"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #509

jacobolus wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appropriate way to fix that problem would be to directly give the money to the people who have trouble paying for food, instead of giving it to dairy farmers.

This (some kind of UBI) does seem like the best solution to give those that don't have money a say what we produce. But this still doesn't address tail risk like war or disasters. Importing 100% of the nation's food might make sense from a market POV but is a significant risk from a strategic POV. Markets do not seem to handle low probability events very well.

Who is importing 100% of their food?

US is a net exporter of food products.

Do you know who lacks food? China!

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

#522

Post by joelbluminator » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

yboris wrote: post #476

joelbluminator wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And similarly, to encourage others to decrease their meat consumption by letting them know that by buying meat, they are very likely going against their values Well, people know. Maybe they don't KNOW know, in the sense of actually visiting a slaughter house and smelling the blood, but I'm sure most people know about animal shipments, tiny cages, and that gassing or slashing animals throats isn't a picnic. Personal…

It's a challenge talking about this topic. It's very easy to come off as "I'm better than you" or "you are a bad person". But these conversations can be productive and non-offensive. I encourage people to see a wide continuum between eating 100% meat and eating 0% animal products. I express that I understand the challenges in decreasing one's meat consumption. I point out that it's not all or nothing - you can be "mo…

Did you actually manage to convince anyone to stop eating meat, who wasn't already having major doubts about what he was doing to begin with? If so how?

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

#523

Post by benhurmarcel » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

skynetv2 wrote: post #309

arc0 wrote: post #81

Facebook already pays people with the exact same credentials 1/3 in London what they would in California, despite London being similarly expensive. These companies do not pay anyone solely based on the work they produce, it has never and probably will never work that way.

There are local factors to take in to consideration. I managed a 100% remote team with team members in UK, Spain, India, China, Canada etc. The total cost to the company remains roughly same but the amount that goes to local taxes and what employee gets in hand varies by market. Europe has very high taxation, which does benefit the employee eventually. US has what it has but offers the employee very little in terms o…

Even considering taxes paid by the employer, the total cost of employment is not nearly the same.

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

#524

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #443

aeternum wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Farm subsidies generally serve a few purposes in the US: 1. Maintaining the political support of farmers 2. Maintaining surplus food production capacity in case of some contingency (e.g. war). The same is true for many developed countries. The US government actually produced “government cheese” with surplus milk to help support dairy farmers, providing the cheese to schools and welfare recipients. The EU has also exp…

FoodStamps was literally created to give farmers money, indirectly.

There's one issue with supporting individual products - government cannot change these rules with the consumption patterns of individuals.

As such - it's not the subsidies that are the primary issue, it's the fact that the government decided that milk gets the subsidies... but almond milk gets the full market price.(As in - vegans are actually financing carnivorous american lifestyle more, than the other way around)

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

#525

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #455

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…

> This is literally the opposite -- providing benefits to private interests. While true in many cases, I don't think it's always initiated this way. Many subsidies start as a social good and then perpetuate based on lobbied interests. My favorite example is the subsidy for alpaca wool. This was started as a social good to ensure there was enough cold-weather gear to fight the Korean War. However, this subsidy continu…

The problem with subsidies is - no one is going to willingly relinquish them.

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

#526

Post by superfrank » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #461

superfrank wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suddenly when it comes to tech bros who are seeing a pay cut, we are all up in the arms? I think you cut right to the heart of the issue here. As a software engineer, for years I've heard "If you want to make the big bucks, you have to move to the bay area" or some variation of that. No one on here seemed to have a problem with location based comp when it worked in their favor. Now that it's not people are up in ar…

> A lot of people in major tech hubs see an opportunity to game the system and are just hurt that companies aren't going to let them. That seems like a negative way of framing it. They are exercising their rights as laborers. Whether or not they are successful is TBD, but they aren't "hurting" companies, they're negotiating. That larger groups are forming to collectively push the notion implies a greater chance of su…

I don't really have a positive or negative take on the situation. It's the workers' rights to try and fight for a higher salary and it's the companies' rights to either pay them or tell them no. The majority of the workers affected by this are making well above the poverty line, so I'm happy to let the free market handle this.

What I do have a very negative view on is articles like this that try and frame it as some big moral argument and hide behind things like discrimination to get people on their side. Like I said, I feel like most people complaining about this saw an opportunity to increase their take home pay by a lot and are now just angry that their plans have been foiled.

If the author want to live in India, but thinks he can provide more value (and thus should be paid more) than everyone in his local market, then let him make his case. If that isn't the case and he doesn't provide any more value that the other people in his local market, then why should the company continue to pay him an above market salary when theres a ton of other potential applicants out there?

Basically, I find him pretending that this isn't about money very disingenuous.

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

#527

Post by csense » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

femtoparsec wrote: post #368

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…

As the employer, it often works differently. You interview a number of people as final candidates you find good fits for different reasons. Each person presents some extra benefits and some shortcomings. You then balance it off against the costs of hiring each person, and you make a final decision on that basis. At that stage, someone who'd be an appropriate "right next step" for the company at $80K may not be the ri…

It might be helpful to give an example. Buffer is a company that is open about its salary formula. Their formula has exactly the problems I'm talking about. See here:

https://buffer.com/salary/customer-engagement-strategist/ave...

