This is at mid size bay area company(not amazon) with substantial presence on east coast. Higher management decided to stay away from interviewing/hiring bay area candidates. Reasoning behind this decision is we can not hire/retain top talent in bay area due to competition from faang and other tier 1 companies. Even if we match competing offers most of hires decide to join tier-1/2 companies because of prestige/benefits/stock stability. Our company has been loosing candidates not only to faang/tier1 but to other companies as well like SAP, vmware, oracle, palo alto nw, visa etc. It left company with two options - pay more than competing offers or hire outside of HCOL where there is not much competition. They decided to embrace remote work and hire remote folks. Since last year this has been going well and I don't see any negative impacts on work or on company. My team used to have 5 bay area eng and 1 remote eng, now we have grown to 12 eng 4 in bay area 7 US remote and 1 in Canada due to visa issue. When I look around I see many midsize companies and startups doing same in bay area. With reluctance to rto and many mid/small companies embracing remote work. I wonder what would be long term impact of this trend on bay area job market. What would be salary diffs between HCOL and LCOL? will it come to healthy equilibrium ? What will be impact on housing market in diff areas? Will it stifle innovation ? or encourage more innovation specially due to having more eng pool available to hire so easy to find good fit for role etc.? Will it accelerate outsourcing in same timezones? Canada due to visa issues in US ? south america ? Litter more about the company I am talking about (any many other similar companies) - midsize (~4000 employees) public company - pays around 130-160 for new grad (SDE I) 160-220(SDE II) in HCOL for remote 110-130 (SDE I) 130-220 (SDE II) and 200+ for SDEIII+ tc ~410k yoe - 9 #tech #remote #wfh #bayarea #rto #remotecompanies #salaries #canada
Tier 1 talent goes to the companies that pay and give them opportunities. The impact of tier 2 and lower companies hiring tier 2 and lower talent is no different than what it’s always been.
Yelp does this now
But wouldn’t they have been losing folks to FAANG even before Covid?
Yeah but before they would still rehire from bay area. Now most hires are outside bay area
Makes sense. I heard that smaller companies are using wfh and remote as an incentive, from a director of a public company.
Yea as a bait to those from tier 1 who don’t want to go to office.
Last year I interviewed for a remote position in a mid sized Bay Area company, although I cleared all the rounds the HM selected a local candidate. Last month they came back to me and wanted to check if I am still interested, they skipped all technical interviews and I have an offer which is 40% more than what I make in MCOL but lower band of Bay Area. I’ll be joining in a couple of weeks
yes that clear trend here in bay area in mid/small companies faang and other big companies are trying to rto though with not much success yet
From my experience the team last year had just 1 dev remote and 5/6 in Bay Area. Now it looks like everybody including manager is remote and the company itself is embracing remote first hiring. They’ve tied up with WeWork for co-working and I heard some employees meet and work from there if they’re in the same city