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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

#391

Post by young_unixer »

rwmj wrote: post #36

Pay is a power relationship. No one is asking company directors to take a pay cut based on cost of living calculations, because company directors have power over their companies. Similarly cleaners are paid peanuts even if they have to live/commute to high cost of living cities to do the job, because cleaners have no power in the relationship. This is also why workers who unionise can be paid more - the union has pow…

If it was as simple as you are stating (A has power over B), salaries would be zero, except with unionised workers, were company profits would be zero.

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

#392

Post by heipei »

satyrnein wrote: post #209
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.

The value you bring is the ceiling on your compensation; employers are not going to pay more than that. Your cost of living is the floor; you're not going to take less than that. The spread between the two is what you're negotiating over.

The problem in a lot of modern software-based companies is that the value you create is impossible to calculate. It might be 10x of what your employer thinks or it might even be negative, and I have definitely seen examples for both myself based on my own calculations.

And even in non-software based products and companies industries this might be hard since the output of so many teams gets lumped together and sold as one product. What's the value of the team that creates and markets the MacBook Pro Touch bar? Personally I think it is net negative, and maybe there's even division over that within Apple.

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

#394

Post by jariel »

a_imho wrote: post #250
jariel wrote: post #94

"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…

This article is exactly about that people from all those places are not happy being paid less though.

Of course, but 'what are they going to do about it'?

They can get 'local jobs' for 1/3 the pay, or accept earning less than their peers in SF.

I'm not saying it's fair, I'm saying it's what the market is driving towards.

And it will affect 'our' wages as 'we' get outsourced.

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

#395

Post by klodolph »

dwaltrip wrote: post #380
klodolph wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You acknowledge there are a very large number of complex factors that determine a market price. There isn't a way to neatly summarize that. What kind of explanation could you possibly want?

> What kind of explanation could you possibly want?

Something that isn’t a tautology. “Why do you pay $4 for a cappuccino?” “Because that is the market price for a cappuccino.” “What does ‘market price’ mean?” “It means the amount of money people pay in the given market.”

You can see that nothing at all has been explained.

So when someone says that people are paying a certain price in a certain market “because it is market price”, that is getting things backwards, and not explaining anything at all. It’s like the surly teenager whose parents ask “Where are you going?” and he says, “Out.”

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

#396

Post by dwaltrip »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #252
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…

> > You should expect "equal pay for equal work" ... > 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. > ...if you accept that you live in a market-enabled society, your salary is at stake, too. This logic horrifies me because it applies equally well to wage disparities based on protected classes. We have collectivel…

If a company is found to be discriminating by protected class, they are in big trouble. Sure, it can be difficult to catch. But what is your point exactly?

Markets currently play a massive role in determining prices across our entire society. A wage is a price paid for an individual's labor.

Labor markets are not perfect. No market is (despite the wailings of the ideologues). We try to fix these issues with specific policies and regulations. There is plenty more work to do here. But if you are advocating for the abolishment of labor markets entirely, I would love to see the details of your proposal. I don't know of any society today that has managed to do so.

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

#397

Post by whimsicalism »

nybble41 wrote: post #375
bumby wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there cases where the market fails when considered in broader context? E.g., the market decides to off-shore manufacturing. This is good short-term as it leads to lower prices for consumers. But it's also potentially a failure at a national long-term level as it has reduced our manufacturing capacity. The short-term bias of the market can adversely affect long lead-time strategic interests. See: the inability…

> But it's also potentially a failure at a national long-term level as it has reduced our manufacturing capacity. That isn't a market failure. It's just a recognition that the economy is global, not national. The market doesn't optimize for the benefit of one nation against others. As for "short-term bias", the market just reflects the biases of the people making the decisions—the same as any other system. If people…

> The market's only real "failure" is that it's too democratic for the liking of certain individuals

It's interesting to see this sort of rhetoric re-emerge after it took a long break after the '08 recession. Of course, the idea that the market is "too democratic" is absurd. At least, I haven't seen a democratic system where 1% of the population gets 40% of the vote.

As long as "willingness to pay" is the market proxy for the utility a consumer gets from a good, the market is not "democratic".

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

#398

Post by [deleted] »

leetcrew wrote: post #371
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > You should expect "equal pay for equal work" ... > 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. > ...if you accept that you live in a market-enabled society, your salary is at stake, too. This logic horrifies me because it applies equally well to wage disparities based on protected classes. We have collectivel…

> This logic horrifies me because it applies equally well to wage disparities based on protected classes. I dunno if GP meant to imply that, but this is kinda the key flaw with the "equal pay for equal work" thing. most engineers earn way more than the median income. this is a direct result of existing in a market-based economy where wages are determined by supply and demand rather than some abstract notion of fairne…

[deleted]

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

#399

Post by woah »

gtsop wrote: post #320
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…

> In reality, your compensation is a function of your negotiating power. Ahhmm, no. Where does negotiation power stem from? Is it a skill? No. You are a product much like eveything else in this economy and you price is a function of how much you cost (living cost, heavily depedent on location) + supply/demand trends. Yes, your attitude and negotiation skills can impact your salary but only by a bit. You can't get you…

Working across a lot of time zones is a huge barrier and leads to all kinds of miscommunication. You can avoid some issues by focusing on written asynchronous communication, and maybe modularizing the work so that different time zones are working on different things, but this tends to calcify and slow down a product development process.

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

#400

Post by Nasrudith »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #291
yeetman21 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm in the same boat as you, but think about this: these cushy developer jobs in the Western world are on borrowed time. FAANG companies are investing billions to teach people how to code and brand it as if it's some noble humanitarian effort when it's really just to further lower wages. When the time of FAANG companies actually offshoring key development teams comes (and it is coming), I have 0 faith the federal gov…

Wait how could Unions help against outsourcing? What do Unions do? Use strikes (withholding labor) to get concessions. What does outsourcing involve? Finding cheaper labor out of the country and laying off or firing existing workforce.

If outsourcing is the threat isn't the potentially outsourced threatening a strike kind of like responding to a mugger by putting a knife to your own throat? Except I think that might be more effective as a threat as it makes the mugger think of you as unstable and irrational.

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