If "Equal pay for equal work" is applied on a long term, That may have a great effect on demography and how cities/countries operate. I can imagine some people living in high COL areas will prefer relocating to other still-nice-locations with lower COL and also the other way around for people already living in lower COL areas. That should relieve higher COL areas from the huge pressure and give more juice to lower COL areas that enables it to improve its infrastructure and services making it even more attractive.
Eventually, this high contrast between high COL and low COL areas would start to normalize even for non-remote non-high-paying jobs!
"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
111–120 of 624 posts
Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#112> You should expect "equal pay for equal work" at your new remote job
So naive.
In an ideal, utopian world? Maybe it would work this way. Maybe.
In reality, your compensation is a function of your negotiating power. Some people, in fact, manage to get the same pay even when working remote, because they're "highly employable". Others don't.
And let me add: I almost agree that remote work shouldn't necessarily command the same pay. A company's goal is to "extract" from each employee more value than his/her/their salary. If a company manages to save on a salary because the employee doesn't have much negotiating power, good for the company.
This is not to say that a company should do anything it wants, far from it. It simply means that if you accept that you live in a market-enabled society, your salary is at stake, too. You want to pay $2 dollars for milk, instead of $20? That's thanks to competition between companies. That's market forces at play. You want it there? Accept it on salary negotiation too.
Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's funny how people expect moral behaviour from other people Do we though? We expect people to not break the rules, e.g murder or steal. We don't expect people to stop eating meat, polluting the earth, or generally to stop being extremely selfish. If we expected everyone to be moral you and I wouldn't be spending money on vacations and buying computer games but on trying to save poor kids in Africa and Bangladesh…
Over the years, I realized that everyone is selfish and will literally throw you under a bus for the right amount of money, or some other acceptable incentive. Laws keep people in line, except for the few who break them and get away with it. Maybe I'm hanging around the wrong people (I often wonder where all the "right" ones are), but that's how it is. And if I don't play the same game, I'll keep getting fucked until…
Everony is selfish yes. Throw you under the bus - not sure about this one. Might be you need better friends.
Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who's morals are in question here? Both you and GP seem to be talking from an amoral perspective. To many people there is certainly a moral obligation to put in an honest effort and pay fair wages.
I certainly don't think of my approach as amoral. Rather, I think it's not immoral to negotiate down a salary based on fair yardstick (COL). Annoying, perhaps, but not immoral. It's immoral to exploit your employees, lie to them, not keep to a contract, deny them the growth opportunities they were lead to believe they have etc. But to negotiate a lower pay, that's not immoral. As an employee, take it or leave it. To…
It's not based on COL, though, it's based on what your company perceives as your peers in the new area. As pointed out in other threads, working in London will net you about 1/3 of the salary as SF, even though the COL is nearly the same.
Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#115Facebook already pays people with the exact same credentials 1/3 in London what they would in California, despite London being similarly expensive. These companies do not pay anyone solely based on the work they produce, it has never and probably will never work that way.
There is a pervasive misconception that you are paid for how much value you bring. In a market economy, you are paid commensurate to how much you can negotiate. The value you bring (real or imagined) is part of that negotiation, but so are other factors. It pains me to see people get frustrated by this fact.
Which is the reason you should unionize. It strengthens your negotiation position.
Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#116Cost of living is a swindle, at least when it applies internationally and cross culturally. If you want to live like a local in Jakarta (to use an extreme example), you can do so very cheaply, $180 a month for a room, eat rice for breakfast lunch and dinner. If you want to live like a San Franciscan in Jakarta, it will cost as much if not more as in San Francisco. An apartment will cost several thousand dollars a mon…
Not entirely a swindle.
I can buy considerably more food for 100 Euros in southern Italy than in Zurich. Rents are so much cheaper too.
Same goes for eating out, going to the cinema, getting around, plumbers, and hair cuts. Most things, really.
Of course, shipping some Swiss cheese and timber to Sicily in order to live my Zurich lifestyle is very expensive. There are some concessions in item availability depending on the location. But that's completely besides the point.
I'm convinced that a sizeable amount of the "location doesn't matter" people are just bummed that they can't pull in a SF salary and live like a king on a small SEA island.
Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#117Median salary globally is around USD $10k, so for remote work presumably everyone's salaries should be similar. Given developers are high skilled and in demand, maybe they should be paid 3x the global median so $30k per year.
That's a fine starting point to set the initial conditions. Now, if a company can find a way to harness developers to create $100K of enterprise value per year, they will be happy to bid $50K for qualified developers. Another company that can create $150K/dev/yr will be willing to bid $60K, etc. I doubt you'll see qualified developers seeing a salary cut anywhere near as deep as you project, because the process I des…
> I doubt you'll see qualified developers seeing a salary cut anywhere near as deep as you project, because the process I describe will play out faster than needed to inject the needed stability.
In the long term, yes I agree. In the short term? No way, there should be around 5x-10x as many people in the world who would be great competition for FAANG spots who cannot do it now because of VISA and location restrictions, lift one of those and now the pool is inundated with talent the companies can do whatever they want.
Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#118"Equal pay for equal work" ... Says the guy putting together your iPhone in China as well. This is going to be a huge lesson in Supply and Demand for the workforce. And contemplate that there are zillions of intelligent people learning to speak English and who can code (and do other things) very well. I don't think the American / Western workforce realizes how fragile their position is in the long run. Today it's abo…
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Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is there moral obligation to do your job well instead of let's say watching youtube and doing bare minimum not to get fired? No You can choose to do well to avoid being fired. You can choose to do well to chase a promotion. You can choose to do well because the work interests you. But you are not morally obligated to do anything, and if your employer is not very good at evaluating your work, then — like a man who b…
Who's morals are in question here? Both you and GP seem to be talking from an amoral perspective. To many people there is certainly a moral obligation to put in an honest effort and pay fair wages.
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Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is no moral obligation for employers to pay a wage that's fair, based on the value of the employee work, perhaps above ~subsistence levels. is there moral obligation to do your job well instead of let's say watching youtube and doing bare minimum not to get fired? It's funny how people expect moral behaviour from other people but not from companies made of these people. Somehow it's fine for companies to be j…
> Somehow it's fine for companies to be jerks. Look at many of the products we make together. Why would we hide behind laws that protect bad practices and think those same companies take a moral high ground on this issue. It is, and always will be, due in part to fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, about the money.
Funny how Target and Costco are still in business, since they're both public and pay living wages to their employees.
The duty of a business is to keep the business healthy. This whole "profit at any cost" is a fairly new development.