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Discussion on: Why (I think) "Cost of Living" pay for remote workers is BS.

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sam_ferree profile image
Sam Ferree • Edited

I assure you friend, you'll find quite hard to find a bigger fan of free enterprise capitalism than me. I understand completely what's going on here, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize the difference between what a company can do and what a company should do

My point is not to start some revolution whereby this practice is made illegal, I want to raise awareness that this practice is not a "Fair to all employees" system, it is a "Save the company money wherever we can" system, and the appropriate way to fix this is to let remote workers know the shouldn't just tacitly accept it.

Honestly if a company like GitLab came forward and said "Yes, we pay people less where we can to save money" I'm all out of complaints. It's this facade of "fairness" that I find extremely disingenuous an utterly indefensible.

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deanashton profile image
Dean Ashton

Point taken - the company should be honest about their motivations when introducing a change to cost of living pay schemes and not call it "fair to all employees" and it is right to call them out on this. I stand corrected!

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jakedohm_34 profile image
Jake Dohm

I love this comment thread so much, because of the respect for each other's opinions and kindness in communication! There are so many sites where "don't read the comments" is great advice, and I'm so so glad that The Practical Dev isn't one of them!

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suprnova32 profile image
Patricio Cano

I worked for GitLab for 2 and half years. I joined as the 9th employee, and that is exactly what they do. The way their salary calculator works has nothing to do about fairness. It is about how much money can we save by hiring this person in this country. They even have "Compensation Specialists" whose sole purpose is to handle these situations.

They will never say it is that way. They hide a lot of bad culture underneath that whole "we are super open" facade.

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bousquetn profile image
Nicolas Bousquet

Let's be honest we all do it. People buy from china/brazil whatever because of the price. They go in vacations in cheap places/coutries (or even retire there). If you discuss with them they'll say they don't want child labor, people without vacation or social security and so on, that they want to protect local work but they are the first to try to get the most of their money regardless.

An enterprise is exactly the same. There no reason why they should be more ethical than the rest of us. And we can't ask them to be when our own behavior mean that if they don't do it they go bankrupt.

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sam_ferree profile image
Sam Ferree

See my response to your previous comment.

Shopping around for the lowest price, and a company policy that says "Screw people who live in poor communities" are not the same thing.

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bousquetn profile image
Nicolas Bousquet

But the policy doesn't say it. You say it. They don't So that the whole difference.

Exactly the same if you buy cheap from country that don't provide decent working conditions. You don't say it, but you do it.

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sam_ferree profile image
Sam Ferree

GitLab wrote a whole article that says it:
about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-o...

it's this EXPLICIT policy, I'm against. Not voluntary market negotiations that result in unequal pay.

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bousquetn profile image
Nicolas Bousquet

github is just one actor inside what you call voluntary market negociations.

I mean there no such thing as getting what you want. Both parties have to agree and if they do not, there no contract, if they agree there a contract. But that doesn't mean the company can force people to work for them or that on the contrary they are forced to provide a given level of compensation (outside of local regulation rules).

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ashokawardhan profile image
Ashoka Chandra Wardhan

I work in India, where salaries are very low compared to USA or Europe.
I am just pointing out about the line pertaining to going to cheaper vacations, the truth at least for me is, some of the vacations might end up taking more than half of my yearly salary, which might not even end up as a month for a dev located in USA.