
“Cost of Living” pay for remote workers is BS - anotherevan
https://dev.to/sam_ferree/why-i-think-cost-of-living-pay-for-remote-workers-is-bs-5b68
======
alkonaut
Isn’t this just a market value? SV companies with a global presence surely
don’t pay the same in their Bucharest office as they do in their SV office?

So does opening a physical office in a remote location suddenly make the idea
of having “local pay” valid again? Why?

And if not: should all global companies pay equally around the world to anyone
who provides the same value within the company? That’s a nice thought but it
doesn’t feel realistic.

As a European developer for a US firm I’d love to get what US devs are paid.
But for that, they could hire two of my neighbors instead of me, so why would
they.

Companies arent paying for produced value, they are maximizing produced value
and minimizing cost.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Isn’t this just a market value?

No.

> SV companies with a global presence surely don’t pay the same in their
> Bucharest office as they do in their SV office?

That's because local offices have limited hiring pools, because a person
living in Bucharest can't practically work in an SF office, and vice versa.

> So does opening a physical office in a remote location suddenly make the
> idea of having “local pay” valid again?

For positions which must essentially be filled by on-site workers in that
office, yes.

> And if not: should all global companies pay equally around the world to
> anyone who provides the same value within the company?

Rationally, they should _offer_ as low as they think each employee will
accept, but be willing to pay based on realized value (net, of course; people
in different areas, even remote, may impose different costs.)

Otherwise they'll either be overpaying for value from high-cost regions,
leaving money on the table, or missing out on talent thst would produce value
in lower-cost regions thst take other offers, both of which reduce profits.

~~~
bdhess
> Rationally, they should offer as low as they think each employee will accept

There are numerous rational reasons to offer employees more than the minimum
they’d accept.

~~~
my_username_is_
Expanding on this a bit, see the idea of an 'Efficiency wage' (above market-
clearing salary):

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency_wage](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency_wage)

------
pascalxus
If everyone in SF all the sudden agreed to work for 1/2 the cost and your
salary was cut in half as a result, would you feel that was wrong too?

There's nothing wrong with paying people less in lower cost areas. If a worker
can get the job done for half the price in Austin than SF, that's the market
forces telling the company to get the heck out of SF.

Ultimately it's not about the value you provide. You might work at Google and
provide x10 value of your salary or you might work at a startup that has no
chance of success (thus providing 0 long term value) and still earn a normal
salary.

It's about the supply of labor and demand for that labor. that's what dictates
the cost.

~~~
baddox
It's true, of course, that the price of labor just comes down to whatever the
employer and employee agree on (barring things like minimum wage and other
"market distortions"). But it's also true that some people have ideas about
fairness, and may be off-put by a pricing strategy they deem to be unfair.
Thus, salary calculations like this, assuming they're known to potential
employees, could definitely affect a potential employee's willingness to take
a certain salary at a certain company.

~~~
cameldrv
It’s a two sided market. The clearing price is going to be dependent on the
employer’s alternatives and the employees alternatives, and each sides
judgements about the other sides alternatives. The employer generally will try
to pay just enough to prevent an employee from jumping ship, subject to bad
feelings about unfairness reducing productivity. Part of the set of
alternatives that an employee has are local jobs, which vary in pay somewhat
based on cost of living.

------
arielweisberg
I have been at companies that did the remote cost of living adjustment. End
result was that I rapidly outgrew their myopic policies and ended up at
companies that didn't.

The real complaint here IMO is that compensation is set by supply and demand
not value. That's kind of orthogonal to remote workers and location based pay.
If you want to capture more of the value you need collective bargaining,
regulation, or to be higher up the food chain where different forces are at
work.

------
BrandonM
There were some good points in here:

\- Differentiating based on location can create an HR risk/burden.

\- After you subtract out living costs, people living in a more desirable area
still end up better compensated because they live in a more desirable area,
with the associated cost difference subsidized by the employer.

~~~
pathseeker
>people living in a more desirable area still end up better compensated
because they live in a more desirable area,

That doesn't make any sense. The cost of living isn't just because there is
more value there. It's often times because of idiotic housing policies.

A software developer living in LA is receiving no better compensation than one
living in Miami just because the housing costs more.

