3 ms·

> FB might just revert to its old practice and leave the Kansas devs back jobless. No, they won't, that's my point. If both developers are remote, and so Faceb

> FB might just revert to its old practice and leave the Kansas devs back jobless. No, they won't, that's my point. If both developers are remote, and so Facebook is nearly indifferent to hiring Kansas vs SF, then it would happily keep pay Kansas developers until they raise their wages all the way to that of SF. That's true even if there's a fixed number of Kansas developers and that number will never increase (which I don't believe). Or, in economics terms, both SF and Kansas workers are substitutable goods, so neither group has a monopoly and you'd expect their prices (or marginal price, to be accurate) to equalize, regardless of the elasticity of supply curves of the two goods. We know the developers are substitutable, as the article states that Facebook isn't able to easily tell them apart, short of threatening them with strict penalties for lieing.

joshuamorton 6y ago
> No, they won't, that's my point. Then you're missing my point: if the Kansas dev costs as much as the SF one, why not just recentralize in SF? It's pretty clear that facebook believes that remote workers are somewhat less efficient. Maybe that cost is worth it at a 10% discount on labor, but maybe it isn't on 3% less. >Or, in economics terms, both SF and Kansas workers are substitutable goods Yes, in isolation, one SF worker and one Kansas worker are substitutable. But 1000 SF workers and 1000 distributed workers aren't. Or in other words, once you have 500 SF workers, the marginal value of an SF worker is > than a Kansas worker, even if the worker in question is the same human being in two different locations.