I find it quite counter-intuitive that there would be different salary levels for remote employees depending on the location they live in, since for remote empl

I find it quite counter-intuitive that there would be different salary levels for remote employees depending on the location they live in, since for remote employees the location is now presumably their choice, and not the employer's - analogous to the personal choice of how expensive the employee's choice of dwelling is. As others have mentioned, anything else runs the danger of creating potentially perverse incentives to move (fake or real) to a more expensive location, thus adding cost to the employer. And when salary costs for some go up, the argument could be made it lowers the pot of total salary money available for the remaining employees, since many large employers are managed to hit overall percentage targets for various cost items (like R&D which for web companies typically has a considerable salary component). The whole thing sure sounds like a classic large company policy with unintended consequences. -- Running large companies is hard.