If engineers are not paid based on their local market, and also not paid based on the value they create, what is their pay based on? I can think of a few other

If engineers are not paid based on their local market, and also not paid based on the value they create, what is their pay based on? I can think of a few other alternatives: - some new "remote workers" market that doesn't exist at the moment - the pay of the lowest paid region in the world - the pay of the highest paid region in the world I can't see the last option being reasonable in any way, and the second option also doesn't seem like it would work in practice. My guess is you'd see something in between the first two. This would take a long time to stabilize, so it's not straightforward for companies to implement I think?