Does salary on remote work should depend on where you live?

As everybody on LinkedIn, I get invites and job proposition every so often. Most sound similar i.e., "Join our new exciting DeFi project. We will change how DeFi works!". But one got my attention lately because of one sentence.

"As for the salary, the current amount of the $ will be adjusted to an equivalent amount in accordance with the local living standard in your country of residence."

It wasn't the first time I got such a message. That got me thinking. Should the salary be adjusted to the place where I live?

Wonders of remote work

In 2017 I worked in hybrid mode (part remote, part office) at my first full-time Blockchain job. In 2018 I got a fantastic job offer to join as a smart contract developer to help build algorithmic stablecoin. The best part was that it was full remote, and my salary was terrific compared to what I was earning before.

I'm living in Poland, and IT salary here is good, but Polish companies weren't paying that much compared to the international market. It changed over time for the better, so the US/EU-based companies raised their salaries.

I always wanted to work remotely for few reasons. I like staying at home and not commuting to work. For me, it was always a wasted time I couldn't get back. Another reason was financial freedom. In a sense, I wasn't bound only to polish IT salary. I could finally earn in USD/EUR/GBP and feel like my skills and knowledge are worth something!

That's why when I see messages like that, I get an alarm going off in my mind. Many people are working hard to stay relevant in their space and do everything they can to get better job opportunities and salaries that reflect their skillset and expertise. That's why people like that are looking for remote work so they won't be bound to the place they live. Not only salary-wise, but often they could move to a different country and still earn a good amount of money.

I understand "business is business," but some companies just want to exploit their employees and have an expert working for them for a junior salary.

How much you earn shouldn't be decided by the place where you live. It should be decided by your level of expertise, skill, knowledge, and how much you can help the company. That should be the standard of determining how high/low your salary should be.

That's was a bit of a rant and my views of this matter. I think it's important we speak about this openly as some people may fall into the trap of thinking they are not worth as much. I'm in a privileged position where my salary reflects my skills and my years of hard work. I wish many more people would feel that and be in a similar place.

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