Stripe To Give $20K Bonus, Then Pay Cut For Workers Who Leave New York City, San Francisco Or Seattle

As a number of companies have provided workers with greater flexibility with the location and method of work, Stripe Inc. intends to provide a $20,000 bonus to workers who choose to leave San Francisco, Seattle or New York while reducing their base salaries by up to 10 percent, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed source.

The company will reportedly provide workers who opt to move prior to the conclusion of 2020 with the deal, according to the unnamed Bloomberg source. Workers choosing to relocate might have to give up a portion of their base pay, however. Stripe, which is based in San Francisco, has approximately 2,800 employees and has depended on telecommuting for a long time.

Bloomberg cited U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data from 2018, which indicated that the San Francisco Bay area had some of the most expensive prices for products and services with the inclusion of rent in comparison to big U.S. metropolitan areas. Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and San Jose, which are all municipalities in California, had some of the steepest rents in the country when it came to areas of every proportion.

Stripe’s new reported policy makes the company among the tech firms that have grown telecommuting opportunities but that also have indicated that they might reduce pay in the event staffers choose to relocate to more economical areas.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 14 percent of American employees telecommuted prior to the pandemic.

In separate news, a recent Challenger, Gray & Christmas poll indicated that 30 percent of firms have reduced pay in response to the pandemic. Fifty-five percent of those firms indicated that the pay reductions let them avoid layoffs over the long haul.

And 44 percent of survey respondents indicated that pay cuts occurred widely, as 34.2 percent indicated that they occurred for executive positions or those of greater ranking. Just 11.1 percent said the reductions had only occurred for “certain positions.”