Yes, on the flipside, it works exactly the same way in reverse if someone is moving to a higher cost market. We benchmark against data from Radford & Comtrix (salary/pricing data providers) and adjust upwards on a regular basis too.
To simplify, it seems like either you want developers that are physically present in London, in which case you have to find some and pay them London rates, or you don't particularly care if they are physically present, in which case I don't understand why you would pay someone working remotely from London differently from someone working remotely from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Presumably in both cases your company is getting the same value out of the employee. So why not hire only people working out of the Welsh countryside and refuse raises to anyone who wants to move to a higher COL area?
In other words, it seems like if I decide to work remote and lie about where I physically spend most of my time, it would make no difference to the company but might make one to my compensation, which, ignoring any moral judgement, just seems strange for the company.
>So why not hire only people working out of the Welsh countryside and refuse raises to anyone who wants to move to a higher COL area?
Companies do this to a certain degree. My anecdotal observation is that a lot of tech companies that aren't in the Bay Area or only have a small presence there don't in fact try particularly hard to be competitive with the big Bay Area employers--unless there's someone they really really want. People may still join for various reasons.
Because not everyone wants to work out of the Welsh countryside and the number of developers available there is limited. Which is a factor because developers still have some power. Because the market isn't completely flooded with developers.