> At that stage, someone who'd be an appropriate "right next step" for the company at $80K may not be the right next step if they were at $100K

This is the right way to look at things. You look at the price / performance tradeoff of each employee, and make an offer based on that.

All the SF people get at least $100k because they all turn down the $70k offers, for the good and simple reason they can't live the lifestyle they want on $70k in SF.

Some Rust Belt folks might take a $70k offer because it's interesting work, and a fairly good salary in an economically depressed area.

> you're being subjected to some kind of corporate level accommodation where the business has decided that "we'll just take the hit and up-adjust salaries based on cost of living"

This is the kind of policy I was expressing my distaste for.

If I don't qualify for the CoL based on my location, it sure feels like the SF-level salary is the baseline and I'm being down-adjusted.

> corruption happening at the company where they're doing this for the sake of some central policy

I don't really think this is a thing. I think it's more a misguided attempt to equalize the lifestyle of employees who happen to live in different places. An ideal of "All of our employees should be able to afford a middle class lifestyle" means you pay your Bay Area people $100k and your Appalachian Mountainfolk $60k.

If you look at it from that perspective, it makes sense.

I'm trying to point out that from the view of someone who, at an earlier point in his career, was looking for remote employment while living in a low CoL area, this perspective isn't the one that comes naturally.

Instead it felt more like my skills are worth $100k, and there are a bunch of tech companies out there who will pay me $100k, but they all have this really strange rule that they'll only pay me what I'm worth if I agree to spend 40% of it on incredibly overpriced housing in a city I don't want to live in.

And I got really angry because it felt like they're screwing me. And screwing me in a way that's completely insane and economically irrational for them. Either pay me $100k for remote work, or don't. Whether I'll spend $15k or $50k of that $100k on food and shelter is, quite frankly, none of my employer's business.

That was many years ago. I'm at a much better place in my career now. But at any given point in time, there are probably thousands of people at the point where I was. It helps to be aware of prospective hires' perspectives when considering compensation policies.

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

#528

Post by bumby » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

nybble41 wrote: post #514

bumby wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just a recognition that the economy is global, not national. True, and good point. > just reflects the biases of the people making the decisions...The market's only real "failure" is that it's too democratic This is a failure if you can agree that people are less than optimal at making decisions, i.e. that humans have biases that work against their own rational self-interest at times. Meaning the market can ex…

> there are times when a completely free market doesn't serve the best interest of society In my opinion the best interests of society are best served by letting people make their own decisions regarding themselves and their own property, and not by aggression or deliberate attempts at social engineering. I tend to be pro-market on average but really it's not the market I'm interested in so much as liberty. I also ta…

I got the impression from your previous posts that you take the libertarian mindset to markets. That's not a bad thing per se, but I think it diverges from what most of society implicitly wants.

You stance optimizes for liberty as you rightly point out. People, however, generally want a society that balances liberty and stability. Laws and policies are enacted to try and find that right balance. It's similar to the centralized banking model vs. a completely laissez-faire economy; it's enacted to provide stability, perhaps at the expense of some liberty. I don't think people inherently have an issue with the government having a monopoly as long as they have a say in how that government functions. In a well-functioning democracy, the people are the government so the idea of a governmental monopoly is diluted somewhat.

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

#529

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

nybble41 wrote: post #514

bumby wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just a recognition that the economy is global, not national. True, and good point. > just reflects the biases of the people making the decisions...The market's only real "failure" is that it's too democratic This is a failure if you can agree that people are less than optimal at making decisions, i.e. that humans have biases that work against their own rational self-interest at times. Meaning the market can ex…

> there are times when a completely free market doesn't serve the best interest of society In my opinion the best interests of society are best served by letting people make their own decisions regarding themselves and their own property, and not by aggression or deliberate attempts at social engineering. I tend to be pro-market on average but really it's not the market I'm interested in so much as liberty. I also ta…

There's too much of "we know better" attitude. Where people fail to realize that what they want to force other people to do - is not necessarily the best option.(the typical issue of healthcare and freedoms)

In the end getting back to the OG topic - it ends up being forced social engineering, instead of freedom and social fluidity. People who can only et paid 6 figures by virtue of geography are going to shout and scream about COL being awesome. People who are awesome get shafted. And humanity's progress is limited, because we get sub-optimal use of resources.

PS: Hi fellow libetarian.

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

#530

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

BirdieNZ wrote: post #508

claudiulodro wrote: post #287

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 doesn't follow that it's a necessary state of affairs, though. New Zealand milk farmers are not subsidised and milk is cheap enough (about USD $2.80 for 2 litres, which is only slightly more expensive than milk in the USA, and due to tax differences and so on, easily accounted for).

What about PPP?

That USD$2.80 would result in PPP $4.20