So I have had a few people ping me about my views on the differential wages debate, and I figured I'd piss everyone off with my opinion, so here goes: multiple sides of this are both right AND wrong at the same time, this is a complicated issue, and nuance is helpful.

Before I start, I want to publicly recognize that I type my rabble-rousing bullshit into this hellsite from a position of extreme privilege. I am a director at a major tech company. I've got it pretty gods damned good.

But I, hopefully, still remember where I came from.

It wasn't that long ago that I had to make the choice between paying rent and buying groceries. I remember weeks of eating nothing more than pilfered soda crackers, mustard, and - for desert - a precious spoon of peanut butter.

I have, thank Jibbers, never experienced TRUE poverty, but I have lived - STILL live - paycheque to paycheque. With a clinical anxiety disorder. I know what it's like to be terrified to lose your job. And I know what it's like to wrestle with morality versus survival. But onward:

It is a fact that the cost of living varies (often dramatically) from place to place, and that is at the centre of this issue, whether we want to admit it or not. All of the issues to hand really flow from this, and from which of a number of philosophies you personally choose.

The EQUITABLE approach to this problem - paying people for roughly the same quality of life - is not the EGALITARIAN approach. Treating people EQUALLY and treating people EQUITABLY are not the same thing.

But there's also a very human morale concern around this topic.

The fundamental question is "should two people doing the same work make the same pay" (equality) or have the same standard of living (equity). Let's leave aside "altering the system so such concerns are irrelevant" for now; I want that too, but just don't know how to get there.

Pay two people the same for the same work and the person living in Poland or India lives a pretty swank life, while that same person could be living in a "pod" in San Francisco. EQUAL, but far from EQUITABLE.

I think, deep down, we agree that nobody should live in a pod.

EQUALITY proponents will at this point talk about "well, those people choose to live where they live, so blah blah blah" and I tune out right here because I swear to gods if I hear the word "bootstraps" someone is going to lose teeth. This narrative doesn't make me calm.

If people could simply choose where they live, a whole bunch of nerds would emphatically NOT be staying in the middle of the Forth Reich that's ON FIRE and also currently the center of the worlds more tragically mismanaged COVID-19 outbreak.

They're leave the country.

But it just doesn't work like that. People have obligations. Friends and family. Roots. Maybe some people can just up sticks. Maybe they can't. But the human entanglements that bind people geographically are what make the "people choose where to live" egalitarianism ring hollow.

The other side is an equity-based approach: pay people enough to have roughly similar quality of life, regardless of where they live, and this is absolutely RIVEN with flaws as well. Not the least of which "is who gets to determine what the cost of living is"? Systems get gamed.

In addition, geographic inequality is often the result of systemic issues that mean both that people living in poorer areas have/had fewer opportunities in general, but also that many of the companies wrapped up in these debates had a hand in contributing to that inequality.

It is not difficult - or all that irrational - to read into these corporate actions a punishment for employees not wanting to go to the office every day. This is made all the more damning because of both the current zeitgeist, and, well...climate change.

*looks at skies*

Not too put too fine a point on this or anything, but the insistence of having the hoi polloi file into their open-plan hellboxes to perform their daily labours, and on having all those hellboxes in the same place fucks EVERYONE. Especially the poor in places like the bay area.

So we have multiple conundrums. If we do not pay people in different geographies the same, aiming for a similar quality of life, Do we ask people to take a pay *CUT* for moving?

If we don't ask people to take a pay cut, and we grandfather existing pay in, we end up with people doing similar jobs in similar geographies making dissimilar pay. That's not exactly ideal either.

IDEALLY, we'd just increase the pay of those others, but if we're being rational about this, the money just isn't there for doing that, certainly not across entire multinational companies.

I don't have answers for how this should be resolved. I have my intuition, but that's it.

Intuitively, I hew more towards equality, but I also believe in compassion on the individual level. I would try to create a phased approach to salary levelling that would probably reduce some salaries OVER TIME, but phasing the changes in to encourage movement and reduce shock.

I would do this because I think it's unfair to individuals to screw them on pay for moving, but it's also a REALLY GOOD THING to start moving technologists OUT of the bay area. There are housing and environmental crises that reducing population density will help alleviate.

But at the heart of this all is COMMUNICATION, and this is where the companies involved have fucked this up in grand fashion.

Corporate communications have been cold, dispassionate, inhuman, and lacking in any semblance of empathy.

Much of the issue could have been avoided if only communications of this nature had people who REMEMBERED WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE POOR AND DISCRIMINATED AGAINST having the final go/no-go say.

This whole debate is, among other things, one of "talking down to people".

It is easy to lose one's self in one's privilege. But it is also easy to forget that even people making lots of money can struggle, depending on their past, their obligations, and where they live. We are all so very quick to dehumanize...and that is made worse corporately.

