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Comment by gamesbrainiac | Hacker News Reader

As a Bangladeshi, I can tell you that the workers in my country don't have proper unions. They can't negotiate. Salary is the last thing on their minds, they can't even negotiate safe working conditions. They are uneducated, so they don't know what they deserve. See here -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...

So, the cheap stuff that you're getting is because someone is getting a super bad deal, by exploiting the heck out of workers. Same in China.

The garments factory owners are walking away with tonnes of money, leaving the workers high and dry.

The more _subtle_ point that the author is making, is that, "wait, if people realize that they can get awesome developers in developing nations for a lower price, I'm not going to get hired any more in my over-priced city".

Good, move to a place where your salary is worth more, and work to enrich that community. Why should SF and NY get all the benefits of economic growth?

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Precisely. The OP reaches the wrong conclusion from an excellent point.

The fact that they are benefiting as a consumer because of location based salaries is another point against them. Pitting “closing down the ‘sweatshops’” (i.e. unemployment) as the only alternative for the workers is disingenuous. Another alternative is worker control over the factories. Yes OP as a consumer will loose some luxury as the price of consumer products rises along with the workers’ pay, but what natural law states that the OP has the right to that luxury at the cost of foreign workers?

The original point, you deserve the value of your work in salaries regardless of your location still holds. Even more so when it is applied to the global scale. And the fact that it isn’t applied on the global scale is just another fact pointing to the fact that we live in an unequal economy that exploits workers. Instead of rejecting this, OP should have reached the conclusion that there are alternative worker arrangements which would benefits workers globally.

The author doesn't actually say it out loud, but

> OP should have reached the conclusion that there are alternative worker arrangements which would benefits workers globally.

This is specifically what he DOESN'T want. What he's saying is that someone from Boise, ID shouldn't complain too loud about location-based pay, because taking the logic to its extreme would mean redistributing all this worker and consumer welfare with the rest of the billions of workers worldwide and, surprise surprise, that would actually suck to essentially every American, doesn't matter how poor.

So, basically: "Hey guys, don't rock the boat. We might be crew but you don't want the rowers competing for our place"

Thanks for calling it out. This is what I read as well but I wanted to give the author the benefits of the doubt (don’t attribute malice... and so on). However it is hard to read anything else from this short, concise, and well worded article.

In my circles we have a saying that there is no such thing as an ethical consumption under capitalism. What the OP is basically saying is: “That is fine, unethical consumption is good actually. As long as I’m the one benefiting on other’s expense”.

Wut, how do you read that? I just read: “Can’t you all see what kind of hypocrites we are, arguing against location based pay?!”

If that were the case, the conclusion would have been the opposite, and the title would have been something like: “Location-Based Pay is more common then you think, and Bad Actually”, and statements like “maybe we should be careful what we wish for” would rather be something like:

> As workers united in the goal for international solidarity we should reject the notion of Location-Based Pay, not only because it devalues our own work, but primarily because this practice is causing mass poverty and underpay among our fellow workers in the poorer regions in the world.

Author of the original piece here. Wow, I made the front page of HN!

Hmmmm... I can see how my vague words could have been read to imply that I advocate the opposite of what you suggest, or that I'm promoting a continuation of the status quo for my own selfish benefit. But that's not what I meant! I was merely trying to draw attention to the hypocrisy of wealthy Western software engineers complaining about "location-based pay" when few of us were complaining when the shoe was on the other foot.

I didn't offer much in the way of prescriptive conclusions because I don't know what the solution is; these issues are difficult and I'm just some random Elixir developer. But your suggested conclusion...

... sounds about right, and after reading all this commentary I wish I'd made a bolder statement than the handwavey words I went with. I think I'll write a follow-up piece next week.

Thanks for all this smart feedback.

Update: I have written a follow-up post in response to the above thread

https://blackshaw.substack.com/p/pay-2

Realistically, if you improve working conditions or pay in Bangladesh, the business will shift to one of 10 other poor countries in the developing world. That's not to say we should give up trying to do that. But the comparison of the low-skilled labour with scarce developers, is simply not a very good one, because most developers have reasonable bargaining power.

The answer is to impose environmental and labor based tariffs on countries that enable destructive capitalism, so the cost savings from disregarding the environment and human suffering is offset. Free trade should only be a thing between ethical, responsible states.

