“Location-Based Pay” – Who are we to complain?
Please, for the love of anything meaningful, read a book about negotiation before trying to sound this stuff out.<p>If you accept the term &quot;location based pay,&quot; you have basically handed your wallet to the &quot;wallet inspector,&quot; and you are being hustled. It&#x27;s just like &quot;policy,&quot; or &quot;pay scale,&quot; they are utter bullshit if you have something of value.  The media people who write articles about whether &quot;location based pay, is it good?&quot; are literally just 20-something bloggers with zero life experience trying to get published, and their editors and publishers have a stake in promoting the idea that your work should be cheaper.<p>If you want to pay me based on location, I&#x27;m going to charge you based on location, because I know what kind of prima donnas people from the bay area &lt;or insert region&gt; can be and I charge a risk premium for having to put up with their nonsense. If that sounds offensive, why should using their perception of my housing situation as leverage be legit?<p>If you are looking at a role, you need a clear idea of the total comp you are looking for as a part of your own plan for your life. Comp isn&#x27;t a reward for good behaviour unless you are a prisoner begging guards for privileges or an animal doing tricks for treats - it&#x27;s earned from value. When an HR person tells you what they want to pay you, say, &quot;that&#x27;s interesting, thank you, here is the data I have on what this role looks like from sources x, y, z, and these are the criteria I am using to evaluate the total package value.&quot; Those X, Y, and Z sources and references are things I&#x27;ve written about here before.<p>Please, please, please, if you write code, read a book on negotiation.