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GitLab themselves have this issue too. They openly publish their formula for calculating salaries [0], but it is very strongly weighted against the local rent index. If you spent all of your salary on rent, then yes it would be fair, but if you want to buy a car, new iPhone or go on a Caribbean cruise, it's going to cost the same whether you live in the Bay Area or Belarus.

For example in the UK if you live in London and earned £60k, according to GitLab's 'Move Calculator' in Bristol you would earn £42k, or in Brighton £38k. Yes there is a difference between the living costs, but there is not that much difference. A 1br apartment close to the center of Bristol is around £900/mo, and in London zone 2 around £1200/mo.

I've seen a lot of remote startups offering salaries around $100k USD, independent of location. For most of the US (outside hot areas like SF or NYC) and Europe that's a good salary, but what if the person you want to hire likes living in the middle of SF and doesn't want to move? For them that salary is going to be too low. I'm not really sure what is the middle ground here.

[0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

I don't think adding a location factor for anything that is less than 100% of the companies core location is fair. You are doing the exact same job and have the same skill level, you should be paid the same. If you decide to move somewhere where living is cheaper then that is up to you and should not affect your earnings.

This is how you keep poor countries / states poor. Instead of paying people the same which would result in larger taxes paid and more spent in those locations you are keeping status quo.

> You are doing the exact same job and have the same skill level, you should be paid the same.

Colocated employees at the same skill level performing the same job aren't paid the same - employers and employees negotiate compensation individually.

There is no "core location", and also you can't demand remote companies to implement completely equal salaries while in-situ jobs (and rents) vary wildly. It's a double standard.

Location is a factor though. If you live in the middle of nowhere, your chances of finding another job are low. If you live in SF, your chances of finding another job are high (because most jobs are still in person jobs). That is why location matters.

It has nothing to do with your value and everything to do with what the company has to pay to get the talent it wants.

Then let it be enforced via competition and market forces - rather than just using location to lowball somebody.

If lots of people are applying from a low-cost country, the employer is free to choose and thus, would be able to offer a lower salary. But from my understanding, employers want the same level of quality as they would get from the bay area, but insists on paying 3rd world wages if the remote is at a low cost of living location, even though there are very few other candidates suitable!

Well, it is enforced by competition. Not every market player is going to be rational, though. And it was rational for the CEO to try to pay lower than SFBay pay, but maybe not to bail on the negotiation entirely.

> It has nothing to do with your value and everything to do with what the company has to pay to get the talent it wants.

Hmmm... this sounds very strange.

Getting a job is dependent on you proving how much value you'll bring to the company, but your pay has nothing to do with "your value".

Sounds like someone wants their cake and to eat it, too.

> Location is a factor though. If you live in the middle of nowhere, your chances of finding another job are low. If you live in SF, your chances of finding another job are high (because most jobs are still in person jobs). That is why location matters.

This is only true as long as remote jobs are so rare that the candidate is unlikely to find an employer who will pay non-location-adjusted compensation (even if that comp is midway between Bay Area-adjusted and Asia-adjusted comp), or more directly, to pay based on value added.

And… that statement is already not true for great (top 20th percentile?) candidates, and trending towards not true for candidates in the middle of the Bell curve. That is, a person with known skills and a good network can obtain offers from multiple remote-first/remote-friendly companies today. There's already a location-ignorant market for their skills.

As more remote jobs are available, more people will get multiple remote offers, that is, they'll find a location-ignorant market for their skills. The clearing price for their skills will trend towards the value they're perceived to add, even if it takes 5 or 10 years to get there. That perceived value isn't location-adjusted, particularly for remote-first companies trying to hire the best candidates or to hire as many great candidates as they can find (rather than to save compensation expense).

I agree completely. As there are more remote jobs, this will apply less and less. At which point I suspect you'll see a bimodal distribution, much like you see with in person jobs today.

There will be the "location independent" companies that pay top dollar, and then everyone else who pays a "global market average". Top candidates will get the top pay, and everyone else, even if they live in the Bay Area, will have to fight for the "global market" rate jobs, meaning it won't be feasible to be a programmer in the Bay Area anymore (barring a solution to the California housing crisis).