That well intended argument has frequently been used as a protectionist argument to keep out cheaper goods from developing nations. E.g. the EU doesn't allow certain produce from Africa because of these reasons.

Most African countries simply won't be able to comply, and the sad thing is that trading produce with the west is one of the only ways for them to escape poverty. So the people you aim to protect are left worse off.

History says that aid to corrupt governments to help the suffering there mostly ends up in the pockets of the people in power, so I'm frankly okay with that. When they get their act together, they can be welcomed into the fold.

Trade is generally accepted as one of the best ways to relieve poverty, precisely because money ends up close to the workers instead of with corrupt governments.

Generally accepted does not equate to the one true way, and in fact, when people generally accept something to be the only truth they usually turn out to be wrong. Economic theory being as contested as it is, and how demonstrably inefficient current economic theories have been at lifting people out of poverty, I would not be surprised if history will regard the statement of “trade is one of the best ways to relieve poverty” to be a failure.

And even if the statement is true, this statement might not hold with international trade as it does with local trade. Perhaps if local populations were allowed to trade freely among them self would be a superior option, then if the rich west were constantly under bidding and under paying.

To take an example. Angola trades a lot with rich countries (particularly with China), yet Angola has one of the worst dictatorships in Southern Africa, and has one of the poorest working class. International trade does not seem to be helping in that case.

The same argument was applied to China in 2000 that trade would transition them to democracy. Instead, we got both poverty eradication AND the entrenchment of their corrupt government in an even stronger position thanks to a stronger economy. I would be very reluctant to support trade with a despot regime.

I think a billion people out of poverty is a net win. Even if their government hasn't become as democratic as we hoped, the chances of it eventually becoming more democratic aren't much less than 20 years ago. If you only want to do business with democratic regimes you will likely hurt the poor people at the bottom more than the despots in power.

> I think a billion people out of poverty is a net win.

On the loss side, we have allowed this despot regime to amass so much power (thanks to the economic growth) that they can take the following steps with impunity

1. ethnic cleansing of Uighur minorities

2. support of a rogue nuclear regime in North Korea

3. Subjugating more than a billion people with perpetual surveillance and authoritarian rule

4. Increasing risks of a strife with multiple neighbors - Japan (Senkaku), S. Korea (via N. Korea), Taiwan (claiming sovereignty), Vietnam (South China Sea) etc.

It feels like a net loss to me.

Except for maybe that last point, I really don't see how having 1 billion people in misery is going to help. Do you have any better solution or would you just hope those regimes change by themselves eventually?

The tiny European country where I come from, the occupation classes with the seemingly most bargaining power are nurses, teachers, air stewards, as they seem to be striking every other year. At the same time they are still payed lower then other similar jobs with similar education requirements. I tend to think that their lower salaries can easier be attributed to the fact that these jobs are majority women. And there is still a significant gender gap in this country.

I’m sorry to say, but I’m little skeptical on how much bargaining power explains different pay gaps.

The situation you describe (striking every other year) is indicative of low bargaining power, as they have to resort to extreme measures and still don't get what professions with high bargaining power get offered even without negotiation.

One cause of low bargaining power for this type of professions (characterised by low pay, relatively high education requirements, decent social status/respect, working with people, often majority female) is that in those positions "the market knows" that the strikers won't fulfil the only threat that matters, namely, simply abandoning that profession for a career path that pays more but is worse in other aspects (generally, unskilled or semi-skilled jobs with less social respectability and work conditions - e.g. painting jobs in construction, driving a garbage truck, etc; it generally would seem a downgrade for a teacher even with an increase in pay) and that theres a nontrivial niche of young people who are still intentionally studying for that profession despite knowing that the pay sucks, because they are motivated by factors other than money. The more people there are who are highly motivated to do that job for non-compensation reasons, the less bargaining power the whole profession has, and it is reflected in pay.

See, this makes me think that the term “Bargaining power” is a post-hoc construction with a-priori explanatory power for salaries. Saying “People have higher salaries because they have more bargaining power” sounds to me like people stating that „courageous people score highly on the courageous personality factor“, or that “there are so many unmarried men because there are so many bachelors”.

Or maybe low bargaining power is just another way to say easily exploitable in the current economic system. If that is the case I’ll subscribe to your theory, as a very similar theory was constructed by Karl Marx in 1867.

