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> "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less..." Let's face it. As an employee, you want to earn as much as you can. As a compa
by rlpb 10y ago
> "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less..."
Let's face it. As an employee, you want to earn as much as you can. As a company, you want to make as much profit as you can, which means that you base your target pay on market rate (be it above or below market rate).
Market rate is set by the competition. Really it's "we're going to pay you enough that you don't leave to work for someone else", and that's it.
If an employer gives you a cost-of-living bonus for high-rent areas, the reason is that they're competing for you against other companies who do the same thing. The same applies to any pay difference based on locality, whether local or remote. It simply depends on who they're competing with for your services.
This isn't evil. It's how the market works.
- MichaelGG 10y agoDon't think I said it's evil, just wrong. Obviously it's how the market works, and I've taken advantage of this myself. Just saying that, aside from "well, we can get away with it", it's not that defensible.
- rlpb 10y ago> Don't think I said it's evil, just wrong. OK. But I'm saying it's not wrong either. It is exactly how our economy works. Other large scale economic systems have not been successful. We know no better way of arranging things. If companies didn't compete, the economy would not be functional and we wouldn't be able to have nice things.
- MichaelGG 10y agoI sincerely doubt you have enough data to state that paying same-skilled remote employees somehow makes the economy non-functional.
- rlpb 10y agoI don't need data. My argument isn't based on a such a claim. Our entire economy relies on free actors being able to buy goods and services from their choice of supplier, based on price, quality, or most other factors. It's clear that this is required for our economy to function. Therefore it can never be "wrong" for some entity to do this unless you can identify some other unfair distortion in a particular case, but you haven't. An employer not offering more in a particular region is just exercising this ability to choose, the general form of which we must grant to have a functioning economy. If you want to argue that it's wrong, then the onus is on you to explain why the general case of free market competition should not apply in this case. But you haven't.