10 ms·

I like how Gitlab promotes remote work, but I don't like that their salaries are based on employee's costs of living. To me these seem contradictory. If remote

• lr4444lr 7y ago
  Speaking in gross generality, the kind of educated talent they need probably live and want to live disproportionately in more expensive areas, and the lure of remote work at non-competitive salaries for the area where they reside is probably not enough. But I'm just guessing here.
  • zzzcpan 7y ago
    > the kind of educated talent they need probably live and want to live disproportionately in more expensive areas Really? My impression is that nobody wants to live in expensive tech hubs where they can't even own a place to live, but they can't leave because there is much less work elsewhere.
    • ghaff 7y ago
      It's a mix. There are certainly people who are convinced that they can only find meaningful work in a handful of tech hubs--first and foremost the Bay Area. I'd argue they're mostly wrong but you won't convince many of them. However, there are others who genuinely like the Bay Area in spite of all its downsides for reasons that I even somewhat understand when I visit. The culture, the lack of snow, etc. Others are like New Yorkers who consider every other city a provincial cowtown.
      • non-entity 7y ago
        > There are certainly people who are convinced that they can only find meaningful work in a handful of tech hubs--first and foremost the Bay Area. I'd argue they're mostly wrong but you won't convince many of them. As someone who kind of feels this way, I guess it depends on how you define meaningful. I grew up and live in the Southeast. Its not like there arent jobs out here, but majority of jobs around here a corporate, "code monkey" jobs. Yeah, there are startups and some markets that are outliers, but its rare for me to see a job in this region and thing "wow this would be a really cool job". OTOH I've seen job listings for companies in say, the bay area or Austin that seemed really interesting (to me), from companies large and small and it just seems to come down to where the companies have offices.
    • mcv 7y ago
      Everybody wants to live in expensive tech hubs. That's why it's so expensive: more demand than supply.
      • bryanlarsen 7y ago
        More specifically, everybody wants to live where the jobs are and the opportunity for career progression is.
        • mcv 7y ago
          For jobs, but also for many other things. It's where lots of things come together, lots of things happen. More restaurants, museums, night life, music venues, theatres, etc. Cities often have a long history, historical landmarks, etc. I certainly wouldn't want to trade Amsterdam for the town I grew up in. Then again, my dad clearly disagrees. On the other hand, Amsterdam probably isn't quite as expensive as London, New York or San Francisco.
      • ghaff 7y ago
        For certain values of "everybody." Lots of people have no desire to live in an expensive coastal city.
        • mcv 7y ago
          Of course, but the fact that they are so expensive is caused by the fact that so many people want to live there. It's the rising cost of living that provide a balance to that.
      • JohnFen 7y ago
        Well, not everybody -- I don't!
    • esoterica 7y ago
      You’ve never heard of the “dreaming of moving to the big city” trope? There are and have always been millions of people who want to move to HCOL cities even if they don’t have access to the jobs that would financially justify it. The reason why doctors get paid more in underserved areas is because very few highly educated people want to live in rural Alabama, even if the houses are cheap.
    • triceratops 7y ago
      > My impression is that nobody wants to live in expensive tech hubs where they can't even own a place to live "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
  • thrower123 7y ago
    I do wonder how much people really enjoy living in those places, versus rationalizing that it's actually great because they have to be there. At least if they want to earn the 3-5x salaries that one can get there, versus what is offered in different zipcodes.
• mieseratte 7y ago
  > To me these seem contradictory. If remote work is so transparent, location shouldn't matter. I don't understand what "transparency" has to do with anything here? Given that we know their algorithm for pay, based on CoL, it sound that they are being transparent?
  • OJFord 7y ago
    Transparent as in that you're remote isn't an obstruction or hinderance, I assume, not as in transparent policies.
• ohduran 7y ago
  Good point, but it's how the market goes: I have different demands in terms of salary, and I pursue them differently than yours. On the other side, if you have some sort of differentiating power (you're one of those 10x developers, for instance), then you can negotiate your salary the way you want, even if you could live comfortably with half the salary.
