> If that means that the rate is too low for people in NYC why should the company care as long as they can get enough people from Stamford and other places with

> If that means that the rate is too low for people in NYC why should the company care as long as they can get enough people from Stamford and other places with lower costs of living than NYC? Exactly. Google doesn't care, and as any other "good" company out there: money comes first, employees are peons. The thing I hope we are discussing here is: what (Google) employees can do about it? Can they do something at all? And if they can't, well, this basically means that in the near future every IT company out there will be doing the same. Sad, but hey, if we let companies do this sort of things, well, we deserve it.