Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

nityesh.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 624 posts

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

#171

Post by bumby »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #109
bumby wrote: post #92

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.

If a company is going to use the lazy COL argument, they're going to do so no matter what. Take 2 people of equal skill, experience, and negotiating prowess. One lives in SF, another in Kansas City. Both apply to the same remote position for a SF-based company. The company will always take the one in KC. I don't see how negotiation skill has a role in this. Unless there are people out there who have successfully nego…

Besides the obvious point made by another commenter that two completely equivalent people won't exist, it's not just negotiating skill it's more about negotiating leverage.

A real example that I've seen: two workers work for the same employer and have been given offers from other companies located in a different State. The single mother in the group had significantly less leverage because she (and presumably her employer) knew she couldn't move without potentially affecting the custody of her kids. She didn't get a raise.

Or to extend your example, someone living in KC has less leverage because they cannot use the COL argument to justify higher pay. If I'm being courted by an employer to move, you better believe I'm building COL considerations into my overall salary ask.

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

#172

Post by yeetman21 »

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?

If a group of employees want to get together to amplify their negotiating power without the threat of the government bludgeon, then they should be all for it.However once the government starts to give unions this and that, then it is no longer just between the employees and the employer

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

#173

Post by dahart »

> What's included in "Cost of Living"? More importantly, who defines it?

The author of this article seems confused about the term “cost of living”. It doesn’t mean all of your personal expenses including grandparents and pets, it’s a measure of the cost of a geographical location.

“ The cost of living is the amount of money needed to cover basic expenses such as housing, food, taxes, and healthcare in a certain place and time period.”

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cost-of-living.asp

... and since many places’ cost of living is a lot lower than the Bay Area, it’s clear why companies would like to take advantage of that fact to lower salaries for people who choose to live somewhere cheaper. It’s not clearly an unreasonable idea, but dropping employees existing salaries is questionable, something employees may need to push back on or be prepared to change jobs. It’s going to be interesting if the big tech companies willingly lower their hiring competitiveness by reducing compensation broadly.

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

#174

Post by JoeAltmaier »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #169
0x445442 wrote: post #96

Sadly I expect Big Tech is looking at remote work for the wrong reason, mainly labor cost arbitrage. I say sadly because I think Big Tech could do a lot of social good in an ever increasing divided America by making a concerted effort to employ remote workers from diverse geographic regions within America.

But those two seem equivalent to me. A software engineer in Toledo has a competitive advantage over an equally skilled software engineer the Bay Area because they are able to work at a lower wage without materially sacrificing their quality of life. So by looking to reduce labor costs by hiring more remote engineers in Toledo, Bay Area companies are effectively working to reduce income polarization and spreading the…

Don't follow. How does income get less polarized? Toledo Engineers working remotely but at Toledo pay, are not ahead. I guess they have a larger market for their skills? But that could lower rates thru competition.

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

#175

Post by ironmagma »

joelbluminator wrote: post #38
ajuc wrote: post #22

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…

We do expect each other to be reasonably moral. It’s understood though that everyone has limits and is fundamentally flawed, so at the end of the day a few things have to be written off. Exactly how many things you write off, interestingly, contributes to your own moral standing.

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

#176

Post by JoeAltmaier »

internet_user wrote: post #141
0x445442 wrote: post #96

Sadly I expect Big Tech is looking at remote work for the wrong reason, mainly labor cost arbitrage. I say sadly because I think Big Tech could do a lot of social good in an ever increasing divided America by making a concerted effort to employ remote workers from diverse geographic regions within America.

Why not hire even cheaper, outside of America?

Issues: language, time zone, currency, network delays, culture and custom, accountability. To name a few.

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

#177

Post by matz1 »

bitL wrote: post #71
matz1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's depends on the negotiation you have with your employer.

I guess the negotiation would be very one-sided - there's no way they would increase one's salary to n x $1M if an employee moved to Monaco (you need to make a permanent 500k EUR deposit in a local bank during your residency and have a tenancy agreement for an apartment where rent doesn't go under 6k/month).

That depends on how valuable you are to them.

If you can help them let say generate $10M income (while live in Monaco) then its no brainer to pay you $1M

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

#178

Post by thinkharderdev »

internet_user wrote: post #141
0x445442 wrote: post #96

Sadly I expect Big Tech is looking at remote work for the wrong reason, mainly labor cost arbitrage. I say sadly because I think Big Tech could do a lot of social good in an ever increasing divided America by making a concerted effort to employ remote workers from diverse geographic regions within America.

Why not hire even cheaper, outside of America?

They can and do, but issues of time zone alignment and language/cultural barriers make it more enticing to hire American engineers. When I was starting my career in the early 2000s it felt like everyone just assumed that outsourcing would eviscerate the US-base job market for software engineers but it seems like it went in the complete opposite direction. I'm sure lots of academic work tries to explain exactly why but my subjective view is just that the outsourcing model doesn't really work that well for modern product development methodologies.

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

#179

Post by cambalache »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #127
cambalache wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How can local wages (in a currency other than USD) be "pitiful", but food cost "the same" for the USD? These are incongruent. Locals wouldn't be able to subsist on those food prices. The USD has greater purchasing power, that's just a fact.

Have you lived in a 3rd world country, especially earning a local salary? 99.99% sure you havent.

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

#180

Post by yeetman21 »

plutonorm wrote: post #158
helen___keller wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am only qualified to speak about the tech sector in which I work. All of my coworkers make above six figures. We have every sort of benefit that we could want. Why would we want a union? Our company has convinced us that unions are a bad thing by giving us basically anything that a union could have, and more. Why would we want to agitate for more when we already have so much, and risk what we currently have (which is more than adequate)
Post reply on HN