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> 1. "change their mailing address to that of a friend living in a high income area and have a better pay" => that would be fraudulent Would it be though? If

> 1. "change their mailing address to that of a friend living in a high income area and have a better pay" => that would be fraudulent Would it be though? If my legal address is a small apartment shared with 5 other individuals in a city I never go to, there's no legal reason pushing me to disclose any secondary housing I might own. Another reason for such as situation is someone being homeless/nomad and having their address set to some organization or PO box in the city.

diminoten 7y ago
Not illegal necessarily, but still fraudulent.
- Raphmedia 7y ago
  You would have to explain to me how providing your legal address could be constituted fraud.
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    An employee at GitLab clearly knows that their compensation is based on their address, and is done so because the compensation is matched to local cost of living. Doing anything (including giving an address, even a legal one) that artificially changes their compensation so that it doesn't match their local cost of living is knowingly deceptive, which is the definition of fraud. To be clear, I wholeheartedly disagree with GitLab's practice of docking people's pay just because they live somewhere cheaper (are they charging less to companies who are based in cheaper COL areas? no), but their policy is still their policy, and fraud is fraud.
    - Raphmedia 7y ago
      Would this be any different if the employee actually lived there? Say they own a house in a rural town that has been handed down from their parents, yet they decide to live in an apartment in some big city. They receive an interesting job offer and start working remote at Gitlab but haven't changed their legal address. Suddenly, they paycheck is reduced unless they disclose their secondary address and somehow make it their main address. Should that employee be required to sell their house? I would say no. Well, it's no different if you live in a big apartment out of town and decide to rent a cheap broken down apartment in the city. What if the employee does not have a fixed address? Are they fired on the spot? Perhaps never hired out of discrimination? Is their pay adjusted for each city they drive their van to? Do the employer require them to stop travelling? What if that person's fixed address is already registered at some organisation or mail center in a "high pay area"? Should they be required to change it to a "low pay area" to be ethical?
      - txcwpalpha 7y ago
        Having any kind of 'secondary address' doesn't matter. Nobody is saying anything about selling a house. There are many, many people who own multiple residences. That's not what matters here. All that matter is what your actual cost of living is (measured by proxy via where you actually live) versus what you tell GitLab your cost of living is (measured by proxy via where you say you live (regardless of if its your primary address or a secondary address or whatever)). If you knowingly tell GitLab that your COL is higher than it actually is so that GitLab gives you higher pay, that is the very definition of fraud. > What if the employee does not have a fixed address? ... Is their pay adjusted for each city they drive their van to? Yes, it is adjusted by each new place's COL. GitLab details this out in their compensation handbook, if you're really interested. > What if that person's fixed address is already registered at some organisation or mail center in a "high pay area"? Should they be required to change it to a "low pay area" to be ethical? They should tell GitLab that they do not actually live in the high COL area and should be paid accordingly to the low COL area. I think you're getting hung up on some sort of strict 'legal address' definition. In this discussion about compensation, I don't think GitLab gives a damn what your "legal address" is or where you get your mail delivered to. They care about your actual cost of living, and they use an address as a convenient way to measure that. If your actual cost of living doesn't match where your 'legal address' is or where you get your mail delivered, you would simply tell them "My legal address is X, but I actually live in Y".
        Raphmedia 7y ago
        > They care about your actual cost of living. Except they don't. If they cared for that they would ask for your rent and economic situation. They are not asking your cost of living to help you, they are asking which hiring pool you belong to in order to cut on operational costs. You could be living rent free & debt free in a high pay area and still get a higher pay than someone with dependents, debts and a high (for their area) rent. This is the part that disturbs me. Being born in a good situation and staying with your parents without any costs would mean your paycheck is bigger than someone born in a worst situation that is also living at home. You might as well build your class barriers out of concrete at that point. Postal-code discrimination is something that should be removed from our lives. Remote working is one solutions to this issue. I really hope that this practice doesn't become a trend.
    - ensignavenger 7y ago
      > and is done so because the compensation is matched to local cost of living This is absolutely not true. Gitlab says so very plainly in this blog post- https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ > It’s not that we want to pay you based on your rent or compensate your cost of living. We want to make sure that we pay at or above market. The blog post is very clear, and supported by the CEO's post above, that they are interested in paying the lowest amount they can get away with- that which they think is "at or above market". They don't care about cost of living. This is also made clear in their relocation policy, wherein they require you to get their permission to move to a different area, and you run a real risk of being denied/fired if you want to move to a higher cost of living area (The CEO has to approve such a move). I really like that Gitlab and their CEO are so open about their true motives like this. If they didn't pay so poorly, I would consider sending them my resume!
      - txcwpalpha 7y ago
        >This is absolutely not true It is true. The things you pointed out in GitLab's post don't disagree with my points, they just go deeper. GitLab's 'market rates' are based on, at least in part, cost of living calculations. They are simply saying they go one step further and try to pay you above the standard cost of living, and hopefully above what others pay as well. It is completely missing the point to say they "don't care about cost of living", because while it may be true that their objective isn't to match COL exactly, COL is a major factor. In their actual compensation principles guide [1], they specifically state that the location factor component of their compensation is almost entirely based in Numbeo data (numbeo is a site that quantifies regional cost of living). 1: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#location-factor https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
        ensignavenger 7y ago
        Huh, I directly quoted them saying that it wasn't true! They explain in their post that they found that market rates correlate with rent costs, and that is why their pay correlates with rent costs.
  - diminoten 7y ago
    Because it's not your actual address. You're misrepresenting where you live.

diminoten 7y ago

Not illegal necessarily, but still fraudulent.

