What passport you are able to receive, and where you can resultantly live and work, is a function of who you are. Nationality is a protected class for purposes of discrimination, at least in US laws. (Not that US law applies, just as a reflection of the moral context.)
Yet Google happily uses this opportunity to pay wildly different amounts to people doing the exact same work.
In any case, this clearly invalidates the first claim, that people are paid based on what they do. They're paid actually based on their replacement cost in the place they are legally restricted to do it.
To make a contrived example, this means that a woman in a LCOL country/city will earn less than a man in an HCOL country/city, for the exact same work.
All of this pay equity stuff is total nonsense and posturing as long as Google is taking advantage of labor market arbitrage (which their staff cannot easily do, not being multinational themselves).
If they truly believe in equal pay for equal work, it should plainly apply across national borders that staff cannot cross. Anything else is lip service.
Your nationality determines where you can live and work. That's not conflating anything.
The fact that some tiny lucky subset of people with very specific credentials can get permission to move across borders does not change this at all. (In fact, H1Bs generally making less than others for the same work reinforces my point.)
Yet Google happily uses this opportunity to pay wildly different amounts to people doing the exact same work.
In any case, this clearly invalidates the first claim, that people are paid based on what they do. They're paid actually based on their replacement cost in the place they are legally restricted to do it.
To make a contrived example, this means that a woman in a LCOL country/city will earn less than a man in an HCOL country/city, for the exact same work.
All of this pay equity stuff is total nonsense and posturing as long as Google is taking advantage of labor market arbitrage (which their staff cannot easily do, not being multinational themselves).
If they truly believe in equal pay for equal work, it should plainly apply across national borders that staff cannot cross. Anything else is lip service.