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I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated th

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that can truthfully deduct the cost-for-living from the compensation they are offering. It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. Also, from my personal point of view, it's the time I'm saving for myself, not the money. Electricity is quite expensive nowadays, and my standing desk and audio/video equipment also wasn't payed by my employer. What annoys me the most is that there are still companies out there stating that remote is "complicated". It's different, and you need to adjust your processes, but it's not "complicated". //edit: fixed typos and added a/v equipment to my ramblings

dboreham 4y ago
> game as it fits their needs Why is this surprising? People like to pay less for things.
rizach8 4y ago
This is so foreign to me, living in Europe. The salary here is in my experience based on where the company is located. Big city, big salary.
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  European here. This happened interviewing with companies that are located in rather well-payed areas, precisely southern germany. :)
  - Scharkenberg 4y ago
    Munich has spiralled out of control in this aspect.
- schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  Yeah, but our "big salary" is still like half of what they'd pay in the USA. Perhaps the company doesn't see it worthwhile to argue over peanuts.
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    Paying a given salary in Germany is a lot more expensive for a company than paying the exact same salary in America. There are both more taxes on the employer side and more labor regulations that cost money to comply with. The number of hours worked tends to be different, too.
    - eru 4y ago
      The wedge between gross and net pay is indeed big in Germany. Btw, it's getting bigger in the US as well over the least few decades. Singapore is a place with a smaller gap, and less regulation. That's part of the reason they went from third world to first world.
  - rkangel 4y ago
    This is true, and still true to some extent once you compensate you can't compare the two numbers. There are large costs associated with living in the US like health insurance that just don't exist in the UK where I live.
- zahrc 4y ago
  Of course there might be exceptions, but isn’t it reasonable to expect that companies in bigger cities have more business and can therefore pay more?
  - eru 4y ago
    That would only really make sense for the location of the sales office, I guess? Where you put your developers shouldn't make much of a difference to how much business you have? However you are up to something: big cities tend to be more productive. That's the reason people and businesses put up with the higher rents and other inconveniences. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration
jahnu 4y ago
> they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area Imagine haggling with a supplier like this. Crazy we put up with it.
- austhrow743 4y ago
  Suppliers can absolutely charge different rates in different locations.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- luckylion 4y ago
  That's pretty normal, isn't it? Many services do location-based pricing, a friend of mine just sets his location to Turkey to get rebates from Adobe, Microsoft etc.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  They do though.
- mcv 4y ago
  Oh, that definitely happens. Consider the power that supermarkets hold over farmers.
MaximumYComb 4y ago
My company allows fully flexible work, but due to the nature of our work we tend to hire locally. A recruiter made a mistake and arranged an interview for me in the wrong city, and I was hired as the only fully remote employee for a local team. Does it have challenges? Yes. Am I a valued employee? Yes, I am potentially one of the most valuable employees after my first year in my team. Easily top 20%. I visit my team every few months for a week. Mostly the point is so we can go out for dinner and I get to have some drinks with them. The workday itself is changed very little by being in person.
toyg 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. That's like saying the price of goods and services should be about the cost of producing them. No no no: the price is about what buyers will bear. In the same way, salaries are about what the worker will bear. If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business will use it.
- michaelscott 4y ago
  Very much this. It makes the process of salary negotiation completely tied to perception rather than reality, which isn't necessarily bad for the employee. It just means that the justifications for a higher salary need to change from "your salary offer is too low because it shouldn't depend on where I live" to "your salary offer should be higher because I can improve your business in x, y and z"
  - anon20230209 4y ago
    Also, the expectation by employer that by paying an average salary they get 100% performance has to change. Employees can optimise for pay or life depending on what the company is willing to offer.
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    > your salary offer should be higher because I can improve your business in x, y and z I just don't think this is true for the overwhelming majority of employees, including developers.
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      It is true for almost all employees, otherwise the business wouldn't be hiring.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    I think the tried and true “Your salary offer is too low compared to your competitors, or what I can do for myself” is pretty much fine right?
brmgb 4y ago
> I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued, that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that can truthfully deduct the cost-for-living from the compensation they are offering. It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. It's mostly about what you can negotiate to be fair. Refusing to pay you more is their way of telling you they don't believe you can get something better than what they offer where you are which is legitimate. They will reassess if you show them a better offer from a competitor if they really want you. A big part of negotiation rests on your best alternative to what's being negotiated. > It's different, and you need to adjust your processes So you actually agree it's complicated from a company point of view.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Refusing to pay you more is their way of telling you they don't believe you can get something better than what they offer where you are which is legitimate. Except when they collude to drive down wages or pay for laws to make it harder for workers to organize keeping them weak. Also "where you are" has been made irrelevant for many workers because they can get employment anywhere without going anywhere. That means what's really being said is that they don't believe you can get something better than what they offer anywhere.
  - TehShrike 4y ago
    Employees could collude too, saying "we refuse to work for anything less than X$". Except that employees would do the same thing that employers do all the time and walk across the line as soon as someone offers them a compelling deal, even if it isn't at the "collusion" price.
franciscop 4y ago
While it is true, the best you can do is vote with your feet. I have had the situation where I was offered "locally competitive salaries" (not in the USA though), and every time I've rejected it I had a 50%-100% better offer within few weeks . There ARE companies that will pay better and independently of your location, you do need to be good though (as in companies are proactively seeking you out) and keep searching. A good indicator is the finances of the company. If you are going to be another cog contributing marginal value, for whatever reason that is, then it's going to be difficult to argue for better salary (thought they MIGHT give a higher salary, to everyone, like e.g. Google). If you can however have a big impact and they have good revenue or funding, then it's a lot easier to argue for higher salaries: "so you are making $300k MRR or just raised $5M of VC money with 4 employees? And you have more tickets and bug fixes to improve growth and reduce churn that you can feasibly do? Great, let's talk how I can effectively help to slash those tickets and then we can discuss my compensation*". Classic: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ * though if the company is crushing it so much, and specially because your marginal tax rate might be already at 50%, evaluate asking for some Stock Options/RSUs/etc.
