Google Employees Face Pay Cuts Up To 25% For Working From Home Permanently: Leaked Salary Data
Google Employees Face Pay Cuts Up To 25% For Working From Home Permanently: Leaked Salary Data
BY TYLER DURDEN WEDNESDAY, AUG 11, 2021 - 09:20 AM
Data from a leaked internal salary calculator at Alphabet's
Google reveals that employees
who decide to work from home indefinitely face pay cuts of up to 25%,
according to Reuters.
The news comes as a surprise, as the tech giant has been
outwardly supportive of working from home during the pandemic - and just last
week approved nearly 10,000 employee
requests to do so. Google also pushed back its target date for
employees to return to the office from September to October 18 in light of the
Delta variant, according to Business Insider.
Alphabet Inc's Google stands out in offering employees a
calculator that allows them to see the effects of a move. But in
practice, some remote employees, especially those who commute from long
distances, could experience pay cuts without changing their address.
...
One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for
fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby
county and would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working
from home full-time,
according estimates by the company's Work Location Tool launched in June.
The employee was considering remote work but decided to
keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. "It's as
high of a pay cut as I got for my most recent promotion. I didn't do all that
hard work to get promoted to then take a pay cut," they said. -Reuters
"Our compensation packages have always been determined by
location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an
employee works from," one spokesperson told Reuters,
adding that pay differs from state to state.
Washington University sociology professor Jake Rosenfeld, who
researches salaries, said that Google's pay structure raises alarms about who's going to feel the pay
cuts the most.
"What's clear is that Google doesn't have to do this,"
he said, adding "Google has paid these workers at 100% of their prior
wage, by definition. So it's not like they can't afford to pay their workers
who choose to work remotely the same that they are used to receiving."
According to the internal salary calculator, an employee living
in Stamford, Connecticut would be paid 15%
less if they work from home vs. commuting one hour by
train into New York City. Another colleague who actually lives in NYC would see
no pay cut. According to screenshots, there were 5-10% differences for workers
in the Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas.
Employees who leave the San Francisco office for an almost as
expensive area such
as Lake Tahoe would face cuts up to 25%.
The calculator states it uses U.S. Census Bureau
metropolitan statistical areas, or CBSAs. Stamford, Connecticut, for example,
is not in New York City's CBSA, even though many people who live there work in
New York.
A Google spokesperson said the company will not change
an employee's salary based on them going from office work to being fully remote
in the city where the office is located. Employees working in the New York City
office will be paid the same as those working remotely from another New York City
location, for example, according to the spokesperson. -Reuters
Facebook and Twitter have adopted a similar stance, while other
companies such as Reddit and Zillow have shifted to location-agnostic pay
models.
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