~~~
PNWChris
I disagree with this assertion. Say you move to a lower cost of living area,
say 6% cheaper, and your wages decrease by the same amount as the change in
COL.

Now all your expenses are 6% lower, but your money left after expenses is also
6% lower. That means that despite being no worse off in terms of quality of
life, your savings went down 6%.

Strictly speaking, if you maintain the same relative ratio of costs to
savings, it’s always rational to take the highest income, even if it’s in a
higher COL area. This is because costs can be measured as a percentage of
income, but savings ought to be measured as an absolute value.

~~~
dasil003
Exactly. This is why it's a pretty good idea to move to Silicon Valley when
you're young, rent out the cheapest room you can find, get a job at FAANG and
bank 75% of your salary. After 10 years you will have a nest egg and resume
that allows you true freedom in what you want to do going forward.

~~~
freedomben
This is great advice for you younger people to pay attention to. I wish I
would have done this when I could.

------
jbrun
How about the clothes you are wearing, do you think they get your the same
wage as a worker in the US or Europe? But I bet you like the cheap clothes...

Your Amazon warehouse workers... the aviation repair people in El Salvador...
the list is endless. Offshoring can make certain products cheaper and software
is no exception.

Software is particular because it is not tied to production location, but that
does not mean you are not subject to market forces.

~~~
jgh
sure, but you can put yourself into a different market virtually. Just because
you and your employer are not in the same physical location doesnt mean you
aren't in the same market.

------
stretchwithme
Wages and the prices of many other things are determined by supply and demand.
It's going to cost less to hire someone where demand is weaker.

And wages HAVE to be higher where its expensive to live in order get people to
live there. And the logistical advantages of having someone down the hall are
usually worth the extra expense.

~~~
jkaplowitz
But for remote workers, you're not hiring someone to be down the hall. You're
hiring them for certain defined availability, and maybe a certain defined
willingness and ability to travel within certain cost and frequency
parameters. And yes, for their skillset.

~~~
x0x0
Right, but if they cost the same as local, I'm hiring locally.

~~~
jkaplowitz
If your whole team is otherwise local, sure. If your team is dispersed across
both US coasts, intermediate US states, and Europe - as mine was for much of
last year - I see no reason why the company would especially prioritize paying
the extra office costs for a worker who preferred remote in an acceptable
location.

------
ironjunkie
Paying salaries based on location is purely based on offer//demand.

When you are a full remote worker, the offer and demand for your market is
based on the global availability of remote workers. Which means that you are
competing with that Ukrainian developer ready to work for 20k$/year.

The best way to hack this situation of course is to live cheaply in a high-
wage city. Some of my friends managed to find a flatshare for less than
1k$/month in the bay area and are literally saving close to 8k$/month.

~~~
scaryclam
I don't mind paying remote workers based on their localised market rate. I
have a problem with workers being rated based on their postcode (zipcode)
though. I work in London. I commute in. Many of these pay calculators
underestimate my wage potential by a large percent. That's BS and just
attempting to get cheap developers for low pay.

~~~
ironjunkie
then the offer//demand theory dictates that you should find another employer
that will not differentiate based on the zipcode. The differentiating employer
will lose you, and hence maybe reconsider his policy if no workers can be
found with the current policy.

------
some1else
I'd speculate that the reason for failure in many off-shored projects had a
lot more to do with the type of developer that's willing to commit to a lower
hourly-rate, than with remote work & management limitations.

------
jonny_eh
Pay is never never never about value. It's about supply and demand. If the
only way to hire that SF engineer is to offer competitive salaries, then you
have no choice.

~~~
amorphid
My visualization of supply & demand.

Somewhere in rural America...

"Will you work for 80K?"

"Yes."

Meanwhile in San Francisco...

"Will you work for 80K?"

"No."

"Will you work for 120K?"

"No."

"Will you work for 160K?"

"Yes."

~~~
jonny_eh
And that difference can be called whatever you want, e.g. 'Cost of Living
Stipend".

------
samlevine
If employers valued the labor of remote workers as much as local workers, we
wouldn't be having this conversation. Tech isn't a monopsony.

They'd all be competing for the same national pool of workers, and anyone that
wanted to use cost of living as an adjustment for their offer would find that
another company would beat them by offering the market rate for the fungible
labor.

