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vladvasiliu 6y ago
I'm not sure how that works in practice. Even with the CoL adjustment, people from lower CoL area still cost less. Say a company has a choice between engineer H from a high CoL area and engineer L from a low CoL area. They are otherwise comparable in their skills, experience, etc. Why would they hire H when L is expected to be able to do the job to the same standard? How is this eliminating competition based on location? People would move to a lower CoL area, so they could get an advantage.
- hobofan 6y ago
  Yeah, you are right, that didn't make much sense...
- Thorrez 6y ago
  > Even with the CoL adjustment, people from lower CoL area still cost less. How so? If the CoL adjustment is high enough, they should have equal costs. But I do see your overall point that with a CoL adjustment people in a low CoL area would in theory be able to be hired easier, because in theory they wouldn't need to be held to as high of a hiring bar.
Thorrez 6y ago
I wasn't talking salaries, I was talking about prices for selling products, same as thaumasiotes. I mentioned salaries only because payroll is a component of the production cost of a product. And when it comes to location, I was talking about the location of the buyer. You're talking about the location of the employee. With a physical product being sold by onsite employees, the location of the buyer and the employee are the same. But with a digital product the location of the buyer and the employee are not necessarily the same, so something purchased in a high CoL area could have been produced by an employee in a low CoL area, and vice versa. So it doesn't make much sense to change the price of a product based on the location of the buyer in that case. Typing this out, I realized there's an error in my previous comment, I didn't need to say "and fully remote employees". A digital product is sufficient to uncouple the employee's CoL from the buyer's CoL. The employees can all be onsite and the CoLs between the buyer and employees would still be uncoupled.

[deleted]

I'm not sure how that works in practice. Even with the CoL adjustment, people from lower CoL area still cost less. Say a company has a choice between engineer H from a high CoL area and engineer L from a low CoL area. They are otherwise comparable in their skills, experience, etc. Why would they hire H when L is expected to be able to do the job to the same standard? How is this eliminating competition based on location? People would move to a lower CoL area, so they could get an advantage.

hobofan 6y ago
Yeah, you are right, that didn't make much sense...
Thorrez 6y ago
> Even with the CoL adjustment, people from lower CoL area still cost less. How so? If the CoL adjustment is high enough, they should have equal costs. But I do see your overall point that with a CoL adjustment people in a low CoL area would in theory be able to be hired easier, because in theory they wouldn't need to be held to as high of a hiring bar.

Thorrez 6y ago

I wasn't talking salaries, I was talking about prices for selling products, same as thaumasiotes. I mentioned salaries only because payroll is a component of the production cost of a product. And when it comes to location, I was talking about the location of the buyer. You're talking about the location of the employee. With a physical product being sold by onsite employees, the location of the buyer and the employee are the same. But with a digital product the location of the buyer and the employee are not necessarily the same, so something purchased in a high CoL area could have been produced by an employee in a low CoL area, and vice versa. So it doesn't make much sense to change the price of a product based on the location of the buyer in that case. Typing this out, I realized there's an error in my previous comment, I didn't need to say "and fully remote employees". A digital product is sufficient to uncouple the employee's CoL from the buyer's CoL. The employees can all be onsite and the CoLs between the buyer and employees would still be uncoupled.