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Comment by JimDabell | Hacker News Reader

> when we were discussing the pay, I threw in a number that's common for the Bay area employees

> I thanked him for his opportunity and advised him to contact some sweatshops instead of playing the "remote" game.

> asking me to go down 1/3rd of my price because of where I lived in seemed ridiculous to me.

I agree with the general principle that you shouldn't give massive discounts because you live in a lower cost of living area, but you're comparing it to a Bay Area salary as if that's the norm. It's a massive outlier. Going down 1/3rd of a Bay Area salary (I'm assuming a developer of some sort from context) still puts you in the top 1% or so of earners virtually anywhere in the world. Offering two thirds of a Bay Area salary certainly can't be described as a "sweatshop" salary.

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Sorry for the lack of clarity, I have since edited my post. They asked me for 1/3rd of my price - Not going down by 1/3rd, but rather 1/3rd of my quoted salary. So, if it was 100k, he was asking me for 33k.

They did offer 1/3 of, and not 2/3 of, from what I've understood from the OP comment.

Going down 1/3 means going down by 1/3 not going down to 1/3. It's possible they misspoke though. 1/3 of a Bay Area salary is still not a sweatshop salary and will let you live like a king in many places in the world though!

Let's reverse this notion: if your company is a remote(-friendly) company the place your employees are living is their decision. Since your company allows them to work wherever they want, they don't necessarily have to live in the Bay Area. This becomes a personal preference and I don't see why a personal preference is your business, moreover why you need to reward it with extra money.

Also it's worth considering that in this business your employees are hired to think. It is nice companies starting to realize that it's not needed to be present 100% in the time in an office to be able to deliver the thinking, but they also need to realize that my brain produces the same output no matter where I live.

It's also a bit weird. Where I live is very expensive and far away from family but I live here because it's a nice area in proximity for jobs.

What's to stop me just moving somewhere cheaper after I get the remote job tired to location? Are they going to renegotiate with me? What if I just forward my mail and don't tell them.

Further still, there are always expensive areas in poorer places and cheaper areas in expensive places. Are these companies going to start auditing our finances before they discuss renumeration?

> Are they going to renegotiate with me?

As an example, GitLab explicitly requires you to inform them and makes no guarantee about if and at what pay level they offer you a new contract.

> What if I just forward my mail and don't tell them.

Sounds like an interesting problem for the courts once they find out.

Both answers seem ridiculous and like something that would quickly be dismissed in the employees favour in EU countries.

But at the end of the day, do we really think gitlab is going to dimiss or renegotiate with a performing employee rather than this being a loophole to get rid of someone they don't value?

> 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 ?

It's almost safe to assume they wouldn't hire me in the first place if they had the quality on tap significantly cheaper.

yes, the point is people (assuming similar work quality) living on cheaper place can afford to undercut other people living in more expensive place. That's why remote position usually pay less, because you are now competing globally.

Which goes back to the point, the price is the price and not, the price is variable based on location. Either there simply isn't enough value for anyone to be based in SF, or it should be possible to present similar value whilst being based elsewhere.

The only way you can demand SF area salary by living in let say vietnam is if you can convince your employer that they won't be able to find anyone else in the world that can do your job as good as you.

> they don't necessarily have to live in the Bay Area. This becomes a personal preference

This was part of my point: you're taking the Bay Area as the standard by which you're judging everything else. This is backwards. The Bay Area is an extreme outlier.

Yes, it's a personal preference. But if you choose to live in the Bay Area, your income requirements eclipse everybody else's. Everybody else can live extremely comfortably anywhere else on that kind of money. If you have the personal preference to live there, why should a business pay you more than everybody else everywhere else? It's your personal preference and it doesn't help the business in the slightest.

Yes, "going down by 1/3" would mean what you say - but they wrote "going down TO 1/3 of": "asking me to go down to 1/3rd of my price because of where I lived".

I read "going down to 1/3" differently than "going down by 1/3". "going down to" leaves you with 1/3; "going down by" leaves you with 2/3.

> they wrote "going down TO 1/3 of"

They didn't; as the OP already mentioned, they went back and edited it.

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