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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

#421

Post by cmrdporcupine »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #381
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subsidy to a private corporation is not "socializing" production costs. Socialization is putting goods under social control. This is literally the opposite -- providing benefits to private interests. Even if the end has the appearance of being for the social good, in reality this has more to do with the power of the private dairy lobby than any pricing concerns about availability of milk. That dairy producer's lobb…

"Socializing costs" is a widely used term to describe the phenomenon of the public taking on private costs for some real or perceived benefit.

Frankly, this way of talking seems to have its origin in the 2008 financial crisis more than in any actual technical economic language (https://www.cnbc.com/id/34921639). And it speaks more to American's mis-education about what socialism is (or its history) than anything else.

Apparently HN does not agree with me, I challenge my downvoting fans to find citations for "socializing losses" in the way you're talking about, prior to 2008.

"Lemon socialism" (gov't bailing out lemons) existed, but that actually has a different tone entirely.

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

#422

Post by yibg »

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…

Location also determines the costs of other things to a certain degree. Prices of gasoline, food, housing etc are all higher in high COL areas, so why is it surprising wages are too?

I get the argument that "well I'm doing the same work here or there, why should I be paid differently?". But this is what things like outsourcing are intended to do isn't it? To get the same work done for cheaper.

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

#423

Post by analog31 »

spurdoman77 wrote: post #376
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?

All companies I've worked for haven't had problems with unions. Though in the tech sector it feels that the employees dont have much interest towards it. I dunno what would happen if all programmers in a company would say that raise our salaries or we will quit. I guess the company would just hire contractors instead and it could even save the company money.

Salaries are not the only things that unions can negotiate, and a group of employees can engage in collective behavior without formally unionizing.

Work rules are another way. My dad told me about the union work rules at the factory where he was a white collar employee (R&D department). I'm reminded of those stories when I've tried to get someone to do some programming for me in a large organization.

Granted these rules have their origins in preventing abuse, or replacing skilled labor with unskilled, but they existed nonetheless and were part of running a business.

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

#424

Post by aeternum »

whimsicalism wrote: post #354
aeternum wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the marketplace failed to provide both affordable milk and the ability for dairy farmers to make a living. So the price is both two low and too high? This is not a failure of the marketplace (aka price discovery), this is the U.S. deciding that cheap milk and overproduction is in the nation's best interest and we should socialize some of the production costs. There are logical (milk as a staple product and avoidanc…

> not a marketplace failure. Remove the subsidies and the market would quickly find the higher price at which dairy farmers could produce milk profitably and consumers would purchase it. If it is in our societal interest to produce more milk so people can eat, and the market doesn't do so, requiring subsidy, then that is a failure of the market to meet society's need. You're conflating the failure of a marketplace to…

Is excess milk production really a social need though? According to the market people would generally rather spend that money elsewhere.

Via the subsidy the U.S. is forcing everyone to spend a small portion of their income on milk production.

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

#425

Post by Izikiel43 »

x87678r wrote: post #168
klodolph wrote: post #91

Often overlooked in the discussions about privilege and equality is the discussion about how citizens of different countries are given different levels of access to the same jobs. Like, I’m a US citizen and have basic programming skills. Not long after college I landed a software engineering job and I immediately have access to markets like SF or NYC, all I have to do is pack up and move (and it turns out I don’t eve…

Forget Syria, Canada is a better example. Canadians earn a fraction of US salaries despite some expensive COL in Vancouver and Toronto.

In Vancouver, can confirm

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

#426

Post by kstrauser »

csense wrote: post #333

Say you have a startup in California and are thinking about hiring me remotely. It's completely ridiculous that you say "Okay I'll give you $100k if you live in NYC, but only $60k for the same work if you live in the Rust Belt." If it makes economic sense for you to pay me $100k, making that conditional on where I live is just a jerk move. As someone who actually does live in the Rust Belt, it feels like these tech c…

I am 100% behind you on this.

Also consider that so many expenses in life are the same wherever you live. For instance, Apple charges the same for a MacBook Pro delivered to Iowa as San Francisco, so if your Iowa rate is half that of San Francisco's, that new laptop takes you twice as many hours to buy. And for what? Also, someone's student loans don't change when they move from a more expensive place to a cheaper one, so in absolute terms anyone making fixed payment stands to take a massive pay cut if they move to a place with COL-based salary changes.

My company is remote-only for now. Without asking them, I have no idea whether my coworkers are in Berkeley or Des Moines. Why should the one living in a cheaper please make less than the one next door? Yes, I completely understand why an employer would like to pay less salary to the latter, but I can't think of any defensible reason that would make the person in Iowa OK with this.

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

#428

Post by nybble41 »

robocat wrote: post #414
satyrnein wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 key is that there is competition for the job. Your negotiation is limited by the negotiation price of other applicants. If you are the single possible candidate for a job that is essential for the company, then you can use your monopoly power to get paid more than the “value” you bring. If the company has an excess of candidates, they may be able to pay less than “CoL” (because CoL varies per applicant, and the m…

> If you are the single possible candidate for a job that is essential for the company, then you can use your monopoly power to get paid more than the “value” you bring.

In that scenario your value to the company, together with all the other "essential" budget items, is the total value of the company. If you're somehow getting more than that then the company simply doesn't have the budget to pay for all the essentials and is consequently going bankrupt.

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

#429

Post by yibg »

csense wrote: post #333

Say you have a startup in California and are thinking about hiring me remotely. It's completely ridiculous that you say "Okay I'll give you $100k if you live in NYC, but only $60k for the same work if you live in the Rust Belt." If it makes economic sense for you to pay me $100k, making that conditional on where I live is just a jerk move. As someone who actually does live in the Rust Belt, it feels like these tech c…

Well the simple answer is because they can? And I don't think there is actually anything wrong with that. You can buy a house for cheaper in the rust belt, and probably other things are cheaper too, hence a lower COL location.

Let's say I paid you 100k in the rust belt, and you're happy with that, you might not be happy with that in NYC because of the higher cost of living. The inverse is true too. If you're happy with 100k in NYC, you'll be more happy with it in a lower COL location. Which means I can pay you (and more importantly others) less and they'll still be happy. This changes the supply and demand equation.

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

#430

Post by grumple »

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…

Your strategies are those that optimize for jobs a monkey to do: "I need someone to flip this burger or turn this wrench". Paying for cheap labor, you get cheap results. I've seen this time and again across many different industries.

When it comes to knowledge / skill based work, the high end of the spectrum is a multiple of value over the low end. Sometimes that's 1.5x, sometimes it's 10x, sometimes it's 100+x.

It doesn't matter how many scientists you hired if you didn't hire the first one (or one of the first ones) to create a working and marketable COVID vaccine, for example. It doesn't matter how many engineers you hired at 50k/year if you didn't hire the guy for 2 million / year that finally got self-driving cars working.

At a less extreme scale, it doesn't matter how many junior devs you hire to do the work if one senior dev could have done it faster and with less headaches, which happens all the time in tech. On a daily basis, in my experience at multiple tech jobs.

And let's also remember that market salaries selects for talent before the talent is even there; today's smartest students that want a paycheck go for tech careers (and some other fields). If tech stops paying well, those people go into other fields, and you don't even get the option to hire that 10xer because they don't exist. If you stop paying well but your competitors continue to pay top dollar, your competitors will leave you in the dust.

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