OpenAI relocates engineers from around the world. Anthropic sponsors visas and helps families move to San Francisco. Google has an entire global mobility team that handles thousands of moves a year. Stripe, Figma, and Databricks all invest heavily in getting the right people to the right place.
These aren’t random perks. The best companies in the world offer relocation support because they’ve figured out something most founders haven’t: if you want to hire the best people, you have to be willing to move them.
This is not the average norm
Most companies don’t offer meaningful relocation support. Most companies also don’t compete for the same caliber of talent that OpenAI and Anthropic do. The companies that invest in mobility are making a deliberate choice to play at a different level. They’re saying: we will go find the best person for this role regardless of where they live, and we will make it easy for them to join us.
That’s a fundamentally different hiring posture than “we’ll consider candidates who are already in our city.” And it produces fundamentally different outcomes.
Relocation support is a signal
To candidates, a well-structured relocation package signals something important about the company:
- You care about the whole person, not just their output. You understand that moving is stressful, that families are involved, and that the transition matters
- You think long-term. You’re investing in someone’s first six months because you’re planning for their first six years. Companies that nickel and dime on relocation tend to nickel and dime on everything else
- You’re serious about building a world-class team. The willingness to relocate talent from anywhere says you’re competing globally, not settling for whoever’s nearby
Top candidates notice this. When someone is choosing between two offers, the company that says “we’ll take care of your move, help your partner find work, and give you three months to settle in” wins over the company that says “here’s $5K, good luck.”
When it becomes critical: the 300 to 400 employee inflection point
Early-stage startups can handle relocation ad hoc. You’re doing a handful of moves a year, and the CEO or head of people can figure it out case by case. But somewhere around 300 to 400 employees, everything changes.
At this stage you’re typically dealing with:
- International expansion. You’re hiring in multiple countries or opening offices outside your home market. Each jurisdiction has its own immigration, tax, and employment law
- Senior and executive hires. The people you’re recruiting have families, own homes, and have partners with careers. Their relocations are complex and the stakes are high. A botched move for a VP-level hire is extraordinarily expensive
- Retention and internal mobility. It’s not just about bringing new people in anymore. You need to move existing talent between offices, support employees who want to relocate for personal reasons, and make sure your best people don’t leave because their life circumstances changed
- Tax and compliance complexity. Cross-border moves trigger tax equalization obligations, permanent establishment risk, social security implications, and work permit requirements. Getting any of this wrong creates real legal and financial exposure
- Families. As your team matures, more hires are relocating with partners, children, and sometimes elderly parents. These moves require school research, partner career support, healthcare navigation, and much longer timelines. They’re also the moves most likely to fail without proper support
This is the inflection point where most high-growth companies start thinking about a dedicated mobility function, whether that’s a hire, a partner, or both. The volume and complexity make it impossible to keep winging it.
What the best companies actually do
If you look at how companies like Google, Anthropic, and Stripe handle mobility, a few patterns emerge:
- Tiered packages by complexity, not just seniority. A junior engineer moving internationally with a family might need more support than a senior engineer moving across town
- Managed relocation, not just lump sums. They coordinate movers, temporary housing, and destination services rather than handing someone a check and hoping for the best
- Partner and family support as standard. Career coaching for partners, school search assistance for kids, and cultural adjustment support. These aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re what prevent relocations from failing
- Immigration handled end-to-end. Visa sponsorship, work permits for partners, immigration legal fees covered. The employee doesn’t have to navigate any of this alone
- Tax protection. Gross-ups on domestic moves, tax equalization on international ones. The employee receives the full value of what was promised
- Ongoing support, not just move-day logistics. The best programs check in at 30, 60, and 90 days. They help with everything from setting up a bank account to finding a doctor. The move isn’t over when the boxes are unpacked
The founder’s decision
As a founder, you set the tone for how your company treats people. Relocation is one of the most visible expressions of that. When you invest in someone’s move, you’re telling them and everyone else at the company that you care about the experience of working here, not just the work itself.
The math makes it obvious. A senior engineer in SF costs $200K to $300K in total comp. At top labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, that number can exceed $1M. It takes 3 to 6 months to fill the role and another 3 to 6 months to ramp. If that person joins, has a terrible relocation experience, and leaves within a year, you’ve lost the comp, the hiring cost, the ramp-up time, and the institutional knowledge. A $20K relocation investment against a $300K annual cost is barely a rounding error. It’s the cheapest retention tool you have.
It’s also a recruiting advantage most startups ignore
Here’s what most founders don’t realize: offering strong relocation support at the startup stage is a massive differentiator precisely because so few companies do it. Candidates expect it from Google. They don’t expect it from a 200-person startup. When you offer it, you stand out.
We’ve seen startups close candidates over much larger companies because the relocation experience felt more personal and more thoughtful. The big company had a standard policy and a vendor portal. The startup had someone who actually cared about making the move go well. That matters more than people think.
The bottom line
The best companies in the world invest in talent mobility because they understand that where someone lives shouldn’t determine whether you can hire them. They understand that supporting a move is supporting a person. And they understand that the experience of joining a company starts long before day one.
If you’re a founder building something ambitious, the question isn’t whether you can afford to offer relocation support. It’s whether you can afford not to.
Ready to build a mobility program that competes with the best? Gullie helps startups offer world-class relocation support from day one.