- ericmay 4y ago
  I’m really surprised that nobody has set up address as a service yet so that you can claim for example to live in New York by virtue of an address auto command “a New York salary”.
  - Avicebron 4y ago
    I'm not a lawyer, but this seems illegal on its face. Just from a tax perspective for the government, I feel like people would immediately start trying to game it for taxes.
    - CalRobert 4y ago
      I don't know if it matters but I have a limited company and am an employee of said company, which means I deal with taxes on my own and can perform work for (almost) any company in the world - I just invoice them like any supplier. Maybe this is the future? Though some companies would rather you were their employee I suppose.
deleted 4y ago
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HatchedLake721 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. There are perfectly valid reasons why that's not the case, see here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation... https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-ra...
- _pastel 4y ago
  Interesting how Gitlab repeatedly emphasizes it's based on "cost of market", not "cost of living".
- dkersten 4y ago
  I don’t buy it. Most of their reasons are why it’s better for them and not why it benefits the employees. The employees are still being discriminated against for living in low cost of living areas by being valued at less, regardless of what their final disposable income is. For example, moving to a low cost of living area is something I did as a choice so that I could save more, and this came with a cost: my friends live further away now. They’re saying I should be penalised for this by not being able to save more compared to their employees who stayed in the high cost of living area.
  - RHSeeger 4y ago
    And if someone moved to a high cost of living area because they wanted to make more, is that different in some way? Would not paying them the amount for a similar quality of life not be the same type of discrimination?
- ragazzina 4y ago
  > "It’s something that kind of happened organically," Sid says. "Every time we hired someone, we’d discuss what a reasonable compensation would be. And many times, it came back to what they were making beforehand, and that really depended a lot on where they were. What a bunch of hypocrites. The perfectly know that what a person is currently making does not come "organically" into the conversation. The employer does whatever is in its power to have this information from the candidate.
deleted 4y ago
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anon20230209 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. But they are not hiring you for "value", you are just a body in a seat filling a "role". Real game to play is: you ask for X money, they propose Y money, agree and do Y amount of work and not the X amount of work. It's entirely reasonable to "quite-quit" even at non-minimum-salary compensation levels.
- mcv 4y ago
  Then they should hire someone else. There are cheaper bodies for filling seats than mine.
  - anon20230209 4y ago
    And they do. Have you not seen all the whining of Google veterans cut after their recent lay-offs?
    - mcv 4y ago
      It's sad that companies like Google these days are more concerned with filling seats than with writing good software.
recuter 4y ago
> I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. Play the game as fits your needs. For example, adjust your work output and use the freed time to look for a better employer. Also, if anybody asks, I live in Bermuda.
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  Well, that's the downside of being loyal, I guess. Although, over the years, I've become better at that. Yet... It doesn't feel right to me.
yxhuvud 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. What, no! It should be about what offers you can get from other places. If your offer is close to your local salaries, then that mean the company thinks you would have a hard time getting a better offer from somewhere else.
- regularfry 4y ago
  That depends entirely on how unique my value proposition is to the company making the offer. If I'm a commodity, yes, salary offers will trend to cost of living.
- eru 4y ago
  It's a bit more complicated. For example, I can get x$ from Google, but that doesn't mean SAP or ASML should also pay me x$: I don't know anything about their respective ecosystems, so I wouldn't be able to contribute much of value.
givemeethekeys 4y ago
> companies out there stating that remote is "complicated" It's complicated because a large number of managers haven't figured out how to manage a remote team.
- m000 4y ago
  I think it is complicated because a large number of management jobs are "bullshit" (see [1]). I.e. they could be eliminated, and productivity would not be affected, or it could even be improved. Remote work does an exposé on the usefulness of these roles. And of course, those holding them, would be eager for everyone to return to the office work theater. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
  - brigandish 4y ago
    There certainly are bullshit jobs and people doing valuable roles in bullshit ways, but Graeber’s claim that more than half of societal work is bullshit is also clearly bullshit, and not just because I read some of the book and sighed heavily before putting it down, but also because of claims like this that I didn’t see in the book but are in the Wikipedia page: > duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code... To think that code can be “fixed permanently” shows a complete lack of understanding and insight into programming, and brings to mind the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect - if Graeber is so wildly wrong about a subject I know well, why do I trust him on those I don’t?
    - nikau 4y ago
      I've dealt with lots of code which could be fixed permanently - ie. put in proper error handling and rearchitect to be robust and maintenance free. More so than ever with the push for MVP and agile ticket stat chasing.
      - brigandish 4y ago
        MVP's are supposed to be temporary, that's a weird cherry pick. Regardless, code is contextual and relies on so many things other than its own quality at the time of that assessment being made that to say it's been fixed permanently, as if there's some Platonic ideal code that can be written, is, in my view, something I'd only hear from someone new to the industry or not in the industry at all, like Graeber. The job is about solving problems in the clearest way possible over time, not once. Managing change is of central importance. If your product is good, it will change. If it changes, bugs will inevitably be introduced. That's not shoddy practice or the fault of some poor architecture decision. I imagine that the only bug that gets fixed "permanently" is in a product that nobody uses enough for it to need change. Like some failed MVPs.
knorker 4y ago
Do you want to play that game? Because if location doesn't matter then there are a billion people in India who are willing to do your job for much much less. In salary per value to the company you are extremely overpaid, assuming you live in the west. I don't think you want to open that can of worms. Edit to add: All those people moving from India to the US for the money could then stay in India. You're not competing with the remote work crowd. You are competing with local cost of labor. If the market switches to just value added, unrelated to location, then you're screwed.
- eru 4y ago
  Yes, I want to play that game. I want people in India to be paid more, if possible. I want to open that 'can of worms'. The big problem is that labour in India isn't all that productive. Offshoring isn't some magic bullet. Companies have tried that and are still trying. Google, Microsoft etc have offices in India. They also keep their offices in the US and Europe not just out of imaginary obligation to westerners, but because it makes economic sense. See also how Apple still does lots of the design work in the US, but manufactures in China. They would off-shore more off the design work as well, if they could. (And if Apple could but would not, someone else would do it and eat their lunch.)
  - knorker 4y ago
