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Comment by ganarajpr | Hacker News Reader

Companies attempting to pay an engineer according to location, in my opinion, is another kind of discrimination. You are supposed to pay an employee based on his/her abilities, not her location.

We have rules in govts that companies should not discriminate against employees based on sex, religion, sexual orientation etc etc.. But it is fair to discriminate the salary of an employee based on location? For ex: I know a few friends who have moved from Europe to Asia with the same role and are getting paid less compared to what they were getting paid in Europe. Its the same role, its the same person, but getting paid less just because of location ?

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> You are supposed to pay an employee based on his/her abilities, not her location.

You are supposed to pay them the minimum amount it takes to get them to show up to work. When someone moves to a less competitive market, where getting another job is harder, then they are more likely to show up for lesser pay.

And remember that a country may have a less competitive market, even if the workers are remote and not seemly bound by a local market, because governments often love to put up huge roadblocks when it comes to international hiring. If you are being paid less than you were in another country doing the same job for the same employer, this is almost certainly why you have agreed to take a pay cut.

Exactly. This isn't a "cost of living" adjustment, it's a "we're lucky you have fewer options, so we don't have to pay as much" adjustment.

If I get hired in such a company, I'm moving to SF or Zurich the next day.

How would you move there without a visa?

Females generally get paid less for the same work that males do. If someone transitions male -> female should they get a pay cut?

That’s up to them. It’s the worker who chooses how much it takes to show up. I suppose if they want to truly play the part of being female they may want to accept less.

Also, the gender pay gap is a myth so there's no reason to consider it in the first place.

I disagree. I believe a company should pay based on ability of employees to have comfort and wellness, not some universal measure of value (which I believe to be impossible). What you are advocating for inadvertently breaks community and exacerbates gentrification and destruction of social fabric via inequality. Location matters.

You could also argue that difference in pay is less discriminatory. You are paying employees to have the same quality of life, same type of housing, same opportunity to provide for family, send your kids to the same type of schooling. These things cost differently in different countries, so require different income.

Exactly this! Location-based pay is not so much about cost of living as it is about buying power. In the end, money is just a place holder for real value which comes in the form of goods and services. And the real value of the same amount of dollars wildly differs per location. So if you want to pay fairly and not discriminate, you have to try and make sure people can roughly buy the same things in their differing locations for the money you give them.

While I'm sure it's very kind of companies to care about my quality of life and the type of my housing, it's honestly none of their business. Even if they tell me I'm "family."

Fair pay to me, at least, means paying for results. Not paying for hours spent toiling. Not paying for where I am on the planet. Not paying for how I get the results, just for the results.

Instead, there are all of these gamey factors inserted into the mix. They're emotional. They're manipulative. Yuck!

That’s not how free markets/capitalism is supposed to work. Companies are expected to just shop around for the lowest price on the capabilities they need. Are you suggesting we should adopt something else then capitalism/free markets?

Why are you supposed to pay based on abilities? Where is that stated?

As a company you need certain abilities, and you pay whatever the market decides these abilities are worth, and nothing more. Depending on location, the market will set a different price on these abilities, so you pay different.

Discrimination is around things that an individual can't choose (religion being the weird elephant in the room). Fair or not, this isn't discrimination.

In the UK, the Equality Act (2010) protects: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership (in employment only), pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation.

Pregnancy, maternity, marriage, civil partnerships and gender re-assignment are usually chosen by individuals, not forced upon them.

Disagree on gender re-assignment, people don't choose to have gender dysphoria just like they don't choose sexual orientation.

I didn't mean to imply that people choose to have gender dysphoria, sorry if it came off that way.

Pregnancy and maternity are desired by the society as a whole. So they might receive some positive discrimination.

(Stress on might and some, probably still not enough in may rich countries to stop native population from shrinking.)

Many people can’t choose where they live either. Getting a visa to the US is a ludicrous process and even if they wanted to they maybe tied by family obligations.

But people don't choose to be rich or poor exactly either. As a general rule, discrimination is around things for which there's no choice. Having a choice over where they live or whether they are rich doesn't mean it's easy or practical. But that can't make it grounds for discrimination, even if unfair.

Ability to live anywhere in the world is a choice?

yes if you're a citizen of one of the US, CA, EU

You can't just live in the US as a reason living in the EU.

TIL

I don't think that rule holds in general. For another example besides religion, you can choose whether or not to marry interracially.

So, you think a software engineer in India can just "choose" to come and work in the US ?

Since when people chose where to be born?

A worker in country X or country Y are very different for companies' balance sheets. For instance, my company is Canadian, and we are eligible for significant tax credits through SR&ED[0] for software developers. If a software developer moved their permanent residence to outside Canada, even if we could magically pin exchange rates to pay them the CAD equivalent in local currency, it would be a significantly different financial impact on the company as they aren't eligible for that program. I'm not an expert, but I imagine there are many equivalent programs in every country, state, and even municipality.

It works both ways, anyway. If those friends had moved from Thailand to Switzerland, would it be discrimination to pay them more?

[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/scientific-...

> A worker in country X or country Y are very different for companies' balance sheets

Yes, but quite often, workers are in the same country (or even same state!) and still get paid differently based on CoL.

I agree with this in theory but I can't see how it will work in practice. There isn't a global "value of ability" to base the pay on. It's valued differently in every location.

> You are supposed to pay an employee based on his/her abilities, not her location.

I don't believe that is a legal requirement, anywhere. Remuneration is based on many factors, which can include the cost of living. A company will not be able to hire someone in New York City, for the same price as someone in a less expensive jurisdiction.

This isn't discrimination, it's simple economic reality.

It s based on suply and demand indeed. The legal requirements might affect minimum pay.

> Companies attempting to pay an engineer according to location, in my opinion, is another kind of discrimination. You are supposed to pay an employee based on his/her abilities, not her location.

So you’re saying, we should be paying engineers in Europe and in the US the same as an engineer in LATAM or India or Asia that has the same level of experience and skill.

The only way to be non discriminatory is to have a standardized formula of compensation that takes into account cost of living (rent, food, healthcare, taxes etc) where the final take home pay in locations around the world are equivalent - which I believe should be the case at most companies

> You are supposed to pay an employee based on his/her abilities, not her location.

I don't think this make any sense on so many levels. First, "abilities" are not a good way to think about wages. If you hire a neurosurgeon to do your gardening, you won't pay them more than a run of the mill gardener.

Rather, you as the employer compete against other employers on different markets in a fairly classical supply and demand situation. The "abilities" of an compliance expert with tech skills did not change much when GDPR was introduced, but as all EU companies scrambled to figure out the regulation (and the DPO role was popularised by fiat), the compensation went way up.

If the employee can participate in e.g the SF labour market, you have to pay a competitive salary in that market, if not you don't have to. As long as there are barriers, e.g a on-location worker in SF has more opportunities for whatever reason, the location premium makes sense.

To take your example in the opposite direction. Let's say a east-european company want to expand into the US and open up a sales engineering office in SF, and want their best sales engineers to go work their, it would be completely insane to not raise their wage. "We pay people after ability here you have 40k USD, have fun finding housing".

Yeah I absolutely hate that. I get why they do it from a business point of view but as an engineer, I'm instantly put off when I see something along the lines of "up to $x (depending on location)".

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