In the case of a US remote worker for a California company, to which state does that worker pay state income taxes? If they're paying California taxes, they should get California money.

I know quite a few people doing remote work for California companies making California salaries, paying localized taxes. It's worth noting that they don't get California benefits either...

California taxes aren't higher because the average pay is higher... Someone making minimum wage pays the same for fuel as anyone else there. The taxes are higher because there are more social programs and generally it all costs more. the real estate in large parts of california are higher based on market desire. That creates side effects of people asking for and getting more money to work there, and it circles around.

Taxation as a percent of income is entirely down to effective spending. And often corruption. Maybe start charging Nestle fair value for all the water they remove from the state.

I agree with you, something needs to be done in order to solve the world inequity. But when a price is negotiated, it's all about how much the seller can get, or how much the buyer has to pay. The quality of work has a relative small impact on price, it's all about how much it would cost to hire someone else, or how much you would earn working at another company. We are in a good trend though, with world globalization - with the help of the Internet.

Is there a fair way to adjust based on living costs - within certain bounds - that isn't based on rent index, or at least weighted in favour of lower cost areas? Paying Bay Area salaries for every employee just isn't feasible for most startups.

Paying Bay Area salaries for every employee just isn't feasible for most startups.

How does that explain the large number of Bay Area, on-site-only startups?

It probably implies that only certain types of start ups are well suited there. E.g well funded VC startups that are looking to go big or go bust where paying lots for talent is worth if for access to many more employees and VCs.

On-site-only is a lot more productive, we just like to pretend otherwise because we wish it wasn't?

As evidenced by?

I'm offering it as a possible explanation for why onsite-only Bay Area startups could be a success but remote startups not be able to afford Bay Area salaries.

I'm talking about startups that are outside the Bay Area, and outside the US.

Yes, you'd use something like the OECD's price level index: https://data.oecd.org/price/price-level-indices.htm

None of these are perfect, you're never going to get two truly comparable locations when accounting for mortage/rent, groceries, cost of transport, cost of consumer products etc., but it's a whole lot better than mainly looking at one variable (rent).

No.

The only fair way to adjust is based on value to the company, and what the potential employee is willing to accept. It isn't reasonable to use pay to remove the financial advantages of a candidate's choice of location, and then claim "you can now hire the best people on the planet in any particular function" as the original link does. If someone is among the best people on the planet, they'll likely be paid considerably more than the San Francisco average without regard to what their costs are.

One of the touted benefits of working remotely, for those who can, is exactly the ability to trade off the advantages and disadvantages of living in places with varying characteristics, and it's unsettling to have a company which claims to support and encourage remote work also be upfront about actively working against remote workers' ability to make these choices.

Yeah. "Paid to a standard of living" seems unfair for employees in that it dictates the employee's spending. (e.g. someone saving half of their salary in high-cost area saves more than someone saving half in a low-cost area, for the same 'standard of living').

AFAICT, the flipside is that "flat global pay" is that then the company can't offer as compelling an offer to those in expensive areas. (i.e. if everyone paid a flat fee and you were stuck in an expensive city, then you would be penalised when looking for remote work).

It's either flat fee or adjust for cost-of-living based on a person's location. Flat fee is fairer, but it cuts out talent from the most expensive places.

> Is there a fair way to adjust based on living costs

Not for work where the employer isn't specifying a location constraint. For on-site work, while one can debate the exact ideal formula, location adjustments within a firm based on comprehensive cost-of-living makes quite a lot of sense.

It's been discussed before on here.

In the UK it's particularly comical because a good number of people commute that far; I've had colleagues (Central London) living in places that according to GitLab should earn half as much.

Indeed but it's weird even when you're not remote. I live in Guildford, and companies unashamedly offer <50% of your average London pay.

The train takes 35 minutes to get into Waterloo... Commuting sucks, but it doesn't suck that much.