    Offshoring is not the same thing. There are great people in India. It's just more conducive for them to get better pay if they manage to get an H1B and move to the US. If they could just "work remote", then you (as an American, or at least someone who can and does work in the US? Well, applies to any western country) are no longer competing with "people from India who manage to get an H1B and have a family situation compatible with moving countries", but suddenly with ALL qualified workers in India. Big tech in the west employs HUGE numbers of expats from lower paid countries. A very large portion of which Big tech paid for the H1B (or equiv) and relocation costs. If you are remote, then you're only valued on your output. And I'm not saying you're in a poor position against a random engineer from India (nor presumably from a random engineer in the US), but you'll be in a poor position against the equivalent of your amazing local coworker who moved from India (or hell, any European country with less pay) because that's where the job was. If the job is "anywhere, because it's remote", then I'm saying that you may not be on the winning side of this change. Opening up "work from anywhere" is not like offshoring to save costs. More like given two equally valuable people, why should an employer pay a premium to one, just because they chose to live in a higher cost of living country?
roenxi 4y ago
This is underselling the value of economic clustering. Even if everyone works from home, there are advantages to drawing from local talent pools (people know people and can vouch for their work, cultural norms make it easier to work together, there are less labour law difficulties, there is less geopolitical risk of parts of your team being sanctioned because you hired Chinese or Russian programmers, etc, etc). All else being equal, the only reason to hire a distant programmer is to pay them less. From the firms perspective they can't easily tell if a distant programmer is more effective than a local programmer so it is a struggle (market-for-lemons style) to justify paying the same amount. If the costs are equal, may as well hire local. It starts to make sense when you realise salaries are driven by the cost to replace an employee (including the risk of a bad hire), not the value they provide. Companies can't measure the value individual programmers provide anyway.
- lunarhustler 4y ago
  > Even if everyone works from home, there are advantages to drawing from local talent pools (people know people and can vouch for their work, cultural norms make it easier to work together, there are less labour law difficulties, there is less geopolitical risk of parts of your team being sanctioned because you hired Chinese or Russian programmers, etc, etc) You could reframe these points so that they look like advantages of global businesses... you'll have someone to vouch for and evaluate people across multiple talent pools (increasing talent supply), the majority of your team will never be sanctioned simultaneously (diversifying that risk), and as for cultural norms, don't we all know that diversity is strength. Saying there are no advantages to global remote first besides cost is underselling it; there are important advantages, for one > It starts to make sense when you realise salaries are driven by the cost to replace an employee asynchronous remote makes documentation and written communication central, which at the end of the day makes it easier to replace employees. Cost is important too, if you can literally hire 50% more workforce that's one hell of a deal.
- eru 4y ago
  I mostly agree. > All else being equal, the only reason to hire a distant programmer is to pay them less. Yes. To give some example where not everything else is equal: There can be benefits from covering more timezones, or benefits from covering different jurisdictions (and tax regimes).
blitzar 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. Tell that to the kid getting paid 14 cents an hour on the other side of the planet to make your $1,500 iPhone.
- newsclues 4y ago
  Isn’t that the point? Most people will be envious of the transaction relationship be it employee/employer or consumer/seller and feel that they were cheated, regardless. The wage was too low, the product was priced to high from one side and the wage was too high and the product priced too cheap from the other. There is actual cheating but it seems like people are never(rarely) actually satisfied, and social media has made it worse.
- eru 4y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is? Making remote work and pay for productivity more common and accepted, would help that kid. That's good!
scotty79 4y ago
Maybe "Where do you live?" should be one of those questions employers shouldn't be allowed to ask? Like what's your religion or what's your sexual orientation?
- sokoloff 4y ago
  So long as there are governments involved in the employee-employer relationship, this can’t happen. I don’t actually care where you live, but I do care that I can legally employ you, pay you, pay taxes/social charges, and that I understand the obligations of the arrangement we’re contemplating entering.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    It could be set up completely differently. Employer could pay 100% to the government and government could pay employee after properly taxing the income. But that would require work from the government that it doesn't want to do.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Which government(s)? Taxes and social charges can vary by city, county, state, and country. If I'm going to hire scotty79 with no knowledge of where in the world they live, which governments would I coordinate with and how would I know that? Employment rules, customs, and laws vary by at least state and country (and minimum wages vary by city). How would I know what laws applied to the employment relationship?
      - scotty79 4y ago
        Federal obviously. Somebody has to know what's up with all this mess. If I'm from another country government should know that and tax accordingly. I have no idea how placing burden of knowing all this on every single employer helps anybody (except IRS).
        ghaff 4y ago
RHSeeger 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. It's a balancing act. If companies pay based on value added to the company, they will wind up paying more than average in low COL areas, and less than average in high COL areas; so they won't be able to hire people in high COL areas at all. If they scale pay based on COL, they'll be able to hire people in both areas. So yes, it's not "fair" to people in lower COL areas, but it's not arbitrary either.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eru 4y ago
  > [...] so they won't be able to hire people in high COL areas at all. You say it like it's a bad thing. If they can hire people for relatively cheap purely from low COL areas, and make the company work, they should totally go for that. That's the whole reason behind having offices in even cheaper areas like Vietnam, instead of just the American Midwest. Of course, if you can't actually run your business purely on people from low COL areas, that means there must be something the people from the high COL areas bring to the table that's worth it for your business. And that's proves the original commenter's point that the company should pay you according what value you bring to the company.
deleted 4y ago
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jwmoz 4y ago
It's a free market so ultimately the best offer will secure a developer.
tcgv 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. It's called the "job market" for a reason. Both sides (employers and employees) are trying to maximize their returns. It's never going to be solely about the value we as developers (or any other occupation) bring to the company.
swah 4y ago
My current employer uses a formula that adjusts between NY cost of living and local cost of living, half way. Found it super generous (unexpected) to be honest...
jt2190 4y ago
> … some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. Keep in mind that not all companies are competing for talent globally. [1] The real question is whether companies that compete in a local or regional market will be able to continue to pay local rates to anyone with specialized skills who can also go remote, or if they’ll just give up and find some other solution. [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...
tiffanyh 4y ago
Cost of Labor vs Cost of Living. Sounds like your interview at companies who employ the former, not later. https://www.zenefits.com/workest/cost-of-living-vs-cost-of-labor-is-there-a-difference/ https://www.zenefits.com/workest/cost-of-living-vs-cost-of-l...
Lio 4y ago
I've heard this arugment before. What's daft is no company I've heard of only wants to sell locally. They all want to sell nationally or internationally whilst paying based on what they think the local market value for labour should be.
- ghaff 4y ago
  LOTS of small companies only sell locally.
hackererror404 4y ago
