> I agree that cities have a higher cost of living, but the people trying to pull me away from my current employer into new remote work don't seem to need to make that distinction!
You should move to these other employers, as this is the only way your current stingy employer will learn.
> My cost of living is very cheap. My commute is 15 minutes. I live close to my family. Why should I want to leave?
You shouldn't. If you have a good job in such a location and are happy with the opportunities available, enjoy!
The problem is that markets naturally congregate in distinct locations so anyone who is looking to advance their career needs to make their way to a hub.
> You want to move to the Midwest and work remotely, or apply for a transfer to a different regional office? Happy to let you do it, but know that the market rate for your skills there is X, which means an adjustment in salary for a voluntary move.
It seems like nobody wins in this situation. If my goal is to maximize savings, I'd move to the Bay Area to get the maximum salary from you and find the cheapest housing in the area. I'd be miserable because I'm living in a place I don't like in a shitty apartment. On the other hand, if you offered to pay the same amount while I live in the midwest, I'd be happier with my living situation and be pocketing more cash. This would make me more productive and make me stay at the company longer, with no additional cost to you.
> with the assumption that location truly is a choice and people have chosen to live somewhere cheaper
That's a terrible assumption to make. People often live where they do due to obligation to others (family usually). I would never work for a company that would consider cutting salary because they moved to a lower cost area. I also know several people that have quit a job rather than relocate to a lower cost part of the country with an employer as the relocation also included a cut in pay.
> Huh, it is rather insulting to people who are more willing to move and also stating top performers always stay stuck to same place.
Not really. I'm not stating a hard and fast rule, but a tendency. People with more options are far more likely to take action to avoid a major disruption to their lives, and people with fewer options are more likely put up with shit.
I know if my employer decided to pack up and move to a new city, I'd almost certainly prefer to take another job locally than uproot nearly everything to move with them for little to no benefit to me.
> Unless the company is compensating folks for living closer to offices, they are likely just transferring those costs to the employees’ cost of living when forcing folks to live in higher cost of living areas.
Cost of living has historically been factored when determining salary, right?
I don't live in a high cost of living environment (I live in Malmo, Sweden; pretty cheap by Swedish standards overall) and I won't earn as much here as I would if I was working in Zurich or Stockholm.
What you say here comes across as hugely entitled since presumably you are already paid a really high salary and want to make even more relative to others in your area? By virtue of you being able to work remotely even if it comes at a cost to your productivity?
As a counter: Large companies (such as IBM) typically have their campuses located outside of major metropolitan hubs where office space is cheap: is your predilection, then, that they should pay you now less? If they force a move to a lower cost of living area because they decide that?
You are paid for a job in a place, and getting to that job is part of the salary for that job in some circumstances.
You wouldn't expect Police officer to be paid the same in NYC vs Bryan, Ohio. If that police officer were to move to Bryan from NYC though: their travel costs and cost of living are on them, They would be paid to work in NYC.
> It costs less to live in some places... if someone was willing to pay me SF wages to live in suburban Texas... cool, I'm all for that. But it's stupid on their part.
No one is paying you to live in Texas, they are paying you to do some specific work. If you can produce as much value as the guy who lived in SF, and will accept 95% of the salary that applicant would, but the employer passed on you because you won't except 80% of what they’d pay for an SF developer, and they hire the SF developer instead, they’ve lost money.
Location pay when the job isn't tied to a location is irrational and involves the employer losing money.
Would you subsidize other employee lifestyle costs? Extra pay for a larger home, or more expensive car, or more frequent international travel? If not, why should you pay more for the same job because the employee lived in a more expensive region, when the job is not tied to that region?
> But that's not gonna happen. They will most likely not get the same paycheck as their colleagues on the coasts. Mostly because the cost of living is much lower.
See, there's no logic to it once you unpack it. If the company is willing to pay $X for a given person in one location, they can obviously afford to pay $X to them in another location - they're not any worse for that, since they get the same productivity in return (quite possibly more, because less commute time == happier employees).
But yes, in practice, they will lower the pay - and then complain that they can't hire anyone in those locations...
> Why should someone living in Indiana make less money than someone living in NYC for a remote tech job?
Because on average they'll accept less money. Someone in NYC is more likely to have other options with higher pay. If a business wants to hire them, they have to offer more. Simple as that.
> What's to stop me just moving somewhere cheaper after I get the remote job tired to location?
Nothing, assuming I can find other people with the similar quality as you, but significantly cheaper because they live in lower cost of living area, why would I not replace you ?
> A company basically pays you for your cost of living. That's why pay is high in the Bay Area or NY, and why you take a massive pay cut when you move out.
