25 ms·

One thing I don't like about Gitlab is their salary formula. They dock you in pay if you are in a lower cost of living area. First, I think I should be paid ba

by clubm8 8y ago

One thing I don't like about Gitlab is their salary formula. They dock you in pay if you are in a lower cost of living area. First, I think I should be paid based on the value I bring to a company, not my location. Otherwise, aren't we subsidizing those who choose to live in an expensive place like SF or NYC over those who are happy with a smaller city like Portland of Austin? Second, while many cities have growing tech scenes, SF and Seattle remain fairly unique job markets. If you're outside those cities, you may have less expenses, but you also lose out on networking and may find it harder to find your next job (if for no other reason than the fact nonremote companies will shy away from relocating you if another qualified candidate is local).

michaelmior 8y ago
Could you not equivalently say that pay is boosted for those living in areas with a higher cost of living?
ravenstine 8y ago
> First, I think I should be paid based on the value I bring to a company, not my location. If it's wrong(and illegal) to pay people differently based on their race or gender, I can't see how it should be alright to pay people differently based on their cost of living. There ought to be a movement to outlaw this practice. EDIT: Before you reply, note that I no longer think my argument is good.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  Are you kidding me? No one ever said "all markets are created equal". There is a very real difference in cost of living and local economies and competitive opportunities for employees in different markets. There's nothing you can do to fix that. This is where "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcome" diverge.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- koolba 8y ago
  > If it's wrong(and illegal) to pay people differently based on their race or gender, I can't see how it should be alright to pay people differently based on their cost of living. It makes no sense to equate location with immutable characteristics like race or gender. People can move to a new city. > There ought to be a movement to outlaw this practice. State and municipal minimum wage laws would be neutered by such a law.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I can't see how it should be alright to pay people differently based on their cost of living. Insofar as local CoL correlates with race and potentially other protected characteristics (religion seems likely, for instance), there's a pretty good “disparate impact” argument that it would be presumptively illegal if challenged under US federal anti-discrimination law.
- Matticus_Rex 8y ago
  As someone who works remotely from a low COL area, please do not outlaw this practice. It's the reason remote workers like me are extremely competitive, and if you outlaw this practice on my behalf, I will be in a worse position.
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    > It's the reason remote workers like me are extremely competitive Do you mean that you're able to compete because your location(hence, your salary) makes you a better value than someone who lives in an expensive region? That makes sense to me. Perhaps my viewpoint wasn't very thought out. > As someone who works remotely from a low COL area, please do not outlaw this practice. I have neither the power nor the desire. :)
    - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
      > Do you mean that you're able to compete because your location(hence, your salary) makes you a better value than someone who lives in an expensive region? Exactly.
- a_imho 8y ago
  it's wrong(and illegal) to pay people differently based on their race or gender It was not always the case though. Good luck convincing people with moral arguments when it goes against their financial interests. Even cutting away the PR bs would be a major win. https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-wage-gap-look-like/ https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...
- pc86 8y ago
  Probably because geographic location is not an intrinsic, fixed part of who are you, and is not a protected class either.
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    If race was something people could change at will, would you be opposed to racism?
    - pc86 8y ago
      If it could be changed freely at will I would be against it being a protected class.
    - sincerely 8y ago
      No, why would you? It would probably be seen as somewhat rude but harmless at worst, similar to e.g. making fun of Rick and Morty fans or making fun of people who dress like it’s still 1969.
      - ravenstine 8y ago
        > No, why would you? I would because it's discriminating someone by their identity and not necessarily their merits. By your reasoning, does is it only rude for Christian employers to discriminate against Muslims, for example? Someone can declare themselves to be of a religion they don't actually believe, but that doesn't mean that we should accept a society that fractures itself based on arbitrary lines of identity. Would you want to live in a society where you have a public race, a public religion, and a public gender while being intimidated to hiding your private identity for the sake of employment or so much as eating at a restaurant? (assuming one could change those things at will) Perhaps there shouldn't be specific protected classes, but I do not agree that the mutability of a person's traits should open them up to systematic discrimination. Being a Rick and Morty fan or dressing unfashionably are generally not considered valid identities by most people, although I'm sure many who have such interests would say those things represent their identity. Anyway, I'm sorry for dragging race issues into a thread about GitLab. xD