It says a lot that they pay based on things like "where do you live" VS the value of the work that you do.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> What annoys me the most is that there are still companies out there stating that remote is "complicated". It's different, and you need to adjust your processes, but it's not "complicated". I’ve worked remote and managed remote teams for a long time. I would say it is indeed more complicated. You may not struggle with remote work and may do fine interacting remotely, but that’s not true for a lot of people. It’s very common to hire good engineers into remote positions and discover that they can’t focus at home, they misinterpret digital communications, or that they just wanted a remote job because they read somewhere that they could work 2 hours per day and nobody would be able to tell. The obvious retort is that you just need to hire “right”, but that’s not an easy thing to do.
- monkeynotes 4y ago
  It isn't more complicated, it is just different. Here, let me hire for an office instead... "You may not struggle with office work and may do fine interacting in person, but that’s not true for a lot of people." I have people who do far better at home than in the office, and some on the other end of the spectrum. People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and finding the right people is the same challenge regardless. What is hard is tooling and setting up processes that work for remote people. The world is at the start of figuring that out at scale and there is lots to learn. But hiring is always going to be the same game, finding the right people for the role and its requirements. If I were hiring for an oil rigger it would not be more complex than hiring for a great developer. It will definitely be different, but all recruitment is different and sees different challenges. But it's always going to be about knowing what to ask, knowing your industry, and doing your very best to find a process that selects fairly and efficiently. Remote work hiring is just a different challenge that we are all just getting used to. People are hard problems to solve.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    > finding the right people is the same challenge regardless. Are you claiming that the complexity of managing in-office is usually, roughly the same as managing remote teams? I'm asking towards magnitude/degree, not if both are sometimes true. If not, you are stating the obvious: "People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes" In my experience, more people struggle with remote than in-office. I've found a lot of satisfaction in returning to a primarily in-person team for this reason. But that's just my experience, an anecdote. Not everyone should be like me, and I'm not saying everyone should return to the office or that WFH is bad. What I am frustrated about is that it seems like many people take dogmatic pro-WFH positions and do not acknowledge the nuance of these issues.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
The cost of living isn't the employer's problem, it's the employees. The cost of living can eventually drive up wages, but only in so far as other regions draw away labor with a better wage to cost ratio. An employer, especially one that isn't just a Human being but a company, will only pay you enough to make you sign and incentivize you to work. They don't care at all how you make your living.
brookst 4y ago
The cost of living thing is a mess. I think it will get sorted out as it becomes clear remote workers can and do still get offers. The current thinking seems to be “if you live in a low cost area, that means there is no competition for you”. Which used to be true, and is not true. And there are tons of just dumb things in remote work policy today. My company does cost of living adjustment based on the state you’re in. So if you were to move to a high cost city in a low cost state (Bozeman, MT), it’s a brutal effective pay cut. But if you move to low cost city in an expensive state (Yreka, CA), it’s a huge effective pay raise. Despite, theoretically, the employer getting the same value. I think these will sort themselves out over time, but it’s annoying in the short term.
- monkeynotes 4y ago
  During the hiring process Gitlab literally reclassified my city based off of data from a free crowd sourced website with about 10 data points. They struck their original offer and reduced it by ~10k just as I'd passed the final round. They refused to even talk about it, even as I protested they'd wasted so much of my time and I was about to sign. I walked away and found a much better paying job elsewhere.
  - brookst 4y ago
    That’s really irritating. Though I guess with the news today, maybe a bullet dodged.
  - kazanz 4y ago
    Unethical, but could you seed the crowd sourced site with datapoints that increase the cost of living data, increasing the offer they'd make you next time?
    - brookst 4y ago
      This is great. Let’s all pick some random town on the beach in Costa Rica, pump it up to Manhattan-level cost of living in the crowdsourced DB, apply to Gitlab.
- 4y ago
HDThoreaun 4y ago
> It should be about the value I bring to the company Your salary has never been even related to the value you bring the company. That is just the absolute maximum they're willing to pay. Your salary is the lowest your company thinks they can pay to get a suitable employee. They pay remote workers less because there are remote workers willing to work for less, simple as that.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  This. Proof of it is in the pay rates of CEOs.
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    How do you figure? The CEO and a process employee of the company have two entirely different roles.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I think it defies belief that the highest-paid CEOs bring so much value to their company that it covers their salaries and other compensation. They are, to me, a clear indication that compensation rates are only loosely correlated to value. There is some correlation, don't get me wrong, but it looks like people are generally undervalued at the low end of the compensation spectrum and overvalued at the high end.
      - ideamotor 4y ago
        I think what you’ve described is the standard train track large company. For a smaller roller coaster company, I disagree.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        Yes. I'm talking broad strokes. The overpaid CEO thing is primarily an effect in major corporations.
fleddr 4y ago
Putting on my accountant's hat... Alright, Mr Gilbert, cloud engineer, microservices architect, UX person, whichever. What is your value to the company? Well, I help to design a..... No, your VALUE. As in, money. How much money do you make the company? Errrr......
mylons 4y ago
where do you live that electricity is expensive enough that your work setup is a concern?
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  Germany. Prices went through the roof last year, and are currently capped by the government at 0.40 € per kWh. But only for 80% of your average consumption per year. So 8 hours work a day cost me roughly 0.50 € in electricity. Same goes for gas prices, they also went quite high. But then again, I'm grateful that we are in the position to get support from the government.
dahfizz 4y ago
Your salary is the cost to replace you with someone else. In person jobs have a smaller market. Everyone is subject to the same COL, so the min salary the employer must pay has a certain floor to it. Remote jobs have a larger market. If you're remote, your employer may as well hire someone from Ohio that is willing to work for half your salary. You have to compete on cost with those cheaper employees.
brightball 4y ago
Fwiw, about 6 years ago I was working for a company that addressed this is a really solid way. They had a main office in South Carolina in an area with very low cost of living and salaries that matched. They had an office in Phoenix and an office in Seattle. Ended up standardizing pay based on Phoenix since it was in the middle. This was actually a really big deal because the majority of the company was in South Carolina while only about 40 people were split between Seattle and Phoenix.
dudul 4y ago
The CoL argument makes no sense to me. Why limit yourself to the CoL due to geographical location? How about the CoL of someone who is single and someone who has 2 kids in college? How about the CoL of someone who needs expensive drugs as opposed to someone healthy? Oh you adjust to CoL? Well, then I expect my salary to be indexed on the inflation. Oh no? You only do the standard 3%? But what about CoL? As a side note, a salary is not about the value you bring to the company either. It's just how much they have to pay to find someone with your skills.

