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Paying a salary based on someone's location is utter horseshit, unless they are an unskilled replaceable commodity. So at facebook, which is it? It's as though

Paying a salary based on someone's location is utter horseshit, unless they are an unskilled replaceable commodity. So at facebook, which is it? It's as though people think that they are paid out of some kind of sense of paternalistic fairness. It's leverage, and if a recruiter can tell you "well the cost of living in your area is %30 lower, therefore your work is %30 less valuable" and you believe them, then sure, you are worth %30 less. If an HR person says, "our policy is we pay less in the area you live," you can respond with, "that's really interesting, my policy is GFY, because I work where I deliver value." Employers do not pay for your time, they pay you for theirs, to shorten the period between their investment and the maximum yield it can return to them. Facebook is no longer mainly solving growth problems, it is solving sustainability and optimization problems, and if you want do do that, you might as well go work at a bank. They haven't dashed the hope of paycheck arbitrage, they have just made a huge public commitment to inferior talent, and they deserve what they get.

MauranKilom 6y ago
> unskilled replaceable commodity That's a weird way to look at "we pay you X because you'd work for someone else otherwise". There's a middle ground between that and "we pay you X because you create Y value for us". Or in other words, if they have more people to choose from for a position (due to location being less of a limiting factor), they will be able to find someone accepting a lower wage. This is deeply unsurprising to me and has nothing to do with how skilled the labor is.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  To frame it as companies paying people mainly as a way to impose opportunity cost on their competitors doesn't reflect the comment, normal economics, or growth. While remote work will flatten the market, it will flatten both sides of the market (employers v. staff). When you invest in a business, you pay people to manage it and deliver a yield. If you invest in a business to prevent another business from succeeding, that doesn't make any sense unless you are a government or state captured industry. If your skills and potential value is undifferentiated, sure, someone could undercut you, but if you have something of value to offer, price is much less of a deciding factor.

MauranKilom 6y ago

> unskilled replaceable commodity That's a weird way to look at "we pay you X because you'd work for someone else otherwise". There's a middle ground between that and "we pay you X because you create Y value for us". Or in other words, if they have more people to choose from for a position (due to location being less of a limiting factor), they will be able to find someone accepting a lower wage. This is deeply unsurprising to me and has nothing to do with how skilled the labor is.

motohagiography 6y ago
To frame it as companies paying people mainly as a way to impose opportunity cost on their competitors doesn't reflect the comment, normal economics, or growth. While remote work will flatten the market, it will flatten both sides of the market (employers v. staff). When you invest in a business, you pay people to manage it and deliver a yield. If you invest in a business to prevent another business from succeeding, that doesn't make any sense unless you are a government or state captured industry. If your skills and potential value is undifferentiated, sure, someone could undercut you, but if you have something of value to offer, price is much less of a deciding factor.