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The competitiveness of the job market sets the price. Looking at the Bay Area vs really everywhere else in the us you’ll find less liquidity in tech which depr

The competitiveness of the job market sets the price. Looking at the Bay Area vs really everywhere else in the us you’ll find less liquidity in tech which depresses the price. Conversely, you’re paying for access to the labor market with your rent, so good markets have high rent. The company is paying for your costs, plus providing you a margin. If your cost are lower, your margin is the same but the absolute number is smaller.

luckylion 6y ago
> The company is paying for your costs, plus providing you a margin. If your cost are lower, your margin is the same but the absolute number is smaller. In that case, they'd look at your lease to see what you are paying. They don't, and whether you live in a cheap apartment or in a luxury one does not matter, even though it can easily change that "margin" by 100%. You're right regarding the competitiveness setting the price. And once the company is fully remote, the competition is no longer constrained by locality. It does not make any sense to pay more or less because the remote worker lives in some location, and unless there is no competition, somebody else will just pay them more and you will not get the employees you were looking to get for cheap.
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  Remote employers right now need to decide whether they want to hire the kinds of people who relocated to the bay area to benefit their careers, because that means they still have to compete with bay area offers. If remote work becomes the norm, at that point bay area offers will no longer be higher (and some of us will leave). Maybe American offers overall will no longer be higher....
  - gpapilion 6y ago
    The second part of this is to remember that moving to a large metro area is good for the employee too. It makes it easy to find the next job, and easy to get highend internet. The candidate can always choose to relocate to make their offer make sense, but I somehow don’t think we’ll see a lot of that.
baddox 6y ago
Many employers have significant market power in the wage labor market.

luckylion 6y ago

> The company is paying for your costs, plus providing you a margin. If your cost are lower, your margin is the same but the absolute number is smaller. In that case, they'd look at your lease to see what you are paying. They don't, and whether you live in a cheap apartment or in a luxury one does not matter, even though it can easily change that "margin" by 100%. You're right regarding the competitiveness setting the price. And once the company is fully remote, the competition is no longer constrained by locality. It does not make any sense to pay more or less because the remote worker lives in some location, and unless there is no competition, somebody else will just pay them more and you will not get the employees you were looking to get for cheap.

erik_seaberg 6y ago
Remote employers right now need to decide whether they want to hire the kinds of people who relocated to the bay area to benefit their careers, because that means they still have to compete with bay area offers. If remote work becomes the norm, at that point bay area offers will no longer be higher (and some of us will leave). Maybe American offers overall will no longer be higher....
- gpapilion 6y ago
  The second part of this is to remember that moving to a large metro area is good for the employee too. It makes it easy to find the next job, and easy to get highend internet. The candidate can always choose to relocate to make their offer make sense, but I somehow don’t think we’ll see a lot of that.

baddox 6y ago

Many employers have significant market power in the wage labor market.