dboreham 4y ago

> game as it fits their needs Why is this surprising? People like to pay less for things.

rizach8 4y ago

This is so foreign to me, living in Europe. The salary here is in my experience based on where the company is located. Big city, big salary.

MrGilbert 4y ago
European here. This happened interviewing with companies that are located in rather well-payed areas, precisely southern germany. :)
- Scharkenberg 4y ago
  Munich has spiralled out of control in this aspect.
schnitzelstoat 4y ago
Yeah, but our "big salary" is still like half of what they'd pay in the USA. Perhaps the company doesn't see it worthwhile to argue over peanuts.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  Paying a given salary in Germany is a lot more expensive for a company than paying the exact same salary in America. There are both more taxes on the employer side and more labor regulations that cost money to comply with. The number of hours worked tends to be different, too.
  - eru 4y ago
    The wedge between gross and net pay is indeed big in Germany. Btw, it's getting bigger in the US as well over the least few decades. Singapore is a place with a smaller gap, and less regulation. That's part of the reason they went from third world to first world.
- rkangel 4y ago
  This is true, and still true to some extent once you compensate you can't compare the two numbers. There are large costs associated with living in the US like health insurance that just don't exist in the UK where I live.
zahrc 4y ago
Of course there might be exceptions, but isn’t it reasonable to expect that companies in bigger cities have more business and can therefore pay more?
- eru 4y ago
  That would only really make sense for the location of the sales office, I guess? Where you put your developers shouldn't make much of a difference to how much business you have? However you are up to something: big cities tend to be more productive. That's the reason people and businesses put up with the higher rents and other inconveniences. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration

jahnu 4y ago

> they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area Imagine haggling with a supplier like this. Crazy we put up with it.

austhrow743 4y ago
Suppliers can absolutely charge different rates in different locations.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
luckylion 4y ago
That's pretty normal, isn't it? Many services do location-based pricing, a friend of mine just sets his location to Turkey to get rebates from Adobe, Microsoft etc.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
They do though.
mcv 4y ago
Oh, that definitely happens. Consider the power that supermarkets hold over farmers.

MaximumYComb 4y ago

My company allows fully flexible work, but due to the nature of our work we tend to hire locally. A recruiter made a mistake and arranged an interview for me in the wrong city, and I was hired as the only fully remote employee for a local team. Does it have challenges? Yes. Am I a valued employee? Yes, I am potentially one of the most valuable employees after my first year in my team. Easily top 20%. I visit my team every few months for a week. Mostly the point is so we can go out for dinner and I get to have some drinks with them. The workday itself is changed very little by being in person.

toyg 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. That's like saying the price of goods and services should be about the cost of producing them. No no no: the price is about what buyers will bear. In the same way, salaries are about what the worker will bear. If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business will use it.

michaelscott 4y ago
Very much this. It makes the process of salary negotiation completely tied to perception rather than reality, which isn't necessarily bad for the employee. It just means that the justifications for a higher salary need to change from "your salary offer is too low because it shouldn't depend on where I live" to "your salary offer should be higher because I can improve your business in x, y and z"
- anon20230209 4y ago
  Also, the expectation by employer that by paying an average salary they get 100% performance has to change. Employees can optimise for pay or life depending on what the company is willing to offer.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  > your salary offer should be higher because I can improve your business in x, y and z I just don't think this is true for the overwhelming majority of employees, including developers.
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    It is true for almost all employees, otherwise the business wouldn't be hiring.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I think the tried and true “Your salary offer is too low compared to your competitors, or what I can do for myself” is pretty much fine right?

brmgb 4y ago

> I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued, that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that can truthfully deduct the cost-for-living from the compensation they are offering. It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. It's mostly about what you can negotiate to be fair. Refusing to pay you more is their way of telling you they don't believe you can get something better than what they offer where you are which is legitimate. They will reassess if you show them a better offer from a competitor if they really want you. A big part of negotiation rests on your best alternative to what's being negotiated. > It's different, and you need to adjust your processes So you actually agree it's complicated from a company point of view.

autoexec 4y ago
> Refusing to pay you more is their way of telling you they don't believe you can get something better than what they offer where you are which is legitimate. Except when they collude to drive down wages or pay for laws to make it harder for workers to organize keeping them weak. Also "where you are" has been made irrelevant for many workers because they can get employment anywhere without going anywhere. That means what's really being said is that they don't believe you can get something better than what they offer anywhere.
- TehShrike 4y ago
  Employees could collude too, saying "we refuse to work for anything less than X$". Except that employees would do the same thing that employers do all the time and walk across the line as soon as someone offers them a compelling deal, even if it isn't at the "collusion" price.

franciscop 4y ago

While it is true, the best you can do is vote with your feet. I have had the situation where I was offered "locally competitive salaries" (not in the USA though), and every time I've rejected it I had a 50%-100% better offer within few weeks . There ARE companies that will pay better and independently of your location, you do need to be good though (as in companies are proactively seeking you out) and keep searching. A good indicator is the finances of the company. If you are going to be another cog contributing marginal value, for whatever reason that is, then it's going to be difficult to argue for better salary (thought they MIGHT give a higher salary, to everyone, like e.g. Google). If you can however have a big impact and they have good revenue or funding, then it's a lot easier to argue for higher salaries: "so you are making $300k MRR or just raised $5M of VC money with 4 employees? And you have more tickets and bug fixes to improve growth and reduce churn that you can feasibly do? Great, let's talk how I can effectively help to slash those tickets and then we can discuss my compensation*". Classic: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ * though if the company is crushing it so much, and specially because your marginal tax rate might be already at 50%, evaluate asking for some Stock Options/RSUs/etc.

ericmay 4y ago
I’m really surprised that nobody has set up address as a service yet so that you can claim for example to live in New York by virtue of an address auto command “a New York salary”.
- Avicebron 4y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but this seems illegal on its face. Just from a tax perspective for the government, I feel like people would immediately start trying to game it for taxes.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    I don't know if it matters but I have a limited company and am an employee of said company, which means I deal with taxes on my own and can perform work for (almost) any company in the world - I just invoice them like any supplier. Maybe this is the future? Though some companies would rather you were their employee I suppose.

