This is an interesting take. I am a remote worker (technically in Chicago), but my employer is headquartered elsewhere. We have offices in Chicago. But I live in Indiana.

What's my 'demand market', as it were? Is it Cali where my parent company lives? Is it Chicago where the subsidiary division I support operates? Or is it Indy?

How does one negotiate salary taking in all that when negotiating a permanent full remote transition?

(This is just for the sake of the hypothetical, I’m very satisfied with my current actual arrangement, but we’ve crossed into a new working world and consider me a career “prepper” or something)

i think there are reasonable arguments for each permutation of answers!

Ultimately, every negotiation comes down to BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement.) You have to demand from the company you think can/will pay the most the amount of compensation you are confident (but perhaps not sure) that you can get from the second-expected-highest company. This is similar to a Vickery auction -- the winner is the person who is willing to pay the most but they pay the price the second-highest bidder put forward.

In tech labor, the distribution of compensation for the same work is much wider than almost any market participant realizes.

To your last point, what would be the closest comparison? Is there even one? I’m sympathetic to the reality that there are lots of variables at play here between work sectors, but do you think a reasonable analogue exists in another industry, and could any actionable models be taken from, iterated upon and applied to tech labor with the effects of equalizing the demand curve and negotiating change through all of this?*

Appreciate the back and forth on this, it’s an interesting set of conditions we’re wading through as a society and I enjoy the thought experiment.

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* there may be a better way to phrase this question, unable to figure how to put it, at the moment-if you’ll accept the pleasantry as far as the hypothetical will warrant it.