There isn't a great answer for this. Building housing in the places where tech
companies have big offices helps, but a lot of folks don't want to live in
cities or move halfway across the country.

------
dbg31415
It costs less to live in some places... if someone was willing to pay me SF
wages to live in suburban Texas... cool, I'm all for that. But it's stupid on
their part.

Base cost of living on what goes into the employee's pocket.

* Austin tech workers saw the biggest jump in salary last year - Recode || [https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16989150/annual-salaries-ris...](https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16989150/annual-salaries-rising-faster-tech-workers-outside-bay-area)

* A ranking of the highest tech salaries in the US, adjusted for cost of living — Quartz || [https://qz.com/1195354/tech-salaries-in-austin-texas-are-eff...](https://qz.com/1195354/tech-salaries-in-austin-texas-are-effectively-66000-higher-than-in-nyc-thanks-to-the-cost-of-living/)

Texas doesn't have an income tax... cool, you don't need to pay as much as SF
to get workers who are every bit as happy. Moreover... if I paid my guy in
Austin the same as my guys in SF, it'd be like giving him a massive raise and
showing a lot more favoritism.

If I just have rate X to spend on salaries, then the only people who I get
live in cities where rate X is a good deal. I need flexibility to hire from
anywhere, attract talent in Seattle, Boston, SF, Chicago, Geneva, Sydney...
you get the idea.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It costs less to live in some places... if someone was willing to pay me SF
> wages to live in suburban Texas... cool, I'm all for that. But it's stupid
> on their part.

No one is paying you to live in Texas, they are paying you to do some specific
work. If you can produce as much value as the guy who lived in SF, and will
accept 95% of the salary that applicant would, but the employer passed on you
because you won't except 80% of what they’d pay for an SF developer, and they
hire the SF developer instead, they’ve lost money.

Location pay when the job isn't tied to a location is irrational and involves
the employer losing money.

Would you subsidize other employee lifestyle costs? Extra pay for a larger
home, or more expensive car, or more frequent international travel? If not,
why should you pay more for the same job because the employee lived in a more
expensive region, when the job is not tied to that region?

------
tdb7893
I always wonder if the reason for "Cost of Living" pay is practical. If you
are paying about the market rate everywhere it means you can hire from
anywhere. If you just payed some set rate for everyone it could price you out
of the more expensive areas. I really wish companies didn't have cost of
living pay because I really prefer the cheaper places in the US but it makes
sense overall.

~~~
jgh
You can always negotiate away the cost of living pay, because it's just them
being cheap.

~~~
amorphid
Unless someone of comparable skill will do the job for cheaper.

~~~
jgh
ok but that's always a risk, not just for remote people.

------
bobthechef
Nonsense. Fair pay is determined by a number of factors including local cost
of living. A number on it's own is meaningless. There is a difference between
price and value, otherwise there would be no difference in cost of living (a
liter of milk would cost the same in any country, but it doesn't).

Let's say the cost of living in Cracozia is 1/3 of that in San Francisco. If
you pay an engineer in Cracozia the same as one in San Francisco, then the
engineer in Cracozia is making 3x the amount in relative terms, e.g., instead
of say $150k in SF dollars, you'll be paying him what amounts to $450k in
Cracozia dollars relative to his own domestic market.

Let's say the cost of living in Luxurbourg is 3x that of San Francisco. If you
pay an engineer in Luxurbourg the same as one in San Francisco, then the
engineer in Luxurbourg is making 1/3 the amount in relative terms, e.g.,
instead of say $150k in SG dollars, you'll be paying him what amounts to $50k
in Luxurbourg dollars relative to his own domestic market.

This blog post rests on a thick, greasy layer of schmaltz.

~~~
walshemj
And "prays in aid" current hot topics if your used to analysing people's
arguments he is on some pretty thin ice.

------
oliwarner
Rants that start off without defining _what_ or _with whom_ they're arguing
really come across as "Old man yells at cloud".

Of the limited samples I've seen "cost of living" is a _fraction_ of base
salary. They're not paying so that on-site staff live a champagne lifestyle.
It's "how much does x need to live, eat and get to work". Cheaper housing,
zero commute, etc all mean remotes "need" less to achieve this level.

Labour is also a marketplace. A big city, for all its sins, attracts more
companies. And there are _usually_ many times more on-site positions than
remote (role dependant). So the best employees from a distinct location are
scarce, and competed for.

