A Follow-up to âLocation-Based Payâ
Where do we go from here?
My previous post, on the subject of âlocation-based payâ, hit the front page of Hacker News, where itâs received over 700 comments. Iâd like to respond to some feedback.
But first, an anecdote:
When I was a kid, there was this cleaner at my school who was from Brazil. This is stupid, but I can remember thinking âwhy would you move all the way here from the other side of the world just to work as a cleaner?â When I verbalised that ignorant thought (thankfully not to Carina herself), I remember being surprised at the explanation: that even a âbadâ job in Britain can feel like a great opportunity to a lot of people worldwide. This obvious fact about global economic inequity wasnât obvious to me at 14 - and if I didnât learn it then, I definitely learnt it twelve years later when I lived for six months in SĂŁo Paulo. There are many great reasons to visit Brazil, but no-one moves there from England just to clean toilets.
My point is that we often donât appreciate how good we have it. And really thatâs all I was trying to say in my previous post. For software engineers in the West to complain about the injustice of âlocation-based payâ betrays a certain level of hypocrisy, because weâve been living under such an arrangement for a long time already. Few were complaining when the shoe was on the other foot.
Some have accused my previous post of advocating such hypocrisy. I shrugged about how things can be made better, therefore I donât care about improving anything and merely want to preserve the status quo for my own selfish benefit. I suppose I can see how my words could be read that way - the sentence âmaybe we should be careful what we wish forâ was regrettable - but thatâs not what I think! I said I donât know what the solutions are because I genuinely donât know, but the least I can do is draw attention to the problem.
If you want a smart, data-driven set of prescriptions as to how we in the rich world can help the less fortunate, read Doing Good Better, a book which profoundly changed my own spending habits. In the meantime, all I can say is that these issues are immensely complicated, and Iâm just some random guy who studied computer science, not international development. I consume cheap products produced in poor countries because itâs the default option and I donât have the time or energy to do a full background check on everything I buy, but Iâm more conscious of these things than I used to be, and Iâm trying to shop better.
Of course itâs a luxury to be having this conversation at all. Many in Britain and elsewhere have got more pressing questions than third-world wage rates; questions like âwhere am I going to find my next meal?â When youâre struggling to afford clothes at all, you donât care where they were manufactured.
So letâs zoom out a little from our myopic debate about developer compensation - a concern that looks more narrow-minded than ever in the face of a global pandemic thatâs destroyed countless livelihoods but left our own industry relatively unscathed. One HN commenter suggests I should have concluded like this:
As workers united in the goal for international solidarity we should reject the notion of Location-Based Pay, not only because it devalues our own work, but primarily because this practice is causing mass poverty and underpay among our fellow workers in the poorer regions in the world.
I canât argue with that.
Here's to a fairer future. đĽ
Thanks for reading. For more, follow me on Twitter and Goodreads, and please consider subscribing.
Image credit: Jordan Opel on Unsplash
This is an interesting topic which doesn't seem to have a clear answer yet. Regardless, I've always been intrigued by the following quote by Thomas Sowell: "Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them."
So most will likely agree with the hope that everyone should be paid wellâor at least fairlyâfor their work. Taking the next step and choosing to either base pay or not base pay depending on where someone lives will trigger certain effects/consequences/incentives either way. Therefore, employers have to analyze the incentives that either choice will create before making a decision.
Thanks for the articles :)
I could not read past âno-one moves there from England just to clean toiletsâ because âThis obvious fact about global economic inequity wasnât obvious to meâŚâ had already clearly indicated that your mind has been made toxic and self-destructive.
Hereâs a test, letâs first get the inequity of wildly disproportionate Jewish wealth and power and control resolved by equitably distributing their inequitable wealth and power. But you will surely see, unless I am totally wrong and more than willing to admit it if I am, that were you to suggest such a thing ⌠presuming you were not immediately censored and shut down ⌠that you would be barraged with all kinds of rationalizations that equity is only something for you to fix by giving away what your forefathers created, not what Jewish people have, regardless of how much it is the Jewish who created all those concepts of you having to give away all that you have and was left to you and constantly pushing it for everyone else, while having different rules for themselves. If they donât believe in what they tell others to do, why do you believe it?
Reality is that theyâve created a whole web of psychologically manipulative concepts and terms to get you to destroy yourselves in a war theyâve never been honest about washing and have been causing massive damage and destruction with for decades now. But I guess when there is no England or France or Belgium or Germany or Italy and itâs overrun and controlled by foreign people who hate all the native people, kind of like SĂŁo Paulo, and e.g., London and Brussels and Berlin and Paris all look like SĂŁo Paulo then we will have achieved equity?
This is not going to feel any more comfortable than what you just read, but you are essentially suicidal, but on a national level and you are essentially murder-suicidal, you support the destruction for all, even those who would not like to engage in your mass suicide. Look around at England and France and Germany ⌠at what people achieved through hard work and positive values ⌠because you will not see it too much longer as you types impose your brainwashed murder-suicide obsession on everyone.