I am curious: Why stop at the US? If reddit feels this is a good idea, then why not eliminate geographic compensation zones worldwide?
I suppose the answer is: There's little friction to move inside the US, but a lot of friction (well, a ton right now, but even pre COVID, there was still a lot) to move outside the US and keep working for a US company. Not to mention time zone issues.
I probably answered my own question, though I am curious what their rational is.
That bit about time zones, though, is interesting to me. In my experience working with a team on both coasts, one side's gotta give. Generally, it's the side with fewer people, but one side ends up syncing up their work schedule to either be early or later. Tough to avoid.
As someone with US and non-US teams, I will say that employment law for engineers is relatively uniform within the US and the customs above that are also relatively uniform and “what we’re used to [as US employees]” so it’s just practically easier to continue to comply with all local laws by staying in the US.
You seem to be getting at a fundamental inequity in international law: trade (and, for various historical-fuck-the-Soviets reasons, emigration) is treated as a right while immigration is treated as a privilege. This basically allows unending labor arbitrage. Whenever a country becomes rich enough to have a middle class, labor standards, unions, and/or minimum wage laws, start moving operations over to the next country on the list.
The only governments that have clued into this are the member states of the EU, and even then, some of them are starting to forget this point.
We're talking about whether or not the sofa seller should be allowed to live down the block, not in your house. Right now, if the sofa seller wants to work for peanuts in a third-world country and outsell local manufacturers in, say, the US; they have the right to do that thanks to literal decades of trade negotiations. But if they want to play fair and compete on a level playing field in the US, they have to get visas in restrictive categories and wait in long queues. That's because there's far less international law on liberalizing the market for labor.
Furthermore, the EU doesn't have Free immigration. EU freedom of movement is only extended to member state citizens; and the Schengen area only dissolves "internal" border infrastructure. Both of those schemes are predicated on the existence of "external" borders which are not opened. If you don't already live in the EU, you're subject to the same types of visa categories and quotas you'd get if you were trying to immigrate to the US.
The reason why it seems like the EU has Free immigration is because there was a refugee crisis a few years back. This is, again, not Free immigration - it's just a particular visa category everyone agreed to for various historical fuck-Hitler reasons. You still have to actually prove to an immigration judge that you have a case of being a political refugee, which is far harder than most people think. Meanwhile, economic migrants still have to go through the process of getting work visas for particular approved professions, sitting on quotas, and so on and so forth. So you get none of the benefit of a Free immigration system but all of the downsides of political, economic, and racial ressentiment, etc.
Does Reddit have any non-us staff? I thought they were focused pretty tightly on their SF office.
As a foreigner myself I'd love all companies be open to hiring non-americans, but going from working within the employment laws of one jurisdiction to 150+ countries is not necessarily a good use of resources for a company.
Currency differences would be a big reason. Currencies can shift against each other and if the dollar weakens or strengthens against the Euro or Yen or whatever, it would mean their payroll costs would fluctuate unpredictably.
Yes, but at least there's some ability to be flexible. Pegging international pay to USD (or any other currency) just means that there's one less tool to address the problem when things change.
Even if that happened (which is highly unlikely) then the employees would still earn more money since SF/NY salary - 20% is greater than salaries outside USA.
The IRS is going to come after you for taxes anyway (post first 105k) so you might as well earn it in USD, bank it in the US, and transfer what you need to whereever you are.
The good news is that some countries won't bother taxing you if you're working for a US company remotely - they're just happy to have expats spending in the local economy.
That only applies if you are a US citizen or permanent resident. For others, it is very inconvenient to have their income tied to a foreign country and/or foreign exchange rates.
For me in Turkey: Having my tied to a foreign country is kind of inconvenient (paying fees and having to wait for a swift transfer). Having it tied to an exchange rate has benefits that far outweigh the inconveniences of the transfer (With the way exchange rates have been going for the last few years, it feels more like* you get automatic raises throughout the year tied to inflation in addition to your yearly raise)
* I know it is not that, but it feels like that.
Also thankfully not tied to the officially reported inflation rate in Turkey
You would be surprised how common is is then, especially in areas of Europe surrounding non EU countries where international daily commutes are not uncommon, not to mention remote working.
I work for an engineering company in Switzerland, and half my team are German citizens who (pre-covid) made a daily commute all while enjoying the lower cost of living in Germany.