This is why I've exclusively worked for London based companies for the last decade or so, even though I now live about two hours outside of London. All the similar jobs around here would as you've seen result in me taking a 50% pay cut, and because I work remote 80% of the week, spending more time commuting into the office.

The difference is so high inside of London compared to an hours train away that it's not even on my radar any more to even look for jobs in the UK outside of London. I sat a jump of 2/3rds in salary when moving to london.

There are some higher paying roles outside of London. Farnborough has defence companies, Swindon has Nationwide, Bath/Bristol has DVSA, Edinburgh has RBS, but yeah, you're generally right. Live in London, if someone offers you "fuck you" money to go elsewhere, you can always rent it out. :)

> in Brighton £38k

Interesting. This is roughly the amount they're offering contractors in Poland.

Everywhere in Poland on top of that, because it's considered a single region, so you could possibly live in a small town where rent is ~£250 and other expenses proportional to that.

Ugh that's awful price disparity as well. It's pretty expensive here in the UK.

You should always pay me for what I can do not where I live.

> I'm not really sure what is the middle ground here.

The middle ground is irrelevant. The market price will be determined by supply, demand, and the differences in productivity and other factors of remote programmers. They’ll meet somewhere in the middle between the current local labour market model and one where collaboration software and practices are so perfect that there’s only one market for programmers, the global one. But we don’t know where yet.

Right. If you want to hire people who live in the bay area, you should pay enough for them to at least live sustainably there.

If that's too expensive, adjust your recruiting or hiring strategy. Maybe recruit bay area programmers that realize their current salary isn't sustainable since they need to plan for illness, retirement, saving up to launch an idea, etc.

It's even more expensive in some locations. A car in Sri Lanka costs more than buying the same model in Canada. In Canada the Yaris Hatchback for example is half the current selling price in Sri Lanka. iPhones and other electronics are also priced at rates that are almost double or even more because of shipping and super high tax rates (the latter is there to keep foreign currency from flowing out of the country reserves). Rent and basic living costs is a very poor estimate indeed for calculating spending power within a country.

If you gave Gitlab a PO Box address in the Bay Area as your address, wouldn't they have to pay you Bay Area salaries without you paying Bay Area rent?

If not a PO Box, some other proxy by which you aren't genuinely living there. Maybe just a short-term roommate lease situation?

If you lie to your company saying you live in SF when you live in Asia your going to have a hard time explaining why your never available during the middle of the day, what are you going to do when your asked to travel to somewhere in the continental US and you try and submit a travel expense for a flight from asia, etc...

Throw away account, believe it or not, I've been doing exactly that for the past 3 years - operating a consulting business out of the Bay Area (virtual office) while actually living in Thailand/India/Kenya, etc. I'm always available and working till 7pm PST no matter where I am (Google Fi/Google Voice numbers). It's actually pretty easy to pull off.

It's almost a no brainer to me. If I can charge 3-4x more for the same skills that I have, why not. I'm not gonna take a huge pay cut just because my location changed. And there's almost no explaining involved.

At times when you can't go somewhere physically, sometimes you can tell your clients you're traveling this month. If something is important, you can take a flight. The amount that you're saving, the flight costs are negligible.

How can I reach you? I have a few questions. (ps. you can reach me i have my email in my profile. Thank you).

I've been thinking of doing something similar, but I need to build up a client base first. Did you build that up before you left, or did you do it while remote? Also, do you have any tips for building up a client base?

Then don't submit a travel expense for a flight from Asia? In fact, if you're working remote, you should probably pay your own way for travel if it's not a core part of your job, and if it is, you should probably live somewhere convenient for traveling to the places you typically go.

Also, what happens to a full-time remote worker who decides to move? If they tell their employer that they moved from SF to somewhere far cheaper, should that employer dock their pay? What if they're just temporarily moving (e.g. living abroad for a year, but returning afterward)? If you're going to work remote, it may make sense to rent for a month or so in SF to be present for interviews and then move back to wherever you want to live, which would essentially mean you "live" in SF for that period, so it wouldn't be lying.

