Should you get paid based on where you live? | Hacker News Reader

Should you get paid based on where you live?

bbc.com

16 pointsadrian_mrd12 comments

This hints at the greater tension between employees wanting to get a better life for themselves and corporations wanting to maximize profits.

Companies are probably vomiting at the idea that individuals could set up a scenario where they are well paid, have a low COL and save for an early retirement, when that value could be captured for the company. Ironically the employee might own a tiny slice of that company through their index investments!

At the same time they haven't sussed out how to get anyone any where in the world to do the work. Finding good people is still hard.

There is no "should" in the question, the real questions are:

As an employee: "Will your employer try to pay you based on where you live, and if so, how can you avoid this."

As an employer: "How do we take the remote working revolution and use it to minimize staff costs while still getting the same value from staff"

There's a difference between what an individual company can do, ceteris paribus, and what would make sense overall.

If people can work-from-anywhere and all such companies reduce salaries in expensive real estate areas, people would leave, then property prices and rents would fall, thus evening out the COL landscape. Both companies and employees would benefit at the expense of rent-seeking landlords.

While true, don't forget other factors of why people live where they live. Education, quality of life, being near people like them, perceived safety / levels of crime. Location and convenience, family and friends. And finally the benefits of physical presence in work, at least for a few years yet before VR is good, and once COVID is sorted out. Remote work will affect rents in high COL areas, but probably won't decimate them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

Not trying to be snarky. But just in case some readers don't know the history of geographic discrimination.

No, you should be paid based on how much value you create. If you choose the luxury of living in a major city, that's your choice.

That’s assuming you’ve got a choice. If you are divorced and share a child you are tied down.

Actually, if your spouse or partner has a job you may still be tied down.

Should according to whom? Obviously, I would want to earn the maximum my employer would be willing to pay for my labor and the company would want to pay the minimum that would allow them to attract quality candidates.

No. In a remote work world, you should be paid on the value you generate. What the employee does with their money and how they conduct their personal life is their business.

Who's going to force these companies to pay employees based on the value they generate? If no one, then market economics takes over.

Just in the same way you don't pay for gasoline based on the value it provides you, companies aren't going to pay that way for labor. They'll pay the lowest they can to get the best employee for the job. And with remote work expanding that talent pool far beyond their physical location, they'll have an easier time.

But they won't simply because wfh opens a huge pool of people able to provide the same value but weren't willing to make the move.

Labor says no. Capital says yes. We mostly end up somewhere in the middle.

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