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Comment by will4274 | Hacker News Reader

So, basically, she got a job offer in a certain city and choose to take it?

As the OP wrote, this is only for 1-3 years, not a job offer.

What usually happens in such big companies is that you might have to work in another country for the same company of a couple of years. Big but is that you go there as an employee of the source country taking with you the respective salary and not that of the destination country. They usually pay for the fixed expenses, eg. accommodation and even might have an allowance for the daily expenses but depends on the company and still it might not be enough to make it with your salary.

Also you don't really have an option to decline, you are up next then for dismiss and in many countries it is not that easy to find a similar job etc. etc.

This is not how Google works. They adjust salary based on local market rate when you transfer.

This is not how it works at any of the majors. Your salary is indexed to the local cost of living, not your country of origin, otherwise nobody from (say) India would ever be able to move and neither would they qualify for US work visas.

I work for a multinational company of 400k+ employees. For the "normal" people this is how it works, for upper management of course it is different.

Also from friends working for other such companies I have the same input.

Please note that here we are talking about temporary move (a few years) and then you have to go back to your originating country. Furthermore in order to compensate for the increased costs as I mentioned they usually pay some of the fixed costs like accommodation BUT your salary remains the same. Back in the old days (eg. 10-15years ago) they could even pay extra money on top of your salary.

Also keep in mind that the world is not just the US or India, there are many big companies outside of the US and one last point, this works very well the other ways around. People from a country with higher salary to go work for a few years on a country with lower salary so they make money + get extra promotion points for having worked outside of their main country

She was already there and changed to Google a few years ago. She has a boyfriend and apartment in this certain city. Now, if she wants to stay with Google, she needs to move to SF for 1-3 years and live in a shared apartment because the salary is so low. It's not ideal to say the least.

> if she wants to stay with Google, she needs to move to SF for 1-3 years and live in a shared apartment because the salary is so low.

The key point here is it being her choice to stay. The reason a company can "get away" with doing this is that people are willing to do it.

There's usually a fairly long list of things you can't legitimately ask an employee to do on pain of being fired. Like go on a date with you. Or move to another continent for a year or more.

What's stopping her from transferring to another role in the local Google office?

Beyond the obvious question of whether a suitable position is open, consider that refusing a chance take an offer might lead to retribution rather than a favorable offer.

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