Tell them you have multiple residences and declare one as your primary.

I know that shit works because rich people do it for taxes all the time.

What if the person you want to hire likes crashing Lamborghinis and doesn’t want to stop? Living in the middle of SF is a luxury good.

Then don't hire them. If there were sufficient alternatives to hiring SF engineers, nobody would hire them. But they do, which suggest there aren't sufficient alternatives. Hiring is hard.

> I've seen a lot of remote startups offering salaries around $100k USD, independent of location.

As long as it's within US?

> but what if the person you want to hire likes living in the middle of SF

I think, the idea, is that in SF he'll have no problems finding jobs. They are looking remote because of shortage in SF. I mean according to them.

There are some interesting arbitrage opportunities in that data[0]. Even if the average for a province is $X, there will be plenty of cheaper towns in it.

[0] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/master/dat...

Exactly. Many "good" companies do that as well, Mozilla for instance. It's fine if they don't pay top Bay Area rates (e.g. 500K-700K+ total comp), but playing the "we pay a competitive rate in your region " game doesn't cut it - I work remotely to escape my region rates - fortunately, there are companies who pay solely based on contribution rather than coordinates on the map.

Then new graduates and others with difficulty selling themselves start working for the coordinates people and after six months or a year they leave to go work for the contribution people. The more and faster that happens the quicker companies will convert from the former to the latter.

I'm sorry - $500k!

I work for a big US company in the UK in a senior role and I get $150k approx. I work just outside London but I regularly have to attend meetings right in the City.

I'm going to move to Mexico before Trump gets his wall!

You can stay in London, e.g. Facebook pays mid to high six-figures (GBP). Seven-figure is also possible for some (incl. bonus), even for IC engineers. They are poaching engineers from finance sector.

I work in Finance! I shall have a butchers.

Here you go: https://www.facebook.com/careers/life/moving-from-finance-to...

Having talked to

1) one coworker who moved from the bay area to the midwest

2) another coworker evaluating NYC vs other potential places to live in the US

it seems like what Mozilla pays doesn't differ that much across their different US geographic salary bands. Both coworkers found it would be more favorable for them to take the small pay cut in exchange for a dramatic cost and quality of living difference.

I meant the gap between the US and e.g. Zimbabwe or Pakistan. As I've mentioned to Gitlab's CEO here, you should aim for fairness in terms of the quality of life. Otherwise, if you go with the "region market rate" - I bet someone living in US or Canada (or Switzerland) has much better quality of life compared to someone in Zimbabwe or any other poor/developing (or non-developing) country.

And yes, someone from Mozilla confirmed here some time ago that they do differentiate salaries based on the country/region - they won't pay "US salary" to someone in Ukraine for instance.

That looks like a totally unprofessional discussion from his side. It's good that he gave you some kind of feedback on the salary part, but most of the companies will simply reject your application in situations like these, with a generic reason: "we decided to go with a different candidate".

Anyway, the sad reality is that salaries are currently location based, no matter how you put it. At least until the world becomes a single economy, if it ever happens.

The obsession companies have with location varied comp is irrational.* The only solution is to arbitrage by living in a high comp area that is not terrible. There are second order benefits (opportunity etc) from living in those areas which you get for free; we have to use them.

If it were a “nobody wants to live there” comp, I would completely understand. Supply and demand. But is London really ~twice as bad as Brighton? My lungs agree, but surely that’s not what the market thinks?

Pay people double to live on the South Pole, not San Francisco.

* Perhaps it is a rational reaction from companies to an irrational behaviour of the labour market, where the majority of devs expect it and get offended if you don’t. Fine. Whatever it is, it’s “free money”.

It is not irrational, it is a cost reduction and very sensible from their point of view. Of course, they can do this only because remote is not a protected class.

It could also be fair if they were to offer relocation to any place the employee picks, but even writing that sentence is ridiculous, why would a business act fair when they can exploit people?

> There's an interesting downside about remote work that most articles don't talk about. Pay.

Which is extra annoying, because working remotely means that at least two expenses may be pushed on you: office and hardware.

