6 ms·

Our reasons for paying local rates can be found on https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.git

by 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
These are remarkably dishonest and bad reasons. 1. This is meaningless. 2. This is FAR more a factor of lifestyle choices than CoL. I've lived in extremely high and extremely low CoL places and there is not a big difference. I have a $1500 mortgage instead of a $1700 lease. Maybe apples are 20c cheaper a pound? 3. "It's better if we pay you less, really!" PS Other remote employers pay significantly more than you. 4. Pay people competitively for the role instead. 5. Pay people competitively for the role instead.
- jedberg 8y ago
  Paying people competitively is exactly what they are doing. They are paying exactly as much as they need to to hire the talent they want.
  - imsofuture 8y ago
    I suppose that's inarguable, even if by definition.
  - a_imho 8y ago
    So why all the dishonesty? Let's just write that (or nothing at all). That could be respected.
  - NickM 8y ago
    Sure, but what I can't fathom is why they would pay more to hire a dev in SF or NY when they could easily hire a better dev for the same price from somewhere else. Allowing remote work is a big benefit from the employee perspective, so I can see why they could get away with paying less than certain other employers, especially if they're hiring people from areas with less competition from other high-paying employers...but why would they then throw those savings away by hiring someone from an expensive city and paying them a premium when the whole company is remote anyway? They claim they want a "geographically diverse team", but without saying what benefit that brings them, that doesn't really explain anything.
    - jedberg 8y ago
pzduniak 8y ago
Being in Poland, it's hard for me to even consider working for GitLab if the salary for a backend engineer tops out at 25k PLN / month pre-taxes, pre-social (that's $80k/yr for a true expert). Berlin companies are willing to hire mid-to-senior remote employees in Poland for that amount. It's not about the idea of a salary calculator, it's about the ratios that you set. Not everything scales linearly and while you could absolutely live in a total dump and consider nearly 100% of the salary "disposable income", in order to live at a similar level to Western Europe, the expenses start increasing rapidly.
- kayoone 8y ago
  Working for a Berlin tech company that is looking for backend engineers. If you have deep experience with Golang or PHP and willing to relocate, let me know ;)
negrit 8y ago
1, 2 and 3 are just theory not truth. There are many counter examples of companies paying equal regardless of the location and: 1. Not everyone lives where it cheap. There are many factors when choosing where to live: Friends, family, emotional attachment to a place, ... 2. That's linked to 1, if they choose to move somewhere expensive that's on them, not imposed by the company. 3. Not true, someone unhappy isn't going to stick around just because they can make more money. ... At the end of the day the main goal of paying less where the cost of living is cheaper is to increase the company profit. It's 100% reasonable but masking the reason behind some "fairness" bullet points is BS to me.
- pc86 8y ago
  #3 is absolutely true for certain classes of employee. If you live in Omaha where tech salaries for the best of the best top out at $70-80k, but you're making $175k at Gitlab, it's going to take a lot to get you to leave. Honestly the thing that bothers me most about all this "fairness" stuff if the implication that business is supposed to be fair in the first place. Salary negotiation is a leverage and your/the company's BATNA. That's why software developers can make $200k in certain areas and janitors make minimum wage. Yes, value provided to the company has something to do with it. Yes, scarcity of skill has something to do with it. But all those just flow into the equation of leverage and BATNA and you come out the other end with a range, and where you fall on that range is largely just your negotiating skill and whether or not you're willing to negotiate in the first place.
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    > If you live in Omaha where tech salaries for the best of the best top out at $70-80k, but you're making $175k at Gitlab, it's going to take a lot to get you to leave. That being said, if you live in Omaha, and working for GitLab, you're going to need to be executive/director level to be making $175k. FrontEnd manager? $110, tops. Security manager, $130, tops.
  - clubm8 8y ago
    >The issue with number 3 is for the employer, not the employee. GitLab doesn't want demotivated/unhappy employees to stick around: they want them to actively look for other opportunities and leave. Sounds reasonable to me. I disagree. If I was making 175k in a city like that, I would probably work for a few years, then semi-retire. Maybe take a nonprofit job, do less hours and consult, or work for a local university with low pay but good work life balance. I wouldn't just ride it out for 10-20 years if I didn't enjoy the job.
dx87 8y ago
Number 3 is pretty rediculous. I don't think I've ever seen another company try to claim that they are doing employees a favor by paying them less money than their peers.
- Xixi 8y ago
  The issue with number 3 is for the employer, not the employee. GitLab doesn't want demotivated/unhappy employees to stick around: they want them to actively look for other opportunities and leave. Sounds reasonable to me.
  - clubm8 8y ago
    >The issue with number 3 is for the employer, not the employee. GitLab doesn't want demotivated/unhappy employees to stick around: they want them to actively look for other opportunities and leave. Sounds reasonable to me. Ironically if you paid a high salary but allowed people to work in a low COL area, this wouldn't be an issue... because the workers could aggressively save for retirement and semi-retire fairly early in their career.
