Should You Take a Pay Cut to Work Remotely?

Should You Take a Pay Cut to Work Remotely?

As more companies embrace remote work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many professionals are choosing to relocate from expensive cities like San Francisco to more affordable cities. However, some of these employers- including Facebook, VMware, and ServiceNow– also announced that they’ll face a pay adjustment if those employees choose to relocate to a lower cost of living area.

Will employees see any kind of pay adjustment as fair? A professional at Siemens asks professionals on Blind, “Facebook pay cut (for relocating to the lower-cost areas): Is it right or wrong?”

  • 59% of professionals answered Facebook is right to cut pay if the employee moves to a lower-cost area
    • 70% of Facebook employees believe Facebook made the right decision to adjust the pay of employees who are relocating to lower-cost areas, while only 13% believe it is the wrong decision.
    • 69% of VMware, 60% of Twitter, and 67% of ServiceNow employees also answered Facebook is right to cut pay for relocating to lower-cost areas.

Facebook pay cut (for relocating to the lower-cost area): Is it right or wrong?

Data from 12,098 respondents:

 

Data by Company:

 

Here are some comments from Facebook employees:

“FB Manager here – this is 100% a voluntary option. If you want, you don’t need to take a pay cut and you can have your old life back when we go back to the office. If you want, you can choose to move somewhere new and work remote and still get paid shitloads relative to where you live.
For reference, the relative pay cuts are significantly less than the cost of living changes, so – not sure why people are complaining.”

“This really isn’t that difficult to understand, FB makes the choice that they want to pay in the X percentile to attract the talent they want. So they find a market reference point, and then pay X above to attract the caliber of person they want.”

“All companies are doing this. Btw if you move to Dallas it’s a 10% reduction in base and no change in equity refresh or current equity. So really not much at all I’ll take that trade.”

An employee at NVIDIA described:

“Many people don’t understand you are not paid a certain amount of money, you are paid a certain purchase power.
This is why it is adjusted geographically.”

Should you take a pay cut to work remotely? Join the conversation on Blind, an anonymous community app for the workplace.