That's the essence of another issue companies are forcing with remote work. It puts the lie to any claim that compensation is based on business value. Do I not provide the same value to the business if I live in Omaha, Nebraska rather than San Jose, California?
But, the company has offices in Menlo Park, you're more valuable because you're closer to them, you say? But the company also has offices in Omaha, and a dozens other places around the world.
This isn't theoretical: companies have already said that pay scales for remote work will be tied to location, regardless of the contribution a person makes to the company.
Employers are going to have to reckon with the fact that if I can chose to live more comfortably, I can also choose to expect to compensated for my contributions rather than my postal code. Am I worth a six-figure salary or not?
> Did the value to Google of the work these people are doing suddenly go down? No, and not even if they were previously working from San Francisco and now working from South Lake Tahoe, or even Bumfuck Nowhere.
I'm a senior developer who has chosen to live both in expensive cities like New York, as well as rural areas.
I knew moving to the rural areas I'd make less in pay with the companies there, I accepted this because it also came with a lower cost of living. My skills grew but my pay was reduced. So was my rent.
Under your logic the local companies should compete with San Francisco salaries, because I "could" be making that much there. When I moved out of NYC I wasn't expecting other companies to compete with my former NYC salary, that would be absurd. The pay is high there because the cost of living is high, not because that is specifically what my talents are "worth".
Yes, the fact everyone is remote now is making everyone second-guess this assumption about pay and location. However, prior to remote work you got paid relative to the cost of living in your area. Programmers in Fargo, North Dakota made far less than programmers in Los Angeles, even with the same or greater skills.
> The city I live in is normally a personal choice. But by paying based on location, the city I live in no longer becomes a personal choice
You still have the personal choice to live in the city of your choice, either by not working for a particular company because they don't offer you the ability to work from your preferred city, or working for the wage they are willing to pay you to work from there.
> it suddenly stops being a personal choice, which justifies the extra pay for living in that city.
I don't think "justification" enters the consideration for extra pay for living in city X or less pay or no job for living in city Y. You are offered a set of terms of employment working from a given place. There is nothing stopping you from attempting to negotiate different terms. Maybe you can improve on those terms. Some people have enough leverage to work from anywhere they want without any pay decrease. Not me, but maybe you!
> If they are unemployed it's likely their own fault.
Well hold on, I was just idly speculating, but I don't like this kind of thinking. There's a hundred and one reasons people can't leave a city, or the obstacle to leaving is too great.
Off the top of my head, not wanting to uproot kids into a new school system, partner's job, disability that makes it extraordinarily difficult to move (away from whatever ADA stuff you've got set up at your apartment and commute flow you've got set up), need to stay near sick family, need to stay regional to a very specific doctor or healthcare facility, and that's just needs. A strong desire to stay in a local area due to history or just preference should be valid as well.
I see this reasoning used to attack non-tech workers all the time and it bothers me.
>> Your trade assumes that none of your employees will want to live in a high cost of living area if given the opportunity to WFH. If their age / hobbies / etc. make city living attractive you will need to compensate them appropriately or be unable to attract them.
This is a fair point. Not sure if you're from the US, but I'll note that the weighted majority of all US technology job opportunities are in cities and major metro areas. If someone wants to live in a high-cost-of-living area, thats a great problem to have, because probably half the tech jobs are already there in the Bay Area especially. There is also no shortage of compensation in such high-cost-of-living areas.
> but with that kind of location based salary that pushes people to try and game the system. Get hired while saying you live in an expensive area and finally move somewhere cheap.
Doesn't this somewhat conflict with the idea that companies who pay local rates are going to discriminate against people who live in higher cost-of-living areas? Because if that's true, then yeah you could try to game the system by asking for a SF based salary, but the trade-off is that now you're less competitive. You'd have to be pretty confident that your skills were top-tier enough to offset that I guess.
> I see folks outside the Bay asking why shouldn't they get paid the same as Bay area folks, when they want to remote from somewhere that has 1/3rd the cost of living.
Well, why shouldn't they? It's not like the company magically has more money available when they hire a non-remote employee, is it?
>Presumably if you are in a higher cost of living area you chose to live there because you obtain a higher standard of living
right, or you were born there and have obligations and connections that keep you from saying well I am going to move now because my computations indicate that will be the optimal result!
At any rate, if I am in a higher cost of living area and your company will only pay the wage that fits the lower cost of living area that obviously means I will not work for you, and I think that is the case for anyone working in higher cost of living areas. So if you want to hire someone in higher cost of living areas you will have to handle that situation. And then we come back to the considerations that the parent poster said.
You should move to these other employers, as this is the only way your current stingy employer will learn.
reply