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My remote gig has several people who are pretty much digital nomads -- they move around often, travel even more often, and work from various states. We all get

My remote gig has several people who are pretty much digital nomads -- they move around often, travel even more often, and work from various states. We all get paid on the same scale (north-east coast based) so there's no issue; but, how would Gitlab handle this? Change their salary every time they log work from a new location? Even with that, it seems arbitrary and unbalanced. One person's cost of living paying for a mortgage in the city, raising children, or having college debt is very different from another's renting a 2 bedroom with their partner in midwestern suburbs. You might say that it's not the company's duty to compensate you for the financial impact of the life choices you make, yet they're doing exactly that by adjusting compensation based on the broad geographical area one chooses to work from. I guess for our situation, the folks on the east coast have the worse deal as their rents/mortgages are higher than remote workers' in other states, but the pay is also competitive for that area so there are still people choosing to be local. On the other hand, if my pay was lower I'd just find work with an NYC or SF based company that is remote or happens to have an office in my metro as they tend to pay higher salaries.

dsumenkovic 8y ago
> My remote gig has several people who are pretty much digital nomads -- they move around often, travel even more often, and work from various states. We all get paid on the same scale (north-east coast based) so there's no issue; but, how would Gitlab handle this? Change their salary every time they log work from a new location? Here's the documented process for the relocating while working at GitLab: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#relocating https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
jypepin 8y ago
yes "nomad" vs "remote" (implying remote but based somewhere) is one of the argument for the other school: pay same rate because what if people are nomads. Gitlab has a process for relocating, so it counter the following argument, but with that kind of location based salary that pushes people to try and game the system. Get hired while saying you live in an expensive area and finally move somewhere cheap.
- emilycook 8y ago
  > but with that kind of location based salary that pushes people to try and game the system. Get hired while saying you live in an expensive area and finally move somewhere cheap. Doesn't this somewhat conflict with the idea that companies who pay local rates are going to discriminate against people who live in higher cost-of-living areas? Because if that's true, then yeah you could try to game the system by asking for a SF based salary, but the trade-off is that now you're less competitive. You'd have to be pretty confident that your skills were top-tier enough to offset that I guess.

dsumenkovic 8y ago

> My remote gig has several people who are pretty much digital nomads -- they move around often, travel even more often, and work from various states. We all get paid on the same scale (north-east coast based) so there's no issue; but, how would Gitlab handle this? Change their salary every time they log work from a new location? Here's the documented process for the relocating while working at GitLab: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#relocating https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

jypepin 8y ago

yes "nomad" vs "remote" (implying remote but based somewhere) is one of the argument for the other school: pay same rate because what if people are nomads. Gitlab has a process for relocating, so it counter the following argument, but with that kind of location based salary that pushes people to try and game the system. Get hired while saying you live in an expensive area and finally move somewhere cheap.

emilycook 8y ago
> but with that kind of location based salary that pushes people to try and game the system. Get hired while saying you live in an expensive area and finally move somewhere cheap. Doesn't this somewhat conflict with the idea that companies who pay local rates are going to discriminate against people who live in higher cost-of-living areas? Because if that's true, then yeah you could try to game the system by asking for a SF based salary, but the trade-off is that now you're less competitive. You'd have to be pretty confident that your skills were top-tier enough to offset that I guess.