People who work remote can be adult about this. They get other non-monetary
benefits from not having to commute, seeing their family, having a bigger
house (hey, even just _owning_ their house), lower rates of crime, etc, etc,
etc. Living in a city can be hard work in itself.

More than anything, they can argue their worth, they could move, or they could
find another job.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
> It's "how much does x need to live, eat and get to work".

Employers should not care about these things. It should be, "I need three devs
and I can afford to pay each $X." It absolutely should not matter where
they're located if they're allowing remote work.

Edit: Let me put this another way. You live where the company headquarters are
but they're a remote company. During negotiations, do you think it would be
fair if the employer asks if you ever intend to move? They should not be
allowed to ask this any more than they can ask a women if she intends to ever
have children. It's not their business and it should have no bearing on if
they hire you and at what rate.

~~~
lbotos
> During negotiations, do you think it would be fair if the employer asks if
> you ever intend to move?

Yes. Clearly you are ignoring the reality of different labor laws in different
places, and making sure the company is prepared to meet the needs of the law.

For example, when I worked at a small 5 person startup based in NYC, we hired
a remote dev in St. Louis. Our cool tech-startup HR software _was not able to
pay him_ because they were not prepared to operate in St. Louis. It took like
about a month and a half to get that sorted.

Your logic is nice, but it fails to account for the realities of the world.
Buisnesses will reduce risk in any way possible, and the situation you are
describing is literally unlimited downside risk for the business. Those are
nice signals to employees but create new overhead and problems for the
business.

------
mnm1
Considering how often remote companies turn into in office only companies, any
company paying remote workers less than they would make locally is also
basically saying to their remote employees, "you're only worth it if we can
get you at a discount." I'm sure that attitude that these companies hold,
often unknowingly, does wonders for output and productivity. /s

------
ThePawnBreak
Obviously market forces should dictate what an employee should be paid, but I
think the problem here is what we consider the market to be. If you are hiring
remote employees from all over the world, the markets you are hiring from are
not San Francisco, New York, London and Bordeaux, it is just one market, the
global remote employees market (excluding timezone considerations).

I would define an employer market as the set of all the employers that a given
employee is willing to work for, should he receive a competitive offer. Some
Canadians really want to stay in Canada and therefore their market is Canada,
others don't mind moving to the states and therefore their market is Canada+US
(and obviously they move to the US). Canadian employers claim to pay "market
rate", when in fact they only do so for employees unwilling to emigrate.

If you have a remote employee making $30k a year in Krakow, and he gets
offered $150k by a SF startup that really likes him, can you reasonably argue
that he was paid market wages, and now he's overpaid? I'd say that his market
value is now $150k on the remote market, and if a different employer wants to
poach him they need to compete with that.

I would expect a rational employer to set a hiring bar and then keep on hiring
people and raising salaries until they can hire as many people as they need.
Regardless of whether that turns out to be $40k or $120k (obviously depending
on productivity, salary can't grow forever). What I think is happening here is
that employers (and their friends and first employees) are making an emotional
decision to somehow justify them being "worth" their salaries, and almost
always scale salaries down but never up, effectively hiring from their market
and less competitive ones. Then they start justifying this as being "fair" and
"based on cost of living", when in fact it doesn't have anything with those at
all.

~~~
baddox
> I would define an employer market as the set of all the employers that a
> given employee is willing to work for, should he receive a competitive
> offer.

