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Comment by throwaway98az8 | Hacker News Reader

Context: I was in the interview pipeline before/when this announced, so I've gotten some additional clarification on the logistics.

I think this is strictly worse than providing employees with the option of where to work (office/remote/some WFH). Something missing in this announcement is that you still need to live in one of the main cities with offices (SF, Seattle, Austin, Dublin) in order to receive full pay. Moving anywhere gets your pay adjusted to the "local market".

So to avoid a pay-cut you need to stay in an overpriced city, but you don't have a nice office with meals/snacks/nice desk setup that you can go to.

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Ironically WFH, whilst being forced to a local actually makes it more expensive. You could live in a tiny studio when your office was available. So now you must rent a sufficient space to include your home office -- In a locale where the price per sq ft is higher.

someone invent a murphy bed that converts to a desk that converts to a toilet so our workforce can live in a space smaller than solitary confinement.

I wonder how the calculus plays out.

You could be local but within "commuting distance" of the office, which could include Sacramento, Tracy, etc. for an SF office. I think you could get a 2BR in Sac for the price of a studio in SF.

We might also see some exodus from the Bay Area, which would put a downward pressure on tech salaries till they hit some equilibrium.

I also wonder what enforcement mechanisms exist short of an IRS audit to make sure you're actually "local" and not in a cheap cabin in North Dakota. Employers could monitor corp traffic, but I wonder if it's actually worth the cost to enforce and they'll just go by honor code.

I too wonder about the equilibrium. I have heard that SF rents are down 20%, Which is probably understating the issue because many landlords opt for vacancy over lower prices (due to how loans work and the difficulty of raising once started).

> but you don't have a nice office with meals/snacks

I was watching an interview recently, might have been buried in the middle of The Social Dilemma, where the speaker mentioned that this class of concierge service risks infantilizing people, and in particular in a time when code that young programmers author effects more and more of the population, that's dangerous.

The implication was that we need people to grow up. If they're going to be responsible (in the specific case), then they should be/get prepared to take responsibility (in the general case).

How is serving nice meals for lunch "infantilizing" people? I'm simply stating that this is a concrete benefit of employment at these companies. If they choose to move away from providing it, then they should adjust salaries to reflect that, otherwise candidates will join firms that do.

You can be within 100 miles of a main hub city and be paid within the same band. 100 miles from Seattle is quite a lot of options for instance that are not expensive.

And "full pay" is relative to the cost of employment for each area. For instance the adjusted amount you would receive in say Kansas still is quite a lot for the area.

Well it's not necessarily a bad thing if the pay cut isn't too severe. Totally depends on what the adjustment is, and whether it's fair.

Did you take the offer?

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