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0 pointssokoloff8y ago0 comments

Just as we pay relevant to local markets in Prague, Barcelona, Zurich, Boston, and Seattle, we also reference local markets in India. (We don't only reference local markets when it suits us.)

Unless you take the view that all profitable employers exploit their employees (a view that I understand but do not share nor agree with), I don't believe that we're unfairly nor inappropriately exploiting our talent in any of our locations.

We seek to make a profit above the cost of our inputs (including risk premium) and I'm not ashamed of what we pay our employees in any of our markets anywhere in the world. If you choose to pay your employees using a different system, I support your right to do so.

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originalsimba8y ago· 2 in thread

So... yes?

I guess I'm challenging you to justify this policy without naming greed as your justification. You are exploiting people for what amounts to slave labor. You're saying that because someone has the unfortunate luck of being born in a third world country that they deserve a smaller salary than you. Admitting that you are not ashamed of yourself for exploiting poor people for cheap labor I mean.. what else is there to say I guess.

sokoloffOP8y ago

No, I don't think it's OK to exploit people; I think I said as much.

I don't believe that it's exploitive to make an offer of salary that an employee is overjoyed to accept. If you believe that's exploitive, you should run your company differently or work for a company that doesn't do that.

originalsimba8y ago

I do run my own company differently.

> I don't believe that it's exploitive

But it is. You aren't paying them based on their capabilities or merit, you're paying them based on what region of the world they were born into, which is completely out of their control. The message your "offer" sends is this, you aren't worth a real developer's salary, because you were born in India. So work for peanuts for me, your privileged first-world master, until you've earned enough to move out of the nation you were born in, and then maybe you can earn a salary equal to your peers.

That is exactly what you're doing, and that is exploitative. I know it's exploitative because it is exactly what American plantation owners did in the slave-owning south 250 years ago. "Work for me for some length of time and you can earn your freedom". It's the same scam. "But these developers are being paid" uh huh, they get $5-$20/hr for what I get $100/hr for. It is dishonest to call that fair.

If you don't believe in equal pay for equal merit then stand behind your opinion, but don't pretend that you're doing these poverty stricken people some kind of favor by paying them fast-food salaries to develop your million dollar applications. If someone spends their life becoming an expert developer they deserve to make expert-developer salaries regardless of what region of the world they call home.

The economic "tool" of outsourcing has always been about exploiting poverty and literally everyone actually knows that.

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