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"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

nityesh.com

321–330 of 624 posts

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

#321
post #297
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not arguing against equal pay for equal work Remote = lower costs does not hold. It also depends on what you think about wage gaps and why do we need equal employment laws in the first place?

Facts don’t depend on what I’m arguing for. I’m arguing against comparing remote work to the gender pay gap. Being female is not comparable to being remote. Most people have more choice about where they live than their sex or gender, for example. I assume you are not arguing that sex and gender are just preferences.

[deleted]

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

#322
post #297
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not arguing against equal pay for equal work Remote = lower costs does not hold. It also depends on what you think about wage gaps and why do we need equal employment laws in the first place?

Facts don’t depend on what I’m arguing for. I’m arguing against comparing remote work to the gender pay gap. Being female is not comparable to being remote. Most people have more choice about where they live than their sex or gender, for example. I assume you are not arguing that sex and gender are just preferences.

Let's agree to disagree. Imo it is very much comparable from a negotiation power point. The fact that it is not something you can change easily is orthogonal. If you want to be pedantic you can use religion as an example.

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

#323

> 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…

> You want to pay $2 dollars for milk, instead of $20? That's thanks to competition between companies. It's not though. "The support granted to U.S dairy producers represented approximately [...] 73% of the farmers' marketplace revenue. USDA data also reveals that US dairy farmers operate at a loss, and have a cost of production that is higher than what they earn from the marketplace."[1] We're subsidizing the low co…

Almost no one buys milk at retail from farmers. We buy milk at retail from stores, which set their own market-based prices.

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want to pay $2 dollars for milk, instead of $20? That's thanks to competition between companies. It's not though. "The support granted to U.S dairy producers represented approximately [...] 73% of the farmers' marketplace revenue. USDA data also reveals that US dairy farmers operate at a loss, and have a cost of production that is higher than what they earn from the marketplace."[1] We're subsidizing the low co…

It's sort of the opposite here in Canada, where dairy production is managed on a quota system (you need quota to produce and sell) and the quota is regulated such that the price remains stable (and more expensive than in the US) for the benefit of the farmers who have quota and in theory the public, who has a reliable "reasonable" price. It's dubious on many levels, but has its defenders.

End result of this being if I want to produce milk with dairy cows I can't?

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

#325
post #322
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facts don’t depend on what I’m arguing for. I’m arguing against comparing remote work to the gender pay gap. Being female is not comparable to being remote. Most people have more choice about where they live than their sex or gender, for example. I assume you are not arguing that sex and gender are just preferences.

Let's agree to disagree. Imo it is very much comparable from a negotiation power point. The fact that it is not something you can change easily is orthogonal. If you want to be pedantic you can use religion as an example.

I agree to disagree.

It is not comparable from a negotiation power point - negotiation is all about what you can and can’t trade.

Therefore whether something is a choice or not is absolutely critical to any negotiation.

Religion is a good example to consider. Can you change it? Clearly some people do. What is the cost of changing religion? Obviously very different from person to person, very different from even the concept of changing sex, and very different from changing location.

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

#326

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?

Does this include coercing the employer to only employ union members? What does the union say if the company wants to hire someone for cheap in another country, who wants the job?

That's no different than any other exclusivity agreement a company might make with a supplier.

I would potentially be on board with outlawing such agreements altogether, but it's not fair to restrict unions to be unable to make exclusivity agreements when every other type of organization can.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm certainly not pro-union in tech, but this is something that could hasten its arrival. Just because I'm in Atlanta doesn't make me inherently worth less than my peers in SF.

> " Just because I'm in Atlanta doesn't make me inherently worth less than my peers in SF. " Should a person be charged SF prices for groceries when they're living in Atlanta because they're getting SF pay? Clearly not. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Then, it should be fair for a person with 4 kids living in Atlanta to be paid more than someone without any kids living in SF, right? You clearly missed the entire point of the article.

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

#328
post #177
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hardly. Unless you have irreplaceable skills (protip: almost no-one does), they'll just get the other candidate to deliver $8m in value for $200k/p.a.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loss of institutional knowledge caused by a mass exodus at the same time would cripple them (and pretty much any company that doesn't have incredibly rigorous standards for documentation).

I've been at startups where we experienced 90% engineering turnover over 12 mo. due to M&A or change of leadership. We got by. I'm sure Fb could cope.

Having spent a lot of time listening to FB employees rant about the lack of documentation and the amount of information sitting in random employees heads, I'm not sure they would.

For instance, all the ads leads who understand the core C++ code leave - how do they fix bugs?

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

#330

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?

I didn't say anything about Unions. I am not an expert, but my humble, quick one-liner to describe how I see Unions is the following: Unions are good to protect employees that don't have negotiating power (e.g. factory workers), otherwise companies would take too much advantage of them. I am not sure this necessarily applies to knowledge workers, especially if their work can be done remotely to some extent. And I am…

Unions are good to protect employees that don't have negotiating power (e.g. factory workers), otherwise companies would take too much advantage of them.

I am not sure this necessarily applies to knowledge workers, especially if their work can be done remotely to some extent.

These two paragraphs contradict each other.

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