I don’t get why where I live is any of their business. Why on earth does it matter what it costs for me to live the life I want? All that should matter is what they need to pay me to compete with other companies who want to hire me too.
If the act of paying remote people differently based on where they remote from is successful then it means the free market isn’t working right and engineers for these jobs are commoditized.
If you live in SF, your job market includes non-remote SF jobs. If you live in Idaho, it doesn’t. Therefore your market wage is lower in Idaho even if you are doing the same work. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.
I think the reason is because cost of living adjustments were built into the salaries being offered. It would have been smarter for companies to offer jobs as X + Cost of Living Adjustment = Y. Instead, they just offered a salary of Y. I also think part of it has to do with an expectation of higher productivity when working out of an office or headquarters.
If the act of paying remote people differently based on where they remote from is successful then it means the free market isn’t working right and engineers for these jobs are commoditized.