The USD has been one of the best performing currencies in the world in most people's lifetimes. I'm sure that most people would prefer to be paid in that currency.
For every Swiss Franc that strengthened 15% against the dollar in 10 years there's an Argentine Peso that because 45 times weaker in that time period.
Not sure how the long term exchange rate movements are relevant for most people who take a paycheck, spend a great deal of it, then use the rest to pay down debt or invest. Not many people are choosing to long term hold and deciding between dollars or pesos. And even if paid in pesos you could open a dollar bank account anywhere.
If you get paid in Peso you lose money every payday that you don't get a significant raise in salary. If you get paid in Dollars your salary raises roughly on pace with inflation.
why not eliminate geographic compensation zones worldwide?
It has many cons for employees, but 'at will' employment presents benefits to employers that can be reflected in salary, since if that employee is no longer needed or the salary is no longer viable for the business case, the employee can be let go easily.
If you're employing people in countries where you have to spend months of negotiation, legals, or may even be unable to lay someone off at all, you're not going to be paying as much, since you need to cover contingencies. If US people move to such countries, they can also be covered by such laws, or may also be subjected to double taxation which will affect their pay too.
I know people in Europe who've been "employed" by US companies as contractors to avoid having these local legal obligations, and that would certainly open up the option of global pay levels, but I know there are legal and regulatory issues around this approach too.
Earn a US salary but not have to put up with the US political nonsense while living in essentially the same timezone while living as a king in Costa Rica, or Ecuador, Chile, Argentina or similar?
Uruguay is relatively stable, is close to US timezone and as far as I can tell a pretty good place to live. Would love to hear from people who live there, as I have unironically considered moving to Montevideo.
Uruguay is also containing the coronavirus currently very well, with 40 times less deaths per capita than United States. This is almost Asian level of competence.
You're also held hostage by their infrastructure too. I'm not saying it's bad cause I don't know, but if something went out, do you really trust them to get things back online in a reasonable amount of time?
I know your point stands regardless, but you're replying to a guy who lived in a jeep for more than two years driving through 35 countries in Africa. I think he could cope with Costa Rican infrastructure. :)
Actually it was 2 years from Alaska to Argentina and then 3 years around Africa.
Internet connectivity is MUCH better than you're thinking. 3G and 4G in every town big enough to have a gas station.
The wired internet was so fast in Nairobi and Cape Town I legitimately thought something was wrong. After living in the US, Canada and Australia I've never used internet even half that fast, it was mind bending.
I wonder if that might be because wired is still somewhat of a luxury compared to most that the ISP's aren't held back by the service they offer since there are so few utilizing the bandwidth.
When I went to Cape Town the internet was awful. Super slow (at least for US/EU sites) and with very restrictive data caps (IIRC, 10GB per month). That was circa 2008 so perhaps things are better now
I was mostly joking but 10GB even in 2008 still isn't a lot. 300gb hard drives were pretty common. Although I bet you could've got a lot more out of that 10GB than you can now what with the absurd amount of ads and excessive bloat on websites nowadays.
A wired internet connection plus a mobile network with enough bandwidth to tether is sufficiently redundant for the average software engineer. Maybe throw in a diesel generator/Tesla Powerwall if you're worried about power outages that last longer than your laptop's battery. If all three fail simultaneously, you probably have bigger problems than just internet connectivity.
I suppose if you have reliable and reasonably-priced mobile data, then you can deal with any other infrastructure issues that arise. Laptops don't need perfect power uptime, and software engineers don't always need to shower.
But without that, at least the telecoms should probably be reliable.
What about companies that monitor you? Mine at least we have to ping it at a random time during the day and we're not told when we get pinged.
I'm just saying that as work from home becomes more common, it's only a matter of time before corporate starts measuring "output" now that they can't check up on you whenever. For programmers at least it's not so bad. For everybody else lower than management, I can only see people feeling unfairly shackled.
I suppose the answer is: There's little friction to move inside the US, but a lot of friction (well, a ton right now, but even pre COVID, there was still a lot) to move outside the US and keep working for a US company. Not to mention time zone issues.
I probably answered my own question, though I am curious what their rational is.
That bit about time zones, though, is interesting to me. In my experience working with a team on both coasts, one side's gotta give. Generally, it's the side with fewer people, but one side ends up syncing up their work schedule to either be early or later. Tough to avoid.