Why Does a Remote Job Pay Less Depending on Where You Live?

15 new remote tech jobs, one engineering role paying up to $500K, and the companies that think your postcode should determine your salary.

I'm on vacation right now (in Spain), but had a look around the remote tech job market this morning and was able to find fifteen decent roles that fit the board requirements: actually remote (no hybrid nonsense), with salary disclosed.

Three of the roles I found are open in several countries and only tell you what the US job pays. Seen a lot of these location-based pay shenanigans over the last year or so.

ClickHouse's database research job is open in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, and the only figures on it are for workers based in the US.

Netlify just says it outright: $204,000 to $275,000 "for most US-based locations", everyone else should ask a recruiter. Can we pay less to use your hosting platform if we're based outside the US?

TRM Labs labels the band "United States (other countries subject to different salary ranges)".

I'm not a fan of paying people less depending on where they live. I think it's a regressive business practice, slightly exploitative, borderline perhaps, and not as good for the American worker as it might seem on the surface since it encourages companies to send jobs overseas. People in weaker economies are held back by it too. Perhaps they should stop using the products these companies produce unless they offer a location-based discount?

DuckDuckGo are the opposite. Right now they're offering $178,500 for a Senior Web Compatibility Engineer and say that "compensation is identical within professional levels, regardless of geographic location or team". What an amazing company! We should celebrate them. Heroes of the remote tech job market.

Biggest number of the lot is Shield AI's Senior Principal Autonomy Engineer, $330,000 to $500,000, which is the top of the board. You need to be able to hold a US security clearance. Big money in the US security sector.

Four employers out of the 79 on the board quote one figure instead of a range: DuckDuckGo, RevenueCat, Circle.so and Toggl. All four hire worldwide. I don't think that's a coincidence. Ranges are BS anyway. What would you do if a job quoted you a range, and then offered you the bottom end of it? Dunno about you, but personally I'd tell them to shove it. Keep looking.

Good luck out there internet friends.