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As the employer, it often works differently. You interview a number of people as final candidates you find good fits for different reasons. Each person presents

As the employer, it often works differently. You interview a number of people as final candidates you find good fits for different reasons. Each person presents some extra benefits and some shortcomings. You then balance it off against the costs of hiring each person, and you make a final decision on that basis. At that stage, someone who'd be an appropriate "right next step" for the company at $80K may not be the right next step if they were at $100K, so you may pass if the person isn't willing to accept $80K. If you truly run into cases where the hiring decision has already been made, so you're sure you're hiring the person independent of where they live, and then decide you'll pay them less if they live elsewhere - then one of 2 things is happening. Reality #1 - you're being subjected to some kind of corporate level accommodation where the business has decided that "we'll just take the hit and up-adjust salaries based on cost of living". If they don't apply this approach universally, the only alternative would be to either pay everyone $100k and therefore not have the ability to hire as many people, or simply not hire from $100K markets and only hire from $80k. Reality #2 - there's some real corporate corruption happening at the company where they're doing this for the sake of some central policy, but it's not a real constraint. That'd be unfortunate.

csense 6y ago
It might be helpful to give an example. Buffer is a company that is open about its salary formula. Their formula has exactly the problems I'm talking about. See here: https://buffer.com/salary/customer-engagement-strategist/average https://buffer.com/salary/customer-engagement-strategist/ave... > At that stage, someone who'd be an appropriate "right next step" for the company at $80K may not be the right next step if they were at $100K This is the right way to look at things. You look at the price / performance tradeoff of each employee, and make an offer based on that. All the SF people get at least $100k because they all turn down the $70k offers, for the good and simple reason they can't live the lifestyle they want on $70k in SF. Some Rust Belt folks might take a $70k offer because it's interesting work, and a fairly good salary in an economically depressed area. > you're being subjected to some kind of corporate level accommodation where the business has decided that "we'll just take the hit and up-adjust salaries based on cost of living" This is the kind of policy I was expressing my distaste for. If I don't qualify for the CoL based on my location, it sure feels like the SF-level salary is the baseline and I'm being down-adjusted. > corruption happening at the company where they're doing this for the sake of some central policy I don't really think this is a thing. I think it's more a misguided attempt to equalize the lifestyle of employees who happen to live in different places. An ideal of "All of our employees should be able to afford a middle class lifestyle" means you pay your Bay Area people $100k and your Appalachian Mountainfolk $60k. If you look at it from that perspective, it makes sense. I'm trying to point out that from the view of someone who, at an earlier point in his career, was looking for remote employment while living in a low CoL area, this perspective isn't the one that comes naturally. Instead it felt more like my skills are worth $100k, and there are a bunch of tech companies out there who will pay me $100k, but they all have this really strange rule that they'll only pay me what I'm worth if I agree to spend 40% of it on incredibly overpriced housing in a city I don't want to live in. And I got really angry because it felt like they're screwing me. And screwing me in a way that's completely insane and economically irrational for them. Either pay me $100k for remote work, or don't. Whether I'll spend $15k or $50k of that $100k on food and shelter is, quite frankly, none of my employer's business. That was many years ago. I'm at a much better place in my career now. But at any given point in time, there are probably thousands of people at the point where I was. It helps to be aware of prospective hires' perspectives when considering compensation policies.
- csense 6y ago
  I should address the whole conspiracy theory aspect of this. I don't seriously think there's some cackling cabal of coastal elites having secret meetings about how to keep flyover country poor. I think it's various companies using lifestyle-based reasoning. That is, instead of numerical salary offers, the company thinks it's better to offer a specific lifestyle level in a geographically neutral way, which translates into different salaries for different locations. Unfortunately the policy such reasoning leads to is exactly the same one that the conspiracy of coastal elites would implement (if it actually existed): Based solely on their location, pay people who live in Middle America less than you pay BigTechCity residents for the same work. I'm trying to explain that you have to look at lifestyle-based reasoning from one particular perspective for it to make sense. There are other reasonable perspectives which reveal it to be a stupid, absurd policy.

csense 6y ago

It might be helpful to give an example. Buffer is a company that is open about its salary formula. Their formula has exactly the problems I'm talking about. See here: https://buffer.com/salary/customer-engagement-strategist/average https://buffer.com/salary/customer-engagement-strategist/ave... > At that stage, someone who'd be an appropriate "right next step" for the company at $80K may not be the right next step if they were at $100K This is the right way to look at things. You look at the price / performance tradeoff of each employee, and make an offer based on that. All the SF people get at least $100k because they all turn down the $70k offers, for the good and simple reason they can't live the lifestyle they want on $70k in SF. Some Rust Belt folks might take a $70k offer because it's interesting work, and a fairly good salary in an economically depressed area. > you're being subjected to some kind of corporate level accommodation where the business has decided that "we'll just take the hit and up-adjust salaries based on cost of living" This is the kind of policy I was expressing my distaste for. If I don't qualify for the CoL based on my location, it sure feels like the SF-level salary is the baseline and I'm being down-adjusted. > corruption happening at the company where they're doing this for the sake of some central policy I don't really think this is a thing. I think it's more a misguided attempt to equalize the lifestyle of employees who happen to live in different places. An ideal of "All of our employees should be able to afford a middle class lifestyle" means you pay your Bay Area people $100k and your Appalachian Mountainfolk $60k. If you look at it from that perspective, it makes sense. I'm trying to point out that from the view of someone who, at an earlier point in his career, was looking for remote employment while living in a low CoL area, this perspective isn't the one that comes naturally. Instead it felt more like my skills are worth $100k, and there are a bunch of tech companies out there who will pay me $100k, but they all have this really strange rule that they'll only pay me what I'm worth if I agree to spend 40% of it on incredibly overpriced housing in a city I don't want to live in. And I got really angry because it felt like they're screwing me. And screwing me in a way that's completely insane and economically irrational for them. Either pay me $100k for remote work, or don't. Whether I'll spend $15k or $50k of that $100k on food and shelter is, quite frankly, none of my employer's business. That was many years ago. I'm at a much better place in my career now. But at any given point in time, there are probably thousands of people at the point where I was. It helps to be aware of prospective hires' perspectives when considering compensation policies.

csense 6y ago
I should address the whole conspiracy theory aspect of this. I don't seriously think there's some cackling cabal of coastal elites having secret meetings about how to keep flyover country poor. I think it's various companies using lifestyle-based reasoning. That is, instead of numerical salary offers, the company thinks it's better to offer a specific lifestyle level in a geographically neutral way, which translates into different salaries for different locations. Unfortunately the policy such reasoning leads to is exactly the same one that the conspiracy of coastal elites would implement (if it actually existed): Based solely on their location, pay people who live in Middle America less than you pay BigTechCity residents for the same work. I'm trying to explain that you have to look at lifestyle-based reasoning from one particular perspective for it to make sense. There are other reasonable perspectives which reveal it to be a stupid, absurd policy.