Employees from online payment company Stripe take pay cut to WFH permanently

Staff at a Silicon Valley start-up were given a $26,000 bonus to permanently work from home – but were also forced to accept a big cut to their salary.

Silicon Valley’s most valuable start-up has given employees an option to leave its offices in New York and San Francisco to work remotely from cheaper locations – but with one big catch.

In doing so, staff had to accept a 10 per cent pay cut. And many have taken the company up on its offer.

Stripe, an online payments company valued at $US95 billion ($A124 billion), said in September that workers who moved to work elsewhere permanently would get a one-time bonus of $US20,000 ($A26,000) – but also a permanent salary cut.

Now, the company’s CEO says many of the company’s 4000-plus workers took the deal.

“We saw pretty major uptake,” said Stripe co-founder and president John Collison in a Bloomberg TV interview.

“There were a lot of people who took advantage of all the remote working that was going on last year to be able to move to be closer to their families, to somewhere they wanted to move previously.”

Mr Collison did not provide an exact number in the interview, and Stripe did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Stripe, which is headquartered in both San Francisco and Dublin, was founded by Mr Collison and his brother Patrick and has allowed some employees to work remotely since 2013.

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Other tech companies have embraced remote working but to varying degrees. Picture: iStock

But while Stripe got an early start, it’s far from the only tech firm to embrace remote work.

Most Twitter employees will be allowed to work remotely forever – it seems without a pay cut – CEO Jack Dorsey said last year.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has told his company’s 40,000-plus employees that the firm plans to let some employees work remotely but will slash salaries for workers in less-expensive areas.

“There’ll be severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this,” Mr Zuckerberg warned last year.

Apple, meanwhile, plans to require employees to report to work in person three days per week.

In response, a group of employees circulated an angry letter in May condemning the decision.

“Without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our wellbeing, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple,” the note read.

This story originally appeared on the New York Post and is reproduced here with permission