Canadians working from home permanently should expect salary changes: experts

Basically every piece of advice on negotiating a promotion says something like "I just bought a car, and I need more money" is not a good argument in support of a promotion. But now the employer is using the same reasoning against you!! Your cost of living went down, so you're going to get paid less? How about you go move to a super cheap place, and instead of paying rent, take out a loan and buy some crazy cars. Now my cost of living is back up again... can I have that money back?

Just pay people for the value they provide. I think there's some room to argue that a remote only employee provides less value. Everyone in the same timezone, lack of face to face time, hallway encounters, going out to lunch, etc. have tangible value to the employer that is lost in the transition to remote work. But the arguments I see from Facebook and in this article are about cost of living. That's wrong. Price it based on value created by the employee.

If the permanence of remote work indeed turns into a long term trend, I think we're going to see some bumpy road ahead while individuals grapple with first moving and then local supply and demand in their new location. Fix your location, and then consider that if given the same pay, and same work, would you rather work remotely or in person? I would rather work in person for a couple of reasons including socialization, removal of distractions in a workplace environment, etc.

I have a hard time swallowing that the pay for remote workers should be based on the employee’s cost of living. My degree is in business and I very clearly recall the lesson on if it was ethical to pay someone with kids more (ie, at raise time) than someone without. The conclusion was that the value the employee brought was consistent and you can’t price in their financial decisions; that it was an old school thing to give a raise for having a kid.

If I am a remote worker and I work in downtown SF or in a flyover state does not change the value I bring. If the bean counters are not giving a raise when you have a new kid, they shouldn’t be cutting your pay when you move to a lower cost area.

It is all smoke an mirrors to improve the financials of the company. I’d be more for it if they just said so instead of lying and hiding it behind other reasons.

The bubble is deflating instead of popping.

First, lower salaries for remote workers.

Next, lower salaries for on premises workers.

Then, lower salaries for everyone.

What they're trying to say is that there's deflationary pressure on wages.

Does this go both ways? Would i get an automatic raise by just moving to a more expensive place? I suspect the answer is no, which shows employers are just fishing for opportunities to lower wages with this bulshit argument.

Businesses pay employees the minimum it takes for them not to quit or lack motivation.

If the work can be done remote, and the employee values that, then they can be payed less.

If the work can be done remote, but the employee does not value that, they could still be payed less if the company is willing and able to potentially replace the worker with one that does value remote work.

In any case, renegotiating wages downward is a strong demotivator, so businesses might opt to leave that work to the grindstone of inflation.

I wonder what effect this will have on remote comminities. The places that are ghost towns now, and you can buy a house for peanuts because there's nothing there. If the average remote worker can move there, take a huge pay cut and still have a reasonable lifestyle (because no mortgage), then they're going to be irreplaceable.

"yeah, Bob's a bit lazy, and he doesn't do all the hours, but at his rate we can hire two of him for the cost of a decent worker somewhere else"

Of course, eventually this will even out, and arbitraging remote locations won't work any more. But then there will be people living in all the little towns and villages we left 100 years ago. Not a bad thing to happen.

I don't think they's a problem with hiring workers based on market wages, but we're talking about these companies who seek to disincentivize existing remote workers and take advantage of the current situation to decrease worker salaries while keeping them on board. If your worker is remote, their location doesn't matter so long as they have a good internet connection. This all comes across as opportunistic and bordering on coercive. Honestly wage decreases in general seem exploitative since the worker doesn't really hold much bargaining power especially in an economic downturn.

In theory, if every job went remote, employees would have more bargaining power, as they have more options, which gives leverage.

In reality, most people aren't skilled negotiators, and become significantly less motivated to negotiate salary once they reach a number that they feel is "fair". And "fair" seems to be a correlated with living expenses.

Furthermore, if most engineers are willing to take a pay cut, this would impact those who are skilled negotiators, for the obvious reason that industry trends are an anchoring point for salary.

Surely a key change would be a home office subsidy, say, split the difference on the cost per employee for footprint?

That would also be benefiting the lowest paid employees proportionately more than the highest.

So, employers are going to finance wealth accumulation for people buying a house in a high cost of living area?

[House ownership rate in Canada is 65%. Mortgage payment are not tax deductible.]

This is all rather beside the point. If you can get a better offer elsewhere, take it. Ideally, develop two or three good offers and take the best.

So what if I chose to live in an area more expensive than what the company is in? would they then increase my salary accordingly?

for arbitrary rules, people will start exploring things at the margins. like that gitlab link can help figure out the best real estate properties where you stay at the edge of a zipcode which pays the most but is next to a zipcode which offers better quality of living.

The article is poorly edited and researched.

For example:

"Its co-founder Sid Sijbrandij wrote in a blog that the calculator was dreamed up because every time he hired someone, there was a conversation around reasonable compensation.

The negotiation would usually revolve around what the person made beforehand, which was dependent on what city they were in. Gitlab scrapped that model in favour of the calculator and also started letting workers know if they move their salary could change."

"what the person made beforehand" is rarely disclosed, so I really question the article.