Isn't that a mostly circular definition? The competitive offer from a less
desirable employer would simply be higher than it would be for a more
desirable employer.

~~~
ThePawnBreak
That wasn't very clear, let me clarify what I mean.

Let's say Bob is a programmer and always loved games, and only wants to work
for game companies. Let's also say that game companies pay roughly $50k, and
the Google office down the street pays roughly $200k. The market rate for Bob
is $50k, not $200k, because he is unwilling to work for Google (since it's not
a game company) and they are therefore not part of his market. His market is
only game companies.

I think examples of this happening are: \- game programmers making
considerably less so than other programmers simply because their employers can
pay less and still get enough applicants \- big tech companies paying through
their nose because a lot of people are unwilling to put up with their hiring
process bullshit \- finance companies in London paying a lot because a lot of
people don't want to touch them

So for programmer Joe, the market is the intersection of companies which would
hire Joe and companies which Joe is willing to work for.

------
stmfreak
Pay reflects replacement cost, not value the employee adds to the company.
This is why janitors don't make six figures in SV even though the office would
shut down without them. Replacement cost of staff in remote markets is often
lower than local staff in SV. That is all that matters.

------
T2_t2
From whose perspective is this written? The employee? The employer? Current
employees? Future employees? I'm not really sure.

On all four of those options, there are arguments to be made in either
direction, and I think the idea it is a single, one size fits all question is
misplaced.

Part of the allure of remote work is reduced cost, and longer runway. On the
flip side, remote workers get to offer a discount in return for vastly larger
employment options despite some additional problems created by a lack of
physical proximity. That even with the discount it is more money than locally
available is a double win. A universal change would also change hiring. I
doubt many people would hire equally qualified, equally paid workers remotely
versus in-house.

I think that proceeding from an unclear perspective makes the conclusions less
relevant, and misses some of the nuance of the question, on all sides.

------
yosito
I agree with this article, but I also think a lot of the comments on this
thread that disagree raise some good points. One point that I haven't seen
raised is that if if it became a trend for companies to pay the same high
rates, regardless of worker's location, it might help reverse the "brain
drain" that a lot of small places in the world are experiencing these days.
Ultimately, a company can choose to justify the rate they pay in any way they
want, but personally, I tend to prefer working with companies that pay the
same rates regardless of a candidate's location, race, gender or citizenship.
Companies that pay based mostly on skill and experience seem (to me) to be
correlated with companies that value treating employees fairly.

------
gerbilly
Wouldn't that imply that if you moved to a higher cost of living area that
your employer would have to give you a raise?

1) Land a remote job while living in Venezuela. 2) Change your address to a
maildrop in Lausanne Switzerland. 3) Profit!

I bet that never happens.

~~~
lamarpye
It happens all the time.

------
kurtisc
Most of this isn't exclusive to remote work at all. The American office pays
more than the UK office, the New York office pays more than the Miami office.
Of course it's BS, pay never rewarded people equally to begin with.

~~~
jkaplowitz
But in that case, you're paying people for a different bundle of agreed job
duties in each case, where one important differing constraint is location.

I just moved from NYC to Montreal. Same time zone, cheap to visit NYC, I can
work legally in both places (and Canadians can easily visit NYC on business
even without being American), etc.

A remote employer shouldn't change my salary much based on that - if anything
they should raise it if they already deal with Canadian/Quebec
payroll/benefits, since NYC benefits cost them more, or lower it just enough
to compensate for the added compliance and travel burden.

But most would lower it dramatically.

------
mesozoic
If any company does this to you they are clearly telling that you are just
another cog in their machine and they primarily value the number of cogs over
the productivity and value of an individual. Use that information as you will.

------
Randgalt
I've been working remotely for more than 4 years and never accept cost of
living pay. Of course, I don't make Silicon Valley salary but I'm paid a
reasonable rate based on my experience not where I live.

~~~
twothamendment
I'm about 2 years in on 100% remote. When I moved from one state to another
did my employer care that my phone/Internet, my car insurance, my health
insurance and cost of food was higher? Did they care that if I hire some guy
to work on my house his rate is twice what it was where I used to be? No, and
I didn't think they should care. I get paid what they think I'm worth. How and
where I spend the money isn't their problem. So I agree, I don't make SV
wages, but I sure can't complain - especially when I get to live where I want
to live. It is hard to put a price on that.

------
jupiter90000
I always wonder what the behind the scenes really looks like at places that do
this. For example, would a hiring manager say, "this person really would be my
top pick, but lives in SV. Instead, I'll pick the candidate in Omaha I'm not
so sure about and that's 1/2 of my budget so I can give myself a bonus later."

Basically I wonder what that tipping point in pay differential between
candidates would need to be to sway a decision to hire someone less skilled or
desirable. (Not to say those outside of pricey metros are less desirable per
se).

------
mabbo
It's not about "cost of living". It's about "You're willing to work for less
money" and "you have fewer alternative options than this offer". If you're
willing to agree to work for less than your teammates who live elsewhere,
that's up to you.

That's just how free markets work.

