Facebook announces that remote WFH employees will have salaries decreased to match local COL

[Anonymous]

I would do the COL calculations for NEW hires, not for dislocated employees who are likely traumatized during a pandemic, facing job loss by partner or spouse, etc. They can keep the same salary for the current employees with a grandfather policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That is effed up

Why? Seems reasonable to me to take COL into account.

Yes. Seems reasonable to me as well as long as this is the case for all employees at Facebook.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps a dumb question, but wouldn’t you need to know the pay cut before determining if the new location really has a lower cost of living to justify the salary cut?

Having been involved with salary studies for satellite offices, I can report that professional consultants for such things price out salaries at ridiculously lower targets even in high cost areas. They priced out San Diego lower than our Midwest HQ—it was ridiculous.

My guess is that companies like FB already have some form of this for satellite offices. They'll just expand it. I imagine you can ask what your salary would be, too.

My guess is that the COL adjustments will be published internally at some point and it will likely be state-based. The gamesmanship that might go on in the east coast (NH versus MA for instance) won't be such a big deal for tech companies because the western states are much bigger.

This. Your salary would be pegged to the same level job at nearest office you could commute to if needed. If there were no such thing, you'd likely be negotiating your salary or they'd just set one.

[Anonymous]

You earn the high pay at the tech companies. Most tech companies deploy a darwin type of peer review performance system to get rid of 10% of the work force each year.

Amazon, Facebook, Netflix etc all deploy a variation of these high stress employee review systems. Many workers don't last 5 years at these companies.

Those who work here honestly earn the high pay irregardless of local cost of living. This move is just another move for Zuckerberg to make more money.

Local taxes are required by state and municipal law to be paid. Local taxes have nothing to do with Zuckerberg's decision.

[Anonymous]

It is completely normal that an in-company transfer to a lower COL office involves a salary change. This was the case at our law firm 20 years ago (first year associates get market salary, not the same salary as all other first years in the firm). Otherwise the new guy from the NY office who just transferred to the Kansas office is making double his boss's salary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would do the COL calculations for NEW hires, not for dislocated employees who are likely traumatized during a pandemic, facing job loss by partner or spouse, etc. They can keep the same salary for the current employees with a grandfather policy.

If they stay in SV they don’t take a pay cut. Problem solved. And it sounds like WFH is an option, not a requirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would do the COL calculations for NEW hires, not for dislocated employees who are likely traumatized during a pandemic, facing job loss by partner or spouse, etc. They can keep the same salary for the current employees with a grandfather policy.

What? None of these employees are dislocated. They don't have to move if they don't want to move. As for job loss and trauma, why wouldn't that apply to new employees as well?

I seriously don't understand some of you in this thread. COL adjustments are very common and reasonable. The FB policy is generous.

[Anonymous]

This has been my thought since WFH started to become a big deal in the past decade: companies figure out that they don't need to maintain expensive offices for all of their people all of the time. Employees figure out they can live further from the workplace and deal with the bad commute less often or maybe never go at all.

Eventually, capitalism happens and companies make the rational decision to pay people less if they can. You don't have to pay silicon valley salaries to get good people if they can be in Sacramento, Charlotte, Mumbai, Manila or Nairobi.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This has been my thought since WFH started to become a big deal in the past decade: companies figure out that they don't need to maintain expensive offices for all of their people all of the time. Employees figure out they can live further from the workplace and deal with the bad commute less often or maybe never go at all.

Eventually, capitalism happens and companies make the rational decision to pay people less if they can. You don't have to pay silicon valley salaries to get good people if they can be in Sacramento, Charlotte, Mumbai, Manila or Nairobi.

Companies have known that for years. The problem is that talent has concentrated itself in certain locales, such as SV. Tech companies poach each other's talent all the time. They don't go hunting for talent in rural Montana.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps a dumb question, but wouldn’t you need to know the pay cut before determining if the new location really has a lower cost of living to justify the salary cut?

Having been involved with salary studies for satellite offices, I can report that professional consultants for such things price out salaries at ridiculously lower targets even in high cost areas. They priced out San Diego lower than our Midwest HQ—it was ridiculous.

My guess is that companies like FB already have some form of this for satellite offices. They'll just expand it. I imagine you can ask what your salary would be, too.

My guess is that the COL adjustments will be published internally at some point and it will likely be state-based. The gamesmanship that might go on in the east coast (NH versus MA for instance) won't be such a big deal for tech companies because the western states are much bigger.

Facebook has not had many satellite offices, unlike Microsoft, which has a lot. Most of tech satellite offices revolve around sales.
I would not think that Facebook salaries would dramatically differ based on location except in terms of housing because they still want excellent employees, and excellent developers can demand high salaries. It’s like a really good experienced developer in Kentucky is going to be cool with making 65K as opposed to 250-300,000+ just because he’s in Kentucky. It will be more like people based in SF have a higher rate because of that cost of living. But I would doubt the difference would be extreme.

[Anonymous]

Oops. It’s NOT going to be like...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't really understand all of the outcry here. I would have interpreted this policy as saying something like "we don't really want people to work at home, but we're willing to let them do it if it will save us money." Which sounds fair enough. I'm not sure why anyone would want to move from SF to middle-of-nowhere, USA, personally, but maybe it works for some.

That's fine if you make the announcement BEFORE approving WFH/remote plans. It sounds like FB decided to cut salaries AFTER telling people they could work remotely. That's just a sht thing to do (in addition to sounding like it would violate an employment agreement). And is the sort of thing that makes people go looking for new jobs.

Look: people working for companies that are facing hard times seem unhappy but willing to accept pay cuts, if it means keeping their jobs. People working for companies doing better than ever should expect they won't be treated like crap by that company, financially, I think.

I see no problem with this policy applying to new employees, that said, so long as they go in knowing what the policy is.

No.. they have till Jan 2021 to decide whether they want to wfh permanently or not. Announcing the col adjustment now means they have the knowledge in hand before they make the decision. You are misinformed.

Yes, when things take a down turn, employers benefit. For decades in SV, it's been an employee's market, rather than an employer's market. No different to how real estate prices work, or any thing else. It's called supply and demand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would do the COL calculations for NEW hires, not for dislocated employees who are likely traumatized during a pandemic, facing job loss by partner or spouse, etc. They can keep the same salary for the current employees with a grandfather policy.

Haha, I'm sure all the 25 year old tech bros fleeing to cheap beach and mountain towns are very traumatized.

[Anonymous]

FB attracts top notch software developers and trains them very well. If they want to piss all that talent off by cutting their salaries in half (even for those who are just as or more productive while wfh), then I will happily hire them for my company.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FB attracts top notch software developers and trains them very well. If they want to piss all that talent off by cutting their salaries in half (even for those who are just as or more productive while wfh), then I will happily hire them for my company.

Please do. Hope you can afford a $350K software engineer + a 20% pay raise because obviously your company stock (if its even public) can't touch Facebook's in Sioux Fall, Idaho or wherever you are.