On today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Quinn Slack, CEO and co-founder of Sourcegraph, a leading code search and intelligence platform.
I was listening to the podcast and paused after the location based pay conversation to come here and ask some questions.
> "location-independent pay means the company can hire very easily in low-cost regions, but it’s hard or impossible to do this in high-cost regions. "
Why? Why not just pay everyone at the high-cost region level?
> "It also creates the incentive for employees to move to a low cost region where they can save more."
So what? Does that make them less productive? Does it reduce their value to the company or the value of their work? Does someone moving from a low-cost region to a high-cost region suddenly become more valuable?
Quinn kept saying that employees should put themselves in the shoes of the shareholders. That actually sounds more like corporate greed than anything else. To be honest, what I want as a shareholder is to attract the best talent possible so that I get the best product possible so that I get as much profit as possible. People, Product, Profits in that order, always. If the amount we pay employees has an impact on the survivability of the company, then there are deeper issues at play (too many employees/scaled too rapidly, bad product, etc).
Startups in SF with mandatory in-office workdays don't open up offices in low-cost regions because they are thinking about their shareholders. They just hire more people in SF.
I would love to have a better explanation than just "you have to think about shareholders".
If the company has a mostly or fully remote workforce, why not pay people based on the value they provide the company? A dev in Portugal with the same output (quantity and quality) as a dev in SF or NY technically has the same value to the company. If one is paid less than the other, then that's just taking advantage of them for the sake of profits.
Nice read! I believe that companies should always be more strategic towards hiring new people.
I was listening to the podcast and paused after the location based pay conversation to come here and ask some questions.
> "location-independent pay means the company can hire very easily in low-cost regions, but it’s hard or impossible to do this in high-cost regions. "
Why? Why not just pay everyone at the high-cost region level?
> "It also creates the incentive for employees to move to a low cost region where they can save more."
So what? Does that make them less productive? Does it reduce their value to the company or the value of their work? Does someone moving from a low-cost region to a high-cost region suddenly become more valuable?
Quinn kept saying that employees should put themselves in the shoes of the shareholders. That actually sounds more like corporate greed than anything else. To be honest, what I want as a shareholder is to attract the best talent possible so that I get the best product possible so that I get as much profit as possible. People, Product, Profits in that order, always. If the amount we pay employees has an impact on the survivability of the company, then there are deeper issues at play (too many employees/scaled too rapidly, bad product, etc).
Startups in SF with mandatory in-office workdays don't open up offices in low-cost regions because they are thinking about their shareholders. They just hire more people in SF.
I would love to have a better explanation than just "you have to think about shareholders".
If the company has a mostly or fully remote workforce, why not pay people based on the value they provide the company? A dev in Portugal with the same output (quantity and quality) as a dev in SF or NY technically has the same value to the company. If one is paid less than the other, then that's just taking advantage of them for the sake of profits.