- mruts 8y ago
  Maybe it’s not wrong to pay based on race or gender
chrisco255 8y ago
This would more or less destroy one of the main incentives that the company has to hire remote employees: that they are more affordable. If every employee is paid at a SF market rate, then there is little benefit (other than office space, which is a fraction of the cost of labor). Market differentials for pay are pretty standard in any company with multiple locations.
- jxcole 8y ago
  What if every employee were paid at the Austin rate?
  - keerthiko 8y ago
    Simple, you'd never be able to hire the talent from the cities with the highest concentration of the best talent. (this is not to say there isn't amazing talent anywhere else, but not paying market rate for SF/NYC based engineers is an easy way to never be able to access the largest chunk of the best engineers in the country)
  - dylz 8y ago
    Then those in SF would be significantly below the poverty line?
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    Then people in SF or NYC would probably leave.
- molteanu 8y ago
  That's not what the article says, or hints at: > The biggest advantage to an all-remote team is obvious: Your hiring pool is gigantic, and you don't need to convince top talent to move for you. So the impression is, we hire you not because you live far off in Romania, but because you're really talented and we need you. That's some nice marketing hype, of which this article has plenty. I get it though, those people making tons of money at the head of the company, marketing, PR and all that, are making those money for a reason. They know how to spin stories. It's their job. And it's a legit job. So I agree with you, but I won't expect that to be the official line.
lotsofpulp 8y ago
>I think I should be paid based on the value I bring to a company People (like everything) are paid based on how much their replacements cost, aka supply curve meeting demand curve. I'm not sure how any other pricing mechanism would work.
- gpm 8y ago
  Under this theory, if their replacement can come from a cheaper place than silicon valley they should get payed a lower rate than silicon valley employees. I think the more accurate description is people are payed the amount they could get if they moved to a different company.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    It's not a theory, it's how any market with voluntary buyers and sellers work. It's slightly more complicated with wages being sticky, but if Gitlab can get someone in Mississippi to work for half and get the same results as someone from SF, then they should (and do) do that. It's why manufacturing moved to China.
  - pookeh 8y ago
    Location is not a non-issue. What you are saying is only true if the company doesn't care if its employees are colocated or not.
  - timeseries2018 8y ago
    >> should get payed should get paid >> people are payed people are paid
TulliusCicero 8y ago
> First, I think I should be paid based on the value I bring to a company, not my location. Otherwise, aren't we subsidizing those who choose to live in an expensive place like SF or NYC over those who are happy with a smaller city like Portland of Austin? Employees are never only paid based on value. If that was the case, janitors would make great money, since having a clean work environment is very important and valuable. What you're missing here is leverage. Janitors don't make much money because most people are capable of basic janitorial tasks, and thus they have little leverage in the job market because they could be easily replaced. In the case of Gitlab, employees in hotter job markets have more leverage because they could more easily find a high paying job where they live. People living in weaker job markets don't have that. Gitlab is paying the former group more precisely because they have more options.
- Faaak 8y ago
  But if everyone is working from home, you'd have access to the whole market, thus finding a same candidate without this leverage ? (please excuse my english)
  - creato 8y ago
    You only have access to the subset of the market that offers remote employment.
    - pc86 8y ago
      "Market" in this context means employees, not employers. The subset of employees completely disinterested in remote work is presumably much smaller than the subset of employers disinterested in offering it.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    But you wouldn't have access to the whole market, because you'd be missing out on people in the major tech hubs. And as it turns out, much of the best talent in the world is clustered in those tech hubs.
  - 8y ago
drinchev 8y ago
It's almost everywhere the same for remote gigs. I guess a way to "trick" that system is to find a remote gig as a tourist and then go back where you want to live originally.
downandout 8y ago
While I disagree that cost of living adjustments are wrong, you are likely dodging a bullet by choosing not to work for them. This company generated $10.5 million in revenue with 350 employees. That’s revenue of just $30K per employee. Since most employee salaries are likely near or above $100k, that means they have a very high burn rate. Investors won’t subsidize them forever, so it’s probably not the best place to work.
- spullara 8y ago
