{"id":27107,"date":"2020-05-22T13:56:27","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T17:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=27107"},"modified":"2020-05-23T10:48:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-23T14:48:16","slug":"facebook-pay-cuts-for-remote-employees-who-move-to-nevada-or-texas-prove-that-the-labor-market-is-rigged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/22\/facebook-pay-cuts-for-remote-employees-who-move-to-nevada-or-texas-prove-that-the-labor-market-is-rigged\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook pay cuts for remote employees who move to Nevada or Texas prove that the labor market is rigged?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2020\/05\/21\/zuckerberg-50percent-of-facebook-employees-could-be-working-remotely.html\">&#8220;Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts&#8221;<\/a> (CNBC):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>The company will begin allowing certain employees to work remotely full time, he said. Those employees will have to notify the company if they move to a different location by Jan. 1, 2021. As a result, those employees may have their compensations adjusted based on their new locations, Zuckerberg said.<\/p><p>\u201cWe\u2019ll adjust salary to your location at that point,\u201d said Zuckerberg, citing that this is necessary for taxes and accounting. <strong>\u201cThere\u2019ll be severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If there is a market for productivity and accomplishment, the remote worker should be able to get paid the same regardless of location, no? For items where there is a functional market, we can&#8217;t say &#8220;Oh, this is of excellent quality, but was produced in Cambodia so I am going to pay only half as much as I would pay for the same item, same quality, made in higher-cost China, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Readers: Does the fact that Facebook can unilaterally set the price it will pay for labor depending on the cost of housing from which the labor toils show that the market for Silicon Valley labor is rigged?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation\">High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation<\/a> (Wikipedia): High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation is a 2010 United States Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust action and a 2013 civil class action against several Silicon Valley companies for alleged &#8220;no cold call&#8221; agreements which restrained the recruitment of high-tech employees.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=23279478\">Hacker News thread on this post<\/a> (my favorite: &#8220;Supply and demand makes sense as an explanation [for why on-site workers in different locations are paid different amounts], but it doesn&#8217;t actually explain this one. If facebook were just charging a market rate determined by supply and demand, then your salary would drop when you become remote, regardless of where you actually live, as your location has nearly no bearing on your productivity or competition for the same job. <strong>The fact that Facebook wants workers to report their location, as they cannot easily see the difference, shows their motivation cannot be driven by supply and demand<\/strong>.&#8221; Also good: &#8220;Salary based on an individual\u2019s needs is quite the &#8216;hmmmmm&#8217; moment. It is one of the reasons Violet Newstead \u2014 Lily Tomlin\u2019s character in 9 to 5 \u2014 is given when she furiously demands to know why she was passed over for a fair promotion. The guy who got the job instead? Well had a wife and kids to support. He needed it more.&#8221; And quoting American academia&#8217;s favorite thinker: &#8220;No, it just proves that Marx was right about the nature of the wage\/salary. The value of labour power is the cost of reproducing\/maintaining that worker at a particular standard of living, not some particular fraction of the value generated at work.&#8221;)<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts&#8221; (CNBC): The company will begin allowing certain employees to work remotely full time, he said. Those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,61,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-nerdism","category-coronapanic","category-economics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Facebook pay cuts for remote employees who move to Nevada or Texas prove that the labor market is rigged? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/22\/facebook-pay-cuts-for-remote-employees-who-move-to-nevada-or-texas-prove-that-the-labor-market-is-rigged\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Facebook pay cuts for remote employees who move to Nevada or Texas prove that the labor market is rigged? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts&#8221; (CNBC): The company will begin allowing certain employees to work remotely full time, he said. 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