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by vostok 3671 days ago
They can still hire devs. They just need to pay more. Total comp is not adjusted for cost of living for doctors, salesmen, traders, bankers, attorneys, and managers. Why do you expect it to be adjusted for software developers? This is less than intuitive for me.
2 comments
epicureanideal 3671 days ago
It's a way of justifying keeping salaries as low as possible for engineers, but somehow managing to cough up more money in some locations. An equally good engineer in Chicago should be worth the same amount as an engineer in SF, but they're paid less... simply because the employer has more negotiating power in both cases. In both cases, the employer pays enough to give the engineer a reasonably good living for the local cost of living, because that's what's needed to incentivize them to work... a natural minimum incentive. If engineers demanded more, they'd get more.
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golergka 3671 days ago
Why the hell should he be paid the same amount of money? It's a different location, different demand for engineers — this just makes no sense.
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jeroen 3670 days ago
> different demand for engineers

That was the point that was made upthread. Lower demand -> no shortage -> no need for H1B.

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golergka 3670 days ago
Yes, and it's the same point I'm trying to defend against a communistic idea of some kind of universal "value" of labour which is equal regardless of location or circumstances.
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adrianN 3671 days ago
Some people think that employees should be paid somewhat proportionally to the amount of value they provide to their employer. If you accept that, then a good engineer should always get about the same amount of money, regardless of the cost of living, because they always produce a similar amount of value for the company.
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golergka 3670 days ago
Value is subjective: it's determined as agreement between seller and buyer. Engineer of the same ability is more valuable for an average SF company than an average Chicago company.
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projectramo 3670 days ago
I don't know if that is true. A cursory glance at compensation statistics seems to indicate wide regional variance in the compensation in all these professions.

And, for me at least, intuitively it makes sense as well, but I don't want to argue intuition here.

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