Yeah those companies don't exist because they would be wasting money. Salary isn't "location based", it's "competitive salary based". It just happens that competitive salaries strongly depend on location.
If you were to forget about location and just say "we'll negotiate all salaries" then you would end with exactly the same result because people in NL are willing to work for much lower salaries than people in SF.
I don't get why so many smart programmers don't understand this basic fact of economics. Eh maybe they do understand it and are just jealous of insane SF salaries (I certainly am!).
I would be wary of demanding equal pay by location anyway because you'll end up with all jobs moving to India.
Those companies do exist. I can confirm specifically that at least when I had an offer from Supabase they paid everyone, internationally, regardless of location, the same pay bands. Being USA based it was one of the reasons that I turned down the offer because I was able to get a much higher salary elsewhere but it would have been extremely competitive had I taken the role and moved to some place like Vietnam.
I wish I could have taken the Supabase role because it was definitely my top pick otherwise. One look at the output and caliber of people they hire also indicates that they have little issue finding talent.
FWIW this was a couple of years ago and I have no idea whether they are still doing this equal pay band thing or not. But they were doing it for awhile at least
The fact is that location is irrelevant for some roles. If you are looking for top talent, you'll pay top talent value. If you constrain your hiring to a single location, you're simply reducing your own pool of candidates.
Today, most labor arrangements are more and more like companies. If you were to select top companies to contract for some job that doesn't really care about location, you wouldn't be choosing companies based on that. You'd choose based on how good they are.
It's the difference between trying to buy the cheapest versus buying the best. Of course if you're always looking for the cheapest, you'll always move towards overseas jobs. But if you're looking for the best, you can get the best from all over the world by offering a single solid compensation package.
It's all a transaction, isn't it? At the end of the day my labor is worth however much I can get for it.
Sure, you could squeeze even more profit by paying overseas workers less, but then you create all sorts of imbalances that can and will hurt your business in the long run.
I always joke that if you want to hire me (I am not from the US) and pay 50-60% less just because I live here, why wouldn't I work 50-60% less?
You're getting the 1% of a lower income country, for an average local developer salary. If you want the 1% of SF you'll have to pay a lot more, even if they are equivalent in the value they provide. The company still wins, and as a result you get happier employees.
You can always cheap out, but it's never without consequences.
> Yeah those companies don't exist because they would be wasting money.
Basecamp has been around for 20+ years and they publicly mention that they hire based on SF rates, not even SF but the top 10% of SF[0] for positions around the world.
When you have only 30 employees, and your people at the top are buying multiple supercars and planes, and your revenue is somewhere in the ball park of $5M+ per employee... you sure as hell better be paying salaries commensurate with that, or people are going to be bitter.
If you were to forget about location and just say "we'll negotiate all salaries" then you would end with exactly the same result because people in NL are willing to work for much lower salaries than people in SF.
I don't get why so many smart programmers don't understand this basic fact of economics. Eh maybe they do understand it and are just jealous of insane SF salaries (I certainly am!).
I would be wary of demanding equal pay by location anyway because you'll end up with all jobs moving to India.