of sociological, and socio-economic issues that quite frankly still remain to this day.
1: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/three-riot-lesson...
That aside, the idea that you can finance life in the highest cost living areas of the USA as a “stylist” (picking items for a clothing subscription) is lunacy. Clearly that work can be done anywhere and it’s only a matter of time till it’s pushed to the lowest cost areas. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of such labor goes to near zero as they attempt to start “paying” people with publicity instead.
It's in quotes with an inline description because, while it's the actual job title for the positions in question, it's also a common English word that in most circles would refer to a "hair stylist".
Ascribing negative intentions to minor punctuation and making up biographies about your fellow commentators says more about your bad taste and biases than mine.
I suppose you think it’s lunacy that hair dressers think they can live in the city as well.
Why not just offer a straight salary cut, since they are already, as you say...remote?
On a more serious note, I know a few companies who do treat their tech people like disposable inventory, on par with the lower-prestige roles, and it works out just fine for them. They don't get highly motivated world-class talent, but they don't need that sort of talent; just someone to take care of their relatively modest IT/dev needs. It's not very efficient across a lot of metrics, but low salaries probably compensate for that.
This seems to be a trend across all sorts of industries, less and less jobs that pay well, less employees that get coddled and treated well, commoditize the hell out of every last role etc. – just because it's not a big thing in much of tech yet probably doesn't mean it's an impossibility.
I think that day is closer than many imagine. If I take out well paying / no physical labor part I am as a Jira slave and daily standup chump are lot closer to warehouse worker than silicon valley type pampered engineer.
A company purpose is to make money, not to take care of its employees.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2019/10/22/now-calif...
https://moskowitzllp.com/leaving-california-and-the-franchis...
Here’s an article from 5 years ago that showed a $10k per employee per year cost difference between NYC and Dallas. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-your-compan...
Keep in mind that office prices are going to vary wildly based on location. High rises in the downtown with good access to public transit are going to cost a lot more than an office park that’s just barely within city limits. So these averages per city are going to hide huge standards of deviation.
Haha, tech companies in the Bay Area use open office designs that pack people like sardines. Each employee probably gets closer to 30-50sqft.
I don't know about the US, but in France, in large urban areas like Lyon or Toulouse, you can easily find office space for 100 to 200 €/m²/year. Which means, translated in $, that $17k per year would grant you 75 to 150 m² (800 to 1600 sq. ft.).
That would be a very very nice office, far from the shoulder-to-shoulder openspace model, even if you add other expenses than pure rent :-)
Of course, in America rents in NYC and SF are going to drive up the averages by a lot, with companies like FB and Google willing to pay huge amounts for prime real estate and luxury build outs.
So the interesting question for you is: how much are rents in Paris, and how does that affect the averages of France as a whole?
Also, the company will be able to save more money since everything is cheaper from taxes to real estate in other states compared to California.
Why wouldn't it be legal?
It's like offshoring -- but off-Californiaing.