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Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

I love these high salaries. My thought is to find a job in SF, live there temporarily for 3-6 months, then become remote and move back to my real home on the east coast. Is that feasible? Aren't these kinds of companies pretty comfortable these days with video conferencing, IM, screen sharing etc.?

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"Sorry, blisterpeanuts... we know telecommuting is really attractive, but we like to have people in-office at least four days per week so we can get together in a room and really hash out problems. But feel free to work from home on No Meeting Thursdays!" - Your future SF manager

Pooh...

In my experience, no, most people assume you're not working if they can't see you working..

I'm a sysadmin, I could do my job anywhere with stable power and a low latency internet connection- but people insist on sticking me in a room with 80+ people so they can observe my work.

One does not simply "become remote."

There are strong advantages to working in direct contact, despite what sentiment on HN and logic dictates. Working in SF for a few months wouldn't make you super rich anyways.

I think his/her strategy of working in SF for a few months at first is not to become "super rich", but to establish a high salary that could then be "exported" to a cheaper area while staying on with the same company.

I'm reasonably sure that a decrease in CoL would be adjusted into the salary, or at the least, any company in a lower CoL is less likely to give a competitive salary.

Solution: buy a property in a lower CoL area and then rent it out to yourself. It helps if you establish a few shell and holding companies. Charge as much rent as you're paying in SF and then they can't lower your salary based on CoL because your CoL is still high. Win-win-win! ;-)

So if you are living and working in SF and making $150K (plus bonus, stock options etc) and you decide to move to, say, Phoenix and buy a house for $140K, they'll say, "OK, minimaxir, we'll be cutting your salary to $90K to reflect the vastly diminished cost of living, although of course we'll be able to give your desk to a new hire and save money on office space!" -- ??

Seems unlikely. If you're contributing, no rational company is going to suddenly cut your salary. Basically, no one cuts salaries in the U.S. unless it's a company-wide belt tightening move to stave off bankruptcy.

You can't make a statement like that without facts to back it. The truth is that companies do this all the freaking time. Besides that, it has also been common for a decade+ for CA-based employees (both LA & SFBA) to sell their artificially inflated house and quit their job to move a lower COL state (often Texas, Washington, Oregon, or North Carolina, all of which are much cheaper and have lower income tax schedules). If they stay with their existing company, their salaries are frequently decreased based on COL calculations. Otherwise they use the previously mentioned tactic and quit for something different, using their current salary as a negotiating point.

Any citations for this "all the time" claim? It's not against the law, but I would think (and online discussion/blog/advice seems to support) that most people would rather quit, as you suggest.

Why? Does the value they contribute to the business change that much simply because they can now live cheaper?

I was on site for 2 years, then have been remote for the past 3. Five years is the longest I've been at any job, and remote is what's kept me here.

But my salary is well below the $140K averages I'm seeing in SF. So hire me at $160K, I'll be on site for a while, then if it's all right with y'all, I'll go back and be with my family and my productivity will be even higher!

Everything's negotiable in this world. I can see why 20-somethings want to be in the big city and are willing to compromise on their living conditions. That's always been true. But there comes a time when you just can't do that any more.

I think it's pretty rare for companies to allow you to work completely remotely from my admittedly limited experience.

no. Telecommuting was a pipe dream of the 90s.

Some people do it, but at most companies the "butt in the chair employee is best employee" thing still sticks.

It's because working from home is terrible, or it was for me. Social contact brings the small frictions that help build big sparks

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