[cj]

I run a remote-first company, and this is basically how we do it.

We don't give people different offers based on where they say they live.

Rather, we have a salary range for a job, and we look for people who are attracted by that salary range. This usually means people in SF, NYC, and other high COL cities disqualify themselves, so we end up hiring many people outside of tech hubs.

In other words, if you simply stop hiring in the top 20% COL cities, you can hire talent at significantly less salary ranges simply because we're not competing with Google, Amazon, etc in Silicon Valley or NYC.

Which allows us to hire a greater quantity of people. E.g. 2 engineers at $150k instead of 1 engineer at $300k.

But the key to this is not making a salary decision based on location. Instead, just set a salary range and you'll find what parts of the country people are willing to work at that range.

[Jcampuzano2]

One thing I don't like that is a bit specific to my own situation about most companies that aren't really remote first, but switched to it due to circumstance is that to them remote means - "you will literally always be located at XYZ address and do all your work from there".

I have my home address, but I actually only spend maybe 4-6 months of the year physically located there. This kind of pisses off most employers due to the tax situation as well as them treating it as if I'm gaming the system by being physically located for much of the year in lower cost of living areas (though sometimes I've even gone to higher cost of living areas for months at a tiem).

A situation like this where the salary doesn't really depend on location so it wouldn't be treated like I'm actively trying to game anything would actually be preferred in my situation, and to many others I know as well.

[cj]

> A situation like this where the salary doesn't really depend on location so it wouldn't be treated like I'm actively trying to game anything would actually be preferred in my situation, and to many others I know as well.

Exactly. We've had multiple employees move to different cities/states during their tenure. That wasn't a problem with us (from an employer perspective) and there was also no expectation that salary would be adjusted in response to a move, since location wasn't factored into the original offer in the first place.