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HatchedLake721 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. There are perfectly valid reasons why that's not the case, see here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation... https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-ra...

_pastel 4y ago
Interesting how Gitlab repeatedly emphasizes it's based on "cost of market", not "cost of living".
dkersten 4y ago
I don’t buy it. Most of their reasons are why it’s better for them and not why it benefits the employees. The employees are still being discriminated against for living in low cost of living areas by being valued at less, regardless of what their final disposable income is. For example, moving to a low cost of living area is something I did as a choice so that I could save more, and this came with a cost: my friends live further away now. They’re saying I should be penalised for this by not being able to save more compared to their employees who stayed in the high cost of living area.
- RHSeeger 4y ago
  And if someone moved to a high cost of living area because they wanted to make more, is that different in some way? Would not paying them the amount for a similar quality of life not be the same type of discrimination?
ragazzina 4y ago
> "It’s something that kind of happened organically," Sid says. "Every time we hired someone, we’d discuss what a reasonable compensation would be. And many times, it came back to what they were making beforehand, and that really depended a lot on where they were. What a bunch of hypocrites. The perfectly know that what a person is currently making does not come "organically" into the conversation. The employer does whatever is in its power to have this information from the candidate.

deleted 4y ago

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anon20230209 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. But they are not hiring you for "value", you are just a body in a seat filling a "role". Real game to play is: you ask for X money, they propose Y money, agree and do Y amount of work and not the X amount of work. It's entirely reasonable to "quite-quit" even at non-minimum-salary compensation levels.

mcv 4y ago
Then they should hire someone else. There are cheaper bodies for filling seats than mine.
- anon20230209 4y ago
  And they do. Have you not seen all the whining of Google veterans cut after their recent lay-offs?
  - mcv 4y ago
    It's sad that companies like Google these days are more concerned with filling seats than with writing good software.

recuter 4y ago

> I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. Play the game as fits your needs. For example, adjust your work output and use the freed time to look for a better employer. Also, if anybody asks, I live in Bermuda.

MrGilbert 4y ago
Well, that's the downside of being loyal, I guess. Although, over the years, I've become better at that. Yet... It doesn't feel right to me.

yxhuvud 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. What, no! It should be about what offers you can get from other places. If your offer is close to your local salaries, then that mean the company thinks you would have a hard time getting a better offer from somewhere else.

regularfry 4y ago
That depends entirely on how unique my value proposition is to the company making the offer. If I'm a commodity, yes, salary offers will trend to cost of living.
eru 4y ago
It's a bit more complicated. For example, I can get x$ from Google, but that doesn't mean SAP or ASML should also pay me x$: I don't know anything about their respective ecosystems, so I wouldn't be able to contribute much of value.

givemeethekeys 4y ago

> companies out there stating that remote is "complicated" It's complicated because a large number of managers haven't figured out how to manage a remote team.

m000 4y ago
I think it is complicated because a large number of management jobs are "bullshit" (see [1]). I.e. they could be eliminated, and productivity would not be affected, or it could even be improved. Remote work does an exposé on the usefulness of these roles. And of course, those holding them, would be eager for everyone to return to the office work theater. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- brigandish 4y ago
  There certainly are bullshit jobs and people doing valuable roles in bullshit ways, but Graeber’s claim that more than half of societal work is bullshit is also clearly bullshit, and not just because I read some of the book and sighed heavily before putting it down, but also because of claims like this that I didn’t see in the book but are in the Wikipedia page: > duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code... To think that code can be “fixed permanently” shows a complete lack of understanding and insight into programming, and brings to mind the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect - if Graeber is so wildly wrong about a subject I know well, why do I trust him on those I don’t?
  - nikau 4y ago
    I've dealt with lots of code which could be fixed permanently - ie. put in proper error handling and rearchitect to be robust and maintenance free. More so than ever with the push for MVP and agile ticket stat chasing.
    - brigandish 4y ago
      MVP's are supposed to be temporary, that's a weird cherry pick. Regardless, code is contextual and relies on so many things other than its own quality at the time of that assessment being made that to say it's been fixed permanently, as if there's some Platonic ideal code that can be written, is, in my view, something I'd only hear from someone new to the industry or not in the industry at all, like Graeber. The job is about solving problems in the clearest way possible over time, not once. Managing change is of central importance. If your product is good, it will change. If it changes, bugs will inevitably be introduced. That's not shoddy practice or the fault of some poor architecture decision. I imagine that the only bug that gets fixed "permanently" is in a product that nobody uses enough for it to need change. Like some failed MVPs.

knorker 4y ago

Do you want to play that game? Because if location doesn't matter then there are a billion people in India who are willing to do your job for much much less. In salary per value to the company you are extremely overpaid, assuming you live in the west. I don't think you want to open that can of worms. Edit to add: All those people moving from India to the US for the money could then stay in India. You're not competing with the remote work crowd. You are competing with local cost of labor. If the market switches to just value added, unrelated to location, then you're screwed.

eru 4y ago
Yes, I want to play that game. I want people in India to be paid more, if possible. I want to open that 'can of worms'. The big problem is that labour in India isn't all that productive. Offshoring isn't some magic bullet. Companies have tried that and are still trying. Google, Microsoft etc have offices in India. They also keep their offices in the US and Europe not just out of imaginary obligation to westerners, but because it makes economic sense. See also how Apple still does lots of the design work in the US, but manufactures in China. They would off-shore more off the design work as well, if they could. (And if Apple could but would not, someone else would do it and eat their lunch.)
- knorker 4y ago
  Offshoring is not the same thing. There are great people in India. It's just more conducive for them to get better pay if they manage to get an H1B and move to the US. If they could just "work remote", then you (as an American, or at least someone who can and does work in the US? Well, applies to any western country) are no longer competing with "people from India who manage to get an H1B and have a family situation compatible with moving countries", but suddenly with ALL qualified workers in India. Big tech in the west employs HUGE numbers of expats from lower paid countries. A very large portion of which Big tech paid for the H1B (or equiv) and relocation costs. If you are remote, then you're only valued on your output. And I'm not saying you're in a poor position against a random engineer from India (nor presumably from a random engineer in the US), but you'll be in a poor position against the equivalent of your amazing local coworker who moved from India (or hell, any European country with less pay) because that's where the job was. If the job is "anywhere, because it's remote", then I'm saying that you may not be on the winning side of this change. Opening up "work from anywhere" is not like offshoring to save costs. More like given two equally valuable people, why should an employer pay a premium to one, just because they chose to live in a higher cost of living country?

