What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time?
Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the state you moved back to?
Note: I don't condone illegal behavior just thinking of edge cases that benefit us tech workers.
That's the most interesting part to me which will play the major role in how WFH situation will evolve. I 100% understand the logic in such situations, but:
1) If company like Twitter is saying: "From tomorrow our default is work from home, but you all get 20% salary cut". This will be essentially a salary cut, nothing more. If let's say Facebook says WFH=on-site developers from Twitter will be flowing to Facebook because of 20% salary cut
2) In order for everyone in FAANG to say simultaneously that we have to cut salaries 20% simply because it is WFH now - there should be a strong evidence that productivity in remote workers is 20% less and they will need to hire 20% more engineers to have the same amount of work done. If it is not correct then companies have incentive to drive this number down to 10% or 0%
3) FAANG and overall Valley residents must also consider the long term effect on their community. I doubt that Silicon Valley will survive going 100% virtual and concentration of innovation can be lost if people go 100% remote. So they might impose 10-20% cut on a premise that they want to create a community on-site. Not sure how C-suits evaluate such factor.
Overall I suppose if companies go WFH by default they will need to reevaluate their incentives structures to be competitive.
You are making some questionable assumptions about our economy. It doesn’t really matter what incentives theoretically exist if there isn’t money to, say, maintain your current staffing levels at their current pay.
Perhaps Twitter is leading the pack in an industry-wide pay cut? I hope not, but that seems to be what the rest of the workforce has experienced in recent months.
My full time job is producing video for YouTube. My revenue from ads is a straightforward calculation: I get 55% of whatever advertisers pay YouTube/Google to run ads on my channel.
Despite having posted record growth in every other positive metric, overall revenue (read: advertiser spending) has tanked in recent months.
Facebook. Google. Twitter. YouTube.
They are all internet advertising companies. And if my personal observations are any indication, I suspect they may be hurting for cash right about now.
Would it be tax fraud if you’re still in California? You record your address when you file with the state, I don’t think the state cares where you get your mail.
I guess the employer could have some contractual terms requiring your address to be at some location. I’ve never seen that though.
I think you just change your address if you move within the state. I don’t think companies track your address as long as you’re the same for taxation. That’s why people do insane 2 hour commutes.
Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the state you moved back to?
Note: I don't condone illegal behavior just thinking of edge cases that benefit us tech workers.