Because you, the laborer, begin as a fungible commodity to a company that very much operates on a short-term, quarterly basis. But with that said, it's certainl

Because you, the laborer, begin as a fungible commodity to a company that very much operates on a short-term, quarterly basis. But with that said, it's certainly possible that Facebook will need to functionally do as you described and "keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world" because otherwise, they won't be able to effectively recruit. They'll get outbid by startups that don't attempt such hare-brained schemes, and maybe they'll dislike it enough to raise wages where required. Secondly, it's not likely the case that Facebook needs the "absolute best talent" across the board -- it's more likely that they do for some positions (and will pay appropriately) and not so much for others. And for where it stands there, I'm pretty sure Facebook knows what that Pareto frontier looks like -- at least in recent history, they have generally outbid their weight class competitors [1] in terms of total compensation. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...