<story><title>Why is remote work seen as a gift?</title><url>https://cdoyle.me/2023/02/08/why-is-remote-work-seen-as-a-gift/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lunarhustler</author><text>Except the market ain&amp;#x27;t going to bear it, not for a long time anyway.&lt;p&gt;If I am a CEO of a remote-first company and it truly doesn&amp;#x27;t matter for me where the employees are located it makes no sense to overpay for labor in high cost of living area.&lt;p&gt;So if there&amp;#x27;s a company A that pays $X in high COL area, and $X&amp;#x2F;3 in a low COL area. And then there&amp;#x27;s a company B that pays $X&amp;#x2F;2 everywhere. Then people from the low COL area would go to the company B, and people from the high COL area would go to the company A. As a result, company B gets the same results 2 times cheaper.&lt;p&gt;Repeat this process enough times and the salaries will be equalized. Of course it&amp;#x27;s not immediate, there are companies rigidly set in their ways; there are people who won&amp;#x27;t move no matter what; there is limited supply of both companies and workers; etc, etc. But eventually the market forces will do their thing.</text></item><item><author>toyg</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; use it.</text></item><item><author>MrGilbert</author><text>I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs.&lt;p&gt;I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Also, from my personal point of view, it&amp;#x27;s the time I&amp;#x27;m saving for myself, not the money. Electricity is quite expensive nowadays, and my standing desk and audio&amp;#x2F;video equipment also wasn&amp;#x27;t payed by my employer.&lt;p&gt;What annoys me the most is that there are still companies out there stating that remote is &amp;quot;complicated&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s different, and you need to adjust your processes, but it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;complicated&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;edit: fixed typos and added a&amp;#x2F;v equipment to my ramblings&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cj</author><text>I run a remote-first company, and this is basically how we do it.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t give people different offers based on where they say they live.&lt;p&gt;Rather, we have a salary range for a job, and we look for people who are attracted by that salary range. This usually means people in SF, NYC, and other high COL cities disqualify themselves, so we end up hiring many people outside of tech hubs.&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you simply stop hiring in the top 20% COL cities, you can hire talent at significantly less salary ranges simply because we&amp;#x27;re not competing with Google, Amazon, etc in Silicon Valley or NYC.&lt;p&gt;Which allows us to hire a greater quantity of people. E.g. 2 engineers at $150k instead of 1 engineer at $300k.&lt;p&gt;But the key to this is not making a salary decision based on location. Instead, just set a salary range and you&amp;#x27;ll find what parts of the country people are willing to work at that range.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why is remote work seen as a gift?</title><url>https://cdoyle.me/2023/02/08/why-is-remote-work-seen-as-a-gift/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lunarhustler</author><text>Except the market ain&amp;#x27;t going to bear it, not for a long time anyway.&lt;p&gt;If I am a CEO of a remote-first company and it truly doesn&amp;#x27;t matter for me where the employees are located it makes no sense to overpay for labor in high cost of living area.&lt;p&gt;So if there&amp;#x27;s a company A that pays $X in high COL area, and $X&amp;#x2F;3 in a low COL area. And then there&amp;#x27;s a company B that pays $X&amp;#x2F;2 everywhere. Then people from the low COL area would go to the company B, and people from the high COL area would go to the company A. As a result, company B gets the same results 2 times cheaper.&lt;p&gt;Repeat this process enough times and the salaries will be equalized. Of course it&amp;#x27;s not immediate, there are companies rigidly set in their ways; there are people who won&amp;#x27;t move no matter what; there is limited supply of both companies and workers; etc, etc. But eventually the market forces will do their thing.</text></item><item><author>toyg</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; use it.</text></item><item><author>MrGilbert</author><text>I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs.&lt;p&gt;I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Also, from my personal point of view, it&amp;#x27;s the time I&amp;#x27;m saving for myself, not the money. Electricity is quite expensive nowadays, and my standing desk and audio&amp;#x2F;video equipment also wasn&amp;#x27;t payed by my employer.&lt;p&gt;What annoys me the most is that there are still companies out there stating that remote is &amp;quot;complicated&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s different, and you need to adjust your processes, but it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;complicated&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;edit: fixed typos and added a&amp;#x2F;v equipment to my ramblings&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dorwi</author><text>&amp;quot;As a result, company B gets the same results 2 times cheaper&amp;quot; - that&amp;#x27;s just an assumption. If I turn it around, it sounds - &amp;quot;people on average in high COL area do the same work two times faster than in low COL area&amp;quot;.</text></comment>