But what would this mean for me? First off it would mean doing all the same work to prepare myself as a candidate. Take Machine Learning for example, which is my area. I need to prepare my resume based on my current projects. I need to brush up for nauseating leet-code hazing trivia dumb shit (probably on a virtual whiteboard now). I need to research companies that have roles I’d be interested in.
Now I do all that, let’s say I do well in the interview.
Am I going to take less money to take the job? No. In fact, I’ll probably want more money than I am earning now if I am going to risk switching jobs.
Am I going to accept my salary to be adjusted by geographic region or cost of living data? No. My compensation is about the value I add to your company. It has nothing to do with where I live.
If I want to do lifestyle arbitrage on my high salary, that’s purely my business and is a private matter my employer does not get to know about or consider.
Given this, how many employers are really likely to want to hire me? I’m going to demand a NYC salary no matter where I live. They won’t get to replace their existing NYC-salary-person with a cheaper competitor, because nobody is cheaper, and a lot of people are more expensive.
In essence, supply went up if you can hire from anywhere, but the price for that supply did not go down, it’s just permanently higher.
I think if companies are looking to trade employees for a cheaper model, they are going to be surprised that hiring remote doesn’t facilitate this at all. The people from rural Kansas who can do the same job are not idiots happy to take 1/2 the pay because of where they live. It’s stupid to expect they would be.