If you're me, and you live with just cats and love your vintage 2013 MB Pro, that might not be that much. But I also would get 80% of the benefit from a job that's just close enough to my home, doesn't have an open office, and doesn't enforce strict working hours. People who benefit more, like folk with families, also need to spend on a home with an extra room.

>vintage 2013 MB Pro

It's considered vintage already? I only just bought it 18 months ago.

I think any company should pay for equipment for their employees. GitLab does this, we will do this.

Desk, monitor, computer, chair, etc. Alternatively, offer a budget for a coworking space.

These kind of expenses are nothing compared to a monthly salary.

It is important that the company embraces the remote working completely -- i.e. even if they have local employees their work process needs to be exactly the same as for the remote ones. Ideally, the company should have no offices, and offer all employees expense allowance to pay for a local office if they want to (e.g. a coworking space or similar, with the option to pool it together if there are more people in the same location). As long as a company treats people differently based on the location (usually by those who are in the same location as the management get treated more favourably), it is not possible to have a real remote culture.

Another issue is related to the time zones; things tend to fall apart if teams work across more than 4-5 timezones. I should be possible to organise teams according to time zones, but that creates a similar (although less disruptive) differentiation as co-location.

One of the upside of hiring remote employee is for better value. Assuming similar skill, because why would you pay 100k for bay area employee where you can pay 33k for remote employee?

You’re talking about a remote employee costing less, not being a better value. The value of an employee is not equal to that employee’s cost. Assuming all employees were paid equally, you’d still find some who were more/less valuable to the company than others. Extend this recognition outward, and the cost can quickly be seen to have little to do with determining the value of a good (or poor) employee. The things that determine a team member’s value are things like productivity, coachability, quality of work, and many other things unrelated to their raw dollar cost.

From the employer perspective, better value means lower cost for the same amount quality.

That's an extremely naive employer perspective. It is exceedingly rare to be able to place an exact dollar amount on the contribution of a team member. Much less to place an exact dollar amount on some subjective notion of quality. The only exact dollar amount an employer-employee relationship definitively has is the negotiated price at which the two actors are willing to play together.

I've been the employer. With any technology professional, I'm willing--and happy--to pay right up to the rough approximation of value I feel the team member brings. Most of the time, that rough approximation is, "Do I feel like the company is getting its money's worth out of this team member?" It's rare to find the same amount of quality among a number of team members, because everyone is unique and brings their own flavor of contribution to a team. Person A might bring a lot more to the planning, architecture, and direction of the project. Person B might be great at not only delivering code, but helping others do so, as well. Person C might be a royal pain to manage as part of the team. Person D might crank code out non-stop, but seems to create bugs/issues in proportion to the amount of code they're pushing out. Judging the quality of team member contribution winds up working out to some sort of curve--there are usually outliers on the high and low ends. You want the vast majority of the team to be roughly equivalent and trending toward the high end. The low-end outliers--those who clearly are not keeping up with the team, not providing enough value in their contribution, are difficult to manage, aren't good team players, etc--those are the people where the cost starts to become an issue.

An employer who prioritizes the exact dollar cost to be as low as possible isn't looking for quality--they're looking to fill seats as cheaply as possible, while hoping something passable comes out as a result. Nobody who knows what they're doing is going to want to stay in an environment like that.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here but yes

>dollar amount an employer-employee relationship definitively has is the negotiated price at which the two actors are willing to play together

I agree with this. But don't forget, the employee living in lower cost of living area can afford to negotiate lower pay to undercut those who live in expensive area.

Let say I move to vietnam, I can now easily afford to demand for 1/2 of the pay compared someone who live in bay area. Then why don't a company choose me instead ? Again, assuming I can produce the same quality of work as bay area programmer.

The goal of a company is still to make money and managing expense is always important.

why would anyone want to do that? you think your company is some kind of special place? ill just look for another job where i dont have to just ask for 1/2 of what i want...

Sure, if I can find a company willing to pay that much. It is going to be difficult in global market. By going remote, you are competing with people around the world.

