[HN Gopher] The Wage Gap 2
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The Wage Gap 2
Author : a_imho
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-09-21 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (elsajohansson.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (elsajohansson.wordpress.com)
| malfist wrote:
| I'm one of those "discriminated" against here. I live in
| kentucky, work for a FAANG company.
|
| My employer pays me less because of that, and you know what? I'm
| okay with that. My discretionary income after housing and basic
| living expenses are removed is way higher than that of someone in
| a HCOL area.
|
| I have a 3300 sqft house that was built in the last 10 years and
| a quarter acre of land. That costs me $1400/month. If I wanted a
| comparable standard of living in SF, the wage gap between here
| and there would need to be many thousands more that it really is.
|
| So pay me 20-25% less, it makes me more employable and I have a
| better standard of living than you do.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Thanks, you're one of the good ones I guess. You must be a
| mindreader, my (slightly negative) comment was NOT inspired by
| you :)
|
| I talked about all the entitled rich boys that bought $50k
| shacks in Kentucky (for $300k), and are now whining that their
| pay is being clawed back.
|
| Anyway, I got a bit of a kick out of that; what a coincidence.
| pyrodactyl wrote:
| I am the original poster from the post linked in this article.
|
| I know these as a fact that a comparable property in my city
| would cost me much more than what you're paying. All the while
| I'm getting payed less than half of my colleagues living in
| your area.
|
| And there are many other costs that are comparable eg.
| electronics, vehicles and education.
|
| All this is to say that location based pay is not about cost of
| living, its about getting away with paying as little as
| possible.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Can we see some sources for those "facts" please?
| pyrodactyl wrote:
| A comparable sized property listing
| https://www.nobroker.in/property/buy/4-bhk-apartment-for-
| sal...
|
| For electronics and vehicles you are free to google iphone
| and mercedes prices in India vs Us. Its especially higher
| if I want specific items to import like framework laptop,
| fairphone, tesla car
|
| Private education can get very expensive very quickly too.
| Public schools are not even an option as they don't even
| have furniture sometimes.
|
| You might say remaining costs are low, but they are low
| only if we use uncertified, unskilled, low quality
| services/labor. For even decent quality of work the prices
| will be in multiples.
|
| About my comment about being payed half, the pay scales are
| visible to everyone in the company so I know that the least
| in the US also gets payed 2x of my location
| [deleted]
| malfist wrote:
| If you're paid 50% of what your HCOL breathern are being
| paid, and living in a higher cost of living than myself, then
| perhaps it's not location that's the culprit here.
|
| I don't know any company that has a location based pay
| differential that ranges into 50%.
| pyrodactyl wrote:
| I get exactly 45% percent of SF rates. Just to be clear,
| this is an international company
| Ekaros wrote:
| People very much miss why they are getting paid so much. It is
| because they are in HCOL area with lot of competition. Thus
| employers are forced to pay a lot to get warm bodies there. For
| some reason they have wanted them there...
|
| Now, if work can be done else where, magically the supply
| increases, go figure. So they don't need to pay so much.
| Instead they can pick someone else for less.
|
| For me, I consider the high pay a payment for living somewhere
| I don't want to or cost lot to live. If I don't live there I
| get less.
| jmoak3 wrote:
| Hey I'm in KY at a FAANG too! Happy to take the pay cut, I
| don't see how I could have the life I want in the Bay even at
| 100% pay.
|
| I'm buying later this year, really thankful I grew up in a
| place where I can easily settle down, and I'm looking forward
| to passing that on someday.
| malfist wrote:
| There's dozens of us!
| scarmig wrote:
| I would bet 100+ people at a FAANG work remotely in
| Kentucky (excluding Amazon fulfillment center work). Based
| off of one that has ~40 remote Kentuckians.
| jmoak3 wrote:
| When's the meetup? :P
| mym1990 wrote:
| I think this is part of the dilemma(and I am not arguing right
| or wrong here), but there will be a subset of employees who are
| okay with giving ground to the employer on this issue, in
| exchange for job security and some financial security. And this
| ultimately takes away some of the ground from the people trying
| to fight the inequality. I believe economics will have the last
| say in the long run.
| malfist wrote:
| Is it an inequality though? Everyone's seen the baseball game
| equality comic with the different high people. Equality is
| when everyone can see the ballgame, not that everyone gets
| the same height boxes to stand on. I'd argue that this is the
| same here. I'm the "taller" person because my cost of living
| is lower, if you give me the same size box (income) as the
| person in the HCOL area, they might not be equal to me,
| because I start with an advantage.
| mym1990 wrote:
| In the literal term, I think it is inequality if one is
| just comparing the salary numbers. BUT, once variables
| start to get added(location, personal preferences, the
| availability of replacements) then you start getting into
| murkier territory. There are also significant impacts of
| standardizing pay across regions. There will obviously be a
| flow of people from HCOL > LCOL/MCOL areas, consumption
| will increase, local inflation will happen...these things
| benefit some groups and hurt others. No idea how it would
| all shake out in the end though.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Ultimately, I'd be far, far more concerned about a race to
| the bottom. That race to the bottom is possible regardless of
| location-based pay or not. Once people discover how to
| navigate remote work across big timezone differences en masse
| and mentality shifts, things will truly get interesting.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Is this from a consumer or producer standpoint(or both)? A
| race to the bottom ultimately hurts everyone. In a
| simplistic world, if wages go down, people will consume
| less, causing decreased revenue. Its in the best interest
| for companies to have a competitive wage floor that still
| allows for quality goods and services to be created.
|
| Remote work will certainly shift dynamics, I am quite
| interested in if the concept of 'hybrid' work will take
| off, and how that would shape cities/communities.
