>For example a dairy farmer in Switzerland earns more than one in Poland because people pay more for milk products in Switzerland compared to Poland.
A Swiss farmer is much more productive when measured in currency units, but probably not that much in milk volume.
However as we are talking about salary differences it's money that matters.
>So why would the GDP per capita of their country be a useful tool in deciding who to hire?
Why would it be? In this conceptual model the ability of a developer is how much he multiplies the output of whatever he's working on, but his productivity is the absolute value of added output. How could it be counted otherwise, in what? Lines of code?
If productivity didn't depend on location immigration wouldn't exist.
I guess it depends on the sense in which "productivity" is being used.
A remote dev working for a Bay Area company from Spain can be just as productive for his employer as one located in Los Gatos, CA. However the above method would categorize this dev as "objectively less productive", which seems counter-intuitive...
>However the above method would categorize this dev as "objectively less productive", which seems counter-intuitive...
It wouldn't, it purports to explain the differences in local salaries, or more precisely salaries paid by local entities to on-site developers.
It's true I didn't specify that explicitly in the first comment, along with definition of productivity, so your reading of it was a reasonable understanding. It's a good thing you helped me clarify the intended meaning.
One assumption is that foreign demand (for non-local use) for local on-site developers is small enough to not change the workforce demand significantly. So it won't work for India or other common offshore destination, but it seems to explain pay differences between USA and Spain, Norway and Switzerland reasonably.
A Swiss farmer is much more productive when measured in currency units, but probably not that much in milk volume.
However as we are talking about salary differences it's money that matters.
>So why would the GDP per capita of their country be a useful tool in deciding who to hire?
Why would it be? In this conceptual model the ability of a developer is how much he multiplies the output of whatever he's working on, but his productivity is the absolute value of added output. How could it be counted otherwise, in what? Lines of code?
If productivity didn't depend on location immigration wouldn't exist.