  During 2017 they had between 130-170 employees but I agree that the amount of revenue for that period makes me think they started scaling without finding product market fit. $10m in revenue for that size of company is very, very bad.
- gaius 8y ago
  Investors won’t subsidize them forever, so it’s probably not the best place to work. They are counting on an acquisition. The question is who. Microsoft has Github so, Atlassian (and merge with Bitbucket), IBM or Oracle are the most likely.
  - shimms 8y ago
    Google is more likely and already a significant investor.
    - richardwhiuk 8y ago
      I doubt Google would buy GitLab. It's an exceptionally bad fit. GitLab's customers are primarily people who want to on-site host, and part of the SaaS marker (though I'd guess that's mostly gone to GitHub). Google don't do Enterprise offerings well - they don't ship software. GitLab is the pinacle of doing everything moderately well - they explicitly prioritise "Breadth over Depth" - https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/ - aka doing every 20%, and leaving the bugs and the missing features to the community. Google are on the overhand fond of polishing something endlessly so they don't have support requests for it. GitLab's source code is all opensource - Google's source code almost none of it is open source. (BigTable, Bors, GFS, advertising stuff etc etc).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
LyndsySimon 8y ago
I live in rural Arkansas, and work remotely. My salary is adjusted for cost of living - I don’t make as much as I would in the LA area, where my employer is located - but I’m fine with that. It gives companies incentive to hire remote devs, and I make far, far more than I could locally. Even assuming I could find the same work on-site here, I’d be making a little more than half what I am now. Everyone wins.
sytse 8y ago
Our reasons for paying local rates can be found on https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c... Paying the same wage in different regions would lead to: 1. A concentration of team members in low-wage regions, since it is a better deal for them, while we want a geographically diverse team. 2. Team members in high-wage regions having less discretionary income than ones in low-wage countries with the same role. 3. Team members in low-wage regions being in golden handcuffs and unlikely to leave even when they are unhappy. 4. If we start paying everyone the highest wage our compensation costs would increase greatly, we can hire fewer people, and we would get less results. 5. If we start paying everyone the lowest wage we would not be able to attract and retain people in high-wage regions.
- macintux 8y ago
  > 1. A concentration of team members in low-wage regions, since it is a better deal for them, while we want a geographically diverse team. "low-wage regions" includes roughly 98% of the land mass of the world. That sounds like a silly reason. > 2. Team members in high-wage regions having less discretionary income than ones in low-wage countries with the same role. Which is how capitalism works. > 3. Team members in low-wage regions being in golden handcuffs and unlikely to leave even when they are unhappy. ...at this point I surrender to their illogic.
  - keiferski 8y ago
    1. Excludes basically the top 100 cities in the world. Ruling out talent from New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, etc. seems pretty significant.
    - macintux 8y ago
      But it doesn't materially impact geographic diversity. Does having an employee in the London suburbs instead of the City of London suddenly make for a weaker team?
- imsofuture 8y ago
kokey 8y ago
I guess it's a sign that the demand for remote workers are still low enough that it has not pulled up the income of remote workers that much.
- molteanu 8y ago
  Good point. I agree with that.
molteanu 8y ago
Just ask for your pay rate when negotiating. If you don't like the offer, then don't accept it. But yes, they might take advantage of the fact that not many companies, relatively speaking, go on full-remote. So you don't have many options if you live far off in forestland.
antaviana 8y ago
Employee pricing is mostly cost-based pricing, not value-based pricing. You need monopoly-like situations to charge by value-based pricing and a monopoly-like situation is difficult to create by a single person.
foxbarrington 8y ago
Do you get a raise if you move to an expensive city? What if you say that you moved and you just rent an address there?
- clubm8 8y ago
  > Do you get a raise if you move to an expensive city? What if you say that you moved and you just rent an address there? Their company handbook says you must have moves approved, and it requires multiple levels of management to approve a move to a higher COL area. Looks like IIRC, only your direct manager needs to OK going lower.
sargun 8y ago
Seems like a good way to negotiate/ save money to me.
darylfritz 8y ago
I like Basecamp's pay structure: it's static. It's more based on the role itself, and the value that role brings to the company. You're not penalized for living somewhere with a low cost of living. > Our market rates are based on Chicago. Chicago isn’t the top of the market — you’ll find higher rates in Silicon Valley or New York — but it’s not far off either. So whether you live in Tennessee or Arizona or Alaska or Illinois, we pay the same. > This means everyone has the freedom to pick where they want to live, and there’s no penalty for relocating to a cheaper cost-of-living area. We encourage remote and have many employees who’ve lived all over while continuing to work for Basecamp. Source: https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-pay-people-at-basecamp-f1d04f4f194b https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-pay-people-at-basecamp-f1d...
