The Wage Gap 2
What has changed in the past 5 years? Unfortunately not much. The point today is the same as it was 5 years ago. Location based pay is still the norm and is still hugely unfair. That last point is not shared by everyone of course. People exploiting the current status quo for profits, and employees who are afraid paying fair salaries to everyone would negatively affect their total compensation obviously have very little interest in acknowledging the situation. Let’s look at some other excuses.
If we look at some equal employment opportunity directives they cover traits like race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, veteran status, disabilities etc. Indeed, some of those are set in stone, but others are not so much. If someone was asked to e.g. change their religion or renounce their nationality for a better salary that would be ridiculous. Yet asking people to severe cultural and social ties and uproot their whole families to move thousands of miles away is still perfectly normal. Obviously this only applies when an opportunity for relocation is presented at all.
Let’s suppose for a moment that employees are interchangeable resources without discernible differences and companies are profit maximizing entities. How is it possible under such assumptions that 2-5-10x salaries exist when 1x replacements are readily available elsewhere? To argue that people are only paid what their replacement would cost also requires an explanation why a garden variety remote employee (or a team of four experienced veterans) is not a replacement for locally grown organic talent? So far there is no convincing explanation to back that up.
