If engineers are not paid based on their local market, and also not paid based on the value they create, what is their pay based on?

I can think of a few other alternatives:

- some new "remote workers" market that doesn't exist at the moment

- the pay of the lowest paid region in the world

- the pay of the highest paid region in the world

I can't see the last option being reasonable in any way, and the second option also doesn't seem like it would work in practice. My guess is you'd see something in between the first two.

This would take a long time to stabilize, so it's not straightforward for companies to implement I think?

I work fully remote from a very low CoL area (house under 100k, monthly expenses for a family of 4 under 2k, etc.) and if I demanded SV pay I'd immediately be fired because my neighbour, who also has a low CoL, will apply for my job and work for 70% less.

That being said, I still do much better than I would with local employers, and I like not stressing out about heavy liabilities.

> Engineers aren’t asking to be paid the value they create, they’re just objecting to pay cuts for physically moving while doing the same job.

While ignoring that their pay in their current location was as a consequence of a location specific market, while if the market becomes the whole of US, the market rate will obviously change.

If you have to discard this for the argument to hold water, it is a bad argument.