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Comment by joshuamorton | Hacker News Reader

Why? Say you live in or near Atlanta, the rate paid to (on site) employees in Atlanta is less than the rate paid to (on site) employees in SF (I think this is true for pretty much every FAANG).

Why should a remote employee in Atlanta make more than an onsite one?

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> Why should a remote employee in Atlanta make more than an onsite one?

Not more, but why shouldn't they be paid the same if they're doing the same work?

Markets don't care about justice. It's all about supply and demand. If a company needs people on-site in SF and also needs people on-site in Atlanta, it will have to pay the former more than the latter. If they don't, they will either be paying more (if they give the Atlanta folks extra money) than they have to or they won't be able to fill the positions (if they don't give the SF folks extra money).

Well, in the scenario you're responding to, you're actually asking why an onsite Atlanta employee should be making less than an onsite SF employee (based on the statement that remote should get main campus salary).

And the answer is market rates but a lot of people don't like that answer.

If the hiring pool is remote, then the local market rates don’t matter. Perhaps an open cost of living difference could be ok, but there is no market rate justification.

Isn't remote a disadvantage in that case as the pool is larger?

If I'm the employer I don't need to hire everyone.

I just need to hire a small subset of people, relative to the overall population in the pool who meets the qualifications of the job, who are also willing to work for X.

The bigger the pool the bigger the competition and the easier it is to find the matching subset, no?

If there are more people who are equally qualified and willing to do the job remotely for less than the on-site team in Silicon Valley is, then the market for remote people to do the job is more employer-favorable than the on-site market.

Why should they pay person X more than needed to get the level of talent they want under the conditions they're willing to offer?

Two reasons to open a satellite office. First is to cut costs, second is to grow the business and recruit from an untapped talent pool.

I'm not a cost cutting person, so I'm not interested by the former. Trying to play games with CoL signals that instead of putting money in growing the product, they would rather try to squeeze as much as they can.

By that logic, why don't they just pay everyone five million dollars a year? Doing anything less is just squeezing employees. I learned from my first startup CEO, the number one cost for almost any company is payroll. If you can't manage it, you won't survive as a company. There's a difference between compensating people fairly, or even generously, for a job well done, and just leaving money on the table.

I have been asking this question for years, and also been downvoted on multiple sites (including HN) for asking it.

Will I at least make the same insane TC CoL adjusted? Or am I more likely to be paid what an average developer in Atlanta can take home or just a bit more?

At least where I work, I come out drastically ahead by not working in the Bay Area. Even though my compensation is maybe 10% lower, it's really more like a 5-6% pay cut when I take my marginal tax rate into consideration. I'd be spending waaaayyy more than an extra 5% of my income if I wanted a similar lifestyle up in Silicon Valley (owning my home relatively close to work)

> Will I at least make the same insane TC CoL adjusted?

There's enough disagreement about what this means that its difficult to say. If your goal is to buy a house, you'll be making more CoL adjusted. If you're happy to rent, its less clear cut but still probably close.

> Or am I more likely to be paid what an average developer in Atlanta can take home or just a bit more

More.

> There's enough disagreement about what this means that its difficult to say.

I remember a talk HR was giving about remote work. Someone asked about COL and salary adjustments. HR didn't mention cost of living, but they did mention cost of labor. That was a new term to me.

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