- pc86 8y ago
  All that marketing text (and among the other docs in the linked Github repo) and they never actually say what their salaries are other than the vague indication that it's the 95th percentile for Chicago.
- richardwhiuk 8y ago
  So basically nowhere with a higher cost of living will work for Basecamp - fine, and they will be substantially overpaying anyone outside of Chicago. That's fine, but basically it changes who you will hire.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's atypical though. Or companies make smallish adjustments based on location. They don't seriously try to compete with Facebook or Google on SV salary, know some people will work for them because they didn't get an offer from one of those companies, or prefer to work for someone else. Some people from those areas will take the job anyway and they're fine with not focusing on hiring developers in those geos.
- tpritc 8y ago
  They then followed up six months later (December 2017) by raising that to the top 10% of San Francisco salaries: > It started to increasingly seem like an arbitrary choice, and if we were going to make one such, why not go for the best and the top? > That’s what we did. Starting 2018, Basecamp is paying everyone as though they live in San Francisco and work for a software company that pays in the top 10% of that market (compared to base pay + bonus, but not options). Source: https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-san-francisco-but-now-we-pay-everyone-as-though-all-did-3ee87013cfc2 https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...
conanbatt 8y ago
There is a correlation between salary and COL: you living in a COL makes you less competitive, as the price of you living somewhere else is paid, everyone in that COL area also wishes to get the same job. Nobody gets paid on value, its not how exchange works.
jimmy1 8y ago
Another thing I don't like about Gitlab is their interview process. They are the exact kind of puzzle-gotcha-question asking interviewers that are looking for a particular right answer that get ridiculed on here quite often. They asked me a question about prototypical inheritance in javascript, I gave what I thought was a very thorough, in depth answer, except it wasn't the type of answer the non-technical phone interviewer was looking for, who was just looking at a list of questions and answers on his or her sheet.
akerro 8y ago
Not really, I was offered a job in London for £110k, but I live in Wales where living costs are at least 3x lower, so I make less than 50% of that. If you want to make more money (on a paper) and pay more taxes, move to places with higher living costs.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
The military provides COLA (Cost Of Living Allowance) to its members to make it bearable to live in more expensive areas. It's a different situation because they send you where they want you. It would be a hardship to send people to an expensive area they coudln't really afford and have no real say in being there. But it makes me feel ambivalent about your critique here. It makes me feel like it is maybe more complicated than what is contained in your reasoning, which means the "right"/best answer isn't necessarily obvious.
plaidfuji 8y ago
Your salary is set based on the amount another company would pay to poach you. The value of a stock is what someone will pay to buy it from you. The value of your car is what you can sell it for. Etc. It has nothing to do with unmeasurable intrinsic values.
kayoone 8y ago
Tbh I think it's weird when remote employees demand hq market rates. Where it the incentive for the company? You can hire talent from anywhere? Many of the best people are not willing to work from home, it's not for everyone, so I don't believe it's such a huge plus. Also why should you earn twice as much as your neighbour who is equally qualified and brings the same value to his/her employer? You will also have much more disposable income that onsite workers. All of that doesn't seem fair. If this was the case shouldn't big tech companies pay the same salaries globally for onsite workers as well? They don't, not even close.
christophilus 8y ago
Salaries are negotiable. Anecdotal evidence: I don’t make Silicon Valley money, but I make way over local market rates because I don’t accept anything else. When a prospective employer asks for your salary requirements, you need to aim high, and be willing to walk. It helps if you can afford several “Nopes” along the way. I always ask for well over what I currently make. It’s worked out well enough for me.
izzydata 8y ago
If you moved to the most expensive city and lived in a box with a laptop would they increase your salary?
matthewowen 8y ago
In fairness, the bigger issue is that they're paying way below market in SF to begin with.
Gatsky 8y ago
This is wage economics 101, people have a visceral reaction to any evidence of unfairness. The same issue occurs in a slowing economy, where in an efficient market you would want to reduce costs by reducing wages, but in practice this is impossible. What happens instead is people never get a pay rise, and inflation reduces their effective wage. Nobody minds this latter option at all, despite the fact it is materially the same thing as a wage reduction. I'm surprised Gitlab makes their policy explicit, it must create a lot of issues for them eg the reaction here. No doubt other companies achieve the same thing (because at the end of the day, it reduces costs), they just do it in less obvious ways.

