Salary and working remote

I kinda disagree with this. The companies themselves also have to compete with each other. If another company thats in a high COL city is willing to offer me a high salary for a remote position, then id accept that. Software engineering has been ahead in terms of wfh flexibility. Youre telling me over time software engineering jobs will have lower pays over time on avg? I hear there is a ton of “talent” in india but i dont think i see top tech companies outsourcing the jobs to them.

Also Seoul is a very expensive city. Not 5th ave nyc expensive but definitely much higher than most cities in america.

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why would the person living in a low COL area accept an offer from your company for less money if they can get more at another remote working company? all companies are remote these days.

My employer has different salary scales in different places based on cost of living. If you move, your salary doesn’t immediately change, but your next raise will be larger or smaller due to your being in a different place in your salary band. Some of our more distant commuters are currently continuing to claim they go into the office because if they declare themselves full time WFH they will be moved to a lower salary band.

But unlike the commuters, the person who actually lives in a much lower COL location will do better, despite the lower pay, because the pay differential by location isn’t as large as the COL difference.

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The reason for pay varying by COL band is to be able to attract talent in the relevant locations.

If WFH becomes the norm, geography becomes less relevant, and salaries will shift to being sufficient to attract talent without regard to location.

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Of course if an employer imposes additional burdensome work requirements you’d expect them to need to pay more, which I agree with.

ao_fan’s point though is, at least as it appears to be going in actuarial, that is a moot point because offices are largely redundant so there wouldn’t be an employer to bother with those burdensome work requirements since it’s such the norm to WFH significantly.

Personally I think it’ll be a bit inbetween. I think it’s tough to move a flight away from your employer and expect to stay as competitive in your career, but barely anyone goes into the office. If you’re seeing the right people once a month I think you’re probably seeing them as much as people manning the fort at 4pm on a Friday by himself.

Immediate lower your salary?
No, not common.

Impact future merit increases and raises within the company? Most definitely.

If you go from being around median in your payrange to being in the 90% percentile of your payrange due to location based COLA, then at many company’s you would expect a much smaller future salaries.

No management experience here, however,if you’re credentialed, a high performer, and your company expects remote work to be available indefinitely I doubt you’ll see a salary decrease. Less of a raise is more likely IMO.

I have experience with actuarial friends moving from LCOL to HCOL and their salaries were increased, but not to the point that they have the same standard of living as before. Not sure exactly what the pay bumps were but I know they effectively took a decrease.

In a post covid environment where everyone is working from home why would the company care where that home is? This doesn’t make logical sense.

I agree with you, but I recall discussing on here one NYC-based employer cutting salaries of employees who moved to the Po during Covid. A big one, IIRC, but maybe not actuarial.

Other than maybe some trivial adjustment for the additional hassle of filing taxes in additional states, I don’t think my (hypothetical) Manhattan-based employer should care if I’m working remotely from four blocks or four states away. Maybe also build in that they’re not paying for flights / hotel / meals when I do need to physically come to the office… either implicitly or, preferably, explicitly.

Same on the taxes. If I’m the only Iowa-based employee of a Manhattan or Los Angeles employer then sure, that’s extra hassle for payroll to cope with withholding & remitting Iowa taxes. So deduct $500 a year from my pay for the incremental cost. Everyone’s happy.

I think the assumption that everyone is working from home may be incorrect. Not sure what the % is tho.

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yeah, I’m one of the few fully remote people at my company. Everyone else goes in the home office 3 times a week. And ability to not be remote is still seen as a plus in interviewing

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We have around 15-20% in the office on any given day. 1 person is there almost every day, then some will go when they feel like it. I suspect once kids go back to school and winter hits it often will be just the 1 person every day on a floor designed for ~50.

We were already somewhat remote-friendly before but it was more like 15-20% remote at that time. And only for people who lived unrealistically far away to come in.

15-20% in a day doesn’t mean 80-85% of workers are remote. I think hybrid schedules are pretty common right now.

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About 70% of our team is now fully remote despite most of us living within 20 minutes of the office.

Of that 30% who go to the office, most of them are in about 1-2 days per week except for the 1 person.

Im not sure but prior to covid most of my coworkers including me were 100% in the office. There were a few people who were hybrid. Now its almost 100% remote. Prior to covid we had too much paper to be remote, whereas now we have no paper other than electronic and there isnt a great reason to be in the office. Would be surprised if other companies are massively different and would wonder what the rationale is for that. Just stuck in their old ways even after this pandemic? Strange

I also wonder if this varies by location, like if new york offices are more likely to still be remote compared to other offices.

I would guess it varies a lot by location.

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I would guess it varies by location too. But since it is now remote, you can physically stay in a vineyard in Southern France or enjoy the sunshine in Thailand. Look like the benefits > the costs.

I think many North American employers impose the constraint that their employees be domestic, due to tax and benefit concerns, although that wouldn’t necessarily preclude a long “working vacation”

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My company does not allow working vacations outside the US