But when Indians, Germans, or Canadians move to the Bay Area for better pay, they don't immediately (or necessarily ever) become culturally Californian. They mi

But when Indians, Germans, or Canadians move to the Bay Area for better pay, they don't immediately (or necessarily ever) become culturally Californian. They might put their complaints aside for the paycheque, but they'd probably have equally-happily done the same as a remote worker. Especially when their whole organization is remote anyway, so there's essentially no subtle cultural difference between a Canadian working from Canada, and a Canadian who just moved to Mountainview while zooming from their spare bedroom. Furthermore, if the difference in compensation is really explained by differences in employee productivity caused by work culture barriers, then location-based pay must somehow maps to the productivity cost of that work-cultural barrier. There's no reason to think that this should map directly to cost of living, and it would change over time; if the workforce composition shifts towards Europeans for example, then now it's your workers in the bay area who are less productive due to missing subtle cultural cues from their German managers.