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Comment by rhamzeh | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand this complaint regarding salaries. I personally find it perfectly logical that 2 employees who put the same effort and work the same, earn the same.

And by "earn" I mean once you deduct taxes, cost of living, and personal required expenses (education, kids, healthcare, rent..). The extra one keeps/gets to use after all those are deducted should be the same for the process to be fair.

Why would someone working remote earn more? That somehow doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

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You get to choose where you live. If you choose to live somewhere with a high cost of living, why does that mean you get paid more? Why is Sally worth $150k a year in SF but Bob, who’s identical in work performance, only gets $100k because he happens to live somewhere else? Your lifestyle choices shouldn’t effect your salary.

I agree with this sentiment. Even having children is a personal choice, which one may choose to forgo in the interest of saving money for example. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you wouldn't expect to pay someone more simply because they choose to have 5 children and their family living costs are higher.

Because in that hypothetical situation, the company can hire those individuals at $150K and $100K respectively. Sally won't accept $100K given alternatives in the Bay Area and her unwillingness to move to $MIDWEST_CITY. And to Bob--who is very happy in his less crowded and expensive location--$100K looks pretty good, especially relative to local alternatives.

"Shouldn't" has very little to do with salary offers.

So clearly sally is not worth being hired, all things bein equal. It wouldn’t make sense for the company

If all things are absolutely equal other than Salary, the company only needs one person, and Bob will take the offer for $50K less--then, yes, they'll probably hire Bob. By virtue of having an expensive lifestyle--and, presumably, more local options--Sally has priced herself out of remote work for companies that genuinely don't care where employees are located.

Of course, real life is more complicated than that and all things are rarely equal.

ADDED: GitLab actually explicitly states: "All things being equal, we will hire people in lower cost markets vs. higher cost markets."

Sally might not have a more expensive lifestyle than Bob, but might be aware that a similar company is willing to pay $150k. And therefore not accept the offer of $100k.

Not a remote one playing by "everyone region has same pay-rate". Because if there is another one and paying more, then Bob, would also apply there.

I understand why it happens, I was replying to a post that says “everyone should earn the same”, which I disagree with.

a lot of assumptions here. Cost of living is proportional to quality of services, or else people would move. Shouldn’t gitlab also pay more so that the people who live in cheaper cities get better food/schools etc?

Otherwise they re just subsidizing the rent seeking behaviour of crazy expensive cities

Wages and cost/quality of living are in a feedback loop. Remote work will net benefit the cheaper cities and will deflate prices in the expensive ones. I think that is inevitable

Gitlab actually pays really well (relatively to local companies) in lower cost zones, I don't think you can find any market in lower cost areas where Gitlab is only slightly above the market.

Well good .. when remote work reaches the tipping point, i expect wages to be fully equalized

I make social sacrifices by living in a low CoL area in the South so that I may save more of my income. Why would I make monetary sacrifices as well when working remote?

What if one employee has ten kids and another has zero?

With 12 kids, I like how you think. :-)

Your expenses are none of your employers business.

Does that mean I can buy a more expensive house and get a higher salary to pay for it? If everybody gets that option, then nobody is going to live in cheap housing anymore.

That's great for lifting everybody out of poverty of course, but how is this suddenly possible? Can we maybe give everybody a Basic Income to take care of all the cost of living stuff?

Also, if living in an expensive city doesn't cut into your disposable income, then even more people will want to live in those cities, driving housing prices up even more.

I'm absolutely sympathetic to the equality for all argument, but I suspect there's a reason why this is not how capitalism usually works.

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