  • ghaff 7y ago
    Yeah, there's no grand theory to location-based pay much as some would like to make it a fundamental issue of fairness. There are some reasons to want the ability to hire anywhere regardless of salary cost. But, if you are going to pay everyone competitive Bay Area salaries anyway even if they work from a beach in Southeast Asia, there's going to at least be a bias towards hiring for nearby timezones, language fluency, the ability to get together physically on a regular basis, etc. You're essentially paying for it after all. (And if you conversely pay a salary that's decent for a typical midsize city in the South or Midwest, you're probably going to have a lot of trouble attracting talent that can get jobs and wants to live in or near major US coastal cities.) As others have said, GitLab is transparent about it which most companies are not. It does let you see that the best "deal" is to live somewhere that the salary multiplier is determined by a high CoL urban area--but then live in a low cost area of the same state.
• giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I agree. Just cause it's cheaper for everyone near me, doesn't mean my cost of living is the same. I could have a half dozen medical situations.
  • dejj 7y ago
    As someone living in Europe, I find it so weird that health insurance/expenses should be so tightly coupled with an employer.
    • giancarlostoro 7y ago
      Heh, yeah, from two perspectives: how many people are covered under an insurance company translates to leverage over medical billing (the insurance company wants to pay the lowest amount possible, and the more insured people they have, the more leverage, or so I've heard...) as well as the fact that paying for insurance out of your own pocket entirely is unfeasible, when I was contracting I was paying like $400 - $600 for health insurance I barely used (I can't remember the exact number, but it was a hit), just in case, now I pay less than $200 which includes my spouse. With $600 I could pay for so many expenses I actually use monthly.
      • scarface74 7y ago
        You’re still paying for it. It’s part of your compensation. The last time I looked a couple of years ago, between what we were paying and the company it was $1000 a month. as well as the fact that paying for insurance out of your own pocket entirely is unfeasible, when I was contracting I was paying like $400 - $600 for health insurance I barely used (I can't remember the exact number, but it was a hit), If you assume you work 1800 hours a year and your insurance is $600 a month, it’s $4/hour you add to the amount you charge per hour. (Insurance is pretax).
        • giancarlostoro 7y ago
          I was working through a contracting firm at the time.
• gwillz 7y ago
  I think it's a requirement of remote work. You can't pay someone in Malaysia the rate of someone in Silicon Valley. Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should get fair wages. But that's just not how it works in different societies. "Fair wages" means different things in different places.
  • rorykoehler 7y ago
    Basecamp do it. It's about the value you deliver for the company.
    • avinium 7y ago
      > It's about the value you deliver for the company. Well, yes, but $1 in Malaysia goes a lot further than $1 in SV. So "equal pay" isn't really equal at all. COL-adjusted salaries are perfectly reasonable in my opinion.
      • strzibny 7y ago
        It's pretty equal actually. Work -> Reward. If you then go on living a life on a boat, meditate in a monastery, or enjoy hipster life in San Francisco are your choices and you pay for them accordingly. Please explain to me how one person working 5 years in the valley and retiring for the rest of the life in Philippines got "equal pay" with someone working in the Philippines from the start until they are dead.
        • gwillz 7y ago
          What if I'm working for a global company based in Malaysia? Would I be happy to be paid the regular rate of a Malaysian developer while I live in Silicon Valley? Or would I demand a higher pay? Does that mean everyone in the Malaysian office gets paid more? Does the company go under? GitLab is in a weird position because they have workers in both. We don't chastise a local Malaysian company for paying the local rates, but we do for GitLab? It's an unfair reality, but not an unlivable one. A cheaper lifestyle isn't necessarily a degraded one. That still doesn't make it fair. I personally believe these global companies could step up and try to change that. But that's if it weren't about profits - which is is.
• rhamzeh 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand this complaint regarding salaries. I personally find it perfectly logical that 2 employees who put the same effort and work the same, earn the same. And by "earn" I mean once you deduct taxes, cost of living, and personal required expenses (education, kids, healthcare, rent..). The extra one keeps/gets to use after all those are deducted should be the same for the process to be fair. Why would someone working remote earn more? That somehow doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.
  • stanmancan 7y ago
    You get to choose where you live. If you choose to live somewhere with a high cost of living, why does that mean you get paid more? Why is Sally worth $150k a year in SF but Bob, who’s identical in work performance, only gets $100k because he happens to live somewhere else? Your lifestyle choices shouldn’t effect your salary.
    • yongli 7y ago
      I agree with this sentiment. Even having children is a personal choice, which one may choose to forgo in the interest of saving money for example. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you wouldn't expect to pay someone more simply because they choose to have 5 children and their family living costs are higher.