    - ozim 8y ago
      But you want unhappy employee to leave in 2-3 months or ASAP not sticking for couple of years to earn his FIRE. I would say after 6 months you get to know quirks of company up to that you might still be oblivious to bodies in wardrobe.
  - sytse 8y ago
    That is exactly the reason. I updated the site https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/5833b6f0838524fe61659a5363a5f9672d4a6764 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/5833b6f0...
- clubm8 8y ago
  > Number 3 is pretty rediculous. I don't think I've ever seen another company try to claim that they are doing employees a favor by paying them less money than their peers. I've heard it used in the context of US government work. (They simply don't want people who are "in it for the money"). I don't know if that's based on studies or just a feeling.
clubm8 8y ago
> Are reasons for paying local rates can be found on [URL] Did you mean "our" or "their"? If you're a Gitlab employee, please explicitly state that when making comments about your company on HN. >Paying the same wage would lead to... A concentration of team members in low-wage regions, since it is a better deal for them, while we want a geographically diverse team. Weird, since it looks like you don't pay a ton in SF compared to market, and IIRC don't offer stock or large cash bonuses ala Mozilla. So if I had to pick between SF and say, Portland, I'd probably go with Portland since you don't seem to ramp up enough in SF. Basically, your salaries do the opposite of what they intend. I also took a look at the salary tool, and it seems to lack nuance compared to say, the GS payscale, which differs based on granular localities. I see many states with wildly varying costs of living that only have one "compensation factor" that would have multiple regions on the GS payscale. In fact, it looks like most of the points are pretty flaccid except for "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." "I don't want to pay a fair wage because I can get more people with less salary" isn't a super compelling argument for workers. Edit: added italics in quotes for readability and corrected a spelling error.
- gpm 8y ago
  > Did you mean "our" or "their"? He's the CEO.
  - sytse 8y ago
    I meant our. I edited my post to update.
    - clubm8 8y ago
      > I meant our. I edited my post to update. Thanks, and sorry for being harsh in my original reply, I should have couched my language to be less accusatory.
- sytse 8y ago
  We do offer stock options. Do you mean this pay scale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_s... ? It would be interesting to see if that would improve our date. I don’t think we have to go more granular than metro area, or did you mean something else?
alt_f4 8y ago
Wow, most of this is such bullshit. > 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. Wrong. You are assuming that people only care about maximizing disposable income. That is plainly incorrect. The vast majority of people won't move to a 3rd world country with a much worse standard of living, language barrier, uproot their family's life, have safety issues and what not, so that they would have potentially 2x - 5x spending power. The reality is cost of living around the world differs, but not to the extent that this influences a large number of people in an organization into switching countries. > 2. Team members in high-wage regions having less discretionary income than ones in low-wage countries with the same role. Wrong. And, also, WTF. It is also not your place to determine people's discretionary income, who do you think you are - their mum? a slave owner? A TV, a Macbook, a car, fuel costs about the same everywhere in the world, because there's a global market. That's true for pretty much everything but rent and food. And you're also completely unaware of various tax rules in countries that may give long-term benefits / short-term tax hikes that end up fundamentally changing earnings and lifestyle. Not that any of that would be your business, but if you're going to do that using this justification, you need to do extremely detailed and sophisticated research. Otherwise, your social equality goal will definitely backfire. > 3. Team members in low-wage regions being in golden handcuffs and unlikely to leave even when they are unhappy. Wrong again. Any employee can go work for another company that hires remote workers. Most of these companies don't adjust salaries to some perceived cost of living factor, so, in effect, you are making yourself incredibly uncompetitive with this practice. For instance, I am extremely good at what I do and I command the global market rates that reflect that. Therefore, I would never consider working with Gitlab. > 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. That's the only actual reason. If you paid competitive rates globally, you'd spend more money. > 5. If we start paying everyone the lowest wage we would not be able to attract and retain people in high-wage regions. LOL, let's pretend that's a thing you could do even if you wanted to. In fact, if you could pull it off, you'd do it. To sum it up, you just lost a lot of people's respect on here by giving a bullshit answer to a serious question. You should've told the truth, people generally respond well to honesty. It is not unreasonable that a startup (or, indeed, any business) would want to reduce costs as much as possible. This BS response, that tries to make it seem like you're doing everyone a favor by not paying global market rates, is just a turn off for most intelligent people.
Lordarminius 8y ago
> Our reasons for paying local rates... With all due respect, this is b.s. Your company does this because it can, and because developers stuck in second and third tier cities (or countries) have few options. It is blatant exploitation on and a black mark on your company. Gitlab is an otherwise admirable company with a fine product. Consider correcting this policy asap.
- leipert 8y ago
