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Comment by heymijo | Hacker News Reader

> 2) do companies want to pay you as much if you work from home?

Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why remote workers should be paid less?

Especially interested in hearing from anyone not incentivized by this practice (eg not the CEO or Chief People Officer of an org that practices this)

> will people abuse the system such that it ruins it for everybody else

An inevitable question and likely consequence.

A counter question: are the myriad ways in-office employees game/abuse the system working materially worse than how remote workers might?

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> Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why remote workers should be paid less?

Right now people working in cities with a high cost of living have a large salary to make up for their living costs. When you make a job remote you suddenly increase the pool of possible employees to anyone in the world, including people living in places that may have a lower cost of living. Those people will be happy to work for less.

If you have a remote employee, why pay them 200k to live in SF if you can pay someone in India 50k?

On one hand, if you are worth $N to the company sitting in an office and produce the same output working from home, that output is still worth >$N to the company.

On the other hand, if the company isn't limited by geographic restrictions, it can find people who may produce an equivalent output and are willing to work for less.

So it is a balance between how in demand your skills are and how competitive the market is for those skills. In my opinion, if a company is in need of an employee and is willing to pay $N for the employee, simply being remote should not reduce that amount. It has advantages for all parties involved (improved employee satisfaction, lower office overhead, etc).

Ultimately it is a negotiation, the the company can try to justify paying you less because of cost of living adjustments unless you can negotiate otherwise. It's in their interest to get your labor for the best price possible.

> Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why remote workers should be paid less?

There is more demand for remote jobs, therefore they pay less.

> Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why remote workers should be paid less?

supply and demand competition. Anything that makes labor easier increases supply, applying downward pressure on prices.

Assuming equal value created, companies should pay remote workers more: normal pay + savings from not using office related overhead (rent + equipment + amenities)

Compensation isn't just about value created, though. Costs, remote versus local efficiencies (cannot be assumed to be identical), and a given person's other options also enter into the negotiations.

The argument also goes the other way. The company pays you now for the work in the office and for the inconvenience you incur from commuting. No more commuting, so you should get paid less.

The company isn't paying for your time in the car but it is paying for the space your desk in the office occupies. Would you argue that someone who drives 30 minutes more to the office than an otherwise equivalent coworker should be paid more?

It's possible, isn't it? The person with the longer commute may be able to use it to negotiate for a higher salary. Particularly if they have another option with a shorter commute.

Perhaps I misunderstand you or have overlooked something.

If everyone switches to pay for outcome instead of paying for hours then they will pay the same or even better. Where better comes from I could do it in 1 hour and other 3 hours I was able to do whatever else.

Though not everyone likes that because there is a lot of people who benefit from hourly based pay. They don't do much but they put their hours in.

The second part is also quantifying outcome is hard... Should we pay that guy that fixed the machine in 5 minutes the same as if we would spend a week to fix it ourselves? Maybe we would fix it in one week instead? Should we spend one week trying to fix it and then call that guy ... or we would break the machine so the guy would charge us 5x more? Then you get all companies charging a lot more if someone tries to fix something on their own because they usually mess up.

> Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why remote workers should be paid less?

If I don't care where my team members are, why would I want two when I could have four of the same quality? Sounds attractive, I should think.

> Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why remote workers should be paid less?

Lower expenses from commuting. Perhaps initially somewhat offset by the need for home office equipment/space.

Lower expenses for the employer as well by not having to maintain a physical office, which I have to imagine is a greater per-employee saving for the company than commuting is for the individual.

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