[eyelidlessness]

> The truth is that companies pay people less in other geographies for a simple reason: because they can. We at Oxide just don’t agree with this; we pay people the same regardless of where they pick up their mail.

So, look. I completely agree with this, and it’s an admirable ideal. If I were in a position to make this kind of decision, I’d make the same decision or one that looks a lot like it.

But if you’re anticipating counter-arguments, this glosses over a pretty important one. Regardless of geography, higher income brackets tend to have outsized influence on prices across all income brackets in that region. The more it deviates from the median, the more it distorts local pricing. All of this “rising tide” might eventually “lift boats”, but it depends where all that new capital is flowing and even in the best cases it doesn’t keep up with price inflation.

For a small company, that impact is pretty minimal and the rest of the admirable aspects of this surely outweigh it. And surely that falls into their “doesn’t scale” bucket, but deferring this analysis is different when the scale is external.

I’m not sure how best to mitigate that or whether mitigations are currently appropriate for Oxide. I have some vague ideas, but I’m not in any position to do anything other than comment. But I do think this impact should be part of the discussion, because the discussion is already poised for public impact.

[acover]

This is a really interesting perspective. People from poor countries should be paid less so they can't be rich relative to their neighbors.

Are rich people so destructive to neighborhoods?

[eyelidlessness]

> should be paid less

Please reread what I posted and recognize that I did not remotely suggest this. I expressly supported the policy, and want to add a frank recognition of its trade offs because its absence seemed important in the post.

> Are rich people so destructive to neighborhoods?

Disproportionately large influxes of money into a local economy cause distortion to the incentives of that economy. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the individual people with said money or their individual impact, and often it doesn’t.

The reason I think it should be part of the discussion is specifically because decisions like this don’t tend to account for externalization. If 100 companies like this are fully equitable internally, that’s awesome! But if their impact is pricing people out of housing, that sucks! If you care mostly about the former, that’s cool! I care about both, and I want to include both in the conversation.

[acover]

You suggested exactly that.

Your counter argument to equal pay for equal work was location based pay prevents distortions in local prices.

Most countries want as many rich people as possible. Progressive taxes seem much more effective at combatting inequality.

[eyelidlessness]

> You suggested exactly that.

I not only didn’t, I stated exactly the opposite.

[acover]

> But if you’re anticipating counter-arguments, this glosses over a pretty important one. Regardless of geography, higher income brackets tend to have outsized influence on prices across all income brackets in that region. The more it deviates from the median, the more it distorts local pricing. All of this “rising tide” might eventually “lift boats”, but it depends where all that new capital is flowing and even in the best cases it doesn’t keep up with price inflation.

Please explain what you mean by this then.

[eyelidlessness]

What I mean is that if you’re anticipating counter arguments you should anticipate the arguments you can expect, not the ones you want to advance yourself. Edit: in HN culture this is commonly phrased as “steel man”, but in basic exchange of ideas it’s just taking seriously the weaknesses your position might have. Generally it’s a good way to strengthen your position, if you can take the alternative views seriously.

[paxys]

There are many valid arguments in favor of location-based pay, but the one you are bringing up – that people in poorer regions shouldn't be paid the same as rich ones because then they'd have more spending money than their neighbors and that would be bad – isn't one of them.

[eyelidlessness]

> shouldn't be paid the same

Okay this is only the second response I’ve gotten to but we’re batting 1000 on misrepresenting what I was very careful to not say, and contradicting what I was very careful to say. I understand my comment is likely to elicit some debate but I’m hoping not every response is like this.

[nonethewiser]

It’s also not quite true that companies can just pay local rates. In my experience someone from low COL can easily find a position where the “local” pay band for their level is higher than the local rate. It’s virtually impossible for an engineer with 2 or 3 YOE from LCOL to find a local job paying 125k+, but not hard at all to find such a remote opportunity.

Furthermore, not all jobs are equal. If Google moves their headquarters to Detroit they won’t suddenly pay Detroit wages.

And finally there is another force at play here - companies need to fill the position and what they pay HCOL candidates establishes what they’re willing to pay for the work. Living in Beverly Hills doesn’t make you a better engineer. This isn’t a bargaining chip you can use, but it’s a fact you can benefit from if you’re persistent.

The markets just arent siloed as much as people want to pretend.

[mstipetic]

I’m trying to understand - what’s your point here?

[kamranjon]

I'm not sure I totally understand what they are trying to say, but it sounds like - if you pay people more money in areas where they don't usually get more money - it is bad for those places?

The more interesting part of the quote from the article for me was this:

"Companies spin this by explaining they are merely paying people based on their cost of living, but this is absurd: do we increase someone’s salary when their spouse loses their job or when their kid goes to college? Do we slash it when they inherit money from their deceased parent or move in with someone? The answer to all of these is no, of course not: we pay people based on their work, not their costs."

[eyelidlessness]

My point is that it’s important to recognize the external impact of decisions alongside the internal, particularly if you’re making decisions on principle and evaluating them on that metric.

[lozenge]

Encouraging everybody to move to CA for a higher salary is also a distortion. The only way to have no effect is for your company not to exist at all.

[eyelidlessness]

Sure, but I didn’t suggest having no effect. I suggested there are external effects and they should be part of the analysis. I even went further and suggested I would not do anything differently under the circumstances.