If think you are that really really special programmer who are better than most people worldwide in what you do, then yeah you can demand whatever you want.

I knew I'm not that special. By living let say in Vietnam, I'm still happy with the 1/2 amount I got and companies has incentive to hire me instead.

> when we were discussing the pay, I threw in a number that's common for the Bay area employees

> I thanked him for his opportunity and advised him to contact some sweatshops instead of playing the "remote" game.

> asking me to go down 1/3rd of my price because of where I lived in seemed ridiculous to me.

I agree with the general principle that you shouldn't give massive discounts because you live in a lower cost of living area, but you're comparing it to a Bay Area salary as if that's the norm. It's a massive outlier. Going down 1/3rd of a Bay Area salary (I'm assuming a developer of some sort from context) still puts you in the top 1% or so of earners virtually anywhere in the world. Offering two thirds of a Bay Area salary certainly can't be described as a "sweatshop" salary.

They did offer 1/3 of, and not 2/3 of, from what I've understood from the OP comment.

Going down 1/3 means going down by 1/3 not going down to 1/3. It's possible they misspoke though. 1/3 of a Bay Area salary is still not a sweatshop salary and will let you live like a king in many places in the world though!

Let's reverse this notion: if your company is a remote(-friendly) company the place your employees are living is their decision. Since your company allows them to work wherever they want, they don't necessarily have to live in the Bay Area. This becomes a personal preference and I don't see why a personal preference is your business, moreover why you need to reward it with extra money.

Also it's worth considering that in this business your employees are hired to think. It is nice companies starting to realize that it's not needed to be present 100% in the time in an office to be able to deliver the thinking, but they also need to realize that my brain produces the same output no matter where I live.

It's also a bit weird. Where I live is very expensive and far away from family but I live here because it's a nice area in proximity for jobs.

What's to stop me just moving somewhere cheaper after I get the remote job tired to location? Are they going to renegotiate with me? What if I just forward my mail and don't tell them.

Further still, there are always expensive areas in poorer places and cheaper areas in expensive places. Are these companies going to start auditing our finances before they discuss renumeration?

> Are they going to renegotiate with me?

As an example, GitLab explicitly requires you to inform them and makes no guarantee about if and at what pay level they offer you a new contract.

> What if I just forward my mail and don't tell them.

Sounds like an interesting problem for the courts once they find out.

Both answers seem ridiculous and like something that would quickly be dismissed in the employees favour in EU countries.

But at the end of the day, do we really think gitlab is going to dimiss or renegotiate with a performing employee rather than this being a loophole to get rid of someone they don't value?

> What's to stop me just moving somewhere cheaper after I get the remote job tired to location?

Nothing, assuming I can find other people with the similar quality as you, but significantly cheaper because they live in lower cost of living area, why would I not replace you ?

It's almost safe to assume they wouldn't hire me in the first place if they had the quality on tap significantly cheaper.

yes, the point is people (assuming similar work quality) living on cheaper place can afford to undercut other people living in more expensive place. That's why remote position usually pay less, because you are now competing globally.

Which goes back to the point, the price is the price and not, the price is variable based on location. Either there simply isn't enough value for anyone to be based in SF, or it should be possible to present similar value whilst being based elsewhere.

The only way you can demand SF area salary by living in let say vietnam is if you can convince your employer that they won't be able to find anyone else in the world that can do your job as good as you.

> they don't necessarily have to live in the Bay Area. This becomes a personal preference

This was part of my point: you're taking the Bay Area as the standard by which you're judging everything else. This is backwards. The Bay Area is an extreme outlier.

Yes, it's a personal preference. But if you choose to live in the Bay Area, your income requirements eclipse everybody else's. Everybody else can live extremely comfortably anywhere else on that kind of money. If you have the personal preference to live there, why should a business pay you more than everybody else everywhere else? It's your personal preference and it doesn't help the business in the slightest.

Yes, "going down by 1/3" would mean what you say - but they wrote "going down TO 1/3 of": "asking me to go down to 1/3rd of my price because of where I lived".

