> Companies spin this by explaining they are merely paying people based on their cost of living, but this is absurd: do we increase someone’s salary when their spouse loses their job or when their kid goes to college?
Companies pay different amounts based on the location due to market price differences for software developers not because of differences in cost of living.
If you relocate to Zurich or Vancouver from SF, highly likely most companies that re-adjust salaries will decrease your salary even though cost of living is pretty high in both of those places.
I think one of the clearest examples of this is London, where tech salaries are 20-30% lower than SF despite it being roughly as expensive.
My friends at Google say Zurich is a better deal that it might seem. Between lower taxes and moderately lower cost of living, your google salary goes a lot further in Zurich than it does in Mountain View.
"developers not because of differences in cost of living."
No, the primary driver of those differences is cost of living.
Vancouver is not actually a 'high cost of living' place - it's just the real estate.
It's supply and demand as well and since most people work 'local' and Van doesn't have huge and powerful software companies HQ'd there, pay will be less.
But cost of living is a primary factor.
The 'my wife is pregnant' thing isn't a fair comparison because it's an individual artifact, not general for a location.
The fact maybe a spouse is pregnant will 100% affect pay because it will affect the demand curve i.e. change the nature of someone's willingness to work at what salary.
It's one thing to whine about compensation but if engineers in Zurich or Vancouver want things to change they must vote with their feet and come to the Bay Area.
Either that or get VC funding on par with what's happening in the valley.
From Vancouver this is a fairly straightforward proposition (or as I understand it, was one pre-COVID). From Europe, it is _incredibly_ difficult to get a work visa for US. The most egregious example of the difference here is London vs San Francisco.
The cost of living is not crazily different, yet the entry level comp in SF is high senior level for most technical jobs. However, my experience is that the Bay Area has a lot of British immigrants (I encounter a new (to me) at least weekly at the large company I work at), so perhaps people are indeed voting that way.
Agreed, it probably is time for that deal to be dramatically improved.
Currently however, for a Canadian to move from Canada under a TN series visa than any of the visas available to Europeans, other than some limited cases such as diplomatic missions.
"Extraordinary individuals" only, max three years, tied to a job and an "event". Definitely not a path to living in SF. Do you know anyone who "simply" got an O-1?
You can live ok, and have disposable income with 120k in Kansas city, while in NYC or SF you probably have to have roommates, or live in a small cramped studio, to have the same disposable income at the end.
If a company is going to pay for you to have a good/happy living conditions, and disposable income, then adjusting some of the pay by location makes sense.
The best scenario is when they split the difference and it becomes a win win scenario.
At the end of the day a company will pay as much as the market bears for their long term retention strategy (e.g. 94% voluntary retention).
A single person will have $6700 a month after taxes on 120k in NYC. Manhattan studio rent is about $1800. That leaves almost $5000 a month in disposal income after housing, which is higher than the US median income before housing costs!
Sure rent is pricy in Manhattan relative to other places in America, but I just don't get how that type of life is depicted as such a struggle online.
It's because it's not unless you're wildly outspending your limits. Having personally done it, living in Brooklyn was fine around 90k right in Carroll Gardens a pretty nice area with a 1 bedroom. Living in Manhattan was fine at about 120k and very easy when I was making about 150k. I have high student loan debt too. I haven't lived in a non luxury type building for years now at this point and only had a flat-mate once by choice while being able to save thousands a month. The narrative of the poor struggling highly paid engineer doesn't really jive with me.
I moved to Jersey City last year to have cheaper rent but I did that because I don't care for NYC much and am migrating out in general but it wasn't like I was struggling as an individual engineer before hand.
Also: there's the Manhattan people typically think of, and then the reality that it's a large island with a wide variety of housing. Most folks who aren't from NYC think don't realise that world continues past 110th st (or, let's be honest, past 86th).
Sure, but you’re trading accessibility/entertainment/<something else people value and typically accept as a given for living in Manhattan>. At a certain point, it makes more sense to leave Manhattan to one of the other boroughs, go across the river to New Jersey, or move further up to Westchester/ Long Island. Your money goes further there (housing, groceries).
Good to have this pointed out again!