by clubm8 8y ago

michaelmior 8y ago

Could you not equivalently say that pay is boosted for those living in areas with a higher cost of living?

ravenstine 8y ago

> First, I think I should be paid based on the value I bring to a company, not my location. If it's wrong(and illegal) to pay people differently based on their race or gender, I can't see how it should be alright to pay people differently based on their cost of living. There ought to be a movement to outlaw this practice. EDIT: Before you reply, note that I no longer think my argument is good.

chrisco255 8y ago
Are you kidding me? No one ever said "all markets are created equal". There is a very real difference in cost of living and local economies and competitive opportunities for employees in different markets. There's nothing you can do to fix that. This is where "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcome" diverge.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
koolba 8y ago
> If it's wrong(and illegal) to pay people differently based on their race or gender, I can't see how it should be alright to pay people differently based on their cost of living. It makes no sense to equate location with immutable characteristics like race or gender. People can move to a new city. > There ought to be a movement to outlaw this practice. State and municipal minimum wage laws would be neutered by such a law.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I can't see how it should be alright to pay people differently based on their cost of living. Insofar as local CoL correlates with race and potentially other protected characteristics (religion seems likely, for instance), there's a pretty good “disparate impact” argument that it would be presumptively illegal if challenged under US federal anti-discrimination law.
Matticus_Rex 8y ago
As someone who works remotely from a low COL area, please do not outlaw this practice. It's the reason remote workers like me are extremely competitive, and if you outlaw this practice on my behalf, I will be in a worse position.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  > It's the reason remote workers like me are extremely competitive Do you mean that you're able to compete because your location(hence, your salary) makes you a better value than someone who lives in an expensive region? That makes sense to me. Perhaps my viewpoint wasn't very thought out. > As someone who works remotely from a low COL area, please do not outlaw this practice. I have neither the power nor the desire. :)
  - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
    > Do you mean that you're able to compete because your location(hence, your salary) makes you a better value than someone who lives in an expensive region? Exactly.
a_imho 8y ago
it's wrong(and illegal) to pay people differently based on their race or gender It was not always the case though. Good luck convincing people with moral arguments when it goes against their financial interests. Even cutting away the PR bs would be a major win. https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-wage-gap-look-like/ https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...
pc86 8y ago
Probably because geographic location is not an intrinsic, fixed part of who are you, and is not a protected class either.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  If race was something people could change at will, would you be opposed to racism?
  - pc86 8y ago
    If it could be changed freely at will I would be against it being a protected class.
  - sincerely 8y ago
    No, why would you? It would probably be seen as somewhat rude but harmless at worst, similar to e.g. making fun of Rick and Morty fans or making fun of people who dress like it’s still 1969.
    - ravenstine 8y ago
      > No, why would you? I would because it's discriminating someone by their identity and not necessarily their merits. By your reasoning, does is it only rude for Christian employers to discriminate against Muslims, for example? Someone can declare themselves to be of a religion they don't actually believe, but that doesn't mean that we should accept a society that fractures itself based on arbitrary lines of identity. Would you want to live in a society where you have a public race, a public religion, and a public gender while being intimidated to hiding your private identity for the sake of employment or so much as eating at a restaurant? (assuming one could change those things at will) Perhaps there shouldn't be specific protected classes, but I do not agree that the mutability of a person's traits should open them up to systematic discrimination. Being a Rick and Morty fan or dressing unfashionably are generally not considered valid identities by most people, although I'm sure many who have such interests would say those things represent their identity. Anyway, I'm sorry for dragging race issues into a thread about GitLab. xD
mruts 8y ago
Maybe it’s not wrong to pay based on race or gender

chrisco255 8y ago

This would more or less destroy one of the main incentives that the company has to hire remote employees: that they are more affordable. If every employee is paid at a SF market rate, then there is little benefit (other than office space, which is a fraction of the cost of labor). Market differentials for pay are pretty standard in any company with multiple locations.