  Disclaimer: GitLab employee here. I am not going to argue about compensation or how we do compensation at GitLab, but I must say: > second and third tier cities (or countries) That is really hurtful to say. Personally I would never want to move somewhere else "just for the money". People happily living somewhere else than SV and being happy without SV compensation is a real thing, believe me.
Lordarminius 8y ago
> Our reasons for paying local rates... With all due respect, this is b.s. Your company does this because it can, and because developers stuck in second and third tier cities (or countries) have little choice. It is blatant exploitation and a black mark on your company. Edit: On closer examination, your third reason simply translates to : we are your best/only option right now so deal with it, this is borderline unethical practice.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  Golly, y'all are cynical assholes. They provide a list of reasonable justifications and you just pounce like you're out for blood. "this leads me to the conclusion that you are unethical as well"? Really?
- xvector 8y ago
  Literally all jobs scale to local rates. Look at any of FAANG. They all scale with local rates.
  - Lordarminius 8y ago
    At the risk of over flogging this issue, let me state this. Employees are hired for the value they bring to the company and the point of remote work is that geography is irrelevant. FAANG paying 'local rates' does not make it right. It simply means FAANG is as exploitative as other companies. Consider the other end of the spectrum - international expatriate workers. These folk have great leverage and they get paid multiples of the local wage. How do you justify that ?
stefanmichael 8y ago
I just want to re-iterate what everyone is saying and also state that I am a very good developer that removed myself from Gitlabs recruitment pipeline as soon as I found out I would be getting paid 89,000$ based on your algorithm because I live in a very low cost of living area. Despite the fact that I was currently making 140,000$ at a non-remote position in my low cost of living area. I was genuinely shocked/surprised when I found that, and confused that a company with a good reputation for software could have such a massive disconnect on wages.
- sytse 8y ago
  Thanks for voicing the disparity. We want to pay at or above market so this big of a difference is concerning to me. As we state on every page that has our calculator, we would love to hear from people when we’re far off. Can you maybe share what position you where considering and in what metro are you life?
  - Implicated 8y ago
    > we would love to hear from people when we’re far off ... Oregon... entire state is same modifier? I can rent a 4 bedroom house 2 blocks away from the university in La Grande for $1200/m. I can rent a 3 bedroom house 2 blocks away from the university in Portland for $3900/m. Does not compute.
    - sytse 8y ago
      I agree Portland should probably have its own index.
      - brittany6229 8y ago
        We are working on our 2019 iteration of the compensation calculator currently, which will create additional metro areas, one of which will be for Portland.
        8y ago
detaro 8y ago
Do you calculate the rate with accurate inputs for the specific candidate's location, or do you use the rough categorization of living areas that's in your online calculator?
- clubm8 8y ago
  > Do you calculate the rate with accurate inputs for the specific candidate's location, or do you use the rough categorization of living areas that's in your online calculator? My major criticism is they have some states where there is one rate of pay for the entire state. Oregon being the most egregious - it's my understanding the difference in COL in Portland versus a rural area in Oregon (or small town like Eugene) is a lot.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
wpdev_63 8y ago
Are you seriously considering an employee's PERSONAL life for setting their wage??? That's bananas! That's like saying that I'll work for free cause the boss wants to buy his wife a new ferrari. Bottom line is that you pay market rate for the programmer. Whether he is programming out of a cardboard box in slum or working in a golden palace in Switzerland, it should not matter cause to the employee, your personal life does not matter. Any body that hears any of these reasons during a salary negotiation or raise should immediately look for work elsewhere. I know I would. Granted, I do believe there is wiggle room for personal reasons("I just had a baby" etc)but gitlab should be paying employees based on the value they bring the company and/or market rate.
scarejunba 8y ago
These are good reasons and I’d find them fairly convincing as having thought of unintended consequences. I don’t work at Gitlab, use it, or anything.
dasil003 8y ago
Contrary to the theme of vitriol expressed by many comments here, I understand the line of thinking and it's fairly reasonable. However there's a big blind spot in this policy: markets have qualitative differences that affect perceived market rates. In SV there is high supply, high demand, and companies are relatively good at evaluating talent; in short, talent is more liquid and it's less of a market for lemons. In cities with lesser tech footprint companies aren't as good at evaluating talent, less good at leveraging and there is less difficulty retaining employees, so average wages are depressed. However top tier talent can be hired remotely, and will generally be worth well above market in less sophisticated markets. When I first looked at your salary scale a few years ago when I was living in Oakland and the discrepency between SF and Oakland was absolutely ridiculous. I assume that has been fixed, but even as someone who might accept your SF pay, I know my worth, and would not consider working for you in any other region. I'm sure you'll find some good talent that doesn't know their own value, but you'll miss out disproportionately on the seasoned talent.

