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Comment by ody4242 | Hacker News Reader

Why though?

Why not? As a business owner why would I pay $90K more than I had to? Since my pool of candidates is basically the entire country, that means my pool of potential candidates who would happily take $140K and be able to work remotely has grown.

"As a business owner why would I pay $90K more than I had to?"

For the same reason might ask why they would take less than they have to.. although it is true that the candidate pool grows, the pool of jobs we can select from is also worldwide.

I mean, I can afford to work cheaper if I want to, but I don't have to because people will pay... the principle works both ways.

Why would I take a 140K/year job just because the people around me are living in abject poverty unless I have to work locally?

Theoretically yes, but most companies don’t allow remote work so it puts the company at an advantage.

Really a bit confused by the "abject poverty" bit you threw in there.

I'm remote working from a folk festival in rural texas. I have a cousin here who is homeless when she's off the ranch. I don't think it would be good for anyone for me to set my pay based off her pay.

Well yes, I agree. I don't think anyone would argue that though. I believe the argument being made though was that a company didn't need to offer Tech Hub market rate when they could simply offer above-market rate for a remote worker, and then both parties would come out economically ahead.

The way your comment was worded, I thought you meant accepting $140k/year was akin to being in abject poverty, which seemed like a very uninformed view of the world. I don't think that's what you meant though.

because the goal/interest of a company is different compare to individual.

as an individual, if you can demand more money, you should.

as a company, if you can spend less for the same amount of quality, they should.

Gitlab gives few reasons in their handbook [1]. The obvious one is: "If we start paying everyone the highest wage our compensation costs would increase greatly, we can hire fewer people, and we would get less results."

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

So why doesn't GitLab fire all their high cost of living employees and replace them with someone cheaper?

They say then they’d only have people who live in low CoL areas and they want diversity. Seems odd to me.

Because I assume they have a headquarters which would be empty. Firing high-cost of living, high expertise employees to hire new ones (might be senior level, but not well versed in the problem) does not sound wise.

The same reason no one offers to pay extra at the grocery store.

its a well established practice to establish compensation partly based on employee cost of living.

The employer doesn't care about an employee's cost of living. The employer wants to pay as little as possible. The employee wants to make as much as his local market will allow. What the employee will accept is based on his other alternatives which is indirectly based on the cost of living.

> Why though?

Cuz they don't need to!

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