Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 385 posts

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

#131

Post by mattdeboard »

frostwarrior wrote: post #110
withinboredom wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are you going to do if that dev moves to the US while working for you (such as on a partner visa)? Are you going to pay them more or fire them? I don’t work for less as an American Expat, I work for how much I’m worth (which is a lot more than local wages) and I live where I live because the money let’s my wife stay at home, in a nice house in a nice neighborhood instead of us both working our asses off just…

I had an interview a few days ago and I asked something similar. I asked about the possibility to travel to the US to greet my coworkers and work alongside them. They said they won't raise my salary and they expect me to stay in my region (Latin America). They also said that if I go to the US or Europe, it would be though to live there with my remote salary. It felt somewhat insulting tbh. As if they said "we want yo…

Exactly. Alienation from the fruits of your labor. It's disgusting we expect people to tolerate it, and act like it's not a totally optional choice by management to exploit labor resources to get a better return on investment for the already wealthy. A modern take on colonization.

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

#132

Post by rahimnathwani »

"The reasons they've given me are weak and I want to debunk them."

Why do you want to debunk them? Is it:

A) You believe you can change the policy, and thereby get paid what your US colleagues get paid?

B) You want to validate your feeling (that the situation is unfair) and be certain that you are right?

C) You are curious about how the world works?

D) Something else?

(FWIW I've been in the same situation, working at a FAANG company outside US/EU, with lower pay scales.)

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

#133

Post by spoonjim »

There are essentially three explanations for your lower pay

1) You're being paid less than your market price

2) Your colleagues are being paid more than their market price

3) Your market price is not the same as theirs.

If 1), get a new job. If 2), make peace with it. If 3), start to look at why that might be true. I know that a randomly selected remote engineer in the US is more valuable to me than a remote engineer in Eastern Europe who is more valuable to me than a remote engineer in India, for example. The US-based engineer has working hours closer to mine, has cultural context closer to mine, can more easily communicate with a customer in a live site debugging, and overall builds products with a "product sense" closer to what the US market desires. This is of course not true at the individual case, but is definitely true in the average, and a reason why domestic remote engineers will likely continue to be paid more than overseas remote engineers.

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

#134

Post by closeparen »

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…

If that were true companies would never hire in the Bay Area, or even the United States. There’s always a cheaper alternative.

The question is, once the company has decided it wants you, what’s that going to take? Making national median offers to Bay Area candidates essentially swears off of ever hiring them. That could be a choice, but for now it remains a bench of talent and experience that companies want to draw from, even if not exclusively.

Making Bay Area offers to rural candidates is giving them 4-5x their next best option, which is characteristic of either a) the devil, or b) rich people making expressive displays rather than business transactions.

It’s like everything else, your leverage is your next best alternative, and until work goes fully remote location is a factor in that.

EDIT: I will add that if you think calibrating an offer based on the worker’s alternatives is crass, think for a second about what exactly your skills, education, and experience are for. Those work through the same mechanism. If that mechanism is wrong, you should be happy to work for the national median wage across all industries and all education levels. Even a mediocre SWE salary is way too high.

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

#135

Post by wruza »

googlryas wrote: post #87
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…

Would you accept if your landlord got upset when he saw how much some people are being charged for rent in silicon valley, and decided to triple your rent?

If it makes your neighborhood and/or city very similar to these in SV, why not?

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

#136

Post by mattdeboard »

jsmith99 wrote: post #128
mattdeboard wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, because the workers would not be contributing labor to the company's output.

To put it another way: Yes, zero exploitation of OP's labor is less than "some" exploitation of OP's labor.

It clarifies things for me to replace "cheaper labor" with "more profitable labor". Why would a company refuse to hire more profitable labor? How could the company not having any relationship with OP exploit his labor more than hiring him as more profitable labor?

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

#137

Post by arlattimore »

contravariant wrote: post #94
chrsig wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it's not the only factor in hiring? competency and likelihood to succeed in the role does still play a role

Sure, but why is a company willing to suddenly pay more for someone depending on where they live? I get that competency and likelihood to succeed play a role, but if you have those I don't see why location should play a role at all. I'm not saying they should give more/better offers to people in 'cheap' locations, I'm saying location shouldn't influence the offer at all.

Many companies can't hire people in 'any' location due to how their legal entities are setup in different countries, how many of them they may or may not have and possible complications with tax etc.

Once you get past that basic hurdle, you might find that the company is willing to pay more because they want a given skilled worker to be co-located with the team they will be joining to increase productivity which might come at a higher price than hiring into a different location but potentially trading off worker and/or team efficiency.

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

#138

Post by navjack27 »

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…

Imagine paying someone in my town where the median income is $39k and the median property value is $87k the same as someone in San Fran where the median income is $120k and the median property value is $1.15M. that would be unfair to everyone in my town who can't work remotely with a tech company that's in that area.

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

#139

Post by whb07 »

Which scenario are we talking about here? Is it:

You live in a poor country making $50k-$100k, and the US devs are making $100-200k.

You live in a poor country and get paid sub $30-50k, and US gets paid $100k+?

I used to live in Ecuador, and the “official” min wage monthly is ~$300USD/mo. So essentially you can hire a full time nanny, cook, etc for sub $1200 easy.

That’s never going to happen in the US with less than $400k+.

So in US 150k+ is top 20% of income or there abouts. But in a random poor country, $100k+ is probably top 0.01%, right? What am I missing here?

Also what is your skill level and could you quickly replace this job with another at the same or higher rate?

Lastly, if you really want to move, there’s 30+ countries you could move to in the interim if you really wanted out of your country. Canada is relatively simple, there’s tons of Caribbean islands that can grant you citizenship for sub $200k, which you can then use to travel freely without visa restrictions globally. Same with EU countries like Malta etc.

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

#140

Post by ZephyrBlu »

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.

> the company would be foolish to let me leave

One thing I've learned is that companies are extremely foolish when it comes to compensation and attrition.

Post reply on HN