by sytse 8y ago

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

These are remarkably dishonest and bad reasons. 1. This is meaningless. 2. This is FAR more a factor of lifestyle choices than CoL. I've lived in extremely high and extremely low CoL places and there is not a big difference. I have a $1500 mortgage instead of a $1700 lease. Maybe apples are 20c cheaper a pound? 3. "It's better if we pay you less, really!" PS Other remote employers pay significantly more than you. 4. Pay people competitively for the role instead. 5. Pay people competitively for the role instead.

jedberg 8y ago
Paying people competitively is exactly what they are doing. They are paying exactly as much as they need to to hire the talent they want.
- imsofuture 8y ago
  I suppose that's inarguable, even if by definition.
- a_imho 8y ago
  So why all the dishonesty? Let's just write that (or nothing at all). That could be respected.
- NickM 8y ago
  Sure, but what I can't fathom is why they would pay more to hire a dev in SF or NY when they could easily hire a better dev for the same price from somewhere else. Allowing remote work is a big benefit from the employee perspective, so I can see why they could get away with paying less than certain other employers, especially if they're hiring people from areas with less competition from other high-paying employers...but why would they then throw those savings away by hiring someone from an expensive city and paying them a premium when the whole company is remote anyway? They claim they want a "geographically diverse team", but without saying what benefit that brings them, that doesn't really explain anything.
  - jedberg 8y ago

pzduniak 8y ago

Being in Poland, it's hard for me to even consider working for GitLab if the salary for a backend engineer tops out at 25k PLN / month pre-taxes, pre-social (that's $80k/yr for a true expert). Berlin companies are willing to hire mid-to-senior remote employees in Poland for that amount. It's not about the idea of a salary calculator, it's about the ratios that you set. Not everything scales linearly and while you could absolutely live in a total dump and consider nearly 100% of the salary "disposable income", in order to live at a similar level to Western Europe, the expenses start increasing rapidly.

