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"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

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Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#151

Post by licebmi__at__ »

bserge wrote: post #82
joelbluminator wrote: post #38

Earlier 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…

This cynical outlook it's definitely helpful, but I believe the truth is more gray. It's quite likely and understandable that my friends will throw me under the bus if they see their livelihood in danger, but so far it hasn't been the case for measly higher pay. And yet I have depended on the kindness of strangers who had nothing to gain by helping me enough times to acknowledge that it's not selfishness what engages human behavior. As always it kinda depends on the framing, you can even say that it's on my best interest to act for the common good, so even altruism is selfish, but then you'll have a useless definition of altruism.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#152

Post by enriquto »

rich_sasha wrote: post #5

This, and similar moans, really misses the point. Employment is a social contract, looking for a compromise between two positions: * Employers want to essentially acquire a good (productive employee) for the best quality / price ratio. If a trained monkey could do the job for peanuts, employers would be happy. * Employees, and the society made up of employees, want stability, employment rights etc. as salary work is…

> Employers want to essentially acquire a good (productive employee) for the best quality / price ratio. If a trained monkey could do the job for peanuts, employers would be happy.

This is true, but there's more to it. Employers typically make a product and they still need to sell it to somebody who is not a poor monkey. Employers also need a safe social environment so that their offices do not get burn by the angry masses, and if the factory takes fire they expect the firefighters to show up. Thus, employers have a real interest in living in a safe world full of happy, well-paid people.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#153

Post by Ekaros »

sremani wrote: post #125
lgleason wrote: post #89

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.

The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. 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.

I don't think Software Developers or related fields will do too badly. It's still skilled and specialised work just like trades. What I imagine will be hit much harder is more average positions that don't really need skills outside just having a degree...

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#154

Post by username90 »

klodolph wrote: post #107
eloisant wrote: post #88

The reality behind "cost of living" is actually "market price". Companies having this policy don't actually try to figure out how much it costs to live in a city in an other, they just look how much people are paid for a similar job in the area. In other words, companies with this policy pay you as low as the market allows them, without you being poached by a local competitor.

Kind of putting the cart before the horse, here. Saying that something is “market price” doesn’t explain anything. Market price is driven by millions of factors including cost of living. “Market price” just means that it’s the price that people actually pay for something in the real world, it’s just a name for that price that doesn’t offer any explanatory power. Cost of living does have explanatory power.

Cost of living is determined by how much people living there are paid, not the other way around.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#155

Post by bumby »

nicoburns wrote: post #142
falcolas wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpaid or not (I tend to agree that they are overpaid), if a significant portion of their compensation is stock grants, then that portion of their compensation is directly tied to the value of the company.

I'd argue that the value of the company often doesn't reflect whether they're doing a good job. Which is why you often find CEOs taking short-termist approach which buoys the value of the company in the short term and completely destroys it in the long term.

There's a famous study that concluded "CEO effects" only account for about 14.5% of performance [1]. It may be quite dated by today, though, it may be even less pronounced according to [2] that claims more recent studies show the CEO only explains for 4.5%-12.8% of performance.[2]

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2094020?seq=1

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/do-ceos...

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#156

Post by haspok »

sremani wrote: post #125
lgleason wrote: post #89

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.

The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. 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.

> Software development (...) becomes a menial job with average pay.

If I had a cent for every time I heard this in the past 25 years... it started with the 4GL craze, at least that's when I started. And look where we are now.

The truth is that software development is an inherently complex process. You can automate the menial parts of it (and you probably should), but can never tackle the core of its complexity. Writing performant programs is hard and always will be. Writing correct concurrent programs is hard and always will be. Constructing easily understandable and refactorable business logic implementations is hard and always will be. And there is no silver bullet.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#157

Post by Mountain_Skies »

OminousWeapons wrote: post #56
9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just tell you live in another city?

I agree, this seems trivial to solve: get a UPS PMB in a high cost of living area and set up mail forwarding.

Those are called Commercial Mail Acceptance Facilities and there is a database of them available. DMVs use the database to catch people trying to use a rented mailbox as their home address. An employer can catch this if they want to. At my last employer I used a UPS Store address and HR never caught on but since it was in the same town I lived in, there were no tax issues. When I tried to open an HSA, my address was flagged because an HSA is considered a bank account and they must have a physical address for that. I opened an FSA instead, which didn't flag. So it really depends on how the company's HR department operates and as others have mentioned, if you're in a different tax area, there could be legal complications if you get caught.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#158

Post by plutonorm »

helen___keller wrote: post #150
jasonjayr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then companies should have no problems whatsoever with Unions? I mean, if a group of employees want to get together to amplify their negotiating power, then they should not stop that?

> then they should not stop that? The whole point of having negotiating power is they can't just "stop" it. Because you, as a union, collectively have enough power to force them to the table to negotiate. Whether or not the company has a problem with unions is basically irrelevant.

It is irrelevant. But somehow companies have convinced most that unions are a bad thing. They have leveraged their greater influence to further their power. They are now in an essentially unassailable position. For the great majority of the workforce they have no bargaining power. This toxic modern world should pop like the noxious little bubble it is. We need a new 60s only this time we need to win.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#159

Post by bagacrap »

klodolph wrote: post #107
eloisant wrote: post #88

The reality behind "cost of living" is actually "market price". Companies having this policy don't actually try to figure out how much it costs to live in a city in an other, they just look how much people are paid for a similar job in the area. In other words, companies with this policy pay you as low as the market allows them, without you being poached by a local competitor.

Kind of putting the cart before the horse, here. Saying that something is “market price” doesn’t explain anything. Market price is driven by millions of factors including cost of living. “Market price” just means that it’s the price that people actually pay for something in the real world, it’s just a name for that price that doesn’t offer any explanatory power. Cost of living does have explanatory power.

But cost of living is only one possible explanation. Desirability also affects it. For example, on the whole, people are willing to spend a greater percent of their income to live in LA vs Dallas. Desirability drives down the market price. Many things go into market price and you don't actually have to pretend to understand them all.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#160

Post by [deleted] »

jasonjayr wrote: post #136
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #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…

Then companies should have no problems whatsoever with Unions? I mean, if a group of employees want to get together to amplify their negotiating power, then they should not stop that?

[deleted]
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