Taxes and cost of goods vary widely across markets within the US. Not to mention that progressive scale shifts more tax burden to people living in high cost of living (COL) locations.
Think $120k in Washington or Florida with no state income tax and lower COL. you’d pay maybe 25% tax. In San Francisco, $200k comp to adjust for higher COL will push you into higher federal tax bracket plus 10-12% state income tax. Now you’re paying more than 40% in taxes.
25% vs 40% is a significant difference.
Local taxes also greatly affect the cost of goods and services. 9.5% sales tax in SFBA vs 0% sales tax in Oregon.
25% vs 49.5% — two extremes, but that the reality in the US.
Not to mention gasoline taxes in CA — highest in the nation, they directly affect the cost of gas that we pay as consumers.
It will take years for markets to even out. Think SV vs rural Alabama. Paying market rate for the talent is table stakes. And I do agree, there will be less incentive to pay SV rates, so engineers living in SV will have to work even harder to demonstrate in the interviews that they are worth the money. Interesting times are coming.
Crew is a group messaging and productivity platform geared for those who don’t work in front of a computer. We are looking for enthusiastic and passionate backend engineers to help us build and scale our real-time backend system. We iterate quickly and de-centralize our decision making; therefore this person will make a huge impact on our product, users and growth.