> A reader (or dare I say a wiser version of me), armed with a future model and dedicated to the task, will succeed with this port where I failed and that makes me uneasy.
It's on a different subdomain for support and hosted by something else. So while some domain ownership issues or poorly prepared dns changes could impact both, it's not the same as their actual service.
Evernote had multiple chances to get back on track. Its decision to rewrite its multiple apps into a single web-based one was one of them. In theory having only one codebase to fix bugs and build new features in makes a ton of sense.
Unfortunately the hard product work of simplifying the feature set and prioritizing server-side tech debt was overlooked. Therefore the new app was weighed down from the beginning because it had to support all these legacy systems.
IMO the best move for Evernote is to rethink the UX and tech architecture from first principals and have existing users opt-in to migrate their data over. It's a tough decision to make but I don't see any meaningful progress being made otherwise.
In materials science "ceramic" means basically any inorganic, nonmetallic solid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fundamental_aspects_o.... This includes perfectly safe materials like alumina, mullite, and silicon nitride, as well as things you definitely do not want in your food like lead oxide, lead zirconate titanate, barium titanate, uranium oxide, and beryllia.
So it is not accurate to say, "Ceramic itself is safe".
(I have no idea what is used in the surfaces of "ceramic" pans but it is unlikely to be any of the substances I listed above; they all have high surface energy.)
Can you go remote within commute distance of the office and keep your salary? What's the limit?
Living in Pleasanton is cheaper than living in Mountain View, but still commutable. Living in Tracy is cheaper still and people still commute to the Bay Area from there. Living in Fresno or Sacramento is even cheaper and farther but still some people will do that commute daily.
The limit is based on what the Census bureau dictates the metropolitan statistical area to be. Certain MSAs with Google offices correspond to a special rate; otherwise it's based on the state you're in.
If you're in Sacramento, you're definitely not in the same MSA as either San Jose or SF. Pleasanton on the other hand is part of Alameda County, which is part of SF's MSA.
Meanwhile, if you opted to be in Santa Cruz, "just" 32 miles south of San Jose, you'd be SOL.
Interesting. I live in a big MSA (Atlanta, which includes a lot of mostly rural counties). I've considered a role at Google, but currently work in a suburb and live further out from there. 1 hour to Atlanta proper without traffic, but still in the MSA according to the census. And I could move further out and still be in the MSA (like Heard County or Jasper County if you want to look at some examples).
Atlanta is still going to be a significantly lower pay band than premium plus (Bay Area/NYC), though. Tech salaries there aren't as high. The ideal play is to be far out in the boonies of a premium plus MSA, e.g. something like Dutchess County in upstate New York. The cost of living there is quite low but you'll still make the highest salary possible.
Interestingly, Seattle is only in the premium price tier, not the premium price tier. This is because there's no state income tax in Washington, so a lower salary goes a longer way. So it ends up being a wash even factoring in NY/CA state taxes. Because CA taxes are higher than NY (but not NYC taxes), your best bet is living in upstate NY (Long Island is outside of NYC too but it's eliminated because CoL is higher there).
There was an internal tool that simulated your pay change when you move. For example, if your office is in Santa Clara county but you move to Santa Cruz county the pay will drop by a lot. But if you move from Santa Clara county to San Mateo county there's no change at all.
Getting paid less for doing the exact same job, just a few miles away. :) Isn't that wonderful? But at least the corporate real estate market is happy.
Oh no, I would bet some money that the C level execs at these companies own a lot of residential property near their campuses. Likely purchased before they announced building said campus! It's just good business sense.
If the employees move away rent goes down, so does demand for their properties.. so yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
... if they are charging from being in the office from 5 days a week (before times) to 0 days a week (now) rather than 3 days a week in office and 2 from home.
5 -> 0 is a pay cut based on where you live.
5 -> 3 is not a pay cut as you're still working out of the same office.
Ah, OK I thought anybody who lived in Santa Cruz and reported to the office 5 days a week would take a pay cut. This is just if you're fully remote, I guess. Still seems like a slap, Santa Cruz ain't cheap even if it's slightly better than San Mateo or Mountain View.
So I'm a "super commuter"; I can take the Metro North from the end of the line to NYC, although I usually go for Amtrak for several reasons.
If I were to go fully remote, I would take a pay cut ... but it would be almost identical to my commuting costs, once you account for rail fair, parking, vehicle mileage, taxes, snacks, etc.
I don't know how representative my case is, but the pay cut ends up being a non-factor in my decision whether or not to apply for full remote.
The above seems to put the lie to the argument I've often heard that the justification for these cost-of-living adjustments is that in-person employees deliver more value than remote employees.
If this were indeed the reason for the salary adjustment, it wouldn't matter whether an employee was moving to Santa Cruz, San Mateo, or San Salvador. Either way they're remote, and unless one city has markedly different internet bandwidth, the value that a given employee delivers from any remote location should be the same.
Next time I hear someone making this argument, I'm calling BS. It's a bald-faced attempt for the company to capture value which rightfully belongs to the employee.
> The above seems to put the lie to the argument I've often heard that the justification for these cost-of-living adjustments is that in-person employees deliver more value than remote employees.
Only the horribly uninformed would ever make such a bad faith argument. You've never been paid based on your "value" but rather what it takes to keep you as an employee. The company only wants to pay you enough to keep you and if you move some place cheap well they don't need to offer as much.
> The company only wants to pay you enough to keep you and if you move some place cheap well they don't need to offer as much.
I think that depends what your other options are. It might work if everyone in the industry offers you less based on where you live, which is almost collusion in my opinion.
