Silicon Valley To Cut Remote Worker Salaries, While Wall St. Boosts Bonuses

Here is a rare optics boost for Wall Street banks in the generosity department (on a relative basis, naturally).

According to a new company pay calculator reviewed by Reuters, Google is slashing pay by up to 25% for some employees who choose to work from home permanently. At the same time, new data shows Wall St. is bumping employee bonuses by double-digits after a banner year for dealmaking.

Suburban Earnin’ (Less)

Google launched its Work Location Tool in June to give employees a preview of the pay they will forfeit by choosing to work remotely on an ongoing basis. The tool suggests that suburban workers would endure far more severe salary cuts than those working remotely from cities with a Google presence:

• Screenshots show remote “Googlers” who previously commuted to the firm’s NYC offices from nearby Stamford, CT would see their salaries slashed 15%. And a worker ditching the city life of San Fran for serene-but-still-expensive Lake Tahoe would see a massive 25% pay cut.
• In contrast, employees living within Manhattan’s five boroughs who choose to work from home going forward would not see their salaries slashed at all.

Google’s pay calculator reportedly relies on U.S. Census Bureau metropolitan statistical areas, or CBSAs, and a spokesperson told Reuters location-based pay is nothing new for the firm, saying, “Our compensation packages have always been determined by location.”

Tech heavyweights Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have similarly cautioned that employees intending to depart expensive urban centers to work from home will see pay cuts.

From Mountain View To Manhattan: Across the country from Silicon Valley on Wall Street, new data from compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates suggests financiers, analysts, and dealmakers are looking at tremendous double-digit bumps (as high as 35%) to their year-end bonuses. Amid a torrent of multibillion-dollar deals, investment banking underwriters are seeing the biggest boost to bonuses.

“When Wall Street does well, they pay well,” Alan Johnson of Johnson Associates explained. “And Wall Street has had their best year in a decade.” With pay cuts looming, Google apparently views $62 billion in second-quarter revenues (a 62% increase over a year earlier) as “just ok.”