The CEO of a Silicon Valley startup sees a future where global employees in locations like India make the same salary as those in San Francisco

• During the pandemic, many white-collar workers left behind big cities for cheaper areas.
• In response, some companies have said they'll cut salaries for remote workers in different areas.
• But CEO Phil Libin says he hopes to pay workers worldwide a San Francisco-level salary.

Amid the Great Reshuffling of the pandemic, Americans are moving out of big city hubs like San Francisco. The wave of the future might be San Francisco-level salaries going with them, or those salaries getting cut once they move. And what if the Bay Area salary is attainable around the world, even as far away as India?

Reuters reported that Google could cut pay for employees who opt to permanently work from home, and even has an internal calculating tool to determine that. Insider's Stephen Jones reported it could mean a 25% pay cut for some of them.

But as remote work and flexible economy seems here to stay, at least one CEO is taking the location and salary debate step further.

In an interview with Insider's Aki Ito, Phil Libin, who heads up video tool startup Mmhmm - he also cofounded Evernote - discussed the company's move to give all employees in the US a San Francisco-level salary, no matter where they're based.

Read more: There's a battle brewing over salaries for remote workers - and it could change the way everyone gets paid

"If you're an engineer working in India and you have a level of performance and productivity that's the same as an engineer working in Mountain View, you should be getting the same amount of money," Libin told Ito.

As Ito reports, data from Salary.com finds that there is at least one large pay disparity for software engineers in India, compared to their US peers - someone with 10 years experience in the US earns nearly three times as much as a worker in India with the same qualifications. India Today reports that a $70,000 salary gap exists between Indian engineers and US engineers.

It's another potential harbinger of the economy that could emerge as the world slowly emerges from the pandemic. Flexibility is already the name of the game for many workers and consumers. In a survey from remote and flexible jobs site FlexJobs of over 4,600 workers, respondents said they'd rather change roles to get better work-life balance - not for higher pay.

More CEOs could adopt Libin's thinking: He wants to pay employees for the value they provide, not based on where they choose to live or what country they happen to be citizens of. "This change to distributed work and life is going to make us question everything."