jxcole 8y ago
What if every employee were paid at the Austin rate?
- keerthiko 8y ago
  Simple, you'd never be able to hire the talent from the cities with the highest concentration of the best talent. (this is not to say there isn't amazing talent anywhere else, but not paying market rate for SF/NYC based engineers is an easy way to never be able to access the largest chunk of the best engineers in the country)
- dylz 8y ago
  Then those in SF would be significantly below the poverty line?
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Then people in SF or NYC would probably leave.
molteanu 8y ago
That's not what the article says, or hints at: > The biggest advantage to an all-remote team is obvious: Your hiring pool is gigantic, and you don't need to convince top talent to move for you. So the impression is, we hire you not because you live far off in Romania, but because you're really talented and we need you. That's some nice marketing hype, of which this article has plenty. I get it though, those people making tons of money at the head of the company, marketing, PR and all that, are making those money for a reason. They know how to spin stories. It's their job. And it's a legit job. So I agree with you, but I won't expect that to be the official line.

lotsofpulp 8y ago

>I think I should be paid based on the value I bring to a company People (like everything) are paid based on how much their replacements cost, aka supply curve meeting demand curve. I'm not sure how any other pricing mechanism would work.

gpm 8y ago
Under this theory, if their replacement can come from a cheaper place than silicon valley they should get payed a lower rate than silicon valley employees. I think the more accurate description is people are payed the amount they could get if they moved to a different company.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  It's not a theory, it's how any market with voluntary buyers and sellers work. It's slightly more complicated with wages being sticky, but if Gitlab can get someone in Mississippi to work for half and get the same results as someone from SF, then they should (and do) do that. It's why manufacturing moved to China.
- pookeh 8y ago
  Location is not a non-issue. What you are saying is only true if the company doesn't care if its employees are colocated or not.
- timeseries2018 8y ago
  >> should get payed should get paid >> people are payed people are paid

TulliusCicero 8y ago

> First, I think I should be paid based on the value I bring to a company, not my location. Otherwise, aren't we subsidizing those who choose to live in an expensive place like SF or NYC over those who are happy with a smaller city like Portland of Austin? Employees are never only paid based on value. If that was the case, janitors would make great money, since having a clean work environment is very important and valuable. What you're missing here is leverage. Janitors don't make much money because most people are capable of basic janitorial tasks, and thus they have little leverage in the job market because they could be easily replaced. In the case of Gitlab, employees in hotter job markets have more leverage because they could more easily find a high paying job where they live. People living in weaker job markets don't have that. Gitlab is paying the former group more precisely because they have more options.

Faaak 8y ago
But if everyone is working from home, you'd have access to the whole market, thus finding a same candidate without this leverage ? (please excuse my english)
- creato 8y ago
  You only have access to the subset of the market that offers remote employment.
  - pc86 8y ago
    "Market" in this context means employees, not employers. The subset of employees completely disinterested in remote work is presumably much smaller than the subset of employers disinterested in offering it.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  But you wouldn't have access to the whole market, because you'd be missing out on people in the major tech hubs. And as it turns out, much of the best talent in the world is clustered in those tech hubs.
- 8y ago

drinchev 8y ago

It's almost everywhere the same for remote gigs. I guess a way to "trick" that system is to find a remote gig as a tourist and then go back where you want to live originally.

downandout 8y ago

While I disagree that cost of living adjustments are wrong, you are likely dodging a bullet by choosing not to work for them. This company generated $10.5 million in revenue with 350 employees. That’s revenue of just $30K per employee. Since most employee salaries are likely near or above $100k, that means they have a very high burn rate. Investors won’t subsidize them forever, so it’s probably not the best place to work.

