Remote doesn't come with a built-in discount or a built-in premium. It comes with a pricing problem most founders have never actually solved.
A client came to us this year trying to fill an operations seat. He'd built the job description around the word "assistant" and priced it at $75,000, then couldn't understand why nobody good was applying. The role wasn't an assistant role. It was an operations manager role wearing an assistant's title, priced at an assistant's budget. Nobody serious was going to apply for a job that undersold itself before the interview ever happened.
That's the same mistake most founders make with remote compensation, just in a different form. They either assume remote comes with a built-in discount, or they default to whatever they'd pay someone to sit in their office, without ever actually pricing the role itself.
What Getting This Wrong Actually Costs
Price a remote seat too low, on the assumption that no commute means the number should shrink, and the applicant pool shrinks with it, down to whoever has the fewest other options, not whoever is best. Price it using your local in-office scale without adjusting anything, and you're often overpaying for a structure that doesn't actually reward what the seat exists to produce. Both mistakes cost real money. Only one of them shows up on the invoice.
The Mistake Most Founders Make
The common thread is guessing. Founders reach for a round number, or copy a comp plan they saw someone else post online, without adjusting it for their own market, their own role, or what that role actually needs to produce. An ISA comp plan built for a team closing forty deals a month doesn't translate cleanly to a team closing four. A commission structure copied wholesale from a stranger's post isn't a compensation strategy. It's a guess wearing a spreadsheet.
What the Research Actually Shows
A January 2026 working paper out of the San Francisco Fed, built on more than a decade of French labor and wage records, found that remote workers earn about 12 percent more on average than their in-office counterparts in the same role. But once the researchers controlled for the fact that higher performers were already earning more before they ever went remote, that premium dropped to about 1 percent, statistically no different from zero.
Remote work itself doesn't inherently command a pay bump or a pay cut.
The only reliable way to price a remote role is to price the role, not the location.
Pricing the Role
That starts with real numbers for the actual position. A Real Estate Acquisitions Manager, for example, is averaging $84,000 a year nationally as of this September, with the middle range running from about $59,500 to $100,000 and the top 10 percent clearing $130,000. That's the band to work from, adjusted for the seat's real scope and the market you're recruiting from, not a number pulled from whatever the last person in the chair happened to accept.
Then comes the structure decision, and for revenue-facing remote roles, ISAs, acquisitions, dispositions, that's rarely a flat salary question. The standard approach for an ISA seat runs a modest base, typically $24,000 to $30,000, paired with a closing commission of 5 to 15 percent of gross commission income, with most teams landing around 5 percent and paying more for stronger performers. Some structure it as a flat rate per set or conducted appointment instead, usually $50 to $150 each. Either way, the commission ties pay to what the seat is actually supposed to produce, which matters even more for a remote hire, since it's the cleanest answer to "how do I know they're working" that exists. The results either show up or they don't.
The last piece is the one most founders skip: pricing the role by its real scope, not its title.
Two Ways We've Seen This Play Out
The $75,000 assistant role from the opening of this piece is a real example. The fix wasn't only the number. It was the title and the description: reframing the posting as an operations manager role with a documented growth path toward director, which is what the job actually was in the first place. A role priced and labeled honestly draws people who can see themselves growing into it. A role undersold to save on the offer just filters out anyone with better options.
We've seen the same mismatch from the other direction, too. A client came to us paying someone $80,000 for a role a compensation analysis put closer to $125,000 to $150,000 in the actual market. The employee wasn't overpaid and difficult. The employer was underpaying and hadn't checked. That gap doesn't stay invisible forever. It shows up as attrition, or as someone quietly looking, long before it shows up as a resignation letter.
Where This Fits With Going Remote
This is the piece that sits underneath everything in
The Remote Shift. Going remote widens the pool and removes the cost a commute would have forced you to cover. But none of that helps if the seat itself was never priced or structured correctly in the first place. Get the role right first. The location decision gets easier once it is.
Pricing a role correctly, remote or not, isn't a guess and it isn't a vibe. It's scope, market data, and a structure that pays for what the seat actually needs to produce. If you want help running those numbers before your next job posting goes out, that's exactly what our Compensation Planning Tool is built for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I pay a remote hire less than an in-office one?
Not automatically. Current research shows remote work itself doesn't reliably command a lower or higher wage once you control for who tends to work remote in the first place. Price the role's actual scope and market rate first, then separately factor in what an in-office requirement would have cost that candidate.
How do I price a remote ISA or acquisitions role?
Start with a national benchmark for the specific role, a Real Estate Acquisitions Manager averages around $84,000 nationally as of this year, with a $59,500 to $100,000 middle range, then decide the structure. Most ISA seats run a modest base plus 5 to 15 percent commission on closings rather than a flat salary.
Salary, commission, or hybrid, which is better for a remote sales role?
For revenue-facing roles, a base-plus-commission hybrid tends to work best, especially remote, because it ties pay directly to what the seat produces instead of requiring you to guess whether someone's actually working.
Does remote work come with a built-in pay premium or discount?
No, not once you control for who ends up working remote in the first place. A 2026 study found remote workers earn about 12 percent more on average, but that premium nearly disappears, dropping to about 1 percent, once you account for the fact that stronger performers were already earning more before they went remote.
What's the biggest compensation mistake founders make with remote roles?
Guessing. Whether that's assuming remote means an automatic discount, copying someone else's comp plan without adjusting it, or pricing a role by its title instead of its actual scope, the fix is the same: run the real numbers for the specific role before writing the offer.
