Anything less is theft
> This is disgusting. The value a worker provides the company does not magically go down just because their expenses go down. If I am providing the same value that another worker is, we should be compensated similarly regardless of where we choose to live.
You are not paid according to the value you provide to your employer. Despite our best efforts at magical thinking, your employer is interested in the least amount of money they have to spend to get XYZ business goals hit and it happens that your skills are useful to get make that happen. However, unless you are very exceptional in your area, you are a replaceable human resource as far as the org chart is concerned.
You're paid according to your ability to negotiate which is a function of many things ( biases, average market, internal business deadlines, perceived value to the business etc.). Sure, your unique ability to drive sales up 100% YoY is a nice skill but turns out someone else is willing to hit the same goals for 50k less than you are because they live in a cheaper area and don't need the extra cash to live a comfortable life. In that case, you may be valuable but you have no leverage in the negotiation anymore.
Since salaries and budgets are kept secret and employers will always offer the least amount they believe you'll accept first, you are entering the conversation severely handicapped already. We will certainly see suppression in wages over the next few years.
Does the value that a worker provide the company actually go down or not, if transitioning to working remotely? I don't think it's so clear-cut as to be an automatic and obvious no (that it doesn't go down). If management thinks it does, then they will only be proven right/wrong over time through the labor market and attribution or through financial results.
Of course, the opposite could well be true, and this how a market opportunity is created: managers who think the opposite, can put their money where their beliefs are, and hire/pay workers based on a different value-rubric, and if they're more correct in their assessment, then they might win out in the long-run.
If the situation was reversed, would you still say it’s fair because a worker gets paid for his/her value to the company?
For instance, let’s say you were working for a company in a rural area. Your pay is perfectly average for your position and others in your position at other companies get an equal salary.
Your company asks you to relocate to their office in central NYC, for the same job you’re doing now. Your cost of living doubles as a result. (Hypothetical amount) Should they increase your pay to account for this?
I sure do, but then why would the opposite be so wrong? I agree that you are paid for your value to the company, but we also can’t pretend like CoL is the same everywhere.
Edit: After posting this I remembered this was a big discussion in politics in my country recently. Dutch Call Centre’s were relocating to Spain during summer breaks and offering Dutch students jobs there (advertised using the fact that it’s Spain and you can party). As a result the companies would offer the students a lower wage since Spain’s minimum wage is a lot lower than the dutch one.
One should think of any employment as just a temporary situation. At the moment, your life situation causes you to make the risk/reward calculation that you're willing to let a company capture some of the value you provide in exchange for steady income. Your goal should be to save enough out of that steady income so that the risk/reward calculus shifts in favor of leaving the company, working for yourself, and capturing all of the value that you provide the world.
Even HN darlings famous for being remote-first like Gitlab adjust salary to cost of living.
If you want to paid very well, then churn out thousands of lines of rubbish code, be in the office for 70+ hours, attend their meetings, pay rapt attention to their PowerPoints and laugh at their jokes. Bingo!
To help yoy grok why what FB is doing makes sense, view this from the reverse situation: Let’s say you live in a low cost area (e.g. AK) and then move to the Bay Area, working for the same company.
In that case, with your COL doubling, would you expect a pay raise? Of course you would! Because your net pay would reduce significantly otherwise.
So, the reverse should true too.