Raphmedia 7y ago
You would have to explain to me how providing your legal address could be constituted fraud.
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  An employee at GitLab clearly knows that their compensation is based on their address, and is done so because the compensation is matched to local cost of living. Doing anything (including giving an address, even a legal one) that artificially changes their compensation so that it doesn't match their local cost of living is knowingly deceptive, which is the definition of fraud. To be clear, I wholeheartedly disagree with GitLab's practice of docking people's pay just because they live somewhere cheaper (are they charging less to companies who are based in cheaper COL areas? no), but their policy is still their policy, and fraud is fraud.
  - Raphmedia 7y ago
    Would this be any different if the employee actually lived there? Say they own a house in a rural town that has been handed down from their parents, yet they decide to live in an apartment in some big city. They receive an interesting job offer and start working remote at Gitlab but haven't changed their legal address. Suddenly, they paycheck is reduced unless they disclose their secondary address and somehow make it their main address. Should that employee be required to sell their house? I would say no. Well, it's no different if you live in a big apartment out of town and decide to rent a cheap broken down apartment in the city. What if the employee does not have a fixed address? Are they fired on the spot? Perhaps never hired out of discrimination? Is their pay adjusted for each city they drive their van to? Do the employer require them to stop travelling? What if that person's fixed address is already registered at some organisation or mail center in a "high pay area"? Should they be required to change it to a "low pay area" to be ethical?
    - txcwpalpha 7y ago
      Having any kind of 'secondary address' doesn't matter. Nobody is saying anything about selling a house. There are many, many people who own multiple residences. That's not what matters here. All that matter is what your actual cost of living is (measured by proxy via where you actually live) versus what you tell GitLab your cost of living is (measured by proxy via where you say you live (regardless of if its your primary address or a secondary address or whatever)). If you knowingly tell GitLab that your COL is higher than it actually is so that GitLab gives you higher pay, that is the very definition of fraud. > What if the employee does not have a fixed address? ... Is their pay adjusted for each city they drive their van to? Yes, it is adjusted by each new place's COL. GitLab details this out in their compensation handbook, if you're really interested. > What if that person's fixed address is already registered at some organisation or mail center in a "high pay area"? Should they be required to change it to a "low pay area" to be ethical? They should tell GitLab that they do not actually live in the high COL area and should be paid accordingly to the low COL area. I think you're getting hung up on some sort of strict 'legal address' definition. In this discussion about compensation, I don't think GitLab gives a damn what your "legal address" is or where you get your mail delivered to. They care about your actual cost of living, and they use an address as a convenient way to measure that. If your actual cost of living doesn't match where your 'legal address' is or where you get your mail delivered, you would simply tell them "My legal address is X, but I actually live in Y".
      - Raphmedia 7y ago
        > They care about your actual cost of living. Except they don't. If they cared for that they would ask for your rent and economic situation. They are not asking your cost of living to help you, they are asking which hiring pool you belong to in order to cut on operational costs. You could be living rent free & debt free in a high pay area and still get a higher pay than someone with dependents, debts and a high (for their area) rent. This is the part that disturbs me. Being born in a good situation and staying with your parents without any costs would mean your paycheck is bigger than someone born in a worst situation that is also living at home. You might as well build your class barriers out of concrete at that point. Postal-code discrimination is something that should be removed from our lives. Remote working is one solutions to this issue. I really hope that this practice doesn't become a trend.
  - ensignavenger 7y ago
    > and is done so because the compensation is matched to local cost of living This is absolutely not true. Gitlab says so very plainly in this blog post- https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ > It’s not that we want to pay you based on your rent or compensate your cost of living. We want to make sure that we pay at or above market. The blog post is very clear, and supported by the CEO's post above, that they are interested in paying the lowest amount they can get away with- that which they think is "at or above market". They don't care about cost of living. This is also made clear in their relocation policy, wherein they require you to get their permission to move to a different area, and you run a real risk of being denied/fired if you want to move to a higher cost of living area (The CEO has to approve such a move). I really like that Gitlab and their CEO are so open about their true motives like this. If they didn't pay so poorly, I would consider sending them my resume!
    - txcwpalpha 7y ago
      >This is absolutely not true It is true. The things you pointed out in GitLab's post don't disagree with my points, they just go deeper. GitLab's 'market rates' are based on, at least in part, cost of living calculations. They are simply saying they go one step further and try to pay you above the standard cost of living, and hopefully above what others pay as well. It is completely missing the point to say they "don't care about cost of living", because while it may be true that their objective isn't to match COL exactly, COL is a major factor. In their actual compensation principles guide [1], they specifically state that the location factor component of their compensation is almost entirely based in Numbeo data (numbeo is a site that quantifies regional cost of living). 1: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#location-factor https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
      - ensignavenger 7y ago
        Huh, I directly quoted them saying that it wasn't true! They explain in their post that they found that market rates correlate with rent costs, and that is why their pay correlates with rent costs.
- diminoten 7y ago
  Because it's not your actual address. You're misrepresenting where you live.