Not true. If it were based on cost of living, then Google would pay more for you to work from Hawaii than from Alabama. (Spoilers: it doesn't, they're both in the same salary band.)
It's slightly more true that it's based on the local cost of labor, but even more so that it's just based on the state, with carveouts for MSAs (which are defined based on county) surrounding certain offices commanding higher salaries.
You'd make just as much working remotely in Matamoras, PA as you would working out of the NYC office in Manhattan.
You would think that Mountain View based Google, being registered as a Delaware Corp, would understand the benefits of legal residence being different than practical residence.
And it's not fraud for an employer to arbitrarily control pay based on someones location? Is their revenue similarly confined by that employees contributions because of location?
If company can pick arbitrary locations around the world to be their HQ, or Trump can use Mar-a-Lago as his residence, then so too can every other citizen following the law and paying their taxes.
One is legal the other isn't.... This isn't hard you would be committing fraud no questions. Also depending on how you've lied you'd also be on the hook for tax issues to the government rather then just and issue with your company.
For criminal fraud to happen, there has to be a defrauded party. If I follow my local tax laws and negotiate a better salary with a corporation based on Location A, while potentially living elsewhere at Location B/C/D for prolong periods of time with lower costs of living, that is not fraud.
Getting the company to enter into a contract under false pretenses is fraud. "intent to deceive" is alone enough. This isn't some kind of gotcha where your technically ok if you do X and Y. Intent matters!
Two parties entered a contract with the understand you would live in location A if you don't that's fraud objectively.
No, it's not tax fraud. Tax is between you and the government, not you and your employer. The U.S. even allows you to ask your employer not to deduct tax so you can deal with it personally.
If you follow whatever local and state laws apply to your situation, you're perfectly in your right.
I didn't bring up taxes, I'm just responding to it.
The topic is whether a global corporation with access to a global workforce should be allowed arbitrary salary negation privileges because of the circumstances of a candidates geographical circumstances, while robbing the candidate of the same privilege.
Just sounds like another way to exploit labor at a time of record profit windfalls for corporations.
A dev in Mountain View has many more high-paying opportunities than the same guy in Weed, CA (pop. 2,862). Google pays him more because that’s what it takes to retain him.
Someday if most employers switch to remote-first, this won’t matter and salaries will be equal everywhere (a lot lower than we’ve seen in tight labor markets, and probably the first world in general).
People do that with car insurance and jobs with residency requirements.
I used to drink with a bunch of fireman who lived about 300 miles away - they had to live in the city or adjacent county. They’d have a flophouse in the hood shared by like 20 guys and crash there once in awhile when they pulled overtime as well as get mail.
Travel scams are similar too. If a company will reimburse travel if you’re 50 miles from home, people will “move” so they can bill the mileage tolls.
It works great until it doesn’t. If you want to give up your cushy Google gig for a few thousand bucks, good luck.
Well for starters you're gonna have all applicable state and local taxes withheld from wherever you're fraudulently claiming to be living, as that is going to be where you are ACTUALLY living as far as all relevant taxation authorities are concerned.
I think a more non-fraud tactic would be to find the cheapest area in a high cost of living area and minmax on that dimension. Especially if it’s by county, then there are likely unfavorable areas within that county.
But if there is anywhere in the county that has escaped full IT gentrification because of poor commuter access, those prices are going to explode if they haven't already. Since median house price is a huge fraction of CoL calculations (and a frequent complaint among some economists), staying in county gets you a raise, if your friends do it too.
Yeah, last time I looked at rents in my hometown, the cheapest options there were comparable to the cheapest options in San Francisco. They're probably a bit ahead of the curve; most the empty land around is either federal or LADWP, so there's limited room for new development, but it's a major shot up from pre-pandemic prices where renting a full house was cheaper than an SF bedroom.
Not at Google. When you go remote you're paid based the same as if you were onsite at the nearest office to your residence, limits are roughly CSA (combined statistical area) in the US—not cost of living.
I don't know the boundary of the SF Bay Area region. It is based on some US designation. Once you leave the region around an office you become a part of some general state-wide designation.
This has some failure cases, with some weird places being included in regions like NYC while some other places where people really do commute to NYC (though it is extremely far) are excluded. I don't actually know anybody who has been impacted by this, but clever Googlers made a pretty compete map of all of counties in the US and their pay region once the tool for getting salary information for proposed moves was available.
It is a bit ridiculous to base these things off location when the location would reduce the taxes the company pays for you.
I'd like to understand how these market values are calculated. It can't be supply and demand, because if you move to a place with 0 supply you do not maximize your value.
I should be able to say to them "hey, I create $x for you now and I cost $y, but if I move I will make the same $x for you for $(y-z), and it will make no impact on means or ends since I'm entirely remote."
You are not paid the value you create. The value you create has nothing to do with your salary(other than whether you get fired if value < salary). Your salary is the least your employer thinks they can pay to get an acceptable candidate. As they expand the pool of applicants they figure they can find people willing to work for less.
From what I’ve been told it’s been pretty easy for some to negotiate no salary adjustment when going remote. It’s against HR “policy” but I know deals happened when someone was deemed a crucial contributor.
im planning on moving out of state in a few months from high cost area. what i've been told is that my salary wont change but I will be at "top of band" in the new area.
Complete manipulative nonsense if they ever use "top of the band" as reason to change their relationship with you imo. A Ferrari doesn't stop being Ferrari just because it's parked amongst Priuses.
If you're worth paying $x for $y, you're worth paying $x for $y minus the reduction in taxes they'll pay; your moving to an area with less taxes is them getting you on sale.
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