spullara 8y ago
During 2017 they had between 130-170 employees but I agree that the amount of revenue for that period makes me think they started scaling without finding product market fit. $10m in revenue for that size of company is very, very bad.
gaius 8y ago
Investors won’t subsidize them forever, so it’s probably not the best place to work. They are counting on an acquisition. The question is who. Microsoft has Github so, Atlassian (and merge with Bitbucket), IBM or Oracle are the most likely.
- shimms 8y ago
  Google is more likely and already a significant investor.
  - richardwhiuk 8y ago
    I doubt Google would buy GitLab. It's an exceptionally bad fit. GitLab's customers are primarily people who want to on-site host, and part of the SaaS marker (though I'd guess that's mostly gone to GitHub). Google don't do Enterprise offerings well - they don't ship software. GitLab is the pinacle of doing everything moderately well - they explicitly prioritise "Breadth over Depth" - https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/ - aka doing every 20%, and leaving the bugs and the missing features to the community. Google are on the overhand fond of polishing something endlessly so they don't have support requests for it. GitLab's source code is all opensource - Google's source code almost none of it is open source. (BigTable, Bors, GFS, advertising stuff etc etc).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

LyndsySimon 8y ago

I live in rural Arkansas, and work remotely. My salary is adjusted for cost of living - I don’t make as much as I would in the LA area, where my employer is located - but I’m fine with that. It gives companies incentive to hire remote devs, and I make far, far more than I could locally. Even assuming I could find the same work on-site here, I’d be making a little more than half what I am now. Everyone wins.

sytse 8y ago

Our reasons for paying local rates can be found on https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c... Paying the same wage in different regions would lead to: 1. A concentration of team members in low-wage regions, since it is a better deal for them, while we want a geographically diverse team. 2. Team members in high-wage regions having less discretionary income than ones in low-wage countries with the same role. 3. Team members in low-wage regions being in golden handcuffs and unlikely to leave even when they are unhappy. 4. If we start paying everyone the highest wage our compensation costs would increase greatly, we can hire fewer people, and we would get less results. 5. If we start paying everyone the lowest wage we would not be able to attract and retain people in high-wage regions.

macintux 8y ago
> 1. A concentration of team members in low-wage regions, since it is a better deal for them, while we want a geographically diverse team. "low-wage regions" includes roughly 98% of the land mass of the world. That sounds like a silly reason. > 2. Team members in high-wage regions having less discretionary income than ones in low-wage countries with the same role. Which is how capitalism works. > 3. Team members in low-wage regions being in golden handcuffs and unlikely to leave even when they are unhappy. ...at this point I surrender to their illogic.
- keiferski 8y ago
  1. Excludes basically the top 100 cities in the world. Ruling out talent from New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, etc. seems pretty significant.
  - macintux 8y ago
    But it doesn't materially impact geographic diversity. Does having an employee in the London suburbs instead of the City of London suddenly make for a weaker team?
imsofuture 8y ago

kokey 8y ago

I guess it's a sign that the demand for remote workers are still low enough that it has not pulled up the income of remote workers that much.

molteanu 8y ago
Good point. I agree with that.

molteanu 8y ago

Just ask for your pay rate when negotiating. If you don't like the offer, then don't accept it. But yes, they might take advantage of the fact that not many companies, relatively speaking, go on full-remote. So you don't have many options if you live far off in forestland.

antaviana 8y ago

Employee pricing is mostly cost-based pricing, not value-based pricing. You need monopoly-like situations to charge by value-based pricing and a monopoly-like situation is difficult to create by a single person.

foxbarrington 8y ago

Do you get a raise if you move to an expensive city? What if you say that you moved and you just rent an address there?

clubm8 8y ago
> Do you get a raise if you move to an expensive city? What if you say that you moved and you just rent an address there? Their company handbook says you must have moves approved, and it requires multiple levels of management to approve a move to a higher COL area. Looks like IIRC, only your direct manager needs to OK going lower.

sargun 8y ago

Seems like a good way to negotiate/ save money to me.

darylfritz 8y ago

I like Basecamp's pay structure: it's static. It's more based on the role itself, and the value that role brings to the company. You're not penalized for living somewhere with a low cost of living. > Our market rates are based on Chicago. Chicago isn’t the top of the market — you’ll find higher rates in Silicon Valley or New York — but it’s not far off either. So whether you live in Tennessee or Arizona or Alaska or Illinois, we pay the same. > This means everyone has the freedom to pick where they want to live, and there’s no penalty for relocating to a cheaper cost-of-living area. We encourage remote and have many employees who’ve lived all over while continuing to work for Basecamp. Source: https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-pay-people-at-basecamp-f1d04f4f194b https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-pay-people-at-basecamp-f1d...

