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Comment by rsweeney21 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding that the value of something changes depending on the context (aka "the market").

Soda at the grocery store? $1.50 Soda at the gas station? $1.99 Soda at Disney World? $30

Your skills are not worth a fixed rate. Your skills are worth more in certain areas because the demand is higher in those areas. As soon as you go remote, you are competing with every other remote worker in the US. More competition, lower price.

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This is about the time that people start to imply (or even say straight out) that their skills are really special, and that there aren't good developers outside the valley. So they totally deserve the rate they're being paid.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are actually quite a lot of smart people who just don't care to live in the valley for various reasons, and they are all just as available as you are when the whole team is 100% remote. Companies are going to love it, but a subset of employees are going to be sad as the market rate adjusts to the new reality.

I guess as it becomes more obvious to people that the logical next step for a fully remote company would basically be to lay off staff in higher cost of living locations (I'm sure we are starting to see this), more people will internalize this reality.

Sure, but this is closer to having soda delivered to your home. The costs on the production side don't matter to you. You only care about price, quality, and delivery time.

I personally suspect the employment market is just not very efficient due to a lack of information. If companies had perfectly accurate information about how good every software person is, available for free, we'd probably all be paid based on that information, with our cost of living ignored.

You don't understand probably because your paycheck depends on not understanding, e.g. you think you are benefiting from the current status quo. Others call it unfair because their paycheck also depend on it.

What if the market says you can get away paying less for group X? What if X is some historically marginalized group? Does it make it OK? What if X = remote workers?

https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...

That only works as long as the company is able to hire someone with your skillset at your new LocalRate.

This cuts both ways; your ability to demand higher pay is contingent on that you can get that pay elsewhere. If other companies at your new LocalRate are paying substantially less, then your remote employer only has to beat those offers to remain competitive (from your point of view).

Each individual hiring case is wildly different, with different supply/demand and price dynamics, and it's nothing like the commodity sold at a gas station example. Yes some companies will penny pinch, but some companies just wont. Not worth their time.

So why don't they just fire every remote worker in high cost of living areas?

Soda is a fungible commodity. People are not.

So if you quit your job, the company...

A) will be irreparably harmed and have to cease operations.

B) will hire a replacement and be fine.

(Hint: It's B)

As my Dad always said, the graveyards are full of indispensable people :)

I would argue most people in a organization actually are fungible, especially the more junior they are. At least in software.

It's not a coincidence that conversations around the number of engineers/designers required for a project commonly end up referring to them as 'resources' in most companies.

Since algorithm interviews are the current norm for filtering, there are a huge swathes of people who are just as good at beating such interviews but never got the chance due to their location.

Someone decided to drink the kool-aid the PM is selling. While business is business and we are not family. We are deeply human, don't ever refer to people as a resource if you want a more healthy working environment.. that goes for any industry or company.

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