So I guess we’ll see a rise of supercommuters flying cross-country 2-3 days a week, because I can’t imagine many remote employees either want to relocate back to the Bay Area (Seattle in the case of Amazon) or take a 70% compensation hit by picking up a job in the local market.
I suppose for the east coast people you can take the first flight out to California Monday morning and get back home in time to wake your kids up on Thursday.
The interesting part is the seems like a deal compared to cost of living of San Fransisco/Seattle and the salary slash of working in Phoenix/Las Vegas/Denver/Salt Lake/Boise.
If you are staying in the city four nights a week you'll probably be better off getting a studio apartment, both in costs and comfort. SLU studios would be ~$2100/mo with utilities. If you assume $5000 for initial furnishing a studio will cost $30,000/yr instead of $50,000/yr for a hotel.
It'll also be faster to go between SEATAC and SLU on the Link Light Rail than an uber (unless you are traveling between 9pm-6am), which costs $2.25/ride compared to $50. So that reduces the costs by another $5000.
If you claim Washington state residency you can probably stop paying your current state income tax (Washington doesn't have one) which will save you thousands or tens of thousands a year.
After looking deeper into it my $15,000 estimate is way too low, but your $85,000 is much higher than reality for Seattle.
Personally, I could imagine doing a long weekly commute like that if it were by train. I’m in Montreal, and if I were to take a hybrid job in Toronto, I could take a 5 hour train ride Monday afternoon (work on the way), get in around dinner, stay 3 days, and head home Friday while working. It would probably be a lot less pleasant than I imagine, and it would certainly be expensive, but if I’m getting a big pay raise then I think it would work fine.
I know people in Japan who take the bullet train on their daily commute to work 200 km away. I would find that quite comfortable, if someone would pay for it! But I definitely wouldn't want to do the same by plane.
Most SWEs don't work at Amazon, Google or Meta. Maybe they'll just keep rolling along while their companies reap the advantageous reach into the national/global talent pool.
Amazon has corporate offices in almost every major city. I assume what will happen is as long as you are going in some office it will satisfy the requirement for now.
Doesn't sound like it. The rationale, according to the article is to "learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture when we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues." If they're true to their stated reasoning, then you gotta be in the same office as everyone else on your team.
If they force you to any office, then their stated reasoning is BS and they just want to lord authority over you.
I suppose for the east coast people you can take the first flight out to California Monday morning and get back home in time to wake your kids up on Thursday.