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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?

#121

Post by supernova87a »

I don't wish to sound harsh, but you've got selective blinders on to the arguments that favor your position. And your position is arguing from the point of view of someone who already has the benefit of a job in a company and asking the company to justify itself why they don't pay you more.

Here's a different point of view.

A company can choose to consider people for work either close to their offices or remote. People who get hired close to offices come with an expectation that they will go in to work at some point, and be collaborative and possibly more effective than people who are remote. This point is debatable, but is up to the company to determine for itself whether it's true or worth the premium. There is a limited set of people living close to offices, and costs of living are generally higher, and pay reflects those factors.

If the company is to consider people who are remote and are not going to be coming in to work, that opens up practically the entire world for them as a labor pool (modulo time zone issues, etc). People in many other countries get paid far less and are willing to do much more work for the same pay than in the US.

If you are remote, you are competing against the labor pool that is similarly situated. If you can show that your value is disproportionate to the average, maybe you can negotiate.

Try to reason through things in a way that reflects more objective reality rather than your perception of it, or your feelings. No one is "forcing" you to migrate or do anything. You are seeking high pay and remote work. You're totally free to go out there and find the company that's offering that. Your company is offering pay and a job, at rates that you can decide to accept or decline. You make your choices, and either feel good about them, or not.

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

#122

Post by slyall »

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…

As a non-US worker I definitely agree. My big advantage over US-based employees is that I'll work for less. Why would I insist on getting paid exactly the same as a Bay-area employee when I could ask for significantly less and be well ahead of what I could make locally?

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

#123

Post by dasil003 »

pyrodactyl wrote: post #71
pkrotich wrote: post #30

I agree with you that it's unfair and senseless but it's market dynamic (supply and demand) with capitalism bend to it. There are probably hundrends of people with your capabilities, where you're now, willing to work at your current pay scale and probably thousands elsewhere in poorer places willing to work for much less than you. Not to mention even more - who are as capable as you're - but lack the opportunity you…

Thanks for this, helps me that people understand me and I'm not being very unreasonable. From what I've gotten from my discussions on my post is 1) I will start looking for contract work. Not going to be easy, but the best way forward. 2) Use some of the negotiation techniques mentioned like bringing up the fact I'm not competing locally, but internationally 3) Negotiate with my company and threaten to leave? Not ful…

> Negotiate with my company and threaten to leave? Not fully sure of this. More alligend to leaving anyway as I find the excuses for location based pay pathetic.

You should negotiate, but do so from a position of strength and leave emotion out of it. The reality is that location-based pay is standard. This reason for this is labor market incentives. Whatever your manager says is not reality, it's just a story to try to placate you. How defensible the story is or how angry and demotivated you are about it is absolutely meaningless in terms of outcomes, and the sooner you come to terms with that and look at the situation from a purely rational perspective the better.

What matters here is how much leverage you have. The best leverage is having an offer in hand for more money. Short of that, if you are perceived as a top performer, that could confer some leverage, but keep in mind that location-based pay is probably baked into the cost structure of the entire office. You are likely better served by a strategy to demonstrate your individual value so that your raise isn't seen as precedent for why the entire location pay scale needs to increase.

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

#124

Post by __d »

I'm going to generalize here. It's important to note that there are exceptions, but they are _exceptions_.

You're working for a company, not a person. Companies exist as a way to make money: they have _no_ other motivation. Notions of fairness, decency, humanity, etc, have zero relevance to corporate behaviour. People who work for companies are actively discouraged, even prohibited, from using human morality or fairness as criteria in deciding what to do: corporate decisions are about the short-term financial gains for shareholders.

Employment policies exist to codify the processes used to achieve this goal, because people a fallible, and tend to have moral scruples, and that gets in the way of perfect implementation of the corporate will. They're necessarily a blunt instrument, with inefficiencies, but in a company staffed by humans, that's the best it can do.

The costs of employing someone have several parts: salary + benefits to the employee, taxes due to the locality they're employed, and the costs of equipment, services, office-space, etc, needed by the employee.

