November 5, 2021

According to Wired, Google employees are expressing concern about the company’s decision to cut salaries of remote workers.

For many workers, it is unfair to cut workers’ salaries based on where they work. The report sampled the opinions of two people, Mike (name changed), a senior software engineer at Google, and Laura de Vesine, a former Google engineer.

For Mike, who wants to continue working for the company remotely, he is facing a pay cut that amounts to a loss of four years of salary increases, although he is still undecided whether to continue working for Google.

Laura de Vesine, for her part, left the company the moment she was told that she would take a 25% pay cut. Vesine explained what had happened: “There was a discussion about moving our team to North Carolina, and that was originally floated as a 15 percent pay cut.” Initially, she reasoned with the decision until they changed it to 25%. For Vesine, “The bait and switch was very upsetting. And once I was angry about it, I started questioning why there was even a 15 percent cut. What is it about my work that is somehow less valuable in a different location?”

For more information read the original story in Wired.