Lawyers and HR exist to protect the company from lawsuits. They vet and check, redline and suggest, and unless compassionate, empathetic people who have Seen Some Shit are involved, it's very easy to take a nuanced, complex topic like that and botch the delivery at 2020 scale.

This is a conversation that should have been had openly. Honestly. Explaining the complexities and ASKING FOR FEEDBACK. This should have been a two way discussion. It didn't. But it IS NOT a simple, binary right and wrong discussion topic. And none of us may have perfect answers.

Another item I want to touch on here is TRUST. More specifically, the lack thereof.

What one side of this debate seems to not understand - or maybe not care about - is that one of the big REASONs people are bolshy about this isn't because they're greedy. It's a lack of TRUST.

Cutting through the crap: most people do understand that if your cost of living is radically higher than you should probably get paid a little bit more to do the same job, if society were equitable. We don't want our coworkers to live shitty lives because of where they live.

If you talk to people like human beings about this topic and you give them some space to vent, retaliation free, then, my dear tech execs, you might be surprised how accommodating people will be to the idea of equitable pay.

But tech executives as a group don't seem to think they need to earn ANYONE'S trust. Not their employees, and not their customers. That is, ultimately the problem.

If your people don't trust you then you CAN'T really have that conversation and have them believe anything.

If I don't trust you, then I am not going to trust that your means of measuring the cost of living is going to be fair, sane, or equitable. I won't trust your choice of third-party stats or data, and I basically am going to be hostile to the entire thing on general principle.

Believe it or not, the various people involved in this debate mostly want the same thing. Bosses want employees to live comfortable, happy lives. Comfortable, happy employees are productive employees. That raises stock prices, and that means bigger bonuses.

Employees want, above all, an end to precarity. Scan the tweets on this hellsite and those who have been living in privilege for lengthy periods of time are quick to talk about how accepting a pay cut for moving to a nice place is "no big deal", and they're firmly in that camp.

But for those still digging themselves out of a lifetime where there weren't many opportunities; those still saddled with debts, with obligations, who have children that need schooling or more...PRECARITY preoccupies them. Fear. Anxiety.

EMPATHY is required to deal with this.

In today's job market employers have all the power, and employees are effectively disposable. NOW is the time for those corporations and all their myriad executives to start EARNING trust. To engage with compassion.

To communicate openly and honestly.

And as employees, we need to be ready to listen to what the bosses have to say, because even the tech sector is getting its ass kicked by the economy, and there ARE going to be hard choices to be made up and down our industry. It sucks, but I don't know how to change that.

I fear too many of us are wrapped up in what we feel we DESERVE. Not enough ask what it is that we are doing to EARN that. Or we look at everything strictly through the lens of money, dismissing the mixed, muddled, and highly variable humanity of our colleagues.

I, poster of guillotine memes, socialist at heart, chronic bleeding heart, and generally someone who actually suffers from too much empathy really do understand the temptation to pillory the executive layer. But...I can also do basic maths, and there are number problems here.

For most companies - not all, but most - in our industry you could gut executive (or even all of management) salaries and bonuses and still not end up giving the average employee much of a salary bump. And also then you wouldn't have trained leaders and things would GO BADLY.

There are skills to the art of leadership, and this issue has illustrated that. Each of us struggles with different aspects. Some find empathy difficult. Others, like me, suffer from too much. And also, if you're me, you probably are TOO honest most of the time. People hate that.

I have personally been extremely lucky. I work for an org where my chain of command is, as far as I can tell, populated by decent people who actually want to do well by those around them. They've handled difficult people, situations, and problems as well as reasonably possible.

Not everyone has that. Not all leaders have all skills. And committees don't improve things - especially communication - nearly as much as they think.

But in the end, this really is a complicated topic, reality is a bitch, and the best way through is open, honest communication.

All organizations should be aiming to build trust right now. Being a trustworthy pillar of the community is of incalculable value when the world is coming unglued. AND IT IS, EVEN IF YOU DON'T NOTICE IT. Not having been personally ratfucked by 2020 is pretty baller privilege.

Most of our leaders are, statistically speaking, probably decent people trying to do well by everyone for whom they are responsible. Some leaders, well...guillotines are being built in multiple for a reason.

It is worth it for all of us to periodically re-examine our views to make sure we aren't becoming the very kind of person we so vociferously decry. It is also worth bearing in mind that shouting complaints without offering viable alternative solutions only entrenches positions.

COMMUNICATION.
TRUST.
EMPATHY.

The hard skills of leadership. Manifest in decisions that ripple outwards from the conference room to touch the lives of countless thousands of very real human beings.

Who in turn will shape and reshape entire societies.

Please lead responsibly.