(I say this as someone who worked for a US-based company out of the Toronto
office for a long time, getting less pay than my equivalents elsewhere)

------
foobaw
I know GitHub and GitLab are known for pay adjustments based on location. I
wonder if the founders have anything to say about this.

~~~
sytse
For our compensation principles please see
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-c...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-compensation/#compensation-principles)

We don't think cost of living make sense. We do think paying market rates is
the way to go. Market rates vary around the world and so does our
compensation.

~~~
mr_toad
Why not just hire from the cheaper locations?

~~~
sytse
Sometimes the best people live in a more expensive location.

~~~
thrxwxwxy1
And sometimes the best people live in cheap places and still ask for a lot of
money.

What you're saying is self contradicting, and in any case GitLab _does_ take
cost of living (rent being the largest part of that) directly into account
when calculating compensation.

------
matz1
Its because someone living at low cost area can afford and willing to accept
lower pay to undercut competition. I know I would.

------
tcbawo
The upper bound of salary is determined by the value that employee provides
(or is expected to provide over their time at the company). But more
realistically, pay is determined by the amount of money required to prevent an
employee from quitting. This leads to pay differential by city, country, etc.

------
conanbatt
Cost of living adjustments make no economic sense, but that doesnt mean that
peopler remotely should get the same income as people that work in-office.

It is very easy to find out how much employees charge in the US, but not so
easy for remote. You can find remote workers from oversees at 30U$S, while
engineers in SF make 70~80U$S on-site.

Also remoting as a contractor, when it includes differences in benefits and
costs, compound: no lunches, office space, etc is very valuable to an employee
and costly to the company.

OTOH, the employees that say that they should be able to make the same money
working remotely because they provide roughly the same value really do not
understand how fierce the competition for remote is, and how low their
productivity, percieved or not, can get from that switch.

------
ada1981
I'd support a law that says you aren't allowed to ask where someone lives.

This would mean that working a remote job in SV pays the same. Which would
mean workers in SV would have an incentive to get out of SV which would mean
little pockets of cool would pop up as developers realized they could do
things like move with a group of peers to a small town and still make SV
wages.

This could help alleviate pressure from the SF housing market.

~~~
sithadmin
What, so companies are supposed to just magically stop having physical
operations?

What you're proposing is completely insane. No reasonable business owner would
put up with it, and hiring in any sector beyond menial service industry jobs
would disappear from whatever jurisdiction enacted that law, while management
works on spinning up operations elsewhere.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What, so companies are supposed to just magically stop having physical
> operations?

If someone is applying for an on-site job, why does where they live matter?
The duty is to be at the specified place at the specified time, how they
acheive that isn't really the employer’s concern.

~~~
ada1981
Exactly -- and also if they are applying for an off-site job, why does it
matter?

Perhaps there are some edge cases where this makes sense to consider, but I
don't really understand what they are.

Judge the person's performance within the organization not where they live.

------
jeffdavis
Negotiation is an often-misunderstood part of a market economy. It's not good
or evil really, it's just a part of what makes a market function in the face
of anything more complicated than a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

I think the author just doesn't understand negotiation. I am no expert either,
but perhaps they should read a couple books on the subject.

------
tw1010
You're probably right, but a lot of these points aren't particularly strong
dude. You'll be more listened to if you make reduce the entropy of your
arguments.

~~~
mopierotti
I've never heard entropy used in this context. What do you mean by it?

------
JustSomeNobody
The employer doesn't pay my bills, they pay my salary. They need to set a
price they're willing to pay for a job and hiring based on that.

~~~
sithadmin
> They need to set a price they're willing to pay for a job and hiring based
> on that.

The problem with this line of thinking is that employers don't _actually need_
to do this. There are no external pressures that would force this behavior, so
why would they bother?

------
shubidubi
in my previous workplace, we had remote engineers from Portugal and Kenya,
both cheap countries to live. we paid them based on their local market rates.
I still don't know if it's good or bad but I do know that if you'll pay
someone in Kenya a SF salary it will unbalance the local market.

EDIT: why downvote? i simply describe a situation i had at the past with my
company.

~~~
bluntfang
Through experience, engineers in Portugal do not have the same output in terms
of speed and quality as engineers in high CoL areas.

~~~
StavrosK
That's probably because all the great ones work remotely for companies with
higher pay.