The goal of the company is to get the best/most output for the least cost. With some initial overheads (setting up foreign legal entities, structuring to support remote work, etc) foreign workers are often a means to this end.

The only reason the company talks about "cost of living", etc, is because that's what potential employees tell it when they negotiate (or refuse) a job offer. It doesn't care: it just knows that unless it pays that much, people will work for its competitors instead.

The reason you're paid less is because you'll work for less. And if not you, then someone else in a similar location. If the company can get more output for less money elsewhere, it will. The only reason the company has local staff is because it believes that not having them will ultimately cost more (in quality, in agility, in reputation, whatever. Often this corporate belief is biased/racist).

So, what to do?

Find a company that realizes that the best people are not all magically located in California, and is prepared to pay more so that it gets the benefits of your work rather than one of its competitors. As other commenters have mentioned: in negotiating your salary, point out that you have other options, and if they want you, they need to be willing to out-bid their competitors.

But your current employer has limited scope for this: you really need to move. Once you're employed, the company counts on you being risk-averse enough to stay, even if you're relatively under-paid. The only way to level up is to move.

Good luck!

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

#125

Post by robocat »

tlb wrote: post #47
wahnfrieden wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nothing valid about it except that it's an established coordinated behavior of employers to reduce pay based on region instead of anything to do with value produced

Wages have never been based on value produced, at any time, in any industry. Although there may be some coordination, coordination isn't necessary for wages to be unrelated to value produced, because that's the default condition. It would take some impressive central planning to have wages actually match value produced. Doctrinaire economists used to argue that value produced sets an upper bound on pay, since why wou…

> Wages have never been based on value produced, at any time, in any industry

Sales commissions can be value based. Equity or options as part of your employee package can potentially be value based for early employees.

Although there are a lot of stories of companies reneging when a great salesperson earns too much, for example earning more than the CEO in the case of my friend, or unsurprisingly Oracle being Oracle: https://www.courthousenews.com/oracle-hit-with-150m-class-ac...

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

#127

Post by mattdeboard »

Your labor is being exploited for profit more than your coworkers'. Exploitation of your coworkers' labor has a smaller return on investment than that of exploitation of YOUR labor.

Despite how flippant other commenters may be with the "bad feels" of this experience, feeling bad about being alienated from the fruits of your labor, and being, essentially, colonized by capital, is completely normal, human thing. Especially so right after discovering the extent to which your labor is valued less than that of your peers.

This sucks bad, and don't pay attention to commenters who are trying to convince you that actually it's fine because that's just the labor market. No, it's totally valid to feel bad about this.

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

#128

Post by jsmith99 »

mattdeboard wrote: post #119
pyrodactyl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would it be less exploitative if firms refused to hire people in lower cost countries?

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

#129

Post by ytdytvhxgydvhh »

pyrodactyl wrote: post #58
Uptrenda wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good advice. I do think the arguments these companies use is ridiculous. I think it's possible that these companies are knowingly exploiting OP because he comes from a lower economic background. I say this as an Australian where tech jobs here pay about half or a third as much as a US startup job yet I've never had any startups try offer me an Australian rate. I wonder if there's more to this story? E.g. does OP work…

I work for a software company that's product based BUT I'm not in a software role as some people are assuming

The first line of your post says “Recently I got to know the pay scales that my peers and even junior developers are getting in the US/EU”. Why mention junior developers if you’re not in a software role? Are you also mad about the salaries of dentists in Canada or lawyers in Japan?

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

#130

Post by frostwarrior »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #40

Your company is gaslighting you. None of those reasons are valid. The first one is the closest to the accurate answer, but the real answer is "because we can hire people in your area for this rate". Try contracting, for a US company, for US rates; set a rate that's comparable to what other US contractors charge, and don't take clients that want to negotiate your pay based on your location. You might also try building…

As a web developer, I would really like to get involved in Open Source software and give back to the community a bit.

But the amount of options is overwhelming tbh, and the skills needed for open source projects are far from the backend API's the industry usually needs.

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