roenxi 4y ago

This is underselling the value of economic clustering. Even if everyone works from home, there are advantages to drawing from local talent pools (people know people and can vouch for their work, cultural norms make it easier to work together, there are less labour law difficulties, there is less geopolitical risk of parts of your team being sanctioned because you hired Chinese or Russian programmers, etc, etc). All else being equal, the only reason to hire a distant programmer is to pay them less. From the firms perspective they can't easily tell if a distant programmer is more effective than a local programmer so it is a struggle (market-for-lemons style) to justify paying the same amount. If the costs are equal, may as well hire local. It starts to make sense when you realise salaries are driven by the cost to replace an employee (including the risk of a bad hire), not the value they provide. Companies can't measure the value individual programmers provide anyway.

lunarhustler 4y ago
> Even if everyone works from home, there are advantages to drawing from local talent pools (people know people and can vouch for their work, cultural norms make it easier to work together, there are less labour law difficulties, there is less geopolitical risk of parts of your team being sanctioned because you hired Chinese or Russian programmers, etc, etc) You could reframe these points so that they look like advantages of global businesses... you'll have someone to vouch for and evaluate people across multiple talent pools (increasing talent supply), the majority of your team will never be sanctioned simultaneously (diversifying that risk), and as for cultural norms, don't we all know that diversity is strength. Saying there are no advantages to global remote first besides cost is underselling it; there are important advantages, for one > It starts to make sense when you realise salaries are driven by the cost to replace an employee asynchronous remote makes documentation and written communication central, which at the end of the day makes it easier to replace employees. Cost is important too, if you can literally hire 50% more workforce that's one hell of a deal.
eru 4y ago
I mostly agree. > All else being equal, the only reason to hire a distant programmer is to pay them less. Yes. To give some example where not everything else is equal: There can be benefits from covering more timezones, or benefits from covering different jurisdictions (and tax regimes).

blitzar 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. Tell that to the kid getting paid 14 cents an hour on the other side of the planet to make your $1,500 iPhone.

newsclues 4y ago
Isn’t that the point? Most people will be envious of the transaction relationship be it employee/employer or consumer/seller and feel that they were cheated, regardless. The wage was too low, the product was priced to high from one side and the wage was too high and the product priced too cheap from the other. There is actual cheating but it seems like people are never(rarely) actually satisfied, and social media has made it worse.
eru 4y ago
I'm not sure what your point is? Making remote work and pay for productivity more common and accepted, would help that kid. That's good!

scotty79 4y ago

Maybe "Where do you live?" should be one of those questions employers shouldn't be allowed to ask? Like what's your religion or what's your sexual orientation?

sokoloff 4y ago
So long as there are governments involved in the employee-employer relationship, this can’t happen. I don’t actually care where you live, but I do care that I can legally employ you, pay you, pay taxes/social charges, and that I understand the obligations of the arrangement we’re contemplating entering.
- scotty79 4y ago
  It could be set up completely differently. Employer could pay 100% to the government and government could pay employee after properly taxing the income. But that would require work from the government that it doesn't want to do.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Which government(s)? Taxes and social charges can vary by city, county, state, and country. If I'm going to hire scotty79 with no knowledge of where in the world they live, which governments would I coordinate with and how would I know that? Employment rules, customs, and laws vary by at least state and country (and minimum wages vary by city). How would I know what laws applied to the employment relationship?
    - scotty79 4y ago
      Federal obviously. Somebody has to know what's up with all this mess. If I'm from another country government should know that and tax accordingly. I have no idea how placing burden of knowing all this on every single employer helps anybody (except IRS).
      - ghaff 4y ago

RHSeeger 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. It's a balancing act. If companies pay based on value added to the company, they will wind up paying more than average in low COL areas, and less than average in high COL areas; so they won't be able to hire people in high COL areas at all. If they scale pay based on COL, they'll be able to hire people in both areas. So yes, it's not "fair" to people in lower COL areas, but it's not arbitrary either.

deleted 4y ago
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eru 4y ago
> [...] so they won't be able to hire people in high COL areas at all. You say it like it's a bad thing. If they can hire people for relatively cheap purely from low COL areas, and make the company work, they should totally go for that. That's the whole reason behind having offices in even cheaper areas like Vietnam, instead of just the American Midwest. Of course, if you can't actually run your business purely on people from low COL areas, that means there must be something the people from the high COL areas bring to the table that's worth it for your business. And that's proves the original commenter's point that the company should pay you according what value you bring to the company.

deleted 4y ago

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jwmoz 4y ago

It's a free market so ultimately the best offer will secure a developer.

tcgv 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. It's called the "job market" for a reason. Both sides (employers and employees) are trying to maximize their returns. It's never going to be solely about the value we as developers (or any other occupation) bring to the company.

swah 4y ago

My current employer uses a formula that adjusts between NY cost of living and local cost of living, half way. Found it super generous (unexpected) to be honest...

jt2190 4y ago

> … some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. Keep in mind that not all companies are competing for talent globally. [1] The real question is whether companies that compete in a local or regional market will be able to continue to pay local rates to anyone with specialized skills who can also go remote, or if they’ll just give up and find some other solution. [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

tiffanyh 4y ago

Cost of Labor vs Cost of Living. Sounds like your interview at companies who employ the former, not later. https://www.zenefits.com/workest/cost-of-living-vs-cost-of-labor-is-there-a-difference/ https://www.zenefits.com/workest/cost-of-living-vs-cost-of-l...

