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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

#581

Post by tolbish »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #174
thinkharderdev wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those two seem equivalent to me. A software engineer in Toledo has a competitive advantage over an equally skilled software engineer the Bay Area because they are able to work at a lower wage without materially sacrificing their quality of life. So by looking to reduce labor costs by hiring more remote engineers in Toledo, Bay Area companies are effectively working to reduce income polarization and spreading the…

Don't follow. How does income get less polarized? Toledo Engineers working remotely but at Toledo pay, are not ahead. I guess they have a larger market for their skills? But that could lower rates thru competition.

The money those Toledo Engineers make is spent on Toledo things, not Bay Area things. Therefore, Toledo local economy benefits.

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

#582

Post by a_imho »

mavelikara wrote: post #576
a_imho wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your concerns. Why would it not be OK to receive the same compensation for the same work?

S/he is asking you, in reply, why it is OK for some people to get better purchasing power for the same economic contribution.

The purchasing power is the property of the money received, it is exactly the same in all cases.

If the problem is that we want to ensure some kind of equality of outcome that is ill posed

1. Companies are not arbiters to define what that outcome should be. In fact, any such attempt boils down to the argument that the current status quo is the natural state of things and everything should stay that way. Trying to come up with a definition for local economy or local purchasing power is simply an exercise in encoding bias.

2. Plenty of products and services are priced without differentiation. For instance in the case of internet services this is probably close to 100%.

Again, all these has nothing to do with selling X hours of labour for Y hourly rate.

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

#583

Post by bradlys »

ryandrake wrote: post #578
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #140

This will happen but people will should not be surprised that we all get paid Topeka KS salaries not San Francisco CA salaries. The long term strategy of location pay differentials may seem like punishing people for leaving SF, but it's the opposite. I've been paid 80% of SF rate to live in the middle of nowhere and anyone else who has done this will realize it's an amazing deal. When a 3000 sq ft house costs conside…

> I've been paid 80% of SF rate to live in the middle of nowhere and anyone else who has done this will realize it's an amazing deal. When a 3000 sq ft house costs considerably less than your 1 bedroom apartment, you realize that your cost of living didn't just drop by more than 20%, but that standard of living went way up. As a counter-anecdote: I moved from the Florida panhandle to the SF Bay area, and while certai…

Relative numbers are very important though. I’m not sure how your standard of living went up unless you are at FAANG or you were severely underpaid in Florida.

Ratios wise, the Bay Area is worse and stays worse unless you plan to leave or join FAANG.

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

#584

Post by lambdatronics »

setheron wrote: post #377

I'm very bearish that the whole "work from home" indefinitely will survive post pandemic. Everyone seems to take company statements at 100% face value and that they won't change. I expect many of these companies to do a 180 reversal of policies eventually.There will be some discord and grievances but will eventually drown out. There may be lingering affects of the situation though as a more willingness to allow 1-2 d…

Agreed. Even if it's more commonly allowed, I suspect that there is a measurable reduction in productivity for "work from home." That would tend to offset the COL differential, so that salaries wouldn't equalize completely across the country. It still may pull salaries down in the high COL areas though, due to increased competition from the labor expanded market.

One possible interesting side-effect: it may result in 'democratizing' tech to some extent, if enough seed populations of engineers remain in the lower-COL areas and continue to work remotely.

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

#585

Post by joelbluminator »

ironmagma wrote: post #535
joelbluminator wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we expect everyone to be reasonably moral, at least I don't live with that expectation - that's just setting yourself up for disappointment. Yes, most people don't murder or rape, but we're still quite a selfish and survivalist creature. Although we know perfectly well the amount of suffering the meat industry causes, most of us are fine with consuming meat and dairy, as long as we don't need to see the…

Food science findings (which tend to be unreliable) aside, eating food is something that’s hard to fault someone else for doing. The fact that most people eat meat alone is something that makes it more of a reasonable thing to do, even more so that we typically don’t find out about the conditions of cows, chickens, etc. until we are already mostly grown and hooked on the stuff. Morality is a complicated thing to defi…

Its not eating food that I have a problem with. Its choosing steaks, pork and beef when there is a huge amount of alternatives. The fact we are brought up like that and are hooked does not make it any better or morally sound. The fact that everyone is doing it makes it Ok in your eyes? Please explain. Everyone was a nazi in Germany at a certain point.

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

#586

Post by neilwilson »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #341
neilwilson wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So naive." Depends on the law. If I'm female, and you're male, then equal pay laws may force it to be the same for equivalent work. Most of the rest of the world forces business to compete for labour - which is as it should be. Jobs, not people, should wait.

Enforcing this kind of equal pay law will result in a mass shifting of jobs to 3rd world countries the likes the world has never seen before.

Good. We can then live off their imports which they have to pay for by buying our exports because we have a floating rate exchange system, not a fixed one.

If the rest of the world want to send us stuff, that's a benefit not a loss.

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

#587

Post by enriquto »

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #188
enriquto wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is true, but there's more to it. Employers typically make a product and they still need to sell it to somebody who is not a poor monkey. Employers also need a safe social environment so that their offices do not get burn by the angry…

If only they realized this.

Of course they do. That's the whole point of expelling poor people from where they live. Who doesn't seem to know that are the employees, who prefer to trample on each other instead of (gasp!) force a collective negotiation.

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

#588

Post by rmtech »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #308
rmtech wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's thanks to competition between companies. That's market forces at play. You want it there? Accept it on salary negotiation too. This is itself a bit naive. In a basic market with voluntary transactions the distribution of the gains from trade is undefined. If your labor sells for $100/hour and costs you $10/hour to produce (basic food, water and shelter) then it is a perfectly legitimate equilibrium for the c…

> It's only through politics that we can make sure that the gains from trade are evenly split. The math of markets doesn't define it. That's clearly not the case since my employer could legally pay me $15/hour for my work, but pays significantly more. They do so, because they are competing with other employers for talent.

> They do so, because they are competing with other employers for talent.

Yes, but the RESULT of the two-way competition where both employees and employers are competing is undefined in a simple model of the market.

If you work as a cleaner or an uber driver, you may find that even though you generate some surplus, you don't actually get any of it (or you get almost none of it)

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

#589

Post by rmtech »

josephcsible wrote: post #310
rmtech wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's thanks to competition between companies. That's market forces at play. You want it there? Accept it on salary negotiation too. This is itself a bit naive. In a basic market with voluntary transactions the distribution of the gains from trade is undefined. If your labor sells for $100/hour and costs you $10/hour to produce (basic food, water and shelter) then it is a perfectly legitimate equilibrium for the c…

> It's only through politics that we can make sure that the gains from trade are evenly split. False. Competition from other employers can do this too.

> can do this too.

Yes, it CAN but whether it actually does depends on the details. If you are a cleaner or an uber driver, you might generate some surplus but you might see the other parties take all or almost all of that surplus.

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

#590

Post by mattmanser »

znpy wrote: post #16
mattmanser wrote: post #8

How long before an enterprising startup starts selling virtual apartment addresses in the heart of SF?

Virtual addresses are a thing already. It's used by business to pretend to have an office in city X (expensive) while actually working in city Y (or in a completely different country). It can also be used to provide an address coming from a fashionable/trendy part of the city. There are similar services that offer re-mailing services. Basically you pay a fee and have a fund for postages/stamps. Whenever mail arrives…

I know, but not at all normal for residential.
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