Bargaining power would refer also to the power to obtain favorable non-salary conditions (and to other types of negotiations), but "low bargaining power" certainly does imply "easily exploitable", yes. It's not entirely tautological - it does say that they get a poor bargain because they're in weak position to bargain for more, which is kind of the default cause for that (at least in economies with a mostly free labor market - if the salaries aren't set by market, then bargaining power is not that relevant), but it also clarifies that the poor bargain didn't happen because of, say, lack of trying or lack of information or fraud or pure randomness, and it also implies that their situation won't change unless either the main factors weakening their bargaining power (mostly the "excessive supply" issue) change or they get handed (e.g. through legislation) a better bargain than they would be able to negotiate.

The power to strike is relevant as the capability for collective action does grant a somewhat higher bargaining power that they would have otherwise, other things being equal; but of course there are many professions which have a higher inherent bargaining power without even attempting to organize, simply due to having better alternative employment opportunities.

I find the author's point to be a very disturbing one: If we really pay people fairly, I won't be able to afford all these cheap consumer goods any more.

The "idea" of location based pay for developers is that you an have the same standard of living in Boise on less salary than in London. Whether this is true or not is subject to debate.

But what's not subject to debate is that, as you say, Bangladeshi garment workers do not have a standard of living that is okay. What do we do with the fact that our (in the USA or UK) cheap clothing comes at that "price"?

Author of the original piece here; see my response elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26141175

On the flipside, if you can make Silicon Valley money and go live in Mexico or Thailand, chances are that you will cause real estate prices there to increase and become less accessible to the locals. You and your high salary, particularly in a low-income country, are an inflationary force. Does you bringing your high income there automatically translate in enriching the local community?

It definitely does. You are not going to have enough people migrating to make a large enough difference. By all means, go to Thialand, they will welcome you with open arms. More money in the economy means more jobs for people.

More people with a higher level of technical skill will also enrich the community should you choose to participate.

Foreigners can not buy or own properties in Thailand. Often this scenario enriches some local after divorce.

If you live in Thailand and marry a Thai national, its pretty straight forwards to become a citizen.

There's no reason Joe Shmoe developer won't do this.

I wouldn't call living and working in Thailand for 10 years, speaking fluent Thai and passing an interview in Thai for your citizenship straightforward, but YMMV.

edit: typo

If you are married to a Thai national the only requirement is that you stay there for 3 years.

You can get a marriage visa. Actual citizenship is much more involved, and even for people meeting the difficult criteria I haven't heard of the process succeeding without help from people of influence. One of the criteria is working for a single Thai company continuously for several years, and won't be an option for remote workers. Remote workers can't even get a business visa, and end up in a legal gray area.

Perhaps it does, if Thai workers get their pay increased on a large enough scale. But these workers will also inject this increased money into the local economy, and pay more taxes towards the local government, so...

Only if you go there looking for luxury. The best at this gambit locate far away from where any other American or German or Canadian is likely to tread.

I have a feeling that many of the engineers who live in locations far off from SV such as Bangladesh, who do have the skills to make it as a FAANG employee (for example), already choose to move to SV/London/etc and collect that salary. If so, there shouldn't really be all that much untapped potential* in the third world. The way FAANG companies greedily hoover up the eligible talent pool (regardless of whether they have good project ideas for those folks to work on) makes me think it's not likely they'd overlook a vast pool of talent that's cheaper and just as productive.

*Not counting those who never had access to education or a computer to become fully realized engineers in the first place. Just commenting on ready-to-go software engineers.

Not everyone is willing to leave family, friends, and country behind.

But its a larger fraction than ever before in history, its pretty safe to say. So the problem is perhaps the smallest its been, and declining. That's a positive thing.

I don't think that's true. See, for example,https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/22/for-the...

So many parts of the world have such terrible living conditions that anyone with an option will leave even though it means leaving your family and everything you know behind, while those left behind are those with no options stuck there, and most rich countries do their best to make it harder and harder for anyone else to make it there... and you conclude this is a positive thing? Truly we live in the best of all possible worlds!

Its against the site rules to construe the worst possible meaning to a comment. And its lazy to put words in others' mouths. If you have something to say, just say it. Without attacking others, please.