| causi wrote:
| _A race to the bottom ultimately hurts everyone._
|
| It's already a race to the bottom. It's just the fact
| that "doing the job well" hasn't been the only factor in
| the race. Strip off "being able to move to and tolerate
| living in the right place" and the race gets a lot more
| fair in my opinion.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Consumer. And frankly, I believe most producers do not
| realize it will hurt everyone, or are hoping some form of
| automation/AI will take off so they can massively
| minimize the downsides.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Arguments against location-based pay generally assume that all
| employees would be given raises to match the company's most
| expensive market.
|
| Realistically, most companies aren't interested in paying
| everyone more just because some of their employees are in an
| expensive location. I would expect any location-independent
| compensation programs to move toward median compensation across
| locations, not upward toward maximum compensation in the most
| expensive location.
|
| Existing companies like the FAANGs don't have a choice because
| they have a lot of customers in those locations, but younger
| companies adopting location-independent pay would absolutely be
| targeting median compensation rather than paying everyone top
| of market in Silicon Valley just because that's the maximum
| possible compensation they might need to pay someone.
| malfist wrote:
| That's exactly what companies like Reddit do that don't have
| location based pay. They pay middle of the band nation wide
| and the excludes people from HCOL from working for them.
| janef0421 wrote:
| I don't think there's any way to take a reasonable position here,
| because the underlying situation is irrational. In a rational
| economy, each city would adopt an urban form that could
| efficiently support its population in a reasonable land
| footprint, and would change that urban form as the city evolved.
| This would mean that housing costs would be broadly similar
| across all cities. This hasn't happened, so housing costs are
| absurd, which results in absurdity in other areas.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what he's talking about here. Is he talking
| about people in other countries not getting USA pay, or different
| locations getting different pay?
|
| At least in the US, things don't always look so unbalanced.
| Moving to <big west coast city>, New York, or Chicago has baggage
| attached to it. There's other costs an annoyances.
|
| I would need a massive salary to consider even trying it. So how
| would it be unfair to expect more money depending on location? It
| really depends on the specifics, and seems to work out either
| way, depending on the situation.
|
| Lots of people are leaving these high payed areas simply because
| they don't think it's worth it. Many might be retiring, but
| you're also seeing them take less glamorous jobs in small
| cities... I know many of them have already made their money, but
| it really looks like something else to me.
|
| Or is this article backlash from salty SV employees that are now
| whining that they can't keep their SV salary, while they pay
| $300k cash for a $50k shack in Kentucky? Honestly, I would be a
| little pissed about that, since you didn't see them complaining
| about the decade they were able to make a half million dollars to
| move some GUI buttons around and attend meetings. Now they see
| dollar signs and are mad that they're being asked to make similar
| dollars to the rubes.
|
| Anyway, what a rant, sorry, especially if that's not what the
| authors meant. If he's talking about US vs. eg. Mexico, India,
| China, ect. that's a really interesting question, though it
| technically has similar issues (eg. I know it's pride, but my
| Indian coworkers insist their quality of life is the same there,
| despite lower pay)
|
| I doubt most rich people (ie. everyone in the US/EU) are really
| willing to deal with the realities of competing on a wider scale,
| with "fairer" pay.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| The previous article (linked at the top of the article) talks
| about "overseas workers." If you look at the blog in its
| entirety it seems to be a screed every year (or 2 or 4) railing
| against the "the ruling class."
|
| I don't think there's a lot of value to be found here.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| I'm one of those people who already made their money and then
| moved to a LCOL area. It was supposed to be temporary, but I
| met my wife and she won't move because of her family so we're
| here to stay.
|
| We have zero debt. I paid off our mortgage in about 5 years. I
| put money aside for my son's education the day she told me she
| was pregnant. We've spent the last 10 years spending less than
| 40% of our combined income annually and now we're reaping the
| rewards.
|
| I am fortunate enough to not have to work at age 40, but I do
| need some kind of obligation to keep me content so I plan to
| have a remote web dev job by the end of the year.
|
| I would be perfectly fine taking a lower wage due to my
| location. And that might make me more attractive to employers.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| I make a 6 figure salary in one of the lowest COL cities in
| the US. I sometimes see people claiming to make significantly
| more in SV, NYC, and forth.
|
| No way would I make that trade. My _PURCHASING POWER_ is
| probably vastly stronger than theirs. You say 40% but I could
| legitimately live off of 20% if I so chose. In fact, one of
| the problems I have is that I have absolutely no credit. As
| in, credit reports come back with zip, zilch, nada. And that
| can be problematic for people that don't trust seeing that.
|
| If I'm being honest, it's a super power that I'm sad to see
| others are figuring out.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| My wife and I both have damn near perfect credit scores
| because we make our money work for us. Everything goes on a
| card but we've never once carried a balance over or paid
| any interest. We have many vehicles because I like older
| autos, but I buy her a new Honda CRV every 5 years for her
| commute. I call a dealer in La Grange, GA and they deliver
| it to the house and I hand them a check.
|
| If you don't have credit I would recommended getting a card
| and using it for everything.
|
| Our situation is 100% by design. I live in a neighborhood
| filled with people making $100K+ plus per year who are all
| leveraged like crazy and probably have no significant
| savings.
|
| But the husbands all drive $50K+ trucks to go to their
| office jobs and their wives have the latest and greatest
| SUV.
|
| In contrast, my pick up truck never gets used unless I need
| it for a specific task. Other than that it sits parked. My
| one "nice thing" that I allow myself is my Land Cruiser.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The author needs to learn some basic economics. Supply and
| demand.
|
| I imagine they would also change their tune a bit if there was
| _really_ no location based pay, so developers in Silicon Valley
| got paid the same as developers in India or China. Don 't
| complain about how good you have it Americans.
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(page generated 2022-09-21 23:02 UTC)