I read "going down to 1/3" differently than "going down by 1/3". "going down to" leaves you with 1/3; "going down by" leaves you with 2/3.

> they wrote "going down TO 1/3 of"

They didn't; as the OP already mentioned, they went back and edited it.

Sorry for the lack of clarity, I have since edited my post. They asked me for 1/3rd of my price - Not going down by 1/3rd, but rather 1/3rd of my quoted salary. So, if it was 100k, he was asking me for 33k.

The good news is I think this is a problem that goes away (or at least is lessened) as remote work becomes more ubiquitous. When there's more supply of remote employers, presumably some of them will make a big point of paying people the same rates everywhere as a hiring differentiator, which will make it harder for employers just looking for a good deal.

"Good news" depending on who you are. If remote really becomes a common thing US programmers will start earning Europe salaries, and Europe programmers will start earning China salaries. I don't think it's going to become that common (I'm thinking less than 10% of programmers will work remote 10 years from now). Yes it will be more common but it will not be common.

By the way, Singapore is one of the most expensive cities to live in Asia, probably behind Tokyo.

I think rent in Singapore is probably higher. Much less area to live on.

Housing in Singapore is not suspect to normal market conditions. Yes, expensive, but 80% of people live in subsidized housing.

One of the most expensive in the world, not just Asia.

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

I completely agree with this.

A person did put in the same effort as the other one for learning something.

Since a person leaves in an area which isn't properly developed or cheaper, he/she is living in order to save money or due to some other personal reasons, shouldn't be discriminated and paid less for the same talent/value the company receives.

Obviously it always feels better to live in developed areas.

When a company is receiving same quality from different vendors, they should pay the same for different vendors irrespective of their origin of locations.

I'm a dev working remote in the PH. While this state of affairs is frustrating, I await the day when pay for technical work has nothing to do with one's location.

Your biggest mistake was mentioning the Philippines. The sad fact is that a lot of employers, including Filipino ones, associate this country with low-wage employees and cheap labour. That's why the PH is the capital of outsourcing and offshoring in order to cut costs. It shouldn't matter, and I feel sorry for Filipinos trying to get paid fairly in this business climate, but unfortunately this country is so corrupt that it's a case of poor economics and planning.

Basecamp, although currently in a "hiring freeze", pays the same salary no matter where you are: https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-pay-people-at-basecamp-f1d...

I would love a list of such companies, maybe people posting on the monthly who's hiring thread can clarify that.

Like it or not they are right, you are wrong IMO, maybe not 1/3rd but much less. Salaries are what they are in SF, because that's what it takes for people to live there and have a sorta decent life.

Rent, food, taxes, transportation etc etc reflect on salary. Also competition has a major impact on salaries. Companies fight a lot over SF engineers, not so much for those in Asia. (unless they're super brilliant)

Edit: Google has ~ 85,000 employees. If they give each employee an extra $100K bonus it would cost them $8.5 Billion. They can afford it. Why they don't give it? Because they don't have to.

Salaries in SF are driven by competition, not living costs (in fact living costs are driven up by the high salaries). There are plenty of cities with comparable living costs to SF, but with much lower salaries.

Fine, but en engineer looking for a job today has to live in SF, with SF prices. The chicken/egg question doesn't matter at this time.

What would happen to salaries if 150,000 more engineers from middle America started to apply to jobs in SF?

> I thanked him for his opportunity and advised him to contact some sweatshops instead of playing the "remote" game.

He's right, you are wrong. Bay Area salaries are high because it's very expensive to live there. Even dev salaries in Europe are 20-30% of what they can be in the BA.

..but it's expensive to live there because of Bay Area salaries..

How expensive is it to live in Singapore?

I had a very tiny one bedroom there, barely bigger than a studio, and it was the equivalent of US$2000 a month in rent.

Ah, you can live like a king in Asia for $20 a day!

Which is very much not true in Hong Kong (where I live), or Singapore (where I have friends), or a bunch of other places in 'Asia'...