I thought you were saying it was a positive thing that so many people were willing to leave family, friends, and country behind, in leaving poor countries for rich ones.

I may have misunderstood? There was a comment saying not everyone was willing to do this, then you said but more people are than ever before in history, which is positive, no? Did I misunderstand?

But you're right, sorry, I could have phrased my reply in a way that was more explicit about not putting words into your mouth.

I should have just put it in my own words, without projection:

You say, if I'm understanding, that it's a great thing that never before in history have so many been willing to leave family, friends, and country behind. When I see that so many people are leaving family, friends, and everything they know behind for other countries, when they are moving from poorer countries to richer ones, what I see is that quality of life is so unequal across the planet, and people are so desperate. While meanwhile most rich countries are doing their best to keep out these desperate people hoping to leave everything they knew behind for a chance at a secure and dignified life. This to me does not seem like a positive thing. People should better be able to find safety, security, and dignity without having to leave behind their family, friends, and country.

Do we really leave anybody? We can talk to them on Skype for free at any time. I actually see some of my remote siblings more often than the local ones.

The world has changed.

> So many parts of the world have such terrible living conditions that anyone with an option will leave

Hm - I roll to doubt. I think there's an idea in the USA (and the west more broadly) that the quality of life in wealthy countries is Good and the quality of life in poor countries is Terrible For Everyone. (At least, everyone but the ultra-wealthy).

Thats reductive, and (perhaps unfairly) I'm pattern matching your comment to that perspective.

The quality of life for most people in Bangladesh is way better than the quality of life anyone living in a tent city in SF / LA. I doubt many people living in tents in Oakland are scrambling to move to Bangladesh, for kind of obvious reasons. (Its scary, language barrier, culture barriers, no extended support networks, flights are expensive if you're poor, etc etc.) I think it works the same way in reverse.

> The quality of life for most people in Bangladesh is way better than the quality of life anyone living in a tent city in SF / LA.

It's true but misses a broader picture. There are only ~0.5M homeless people in the US [1], or 0.1% of the population. What fraction of Bangladesh lives in that state? Being from the Indian subcontinent and having traveled extensively around the globe, I assure you that that is a much higher fraction and that the quality of life in the US is far far superior than what you'd find in a lot of third world countries.

[1] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

I think there are a lot of preconceived notions regarding developing nations.

A lot of people who can leave, do leave. I left, for example. However, there are a tonne of people who are super smart, but can't leave because of their ageing parents, or other reasons.

Leaving everything you know behind takes courage, and adapting to a new world, a new life takes a lot out of you. Not everyone wants to leave their loved ones. Furthermore, if you are older, it's even harder.

Funny story, one of the reasons I left Bangladesh is because I used to work for this company that paid me 1/6th of the salary someone else was making in a more developed Asian country. I was doing the same work, succeeding at it too.

However, when I wanted equal pay for equal work, they decided to not renew my contract. Back then, I was young, so I decided to apply abroad, an was luckily accepted. Not everyone can do this, because again, you have family, and responsibilities.

2 months into my new job, my old company begs me to come back, and offers me the salary that was more than I wanted, and an O1 visa sponsorship should I want to go to America.

Most Eastern Europeans I worked with in the Netherlands all had one thing in common - they put the effort in to leave their home countries (Romania, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.) and never return. They took all the optional extra courses at school, took as many professional exams as they could afford, and worked on their craft as software engineers to get an opportunity to move to NL, IE or UK.

In Bangladesh, the tried and tested way is to enrol in a master's program and take it from there. Not always something that you can afford though.

Mostly because they're sick with corruption and politicians in those countries or they hadn't had much to leave behind.

Even then, it took my friend 7 years and the death of his father to start thinking about leaving the country. By 7 years, I mean that I've been telling him to leave for 7 years.

Definitely agree with the inertia thing. The labor market works in the long-run but isn't frictionless for practical real-world reasons pertaining to personality, personal circumstance, immigration policy and so on.

I very much doubt this is true. I’m sure there are a very large number of FAANG quality engineers all over the eastern US, let alone other countries, that couldn’t or wouldn’t make the move to SV. I would be willing to put money on it being the MAJORITY capable of being hired into those roles couldn’t or wouldn’t move there to take them.

