Location Pay: Equalizing or Egregious?

Lauren Warliga
4 min readNov 5, 2021
Photo by Aksonsat Uanthoeng from Pexels
Screenshot of LinkedIn Post by Robynn Storey, CEO, Storeyline

I came across this post on LinkedIn a few weeks back. I’ve been following Robynn Storey since I internally declared I was getting out of the classroom for good — I clicked “Follow” on her profile as I started to make my exit plan from the only career I’d ever known. Robynn is what I’d call a LinkedIn influencer. I don’t always agree with her, but she has big opinions and she’s not afraid to spell them out. She’s well-spoken, confident, and motivational. She is also sometimes quite controversial.

Her comparison of location pay to lunch allowance caught my eye as just one way Robynn drives home her point: location pay simply isn’t fair. No one’s salary should be influenced by their cost of living, she feels. I’m usually one to avoid this type of argument, but I couldn’t walk away from this one. Fair and competitive salary determination is absolutely a topic worth debating.

I work for a company that provides virtual education services. We educate students all over the world. Our teachers are licensed, and live, all over the United States. I’ll give you an example: It’s really hard to find a California-licensed (and California-based) educator willing to work for $50k. However, it’s really…

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Lauren Warliga

Lauren brings insight and humor to weight gain, parenting, work, divorce, and bad dates. She lives in NC with her husband, kids, dogs, goats, chickens, & ducks.