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Comment by ef4 | Hacker News Reader

There's something that's almost religious or magical about the way people understand national borders. Pay the workers $1.21/hour while they're on one side of an imaginary line, it's fine. On the other side of the line, it's despicable.

Shouldn't the ethics be independent of the imaginary line? It's either wrong in both cases or right in both cases.

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Your comment displays a fundamental misunderstanding of wages. Wages in the amount of X support a lifestyle of Y quality. This is why a job that pays $150k in SV will pay something like $80k in, say, rural Idaho (if you can find the equivalent job). Typically Y stays constant for a job of a certain type, level, and country; X varies based on location/cost of living. Obviously this is greatly simplified. [Edit: in case it wasn't clear, my point is that 'imaginary lines' don't have anything to do with compensation levels - cost of living does.]

I don't really know enough about EFI's situation to comment... if you have an entire branch of your company in India, and you bring some portion of your workers to the US for a week or two for some onsite work, do you pay them US wages or Indian wages? I truly don't know the answer to this.

Likewise, if your company sends you to India for a week, do they pay you in Rupees?

If an Indian visits US for a short term, he or she will typically paid their normal Indian salary plus a "per diem" in US + accommodation. A decent company will put you up in a reasonable hotel and pay $70/day in a city like Chicago, maybe $100/day in a city like New York. The per diem money is neither taxable in US nor in India - if someone is "working" in US, they need to paid US wages and also pay taxes in US.

Well for one, the cost of living in India is insanely lower than the United States much less San Fran.

Nobody is contending that these workers had to go find apartments or pay for their own hotel rooms in San Francisco. If the company covered all their living expenses while they were here, the cost issue is a red herring.

No, it isn't. We don't place trust in corporations to bypass laws because they are taking care of their workers; we require corporations to follow laws in case they don't.

What would happen to you if your company flew you to Mumbai, set you up in an apartment and arranged for you to go to an office, and then went bankrupt before they could get you home?

You'd be responsible for airfare home, and that might or might not be a hardship for you.

Now consider the opposite case, with people from India being paid $1.21 an hour in SF. Can they even afford airfare home? Unlikely.

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