[R0b0t1]

No. Scaling income with CoL is just subsidizing the housing costs of people who want to live in more desirable locations.

If someone wants to spend part of their compensation on living in a nice area, fine. But if someone else would rather take that compensation and live in a lower CoL area then let them.

[cameronbrown]

But we're not paid by CoL, rather, the job market. If I move to a very small but expensive village, I'm not going to get paid more than being in London. Silicon Valley is just a weird edge case where there's so much talent in one place that it's affecting CoL.

Regardless, there's always going to be a premium on in-person talent.

[WhompingWindows]

I don't understand your comment...What's your point here as it relates to remote employees? They by definition are not in the job market of "in-person" laborers, so shouldn't we confine the conversation to remote employees' comp?

[R0b0t1]

Yes and no. If a company wants to pay less they typically calculate their reduction based on CoL. But I agree that it is doubtful they'd ever pay more.

[tharne]

That's an interesting perspective and one I'd never really considered. But I guess you could put choice of living location in the same bucket as choice of car, clothes, etc.

[netsharc]

It's interesting to look at the inverse... would/should the company pay more if someone moved from a low to a high CoL place?

Obviously SV companies offer high salaries because they want to attract people to work on-location, which means they'd have to live nearby, in a high-CoL area. If the job was made remote with the same salary offer, there would be so many candidates, that it would make sense to lower the salary offer, like in any supply-demand problem...