There is no amount of money that would have convinced me to leave Florida. My family and my wife’s family is here. My children’s friends and extended support networks are here. This life is not worth losing for any pay raise. I’m willing to bet a very large number of quality engineer made the same decision I did.

There are plenty of skilled engineers who either don't make it into FAANG or don't manage to get into the US.

you really overestimate how much FAANG companies understand about the world, or how to hire productive employees. It's all dances and bullshit, and puffery on behalf of the employees to make you believe we're the pinnacle of human intellect. I should know, I'm one of them :)

that's quite silly - leaving your family is a very questionable deal, you grandparents or parents basically wither away without seeing their children and grandchildren.

The visa laws make you a second-class citizen (well non- citizen, really) and ensure that you cannot spend much time with them - there is a maximum limit on the number of days you can spend out of the country. Also usually they mean you cannot bring your grandparents. Hell, UK home office basically killed a woman because they denied entry to UK to her sister for an organ transplant. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/leukaemia-pa...

You have to have relatives and friends that can look after your family, because every now and then they need help and you are not there to help them.

For many folks who have half-decent life at home, the trouble is not worth it. I have many friends from eastern Europe who have come to UK to study and went back.

Lastly, why is FAANG the ultimate benchmark? Some people develop safety and life-critical systems, land rovers on mars, etc. I hold them in higher regard.

There are vast numbers of people from poorer countries working in richer countries so that they can send the money home to their families. In the Phillipines (for example) it's so normal for parents to work abroad (usually in Arab countries) while the grandparents look after the children, the whole economy is affected by it.

And FAANG is the ultimate benchmark for salaries because they pay so much, not because they're held in high regard. In fact, the stories coming out of FAANG (FB and Apple especially) seem to show these are dystopian nightmare workplaces that you only work in because of the ridiculously high salaries.

Fun fact!

Income is NEGATIVELY correlated with job satisfaction in SOME scenarios. Imagine the thought experiment: you get paid GREAT, but you boss is aweful. You decide to quit as soon as you find a job that let's you keep you current lifestyle. If it is hard to do that, you keep your job longer...and you have poor satisfaction.

To counter this, I got a 10% raise 6 months ago, and it was tots legit.

As if it was easy to emigrate to the US or western Europe for non-citizens…

It's super easy in case you are a talented young person. See Canada's point base migration system or Blue Card for EU.

> I have a feeling that many of the engineers who live in locations far off from SV such as Bangladesh, who do have the skills to make it as a FAANG employee (for example), already choose to move to SV/London/etc and collect that salary

What is this feeling based on? You have to invest a lot of money, time and effort into paperwork before you can dream of migrating. One does not simply "choose" to move; it takes months or years of effort - not every talented individual takes this route, or even thinks it's worthwhile - there are a lot of trade-offs, even for the most naïve. I suspect this idea of talent=success is an instance of the Just-world fallacy (one way of reading what you said is that those who are talented have already been rewarded by FAANG jobs, therefore those who haven't yet are not talented, obviously)

> the cheap stuff that you're getting is because someone is getting a super bad deal

And this is Bad and should be fixed. Developed countries should push poorer countries into paying better salaries to their workers and improve their conditions. This would directly benefit "westerners" too, since it would reduce migratory pressures and get a more level-playing field in economic sectors that have been wiped from these shores -- some even in quite strategic sectors, like the PPE shenanigans last year showed.

Would that mean my plastic bullshit would get more expensive? Yeah, so what? Maybe this would reignite the debate on effective redistribution in our countries too, which was basically killed in 1989.

It's not always even passed to consumer -> you might pay $20 for a T-shirt but the worker might get paid $1 for it!

I totally agree with this. The exploitation of the human resource is true and brutal!

I grew up in Sri Lanka, and there is a relatively small yet similar situation. Workers are paid $100-200, and have the jobs hanging in a thread leaving no room for negotiations.

There is a massive environmental impact as well. Those big companies often don't play by the rules, and often pollute the water ways, air, etc because who cares if they make money.

> They are uneducated, so they don't know what they deserve. They are uneducated, so they don't know what they deserve.

You don’t need a formal education to know whether you are being taken advantage of. Only people with formal education believe such lies.

> Good, move to a place where your salary is worth more, and work to enrich that community. Why should SF and NY get all the benefits of economic growth?

Do you really think Globalization should force everyone to move where their salary is worth more?

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