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Google Building in New York (archive photo)
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It takes a Google employee from near Seattle two hours to get from home to the office every day.
Time that could easily be saved, as the corona crisis has shown: He could just as easily do his work in the home office.
But then he would probably earn ten percent less.
At least that's what the internal salary calculator suggests, with which Google employees can calculate the effects of a move on their salary.
For example, Google employees who move from New York to Stamford, Connecticut, an hour away, have to accept a 15 percent wage drop.
Anyone who relocates to the Seattle, Boston or San Francisco area gets five to ten percent less salary.
Facebook and Twitter are also cutting salaries for employees who move to cheaper areas.
»Compensation packages« are »location-dependent«
"Our compensation packages have always been location-dependent, and we always pay at the top of the local market, depending on where an employee works," the Reuters news agency quoted a Google spokesman as saying.
The remuneration differs from city to city and from state to state.
Adjusting the salary of employees based on where they live is a well-known concept in the United States.
Buffer co-founder Leonhard Widrich reported in an interview with SPIEGEL five years ago that moving could reduce wages.
“In Thailand the cost of living is significantly lower than in California, where a room in a shared apartment costs more than a thousand dollars in rent.
It would therefore be unfair to pay everyone the same. "
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So far, the concept has only been used when moving.
Employees working from home now fear that their salary could be reduced without moving if they live in the country.
His salary would then be back to the level before his last promotion, Reuters quotes the Google employee from the Seattle area, who wants to remain anonymous.
"I didn't work so hard to get a promotion and then accept a cut in my salary." That's why he decided to commute every day again.
When asked by the news agency whether the salaries of homeworkers would be adjusted, a spokesman replied evasively: Employees who work in a branch are paid the same as employees who work from home in the same city.
How employees are remunerated who have previously worked in the New York office and have their home office outside of the city, the spokesman did not answer.
vet / Reuters
