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Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

If it's more than just a cost-of-living bonus for high-rent areas, then yes it is. You're saying "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less because people that live near you aren't getting paid as much. If you'd like a raise, move somewhere where engineers get more money."

Again, if it's just the cost-of-living bonus (like, all our engineers get $80K, plus $X/month where X is average rent and groceries, plus Y% for taxes) then it's fine. Otherwise it's valuing someone less purely on their geographical location.

Edit: Also, really, overpaying so they might be unhappy? "We're giving you less money for your own good!" Presumably if they're a world-class engineer and can work remotely at one place, they can find another remote job, too...

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While I can't comment on Travis CI, Gitlab from what I understand, used to hire a 3rd party company that would perform research (based on cost of living, taxes etc.) to gauge your salary (across different regions).

That said, what's stopping remote engineers starting to work in expensive regions (say Vancover/Toronto) and then moving to cheaper regions (Saskatchewan/Manitoba/Alberta) for example - would salaries be adjusted every time someone moves around?

In my opinion, one of the biggest benefits of working remotely would be the ability to travel the world!

Gitlab people on here have previously said yes: pay gets adjusted when you move.

So move to Monaco, get your pay adjusted upwards crazily. Then leave but just rent a PO Box there and use a VPN to make it seem like you are there. Simple :D

> "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less..."

Let's face it. As an employee, you want to earn as much as you can. As a company, you want to make as much profit as you can, which means that you base your target pay on market rate (be it above or below market rate).

Market rate is set by the competition. Really it's "we're going to pay you enough that you don't leave to work for someone else", and that's it.

If an employer gives you a cost-of-living bonus for high-rent areas, the reason is that they're competing for you against other companies who do the same thing. The same applies to any pay difference based on locality, whether local or remote. It simply depends on who they're competing with for your services.

This isn't evil. It's how the market works.

Don't think I said it's evil, just wrong. Obviously it's how the market works, and I've taken advantage of this myself.

Just saying that, aside from "well, we can get away with it", it's not that defensible.

> Don't think I said it's evil, just wrong.

OK. But I'm saying it's not wrong either. It is exactly how our economy works. Other large scale economic systems have not been successful. We know no better way of arranging things. If companies didn't compete, the economy would not be functional and we wouldn't be able to have nice things.

I sincerely doubt you have enough data to state that paying same-skilled remote employees somehow makes the economy non-functional.

I don't need data. My argument isn't based on a such a claim.

Our entire economy relies on free actors being able to buy goods and services from their choice of supplier, based on price, quality, or most other factors.

It's clear that this is required for our economy to function. Therefore it can never be "wrong" for some entity to do this unless you can identify some other unfair distortion in a particular case, but you haven't.

An employer not offering more in a particular region is just exercising this ability to choose, the general form of which we must grant to have a functioning economy.

If you want to argue that it's wrong, then the onus is on you to explain why the general case of free market competition should not apply in this case. But you haven't.

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