121–130 of 624 posts
Of course, the corollary to this is that maybe remote worker's aren't always as good a choice as local workers, which would explain an otherwise puzzling market inefficiency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your employer required you to move to a location with a higher cost of living, would you not expect to be compensated for that? i.e. is it only downward adjustments for COL that you object to? and, if so, what's the logic in that (other than pure self-interest)?
I think the "requirement" part is a sticking point. If I chose to move from my small house in WV to a condo in Pitt, i would not expect my employer to pay me more because of my choice. If they required me to move to Pitt or I lose my job, I would expect some compensation. Likewise, if I take a job and get X salary for that job, then move to a cheaper part of town I wouldn't expect to take a pay cut.
You're employed with a salary of $X at location Y.
Your employer wants you to move to location Z with higher cost-of-living. You can either stay at location Y or move to location Z. You feel it's right that your employer increase your salary because of the higher cost of living if you move to Z.
The company is asking you to make a concession: do the same work, but in a different location.
When you ask to move to a lower-cost area, aren't you asking for the same concession? Why is that concession expected to be gratuitous vs the same concession from the company which is expected to be compensated?
The biggest thing that factors into your "cost of living" is not geographic, but rather the number of dependents you have. Oddly, you don't seem to see companies trying to base their compensation on this. Why do you suppose that is?
Probably because the company isn't paying you based on your living costs, but based on their cost of potentially losing you to some other company.
It just grids my gears to no end when a company like Gitlab these blog posts about CoL adjusted compensation chock full of mental gymnastics to support themselves as doing some moral good for their employees. Gross.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
right, but what underpins the usual rules of employment is based on what the society wants. Like democracy - it is literally a contract, written in laws. And yet it is also a social contract.
the usual rules of employment is based on what the society wants. Until "the board" steps in and says 'no', right? That's been my experience. Proclamations and cheerleading about "we're a meritocracy, we act democratically in this company". Times get tough (like a Global pandemic coming along), employees ask firm questions like "will the executives taking a pay cut like the rest of us?" Response: "the board said no"…
Of course, this is the same CEO who owns three separate properties, and flew between them in his private jet, to keep his own stress levels down during Covid-19.
If you live in the US and are advocating for this be careful what you wish for. It could lead to your 100-200K per year salary being cut to well below 100K to equalize across all engineers including those in low cost areas such as China and India.
It is not that far either, I bet Software Developers do not have beyond 7 years for this to take shape and of course, those massive layoffs are just around the corner when remote works becomes the standard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This 'misconception' comes from two big sources, IMO: 1) Leadership is paid for the value they bring. Primarily through huge stock grants as part of their multi-million dollar compensation packages. 2) Companies always discuss employee compensation, especially raises and bonuses, in terms of the value an employee has relative to their peers. So, it's no wonder that people believe that their value has something to do…
No they're not. They're massively overpaid relative to value they bring. They generally get these multi-million dollar compensation packages regardless of performance. Presumably this is also because of their power to negotiate which is high because they're more or less in charge of everything.
Cost 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…
Yeah, I always laugh at the naivete of many people from first world countries : "Wow down there in Mexico the dollar is worth 10X/8X/6X times as more". No, it fucking is not. Or let me rephrase, it does but just for an extremely small subset of things. Cars? No, more expensive in the third world. House? Not at all, for a similar house, same quality of construction, and neigborhood, expect to pay at the very least the…
Earlier 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…
> 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…
Once you learn about the horrors of the animal abuse happening thanks to the money with which you buy meat, I think it's the right thing to stop. And similarly, to encourage others to decrease their meat consumption by letting them know that by buying meat, they are very likely going against their values (just ask them if they would pay to torture a dog, for example).
Instilling better norms in a society is hard work, but it's a good thing. Thanks to the efforts of our predecessors, we now look down on beating one's wife, for example. Let's join together, and make it the norm to give 10% of our income to the most cost-effective charities we can find (see https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ )
> 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…
OK, but if you go in front of the employers as individuals, 1 might gain, but everybody will lose. That's not how work relationship works.
I get that on HN everybody feels like a genius and individualism is rampant. But that's a fertile ideological environment for mass exploitation.
Tech workers are just workers first and foremost, and the same dynamic of the labor market are true for tech workers, as they are true for anybody else.
> 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…
This quickly falls down once salaries and payments become public. In economic parlance, when everybody has all the information and the job market becomes efficient.