kayoone 8y ago
Working for a Berlin tech company that is looking for backend engineers. If you have deep experience with Golang or PHP and willing to relocate, let me know ;)

negrit 8y ago

1, 2 and 3 are just theory not truth. There are many counter examples of companies paying equal regardless of the location and: 1. Not everyone lives where it cheap. There are many factors when choosing where to live: Friends, family, emotional attachment to a place, ... 2. That's linked to 1, if they choose to move somewhere expensive that's on them, not imposed by the company. 3. Not true, someone unhappy isn't going to stick around just because they can make more money. ... At the end of the day the main goal of paying less where the cost of living is cheaper is to increase the company profit. It's 100% reasonable but masking the reason behind some "fairness" bullet points is BS to me.

pc86 8y ago
#3 is absolutely true for certain classes of employee. If you live in Omaha where tech salaries for the best of the best top out at $70-80k, but you're making $175k at Gitlab, it's going to take a lot to get you to leave. Honestly the thing that bothers me most about all this "fairness" stuff if the implication that business is supposed to be fair in the first place. Salary negotiation is a leverage and your/the company's BATNA. That's why software developers can make $200k in certain areas and janitors make minimum wage. Yes, value provided to the company has something to do with it. Yes, scarcity of skill has something to do with it. But all those just flow into the equation of leverage and BATNA and you come out the other end with a range, and where you fall on that range is largely just your negotiating skill and whether or not you're willing to negotiate in the first place.
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  > If you live in Omaha where tech salaries for the best of the best top out at $70-80k, but you're making $175k at Gitlab, it's going to take a lot to get you to leave. That being said, if you live in Omaha, and working for GitLab, you're going to need to be executive/director level to be making $175k. FrontEnd manager? $110, tops. Security manager, $130, tops.
- clubm8 8y ago
  >The issue with number 3 is for the employer, not the employee. GitLab doesn't want demotivated/unhappy employees to stick around: they want them to actively look for other opportunities and leave. Sounds reasonable to me. I disagree. If I was making 175k in a city like that, I would probably work for a few years, then semi-retire. Maybe take a nonprofit job, do less hours and consult, or work for a local university with low pay but good work life balance. I wouldn't just ride it out for 10-20 years if I didn't enjoy the job.

dx87 8y ago

Number 3 is pretty rediculous. I don't think I've ever seen another company try to claim that they are doing employees a favor by paying them less money than their peers.

Xixi 8y ago
The issue with number 3 is for the employer, not the employee. GitLab doesn't want demotivated/unhappy employees to stick around: they want them to actively look for other opportunities and leave. Sounds reasonable to me.
- clubm8 8y ago
  >The issue with number 3 is for the employer, not the employee. GitLab doesn't want demotivated/unhappy employees to stick around: they want them to actively look for other opportunities and leave. Sounds reasonable to me. Ironically if you paid a high salary but allowed people to work in a low COL area, this wouldn't be an issue... because the workers could aggressively save for retirement and semi-retire fairly early in their career.
  - ozim 8y ago
    But you want unhappy employee to leave in 2-3 months or ASAP not sticking for couple of years to earn his FIRE. I would say after 6 months you get to know quirks of company up to that you might still be oblivious to bodies in wardrobe.
- sytse 8y ago
  That is exactly the reason. I updated the site https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/5833b6f0838524fe61659a5363a5f9672d4a6764 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/5833b6f0...
clubm8 8y ago
> Number 3 is pretty rediculous. I don't think I've ever seen another company try to claim that they are doing employees a favor by paying them less money than their peers. I've heard it used in the context of US government work. (They simply don't want people who are "in it for the money"). I don't know if that's based on studies or just a feeling.

clubm8 8y ago

> Are reasons for paying local rates can be found on [URL] Did you mean "our" or "their"? If you're a Gitlab employee, please explicitly state that when making comments about your company on HN. >Paying the same wage would lead to... A concentration of team members in low-wage regions, since it is a better deal for them, while we want a geographically diverse team. Weird, since it looks like you don't pay a ton in SF compared to market, and IIRC don't offer stock or large cash bonuses ala Mozilla. So if I had to pick between SF and say, Portland, I'd probably go with Portland since you don't seem to ramp up enough in SF. Basically, your salaries do the opposite of what they intend. I also took a look at the salary tool, and it seems to lack nuance compared to say, the GS payscale, which differs based on granular localities. I see many states with wildly varying costs of living that only have one "compensation factor" that would have multiple regions on the GS payscale. In fact, it looks like most of the points are pretty flaccid except for "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." "I don't want to pay a fair wage because I can get more people with less salary" isn't a super compelling argument for workers. Edit: added italics in quotes for readability and corrected a spelling error.

