CMV: The compensation in salaries for remote workers is completely ridiculous

In my opinion, remote workers who perform white collar jobs should not be getting their salary based on the country they live in, but the cost of living of the area in which they are goung to perform their services. If I was hired to do a job in Germany I would likely need to relocate to Germany, and thus my salary should be adjusted to reflect the higher cost of living in Germany. If I were to do remote work for another country, there's no need to adjust my salary to reflect the place in which I would be doing my job, becasue I can live and perform the job wherever I want to. Since many companies don't pay their employees 100% salary + WFH stipen, they offer a lower salary + wfh. The cost of compensation should be adjusted to reflect both compensation for in-person work and traveling, and compensation for the place in which you're doing the work. If I was doing remote work for another company, and they wanted me to perform the work in their HQ, they would need to pay me to relocate to their HQ in order to live there and work there. The same principle should appy to remote work, I would need to be paid relocation costs to move to where the company is located. Since many companies pay their remote employees whatever they pay their in person employees , plus some stipen for remote work, these companies are overcompensating in comparison to an in person employee that still needs to pay to relocate and move to a new location to work there. I think remote employees should be adjusted for the place where their work will be performed, not the location where they are currently located.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>EDIT: A better example to describe my point is this:<br><br>Suppose you have two people working for the same company. Person A is hired to work in New York City, and Person B will be working in Texas. Person A needs to relocate to NYC, and Person B goes back to thier home in Texas. From a business sense, the company should pay Person A more than Person B because Person A had to relocate to NYC. This in itself is a cost to the employee, mostly because it's expensive to live in NYC. Also, the cost of living in NYC is higher than Texas, so you need to pay Person A higher to reflect this difference.<br><br>In the case of remote workers, Person B could potentially live and work from NYC, even if Person B wasn't relocating to the city, just because remote work is so flexible. This would be a cost to the company, becuase they would pay Person B the salary Person B needs to live in NYC, but Person B would have never had to relocate to NYC, they just decided to live there because of the remote work flexibility. The company is paying compensation to Person B for a cost they never incurred. The company would have to pay relocation costs for Person A to move to NYC, and would need to pay Person A a salary that would cover the higher cost of living in NYC. They would get the cost of relocation once, and the cost of living adjustment forever. In the case of Person B, the company would be paying a cost of living adjustment forever without ever paying the relocation cost.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>EDIT 2: As an example of what I'm saying, Amazon pays software engineers 225k base, and 30% bonus (so 10% base, 20% stock), in the Seattle area. If an employee decides to relocate to Houston, the base pay drops to 180k. It would be completely ridiculous if they just kept the base salary at 180k if the employee decides to move to Houston, and still keeps their compensation. The correct thing to do would be to give a structured bonus, that eventually phases out, and the base pay drops to 180k.