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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

#491

Post by nybble41 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #458
nybble41 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least, I haven't seen a democratic system where 1% of the population gets 40% of the vote. In a pure voluntaryist market system everyone gets 100% of the vote (i.e. veto power) when it comes to how they use their own labor and resources. If one has acquired more wealth then one has more options available and more decisions to make, but still doesn't get any direct say in how other people use their property, no m…

> everyone gets 100% of the vote (i.e. veto power) when it comes to how they use their own labor and resources Yeah, so uh... not democracy. I'm not going to relitigate the entirety of Anarchy, State & Utopia in the HN comments section, but suffice to say that these ideals are far from objectively "egalitarian" and the idea that other's negative, non-inferential side-constraints must be sometimes violated in the cont…

It's not direct democracy, but those systems are rare. Everything else is quibbling over details. What most people mean when they say "democracy" has little to do with voting and everything to do with the protection of rights for minorities… which is much closer to voluntaryism than direct democracy.

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

#492

Post by B-Con »

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…

> If it makes economic sense for you to pay me $100k, making that conditional on where I live is just a jerk move.

If you can buy a product for $50 from one site and that's worth it to you but you can buy it for $35 from another site...

What was written is literally an argument for not trying to minimize expenditures. But it makes economic sense to minimize expenditures, that's business 101.

"Objective value" doesn't exist. Not only is it hard to determine because information is generally far from perfect, but the only thing that matters to actual people in the actual world is relative value (aka, incremental value).

That is to say: All decisions in life are about choosing your best option. Hiring is no different.

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

#493

Post by rapht »

oh_sigh wrote: post #481
darth_avocado wrote: post #444

No, equal pay for equal work, especially in remote jobs isn't going to work. Why is it that for almost the entire history of man, we've had wages decided based on COL, and suddenly when it comes to tech bros who are seeing a pay cut, we are all up in the arms? A Starbucks barista in SF gets paid one and half times that in Oklahoma. They do equal work, just different locations. A lady in the Zara sweatshops in Banglad…

All of your examples are geography dependent and is not actually equal work - the Oklahoma barista can't do the same job as the SF barista, because telecommuting baristas is not a thing. But if the job role is to maintain a server fleet, and you can realistically do the job from anywhere, then you should get paid the same amount whether you happen to be in SF or Oklahoma, since you can complete the job in the same ma…

^ This exactly. The market will actually tend to equal pay for equal work: this has already happened in numerous industries in the form of layoffs of people in one expensive location to be replaced by people doing the same work in less expensive locations, until people doing the actual same work, including notably dealing with the same kind of constraints, roughly have the same pay whenever/wherever possible. There are of course a lot of variables in what makes company consider that 2 people do "the same job": sometimes, a company will value a certain proximity of a team, which you could interpret as considering someone further away from where the team is based cannot actually do "the same job". Either way, there is no reason why geographically-independent jobs should not end up aligning to some global, geographically-independent wage... and as always, this will not benefit those who are highest-paid doing said job...

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

#494

Post by whimsicalism »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #462
pc86 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is your suggestion then

We could start with: 1.) Getting rid of at-will employment 2.) Have a NLRB that is functional and actually protects labor 3.) Lower the legal threshold for proving illicit anti-union activities 4.) Give teeth to laws protect that unionization and uniformly enforce those laws no matter the political party in power 5.) Staff the upper levels of the NLRB with career civil servants, not political appointees

Honestly, I would start with just

a. eliminating workplace one-party consent recording laws in every state

b. public advertising campaign + bounty - record your employer for violation of labor law and get paid a bounty if it is proven in court

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

#495

Post by goodpoint »

renewiltord wrote: post #342
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?

Companies can't stop you from unionizing. They can choose not to accept the collective agreement and they can hire permanent replacement for strikers. As for whether anyone should have a problem, you're welcome to have a problem. It's a free country. Whether that will lead to an outcome you desire is independent, though.

> Companies can't stop you from unionizing

Companies have been fighting unions for a century.

In some cases leading to massacres:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike

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

#496

Post by FooHentai »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #464
MetalGuru wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay isn’t directly based on COL. It’s based on supply and demand. If there were thousands of baristas available to fill jobs at SF Starbucks, the pay would be lower. The reason pay is higher in SV is because all the same firms were competing against each other for the limited supply of talent. One could argue the supply is impacted by COL, but it’s still only an indirect cause of pay determination.

I don't understand where people get the idea that prices are based on anything but supply and demand.

Consider the offshoring of manufacturing to undeveloped/developing nations. It reduced manufacturing costs, increased profits to businesses, and/or lowered the price to consumers giving the products a competitive advantage over those made in developed nations.

The ability to outsource to places where cost of living and wages were low allowed this to occur.

I don't see that the office-based/remote-based working situation is much different to this. The main uncertainty whether remote working is actually as effective, at scale, as when it occurs in an office environment. Since knowledge work output is far less tangible than manufacturing output, I'm skeptical.

The main incentive for employers to shift to remote workers, outside of the current pandemic situation, is the same reason they shifted to open-plan offices - Cost saving. Here, that's realized via lower wages.

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

#497

Post by ethanbond »

jimbokun wrote: post #438
mgh2 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny how tech employees complain about this when it hits them personally, while employers have been discriminating for eternity. That clause at the bottom of a job page: "no discrimination based on citizenship, origin, etc..."? Just corporate/legal mumbo jumbo. This is how it feels for the non-elite, non-American. In a weird way, the pandemic is leveling the playing field. Democratize opportunities, increase c…

> It is funny how tech employees complain about this when it hits them personally That's a good point, because no other groups of people only complain about issues when they start to affect them personally.

Tech workers do make a unique show about caring, though. Think about all the social good branding surrounding massive advertising panopticons.

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

#498

Post by iandanforth »

I was surprised timezones are not mentioned in this article. I fully support equal pay for equal work but in our not-quite-by-choice remote company timezones matter. Trying to schedule meetings with India is a PITA. It's not convenient for anyone. I don't need someone in an office next to me but I'd sure pay a premium to have them in the same timezone.

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

#499

Post by bumby »

nybble41 wrote: post #415
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's internally consistent from a logical perspective. Forget the require bit. Say it's an option. You're employed with a salary of $X at location Y. Your employer wants you to move to location Z with higher cost-of-living. You can either stay at location Y or move to location Z. You feel it's right that your employer increase your salary because of the higher cost of living if you move to Z. The compa…

If an employer asks an employee to move to a higher cost-of-living area then they're asking the employee to take on extra expense for the benefit of the employer. It's only reasonable that the employer would offer some form of compensation if they want the employee to grant that request. If an remote-work employee wants to move to a lower cost-of-living area it should make no difference to the employer. They're still…

This is all true, but it's based on the assumption that one already works for a company. I don't know if the same is true for new hires.

New hires generally have their existing compensation as part of their negotiation. So if I'm already living in SF and am negotiating with a new employer for salary, my current high CoL salary gives me leverage to expect higher pay regardless if I'm working remotely. Remote work allows for flexibility but it doesn't erase CoL concerns.

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

#500

Post by romanoderoma »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #421
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 a…

This was published in 1972 in Italy

The title translated in English reads as

"SOCIALIZATION OF THE COSTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LARGE INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41630721?seq=1

"Socializing costs" is a widely used idiom, at least in my language, it might be true that America is miseducated to the meaning of socialism, but subsidizing the production of goods and services it's a form of socializing the costs in a non socialistic way (in which the state produces those goods and services)

Social is used in this case to intend the society, public money, people taxes.

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