pc86 8y ago
All that marketing text (and among the other docs in the linked Github repo) and they never actually say what their salaries are other than the vague indication that it's the 95th percentile for Chicago.
richardwhiuk 8y ago
So basically nowhere with a higher cost of living will work for Basecamp - fine, and they will be substantially overpaying anyone outside of Chicago. That's fine, but basically it changes who you will hire.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's atypical though. Or companies make smallish adjustments based on location. They don't seriously try to compete with Facebook or Google on SV salary, know some people will work for them because they didn't get an offer from one of those companies, or prefer to work for someone else. Some people from those areas will take the job anyway and they're fine with not focusing on hiring developers in those geos.
tpritc 8y ago
They then followed up six months later (December 2017) by raising that to the top 10% of San Francisco salaries: > It started to increasingly seem like an arbitrary choice, and if we were going to make one such, why not go for the best and the top? > That’s what we did. Starting 2018, Basecamp is paying everyone as though they live in San Francisco and work for a software company that pays in the top 10% of that market (compared to base pay + bonus, but not options). Source: https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-san-francisco-but-now-we-pay-everyone-as-though-all-did-3ee87013cfc2 https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...

conanbatt 8y ago

There is a correlation between salary and COL: you living in a COL makes you less competitive, as the price of you living somewhere else is paid, everyone in that COL area also wishes to get the same job. Nobody gets paid on value, its not how exchange works.

jimmy1 8y ago

Another thing I don't like about Gitlab is their interview process. They are the exact kind of puzzle-gotcha-question asking interviewers that are looking for a particular right answer that get ridiculed on here quite often. They asked me a question about prototypical inheritance in javascript, I gave what I thought was a very thorough, in depth answer, except it wasn't the type of answer the non-technical phone interviewer was looking for, who was just looking at a list of questions and answers on his or her sheet.

akerro 8y ago

Not really, I was offered a job in London for £110k, but I live in Wales where living costs are at least 3x lower, so I make less than 50% of that. If you want to make more money (on a paper) and pay more taxes, move to places with higher living costs.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

The military provides COLA (Cost Of Living Allowance) to its members to make it bearable to live in more expensive areas. It's a different situation because they send you where they want you. It would be a hardship to send people to an expensive area they coudln't really afford and have no real say in being there. But it makes me feel ambivalent about your critique here. It makes me feel like it is maybe more complicated than what is contained in your reasoning, which means the "right"/best answer isn't necessarily obvious.

plaidfuji 8y ago

Your salary is set based on the amount another company would pay to poach you. The value of a stock is what someone will pay to buy it from you. The value of your car is what you can sell it for. Etc. It has nothing to do with unmeasurable intrinsic values.

kayoone 8y ago

Tbh I think it's weird when remote employees demand hq market rates. Where it the incentive for the company? You can hire talent from anywhere? Many of the best people are not willing to work from home, it's not for everyone, so I don't believe it's such a huge plus. Also why should you earn twice as much as your neighbour who is equally qualified and brings the same value to his/her employer? You will also have much more disposable income that onsite workers. All of that doesn't seem fair. If this was the case shouldn't big tech companies pay the same salaries globally for onsite workers as well? They don't, not even close.

christophilus 8y ago

Salaries are negotiable. Anecdotal evidence: I don’t make Silicon Valley money, but I make way over local market rates because I don’t accept anything else. When a prospective employer asks for your salary requirements, you need to aim high, and be willing to walk. It helps if you can afford several “Nopes” along the way. I always ask for well over what I currently make. It’s worked out well enough for me.

izzydata 8y ago

If you moved to the most expensive city and lived in a box with a laptop would they increase your salary?

matthewowen 8y ago

In fairness, the bigger issue is that they're paying way below market in SF to begin with.

Gatsky 8y ago

This is wage economics 101, people have a visceral reaction to any evidence of unfairness. The same issue occurs in a slowing economy, where in an efficient market you would want to reduce costs by reducing wages, but in practice this is impossible. What happens instead is people never get a pay rise, and inflation reduces their effective wage. Nobody minds this latter option at all, despite the fact it is materially the same thing as a wage reduction. I'm surprised Gitlab makes their policy explicit, it must create a lot of issues for them eg the reaction here. No doubt other companies achieve the same thing (because at the end of the day, it reduces costs), they just do it in less obvious ways.