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Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

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Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#111

Post by jrockway »

christophilus wrote: post #43
danielfoster wrote: post #18

The answer is the same here as for anyone else who wants a substantial raise. You need to find a new job. It’s possible your current employer could match a new offer or even pay you more, but first you need to show them you’re serious about leaving.

I second this. Another option is the one Manish Pabrai took: do just enough work to not get fired, and spend the excess time and energy building your own business.

I think it's important to consider the downside risk here; your current employer could consider your code and business that you made while being on their payroll as their own intellectual property and fight you in court for that. Even if you have an airtight contract, they can still litigate it, and spending time in court will detract from your business and cash flow. Meanwhile, taking some time to go interview at other companies is much lower risk, but can still yield a large increase in pay.

I'll also suggest treading carefully with "just start your own business". My read is that the first 3 months will be "program 14 hours a day and make something awesome", and the rest of your life will be meeting with customers and preparing slideshows for your board. If that's what you want out of your career, you should definitely do it. If you just want to be locked in some basement writing a lot of code for a lot of money, you probably want a non-customer-facing engineering role at FAANG.

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#112

Post by bradleyjg »

3) something about not trapping in a high salary job - I dont even know what to say about this. I would love to be in that trap instead of the one I'm in right now where I'm being forced to migrate, where I would loose my family, friends and all the support structures I've built around me, to receive the same benefits as my peers.

You don’t have to agree with it, or think it’s barely reasonable, but you should understand the argument at least.

It’s not about worrying that you’ll feel trapped and that will make you feel bad.

It’s worrying that you’ll feel trapped and won’t quit even if you are very unhappy. Instead you will stick around and be a drag on productivity and morale. Companies would most like workers to be happy and productive, but if they can’t have that they’d rather they quit than stick around unhappy and non-productive.

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#113

Post by jcheng »

rtlfe wrote: post #54
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #51

The cost of living point is very valid. A great salary in Hanoi is most likely to be a very low wage in San Francisco. You can't expect an employer to pay way above the local market rate for a position. Bottom line, they will always find someone to work if they offer a bit above the local market rates. The salary, whatever miles away makes no difference. As far as how to deal with it, look a round you I bet your sala…

> You can't expect an employer to pay way above the local market rate for a position. This would certainly be true for a business where all the employees and clients are local, but doesn't have to true for a global company with fully remote jobs. If I'm providing as much value as an SF-based employee and demand a raise to 80% of SF pay, the company would be foolish to let me leave.

50% of SP is not OK, but 80% is OK? Honest question. I can think of principled arguments for equal pay and for fully COL-adjusted pay, but I can't think of any for equal-ish pay.

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#114

Post by keithnz »

In the job market you are willing to work in, can you get the $s you are wanting? By that, I don't mean there's a possibility some company might pay you the $s, but that it would be reasonable to expect quite a number of places to pay you those $s. If not, then your market value isn't the same as it is in other locations. You already demonstrated in your question that there is value in a particular location, for you, family and friends. For companies, they operate in whatever locations they think is best and pay competitive $s for that location.

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#115

Post by barrysteve »

sinenomine wrote: post #61

> What do others think about this and how do you deal with this? One word: counter-offer Welcome to the world ( plane? ) of zero-sum games and adversarial strategies! Appealing to fairness doesn't help in this world - because the values and corresponding strategies of your management and yourself are fundamentally adversarial to each other - that is, your delta of profit is their delta of loss. People like to argue s…

It's easy to see politics as a series of non-sequitur causes when you esoterically model your workplace as a tree of maps where normal humans are reduced to control points on a biezer curve.

I'm sure somewhere near the start there was the intent to help OP and by the end of it we are talking UBI for some interdimensional reason.

Game theory and economics already exists if you want to model business relationships, without cracking open some vaguely esoteric metaphysical mess. Though I do enjoy a good metaphysical discussion.

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#116

Post by jbay808 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #78
soneca wrote: post #33

It is a negotiation not a fairness discussion (even though fairness is part of the negotiation arguments). I asked about it in my current job before accepting the offer and was able to successfully negotiate it. In your situation, it seems that the only way is to look for a new job. Anyway, the way I negotiated was very simple. Basically a version of ”I understand that this is a good salary relative to my local marke…

It's 100% correct that's simply a negotiation, and this is another variable. But if you came at me and told me I had to pay you what I pay my US employees, my first response would be "alright, but you have to work US hours and speak perfect American English." Honestly, that's a good part of why we try to hire in one general area, in this case the US. There is a real cost to foreign developers who only speak passable…

Sounds like you should hire Canadians!

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#117

Post by version_five »

mutt2016 wrote: post #92
rootusrootus wrote: post #81

If I am hiring outside the US, I'm doing it to save money. I'm willing to accept the downsides -- schedule differences, language barriers, etc, in order to save money. Otherwise I would just hire someone in the US. So if a foreign dev were to tell me I had to pay the US rates, I'd pass. I think you should negotiate for as much as you can, but it is unrealistic to benchmark yourself against US employees of a US compan…

Same, and I hold certain cultural biases too. Which is horrible, but also learned experience. Certain countries have stronger low level programmers, some cultures make for poor leadership traits, while others seem to create amazing UI/UX skills. Understanding there are no absolutes, and people are people, I just continue to observe some countries produce interesting niche skills. Like in my home town, C# is king.

I've said this before: it's not really that there is some inherent thing about being from a country that makes people better or worse. But it certainly correlates, because of education, etc. I (and most remote north America workers) could go live in India and get the same money I do now. Nobody cares about location, but they do care about the labor market based on skills and education, and that's what they are hiring from and that's why people get paid less.

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#119

Post by mattdeboard »

pyrodactyl wrote: post #55
kleinsch wrote: post #22

Your pay is based on the cost to hire your replacement. That’s it. There’s no crazy conspiracies, there’s no moral failing, they’re not running a calculator of how much value you generate. Would it sap your motivation to learn there are people doing your same job at FAANGs making double what you make? Or that some other job makes more money than you? Location based pay is just another variable. As with everything in…

Its not a crazy conspiracy, I know it's pretty clear why it's being done. And I know I can't do anything about it other than look for new opportunities. But should location based pay be just accepted because that's the norm? There are variables that can't be used to do discriminate like age, gender, race, sexual orientation etc. We've accepted equal pay for equal work in these cases. Is it that far fetched that even…

I agree with you it's horseshit. What you're saying sincerely makes total sense to me. Has to feel terrible. I would feel detached from my work as well, I think.

You're experiencing alienation from the fruits of your labor. Your labor being exploited to maximize profit. Unfortunately, the comments here are right. It "makes sense" in the sense these experiences are characteristic of life within capitalism as a laborer.

Functionally, your location is being "colonized," so to speak, by capital. I don't know if there's a real phrase for it, but I suppose it could be described as "telecolonization." Management has found a resource (your labor) that can be cheaply extracted by alienating you, the "telecolonized," from the value your labor creates.

It is bullshit. If you want solutions, your recourse is either collective action/unionization or finding a new job. You're being exploited by capital more than your coworkers. That is the context from which this sense of unfairness arises, I believe.

Re: Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

#120

Post by isatty »

giantg2 wrote: post #31

You can't argue with your bosses because they don't care about the points you make. They have the power and know it. You can migrate, or find better job. Maybe look into unionizing (no idea about your country). I learned this a few years ago. I can make great arguments but it doesn't matter. The boss has his mind made up and he'll say anything, even blatant BS, to justify it.

Line managers usually have no control over what your initial negotiated offer is. Unless your line manager is the equivalent of director+ of course.
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