If that was the case people wouldn't make $200k in SV, $75k in Omaha, and $9k in Phuket for the same job.
If I left Boston today, I'd still make what I make here. I have considered doing exactly that.
Most employers will happily tell you that this is the case. That does not mean that it is so. If you rate it, those doors will, at many companies, open. But you have to rate doing something that is Not Normal, and you have to be able to communicate why you rate having the people dealing with your hiring stick their neck out and do something that is Not Normal. This is hard. Few people (not just engineers) can do that. But it can be done.
When you're hiring a "Programmer II" in a company like that, the salary is not going to change. You might be able to negotiate work-from-home a day or two a week, or an extra week of vacation or something, but you're simply not going to make more than the upper bound of that schedule, and being at the upper bound of that schedule will negatively impact raises until you get promoted.
The CEO or COO or CIO is not going to approve a $100k salary for a Programmer II when the band is $60-75k. It just won't happen.
On an extremely related note, there is zero ambition and very little technical skill at that company. The vast majority of folks with skill and ambition leave after 2-3 years.
I would also suggest your understanding of how often exceptions are made is very unlikely to be based on good data. Employers have ways of hiding that they are paying somebody more than their traditional salary structure when they need to make an exception. And a very strong incentive to do that hiding.
No, it wouldn't, because employers have a strong incentive to hide salary band violations, while employees have a strong incentive to discover when negotiations are possible.
> it strikes me as an extraordinary to claim successfully negotiating higher-than-average wages is typical.
Then you should probably go talk to somebody who made that claim. But it's a nonsensical claim, so my guess is not many would be making it.
I've never been a typical employee in my life. I have, however, been the highest-paid non-manager (or so I was told; this might have been an attempt to shame me into working more for free) in a hundred-person development group, well out of band, because I brought capabilities and skills to the table that they needed more than they needed to Maintain The Integrity Of The Salary Band.
And calling me "anonymous" is kind of funny.
I don't have direct experience with Phuket, but I've heard of friends who get paid US level contract rates in similar areas.
What this really tells me is that workers in Omaha and Phuket ought to demand more, and that they are selling themselves for far less than the value they create, or else that they aren't actually doing "the same job." Likely both are true.
It's less about the 'value I create' and more about the 'value company X is able to create using my skills'. And... in some measure, you're going to be tied to how good the company itself is. I could give the same deliverable to two companies, and one may be able to make 20x more than the other, owing to other factors like network, sales, marketing, image, etc. In that case, they could probably pay me more as well, because they're earning more, but that then gets in to business vision and politics - do they see the software/tech as a cost-center or a profit-center?
I'm pretty sure we're going to see a trend as remote work becomes more popular where there will be a much smaller delta because of location of the employee.