I think it’s a slippery slope to adjust pay based on (the employer’s perception of) the employee’s costs.

Do you pay employees less if they don’t have kids? If they don’t have college debt? If they have a rich spouse? If they don’t drive?

If those things don’t affect salary, why should choosing a less or more expensive city?

@enn Because this market is not global yet.

Adding or removing kids, debt or spouse doesn’t change the list of potential jobs for a potential employee. Moving to another city does.

It’s effectively national

… in US?

Way less in some other countries.

In the US, yeah

Also, I don’t believe that the person in the Pumpkin Village, KS has the same opportunities (excluding the ones which involve moving to another city) as the one in SF.

Yes, one can pack and move to California, but then the salary difference will be eaten up by the increased cost of living.

> Adding or removing kids, debt or spouse doesn’t change the list of potential jobs for a potential employee Disagree. There are jobs that do credit checks on people. Some jobs may be more difficult to hold if you have kids (e.g. demanding/time consuming jobs).

spouse probably wont make much difference but the other two can.

Oh, sorry, I forgot that US is the surveillance state now and employers are not legally prohibited from doing these checks.

But that is actually reinforces my point — @enn says that the employers should not discriminate by amount of kids or debt, and hence they should not discriminate by location, and you’re saying they already do.

i agree with you, but yes these things happen now

From a pure market perspective, I guess I would assume that--since we’re talking about remote jobs--a dev who can land one all-remote job is probably in a position to land other remote jobs

so as far as the remote market they really do have the same opportunities as someone in SF or whatever

it’s true that the SF person likely has far more lucrative local options

@enn Yes, and the people who can land a lot of remote jobs have a better negotiating power than those who choose between local jobs and a remote one.

But there are few remote jobs yet.

This discussion was kicked off by a listing for a remote job with a COL adjustment, I thought?

yeah it was

turned out to be a contentious issue 😉

yeah

to argue against what I said earlier, I don't think it's up to a company to decide what my cost of living is

maybe I live like a monk on the bare essentials. Maybe I need to support half a dozen family members

in the end, I know the salary I want, and can negotiate to get close to it

It’s up to a company to drive the cost down to the point which is a little bit higher than your next best alternative.

And it’s up to a potential employee to drive the cost up to the point which is a little bit lower than their next best alternative.

right