Reddit won’t lower employee pay if they move out of high-cost cities like San Francisco

Steve Huffman CEO, Reddit, delivers remarks on ‘Redesigning Reddit’ during the third day of Web Summit in Altice Arena on November 08, 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Horacio Villalobos | Corbis | Getty Images

Reddit said Tuesday it won’t lower pay for employees who choose to move out of high-cost cities following the coronavirus pandemic. That means employees will be compensated as if they live in places like San Francisco, where Reddit is headquartered, even if they move to a much cheaper locale.

“To support employees to live where they want to and do their best work, we are eliminating geographic compensation zones in the US,” the company said in a blog post. “We believe this is the right balance of flexibility and support for employees, recognizing the varied tradeoffs people consider when deciding where to live.”

The social media company will also allow employees to choose between working in person, remotely or a combination of both. Reddit said the new policy will exclude workers who have roles that need to be performed in person.

“We are reimagining the future of our office space to support those team members who will be in the office 1-5 days per week,” the company said. “Imagine: casual and coffee shop-style seating, private space for heads-down focusing, larger bookable resources and collaboration spaces for teams to strategically meet IRL, and no more fixed desks—we’ll have neighborhoods for teams to gather and bookable desks for employees working in the office.”

More companies are starting to consider remote work as a more permanent option due to the pandemic. Twitter and Square are letting employees work from home “forever,” while Microsoft said workers will have more flexibility to work from home. However, some companies, like Facebook and Stripe, have said they would adjust pay based on their new locations.