Many comments have pointed out that pay is determined by the cost of replacement.<p>For employees at an office in SF (or Seattle or NYC or London or anywhere else), the relevant cost is how much they have to pay to get someone else in that same city. Hence, for non-remote workers the pay has to be high in high cost of living places.<p>Many people seem to think that when the same principle is applied to remote work, that means the pay should depend on the cost of living where that particular remote worker lives.<p>Is that actually the correct application of that?<p>If a remote worker in, say, Tulsa, OK quits and the company wants to replace them with another remote worker there is no reason they need the replacement to be in Tulsa, OK. It should be fine from the company's point of view if the replacement lives in Boise, ID (which has a lower COL than Tulsa), or Salt Lake City, UT (about the same COL as Tulsa), or Spokane, WA (higher COL than Tulsa).<p>So why should they offer more for workers that happen to live in Spokane, about the same for those in Salt Lake City, and less for those in Boise?<p>It seems to me to make the most sense from the company point of view to consider all remote workers to be essentially in the same location, and how much they pay should be what it takes to attract the number of qualified remote workers that they want to hire.