gpm 8y ago
> Did you mean "our" or "their"? He's the CEO.
- sytse 8y ago
  I meant our. I edited my post to update.
  - clubm8 8y ago
    > I meant our. I edited my post to update. Thanks, and sorry for being harsh in my original reply, I should have couched my language to be less accusatory.
sytse 8y ago
We do offer stock options. Do you mean this pay scale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_s... ? It would be interesting to see if that would improve our date. I don’t think we have to go more granular than metro area, or did you mean something else?

alt_f4 8y ago

Wow, most of this is such bullshit. > 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. Wrong. You are assuming that people only care about maximizing disposable income. That is plainly incorrect. The vast majority of people won't move to a 3rd world country with a much worse standard of living, language barrier, uproot their family's life, have safety issues and what not, so that they would have potentially 2x - 5x spending power. The reality is cost of living around the world differs, but not to the extent that this influences a large number of people in an organization into switching countries. > 2. Team members in high-wage regions having less discretionary income than ones in low-wage countries with the same role. Wrong. And, also, WTF. It is also not your place to determine people's discretionary income, who do you think you are - their mum? a slave owner? A TV, a Macbook, a car, fuel costs about the same everywhere in the world, because there's a global market. That's true for pretty much everything but rent and food. And you're also completely unaware of various tax rules in countries that may give long-term benefits / short-term tax hikes that end up fundamentally changing earnings and lifestyle. Not that any of that would be your business, but if you're going to do that using this justification, you need to do extremely detailed and sophisticated research. Otherwise, your social equality goal will definitely backfire. > 3. Team members in low-wage regions being in golden handcuffs and unlikely to leave even when they are unhappy. Wrong again. Any employee can go work for another company that hires remote workers. Most of these companies don't adjust salaries to some perceived cost of living factor, so, in effect, you are making yourself incredibly uncompetitive with this practice. For instance, I am extremely good at what I do and I command the global market rates that reflect that. Therefore, I would never consider working with Gitlab. > 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. That's the only actual reason. If you paid competitive rates globally, you'd spend more money. > 5. If we start paying everyone the lowest wage we would not be able to attract and retain people in high-wage regions. LOL, let's pretend that's a thing you could do even if you wanted to. In fact, if you could pull it off, you'd do it. To sum it up, you just lost a lot of people's respect on here by giving a bullshit answer to a serious question. You should've told the truth, people generally respond well to honesty. It is not unreasonable that a startup (or, indeed, any business) would want to reduce costs as much as possible. This BS response, that tries to make it seem like you're doing everyone a favor by not paying global market rates, is just a turn off for most intelligent people.

Lordarminius 8y ago

> Our reasons for paying local rates... With all due respect, this is b.s. Your company does this because it can, and because developers stuck in second and third tier cities (or countries) have few options. It is blatant exploitation on and a black mark on your company. Gitlab is an otherwise admirable company with a fine product. Consider correcting this policy asap.

leipert 8y ago
Disclaimer: GitLab employee here. I am not going to argue about compensation or how we do compensation at GitLab, but I must say: > second and third tier cities (or countries) That is really hurtful to say. Personally I would never want to move somewhere else "just for the money". People happily living somewhere else than SV and being happy without SV compensation is a real thing, believe me.

