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Ask HN: Should a remote employee’s salary be tied to their physical location?

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Re: Ask HN: Should a remote employee’s salary be tied to their physical location?

#91

Post by bsenftner »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #54
bsenftner wrote: post #33

Of course, there are two correct answers: those employees able to negotiate away their location having any relevance to their pay, and those who due to hierarchy position or lack of negotiating skills have their pay pro-rated against their location and potentially a giant host of additional factors beyond the employee's control. The course of action is clear: learn to negotiate.

>The course of action is clear: learn to negotiate. I think learning to negotiate is second to selling something which you have multiple buyers to choose from and few competing sellers. If that’s not the case, you won’t be able to negotiate in the first place, and you need to figure out something else to sell.

There is a lot more to negotiation than the multiple buyers scenario.

Re: Ask HN: Should a remote employee’s salary be tied to their physical location?

#92

Post by lotsofpulp »

bsenftner wrote: post #91
lotsofpulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The course of action is clear: learn to negotiate. I think learning to negotiate is second to selling something which you have multiple buyers to choose from and few competing sellers. If that’s not the case, you won’t be able to negotiate in the first place, and you need to figure out something else to sell.

There is a lot more to negotiation than the multiple buyers scenario.

Not unless either party has the ability to walk away, which means multiple buyers. If I’m a buyer and I know you have no other options, why would I negotiate?

Re: Ask HN: Should a remote employee’s salary be tied to their physical location?

#93

Post by JoeAltmaier »

munificent wrote: post #79
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay raise and pay cut are not justified descriptions. Given folks can live where they like, its simply a choice of where you want to live, vs what you can afford. I agree that work and location will be decoupled for information workers, because the modern world is going that way. Its just something we'll have to adapt to.

> Pay raise and pay cut are not justified descriptions. That's why I said "essentially". :) Compared to the alternative where salaries are location independent, it functions as a change in salary. > Given folks can live where they like Switching costs for moving are relatively low for young, healthy, childless renters, but are much higher for many others. Not wanting to move away from family (who may also be providin…

Yeah I know, its hard. Done it 14 times, mostly about chasing jobs.

Living where you can't afford/don't have a job is not any kind of excuse for not moving. Some of the others - sure I'd like to be near family, but not if I'm going broke.

Strawmen for why-not-to-move are interesting but not statistically so. Most folks can move, especially the younger. There are far more younger folks than old ones.

Re: Ask HN: Should a remote employee’s salary be tied to their physical location?

#94

Post by winter_blue »

deepakkarki wrote: post #71
winter_blue wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not believe every talented European is 40% as capable as the average developer in the US. I do not believe that the same software engineer that made $10k in India, suddenly brings 10x as much value due to a 1 year masters, once they move to the US. Exactly. The salaries in some countries (e.g. India) are so low that it befuddles me. In smaller cities in India, software engineers actually make closer to around…

People starting at $4K are the ones who work for consultancies like Infosys, Wipro, et al. There is a reason why they're paid so less. They're usually graduates from terrible engineering colleges who have no real engineering skills what so ever. They undergo a 6 month training period before they can even start working. My friends in Google India on the other hand make close to $50K/yr. My friends in Google MTV make $…

> My friends in Google MTV make $200K/yr.

I'm guessing he's L3? SWE L3 averages 180K in Google.

My friend at Google is SWE L5 (which averages 350k), but he's at closer to 400K because Google's stock price appreciated considerably since he joined.

> Google India on the other hand make close to $50K/yr

Regardless, $50K in India is actually quite high. Many, many large US tech companies are happy to pay peanuts. The average for a large tech company is probably between around $10K/yr to $20k/yr USD, which in my opinion is horrifically abysmal. (Not to mention, I know of companies that hire people in India's neighbor Pakistan, and they are paying them around $400 USD per month, i.e. less than $5K/yr.)

The numbers are frankly quite absurdly low.

Re: Ask HN: Should a remote employee’s salary be tied to their physical location?

#95

Post by bsenftner »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #92
bsenftner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot more to negotiation than the multiple buyers scenario.

Not unless either party has the ability to walk away, which means multiple buyers. If I’m a buyer and I know you have no other options, why would I negotiate?

If one has no options and they treat the other party with an acknowledged lack of options, the poorly treated party can undermine the dominate party through publicity and peer shaming. There are many options for the individual trained in negotiation, and walking away for other options is the most primitive and least effective maximization strategy.

Re: Ask HN: Should a remote employee’s salary be tied to their physical location?

#96

Post by bananaface »

alextheparrot wrote: post #49
simmons wrote: post #15

I think the relationship of geography to salary is going to be dictated by the biggest factors in all pricing -- supply and demand. Cost of living adjustments are really just a proxy for acknowledging that a prospective remote worker in Des Moines will have fewer local opportunities (lower demand) than a similar worker in New York, and so will be in a less favorable negotiating position. If remote work continues to g…

Wouldn’t this mode breakdown when more than two companies want a given remote employee? Presumably companies paying Bay Area salaries and still making healthy profits means that they can afford to pay high salaries irrespective for talent. This seems to be true insofar as companies can’t collude, either implicitly or explicitly, to suppress remote wages.

This is something I've thought about a lot, and I haven't found a satisfactory answer to it. My hypothesis is that those employees who can exert that leverage probably do win, but they keep it under their hat, and so do the companies.
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