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The Wage Gap 2

A recent post on Hacker News prompted me to revisit What Does a Wage
Gap Look Like?

What has changed in the past 5 years? Unfortunately not much. The
point today is the same as it was 5 years ago. Location based pay is
still the norm and is still hugely unfair. That last point is not
shared by everyone of course. People exploiting the current status
quo for profits, and employees who are afraid paying fair salaries to
everyone would negatively affect their total compensation obviously
have very little interest in acknowledging the situation. Let's look
at some other excuses.

1. Discriminating salaries based on location is not an equal
employment problem because one can change locations

If we look at some equal employment opportunity directives they cover
traits like race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual
orientation, veteran status, disabilities etc. Indeed, some of those
are set in stone, but others are not so much. If someone was asked to
e.g. change their religion or renounce their nationality for a better
salary that would be ridiculous. Yet asking people to severe cultural
and social ties and uproot their whole families to move thousands of
miles away is still perfectly normal. Obviously this only applies
when an opportunity for relocation is presented at all.

2. People are paid what a replacement would cost

Let's suppose for a moment that employees are interchangeable
resources without discernible differences and companies are profit
maximizing entities. How is it possible under such assumptions that
2-5-10x salaries exist when 1x replacements are readily available
elsewhere? To argue that people are only paid what their replacement
would cost also requires an explanation why a garden variety remote
employee (or a team of four experienced veterans) is not a
replacement for locally grown organic talent? So far there is no
convincing explanation to back that up.

3. You get what you negotiate

Negotiation can move the needle in a narrow salary band, but it does
not change the fundamentals. There is no way to negotiate against a
glass ceiling. It is simply impossible to negotiate a salary that is
not on the table. Unless we want to pretend whole countries are good/
bad at negotiating, arguing getting paid a fraction of your coworkers
is a failure in negotiation is insincere.

+1. Location based pay protects local economies and thus GOOD for
employees

Yes, you read that right. Some folks indeed suggest wages should be
suppressed out of kindness, bless their hearts. The poor should stay
poor for their own sake (not for their sake). Frankly this is an
insult to injury.

5 years. Remember 2017? Trump has just entered office, market was
booming, the start of the covid pandemic is still 3 years away, no
war in Ukraine. Now consider since 2017 people having the same title,
working the same job within the same company still have not earned
the same money their colleagues made just in 2017 alone, just because
they live somewhere else. Let that sink in for a moment.

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[e5281]Author elsajohanssonPosted on September 16, 2022September 16,
2022Tags eee, employee, employer, remote, salary, wage, work

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  * The Wage Gap 2 September 16, 2022
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