Lio 4y ago

I've heard this arugment before. What's daft is no company I've heard of only wants to sell locally. They all want to sell nationally or internationally whilst paying based on what they think the local market value for labour should be.

ghaff 4y ago
LOTS of small companies only sell locally.

hackererror404 4y ago

It says a lot that they pay based on things like "where do you live" VS the value of the work that you do.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> What annoys me the most is that there are still companies out there stating that remote is "complicated". It's different, and you need to adjust your processes, but it's not "complicated". I’ve worked remote and managed remote teams for a long time. I would say it is indeed more complicated. You may not struggle with remote work and may do fine interacting remotely, but that’s not true for a lot of people. It’s very common to hire good engineers into remote positions and discover that they can’t focus at home, they misinterpret digital communications, or that they just wanted a remote job because they read somewhere that they could work 2 hours per day and nobody would be able to tell. The obvious retort is that you just need to hire “right”, but that’s not an easy thing to do.

monkeynotes 4y ago
It isn't more complicated, it is just different. Here, let me hire for an office instead... "You may not struggle with office work and may do fine interacting in person, but that’s not true for a lot of people." I have people who do far better at home than in the office, and some on the other end of the spectrum. People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and finding the right people is the same challenge regardless. What is hard is tooling and setting up processes that work for remote people. The world is at the start of figuring that out at scale and there is lots to learn. But hiring is always going to be the same game, finding the right people for the role and its requirements. If I were hiring for an oil rigger it would not be more complex than hiring for a great developer. It will definitely be different, but all recruitment is different and sees different challenges. But it's always going to be about knowing what to ask, knowing your industry, and doing your very best to find a process that selects fairly and efficiently. Remote work hiring is just a different challenge that we are all just getting used to. People are hard problems to solve.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  > finding the right people is the same challenge regardless. Are you claiming that the complexity of managing in-office is usually, roughly the same as managing remote teams? I'm asking towards magnitude/degree, not if both are sometimes true. If not, you are stating the obvious: "People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes" In my experience, more people struggle with remote than in-office. I've found a lot of satisfaction in returning to a primarily in-person team for this reason. But that's just my experience, an anecdote. Not everyone should be like me, and I'm not saying everyone should return to the office or that WFH is bad. What I am frustrated about is that it seems like many people take dogmatic pro-WFH positions and do not acknowledge the nuance of these issues.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

The cost of living isn't the employer's problem, it's the employees. The cost of living can eventually drive up wages, but only in so far as other regions draw away labor with a better wage to cost ratio. An employer, especially one that isn't just a Human being but a company, will only pay you enough to make you sign and incentivize you to work. They don't care at all how you make your living.

brookst 4y ago

The cost of living thing is a mess. I think it will get sorted out as it becomes clear remote workers can and do still get offers. The current thinking seems to be “if you live in a low cost area, that means there is no competition for you”. Which used to be true, and is not true. And there are tons of just dumb things in remote work policy today. My company does cost of living adjustment based on the state you’re in. So if you were to move to a high cost city in a low cost state (Bozeman, MT), it’s a brutal effective pay cut. But if you move to low cost city in an expensive state (Yreka, CA), it’s a huge effective pay raise. Despite, theoretically, the employer getting the same value. I think these will sort themselves out over time, but it’s annoying in the short term.

monkeynotes 4y ago
During the hiring process Gitlab literally reclassified my city based off of data from a free crowd sourced website with about 10 data points. They struck their original offer and reduced it by ~10k just as I'd passed the final round. They refused to even talk about it, even as I protested they'd wasted so much of my time and I was about to sign. I walked away and found a much better paying job elsewhere.
- brookst 4y ago
  That’s really irritating. Though I guess with the news today, maybe a bullet dodged.
- kazanz 4y ago
  Unethical, but could you seed the crowd sourced site with datapoints that increase the cost of living data, increasing the offer they'd make you next time?
  - brookst 4y ago
    This is great. Let’s all pick some random town on the beach in Costa Rica, pump it up to Manhattan-level cost of living in the crowdsourced DB, apply to Gitlab.
4y ago

HDThoreaun 4y ago

> It should be about the value I bring to the company Your salary has never been even related to the value you bring the company. That is just the absolute maximum they're willing to pay. Your salary is the lowest your company thinks they can pay to get a suitable employee. They pay remote workers less because there are remote workers willing to work for less, simple as that.

JohnFen 4y ago
This. Proof of it is in the pay rates of CEOs.
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  How do you figure? The CEO and a process employee of the company have two entirely different roles.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I think it defies belief that the highest-paid CEOs bring so much value to their company that it covers their salaries and other compensation. They are, to me, a clear indication that compensation rates are only loosely correlated to value. There is some correlation, don't get me wrong, but it looks like people are generally undervalued at the low end of the compensation spectrum and overvalued at the high end.
    - ideamotor 4y ago
      I think what you’ve described is the standard train track large company. For a smaller roller coaster company, I disagree.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Yes. I'm talking broad strokes. The overpaid CEO thing is primarily an effect in major corporations.

fleddr 4y ago

Putting on my accountant's hat... Alright, Mr Gilbert, cloud engineer, microservices architect, UX person, whichever. What is your value to the company? Well, I help to design a..... No, your VALUE. As in, money. How much money do you make the company? Errrr......

mylons 4y ago

where do you live that electricity is expensive enough that your work setup is a concern?

MrGilbert 4y ago
Germany. Prices went through the roof last year, and are currently capped by the government at 0.40 € per kWh. But only for 80% of your average consumption per year. So 8 hours work a day cost me roughly 0.50 € in electricity. Same goes for gas prices, they also went quite high. But then again, I'm grateful that we are in the position to get support from the government.

dahfizz 4y ago

Your salary is the cost to replace you with someone else. In person jobs have a smaller market. Everyone is subject to the same COL, so the min salary the employer must pay has a certain floor to it. Remote jobs have a larger market. If you're remote, your employer may as well hire someone from Ohio that is willing to work for half your salary. You have to compete on cost with those cheaper employees.

brightball 4y ago

Fwiw, about 6 years ago I was working for a company that addressed this is a really solid way. They had a main office in South Carolina in an area with very low cost of living and salaries that matched. They had an office in Phoenix and an office in Seattle. Ended up standardizing pay based on Phoenix since it was in the middle. This was actually a really big deal because the majority of the company was in South Carolina while only about 40 people were split between Seattle and Phoenix.

dudul 4y ago

The CoL argument makes no sense to me. Why limit yourself to the CoL due to geographical location? How about the CoL of someone who is single and someone who has 2 kids in college? How about the CoL of someone who needs expensive drugs as opposed to someone healthy? Oh you adjust to CoL? Well, then I expect my salary to be indexed on the inflation. Oh no? You only do the standard 3%? But what about CoL? As a side note, a salary is not about the value you bring to the company either. It's just how much they have to pay to find someone with your skills.