Lordarminius 8y ago

> Our reasons for paying local rates... With all due respect, this is b.s. Your company does this because it can, and because developers stuck in second and third tier cities (or countries) have little choice. It is blatant exploitation and a black mark on your company. Edit: On closer examination, your third reason simply translates to : we are your best/only option right now so deal with it, this is borderline unethical practice.

castlecrasher2 8y ago
Golly, y'all are cynical assholes. They provide a list of reasonable justifications and you just pounce like you're out for blood. "this leads me to the conclusion that you are unethical as well"? Really?
xvector 8y ago
Literally all jobs scale to local rates. Look at any of FAANG. They all scale with local rates.
- Lordarminius 8y ago
  At the risk of over flogging this issue, let me state this. Employees are hired for the value they bring to the company and the point of remote work is that geography is irrelevant. FAANG paying 'local rates' does not make it right. It simply means FAANG is as exploitative as other companies. Consider the other end of the spectrum - international expatriate workers. These folk have great leverage and they get paid multiples of the local wage. How do you justify that ?

stefanmichael 8y ago

I just want to re-iterate what everyone is saying and also state that I am a very good developer that removed myself from Gitlabs recruitment pipeline as soon as I found out I would be getting paid 89,000$ based on your algorithm because I live in a very low cost of living area. Despite the fact that I was currently making 140,000$ at a non-remote position in my low cost of living area. I was genuinely shocked/surprised when I found that, and confused that a company with a good reputation for software could have such a massive disconnect on wages.

sytse 8y ago
Thanks for voicing the disparity. We want to pay at or above market so this big of a difference is concerning to me. As we state on every page that has our calculator, we would love to hear from people when we’re far off. Can you maybe share what position you where considering and in what metro are you life?
- Implicated 8y ago
  > we would love to hear from people when we’re far off ... Oregon... entire state is same modifier? I can rent a 4 bedroom house 2 blocks away from the university in La Grande for $1200/m. I can rent a 3 bedroom house 2 blocks away from the university in Portland for $3900/m. Does not compute.
  - sytse 8y ago
    I agree Portland should probably have its own index.
    - brittany6229 8y ago
      We are working on our 2019 iteration of the compensation calculator currently, which will create additional metro areas, one of which will be for Portland.
      - 8y ago

detaro 8y ago

Do you calculate the rate with accurate inputs for the specific candidate's location, or do you use the rough categorization of living areas that's in your online calculator?

clubm8 8y ago
> Do you calculate the rate with accurate inputs for the specific candidate's location, or do you use the rough categorization of living areas that's in your online calculator? My major criticism is they have some states where there is one rate of pay for the entire state. Oregon being the most egregious - it's my understanding the difference in COL in Portland versus a rural area in Oregon (or small town like Eugene) is a lot.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

wpdev_63 8y ago

Are you seriously considering an employee's PERSONAL life for setting their wage??? That's bananas! That's like saying that I'll work for free cause the boss wants to buy his wife a new ferrari. Bottom line is that you pay market rate for the programmer. Whether he is programming out of a cardboard box in slum or working in a golden palace in Switzerland, it should not matter cause to the employee, your personal life does not matter. Any body that hears any of these reasons during a salary negotiation or raise should immediately look for work elsewhere. I know I would. Granted, I do believe there is wiggle room for personal reasons("I just had a baby" etc)but gitlab should be paying employees based on the value they bring the company and/or market rate.

scarejunba 8y ago

These are good reasons and I’d find them fairly convincing as having thought of unintended consequences. I don’t work at Gitlab, use it, or anything.

dasil003 8y ago

Contrary to the theme of vitriol expressed by many comments here, I understand the line of thinking and it's fairly reasonable. However there's a big blind spot in this policy: markets have qualitative differences that affect perceived market rates. In SV there is high supply, high demand, and companies are relatively good at evaluating talent; in short, talent is more liquid and it's less of a market for lemons. In cities with lesser tech footprint companies aren't as good at evaluating talent, less good at leveraging and there is less difficulty retaining employees, so average wages are depressed. However top tier talent can be hired remotely, and will generally be worth well above market in less sophisticated markets. When I first looked at your salary scale a few years ago when I was living in Oakland and the discrepency between SF and Oakland was absolutely ridiculous. I assume that has been fixed, but even as someone who might accept your SF pay, I know my worth, and would not consider working for you in any other region. I'm sure you'll find some good talent that doesn't know their own value, but you'll miss out disproportionately on the seasoned talent.