5 ms·

ITT: People using their subjective remote-work opinions in defending Google's desire to increase their profits by sacrificing their own employees' well-being.

thehappypm 5y ago
Eh I think the adjustment is fair. It’s kind of a pay loophole to negotiate a salary based on one market, then move to a different one. It’s reasonable that companies pay market salaries, rather than having this weird thing where the Googler who moves to Montana makes double what the new hire from Montana is offered.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  Maybe it should instead be taken as an indication that location based pay in an industry where location doesn't matter is asinine.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    It's not location-based pay, right? It's market-function based pay. A radiologist can usually give you a report based on your scans from anywhere. However, my cousin (a well-paid radiologist in the NHS) simply cannot give me a report that I can use here in the US. So I must pay above global market value since the market function constrains participants. So it isn't location-based. It's just market-based. It makes sense that big companies would do this, since labour is usually fungible there. They can then treat the labour market as a highly-liquid market of equivalent units. This standardization of things leading to liquid markets is quite common: options contracts, the TEU shipping container, the ERC-721 standard. I run engineering at a trading company and I don't do this, but that's because labour is not fungible at my scale. So I don't have a liquid market: each time I buy labour, it is not usually substitutable with another guy.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    “Market rate” is just that: a market rate. In regards to pay, it’s all about finding the salary that’ll get someone to say “yes”, and trying not to go too much above that. Pre-pandemic, living in the Bay Area, you were commuting to the office, and you were exclusively competing with the people also living in the Bay Area, meaning your labor was scarce. Companies paid more not because of CoL but because the market mandated a certain salary, otherwise you’d just say “no” and work somewhere else. Remote was much rarer, and if you lived in (say) Montana, Google could offer you less money because you’re way more likely to accept a lower salary if you have fewer options and if that salary satisfies you. With this odd moment we have people who negotiated salaries in the Bay market now moving elsewhere to work remote.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Where have the people against this policy been prior to 2020? Google (and a gazillion other companies) have paid differently based on region forever. The folks in London getting paid far less than their SF peers seem to find it weird that this has only become a source of complaints once it has affected Americans.

thehappypm 5y ago

Eh I think the adjustment is fair. It’s kind of a pay loophole to negotiate a salary based on one market, then move to a different one. It’s reasonable that companies pay market salaries, rather than having this weird thing where the Googler who moves to Montana makes double what the new hire from Montana is offered.

bluefirebrand 5y ago
Maybe it should instead be taken as an indication that location based pay in an industry where location doesn't matter is asinine.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  It's not location-based pay, right? It's market-function based pay. A radiologist can usually give you a report based on your scans from anywhere. However, my cousin (a well-paid radiologist in the NHS) simply cannot give me a report that I can use here in the US. So I must pay above global market value since the market function constrains participants. So it isn't location-based. It's just market-based. It makes sense that big companies would do this, since labour is usually fungible there. They can then treat the labour market as a highly-liquid market of equivalent units. This standardization of things leading to liquid markets is quite common: options contracts, the TEU shipping container, the ERC-721 standard. I run engineering at a trading company and I don't do this, but that's because labour is not fungible at my scale. So I don't have a liquid market: each time I buy labour, it is not usually substitutable with another guy.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  “Market rate” is just that: a market rate. In regards to pay, it’s all about finding the salary that’ll get someone to say “yes”, and trying not to go too much above that. Pre-pandemic, living in the Bay Area, you were commuting to the office, and you were exclusively competing with the people also living in the Bay Area, meaning your labor was scarce. Companies paid more not because of CoL but because the market mandated a certain salary, otherwise you’d just say “no” and work somewhere else. Remote was much rarer, and if you lived in (say) Montana, Google could offer you less money because you’re way more likely to accept a lower salary if you have fewer options and if that salary satisfies you. With this odd moment we have people who negotiated salaries in the Bay market now moving elsewhere to work remote.

UncleMeat 5y ago

Where have the people against this policy been prior to 2020? Google (and a gazillion other companies) have paid differently based on region forever. The folks in London getting paid far less than their SF peers seem to find it weird that this has only become a source of complaints once it has affected Americans.