    • ghaff 7y ago
      Because in that hypothetical situation, the company can hire those individuals at $150K and $100K respectively. Sally won't accept $100K given alternatives in the Bay Area and her unwillingness to move to $MIDWEST_CITY. And to Bob--who is very happy in his less crowded and expensive location--$100K looks pretty good, especially relative to local alternatives. "Shouldn't" has very little to do with salary offers.
      • buboard 7y ago
        So clearly sally is not worth being hired, all things bein equal. It wouldn’t make sense for the company
• lbotos 7y ago
  I work at GitLab. I work in NYC so my salary is "NYC based". If I moved to a lower cost region my salary would drop. So would a lot of my expenses. I'm okay with this. Do I move? No, because I like being in NYC. I have coworkers in Nebraska. They make a different amount than I. They also have and own a house on that salary. Do they move? No, they like it in Nebraska. It is not GitLab's job as a large remote company to "fix" global economics. GitLab is a "small multinational". If you look at other multinationals (or even large nationals) like Google Microsoft, GE, Comcast, etc, I'm 100% positive you'll find that they don't pay the same in different cities. It's no different. One step at a time. GitLab is offering remote. In 10 years, if local economies level out more due to globalization, this can be less of an issue. Until then, I'll just keep reading this argument on HN...
  • pingyong 7y ago
    The calculator is fun to play with, but as someone from Europe, goddamn what's going on in San Fransisco? You get almost double the salaries compared to Germany/Sweden etc., and significantly more than in NYC - rent must be insane!
    • GhettoMaestro 7y ago
      Yes. Rent in SF is off the charts. Also they (California in general) have a major homeless (housing) crises. Lots of NIMBYs blocking new building developments because of "their view".
    • lunchables 7y ago
      Yes - it is absolutely insane: https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/san-francisco/ https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/sa... (Note that is ~700 sq feet, not meters) But, you also make literally twice as much money, so it easily offsets the extra rent.
      • souprock 7y ago
        This is the case for people with little need for space. If you are happy to rent a room and you don't need a parking spot, you get a great deal. Investments and mail-order items aren't any more expensive in San Francisco. Local expenses like food are break-even with a 2x price increase. For people who need space, just forget it. House prices are roughly 10x higher than in the ordinary small cities, ignoring the difference in land area. Families need the space. I know a former San Francisco resident, now in Florida, with enough space to raise sheep and shoot an AR-15 in his yard. He's not rich. He earns a salary as a good software developer, and he decided to buy that kind of space. It's 11 acres if I remember right. He couldn't have that in San Francisco, even earning literally twice as much money.
• mrfusion 7y ago
  Do people game that system? Start work in a high col area and then secretly move?
  • wolco 7y ago
    Or maintain two locations.
• bryanlarsen 7y ago
  For most companies, the alternative to CoL salaries isn't Bay Area salaries, it's the lowest salary they can get away with. In other words, people in the Bay will get less, people in the Midwest won't get more. Be careful what you wish for.
  • ghaff 7y ago
    Arguably, Bay Area tech salaries at the big employers are somewhat of an outlier. They tend to be pretty generous even when you take CoL into account. (The same could arguably be said of some areas of financial services in NYC.) But, even historically in the Bay Area, that's not really the norm. Compensation in high CoL areas is often higher but not really equivalent with respect to housing, etc.
• shantly 7y ago
  I don't so much mind that as mind that they do it as that their calculation's way off for where I live (others have reported same for other cities, IDK first-hand though). I can do (presumably) easier interviews (zero whiteboarding/leetcode horseshit, I reckon they probably do that) and get fully remote or mostly-remote work at like 20% higher than Gitlab will give me. They'd be more interesting than a lot of the work I get but I have a family and am willing to jump through exactly zero hoops to take a significant pay-cut, you know? [EDIT] actually, looks like they finally fixed it so it's about right. Nice. Glassdoor info on their interviews still make it seem like way too much of a PITA for a lateral comp move, but that's better.
• btasovac 7y ago
  Please see how did we start paying team members according to the location in the first place and why we did it here: https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/
  • lordfoom 7y ago
    Then why don't you do region based pricing as well?
    • mercutio2 7y ago
      Customers really hate price discrimination, especially if the company has a reputation for transparency. Employees don’t mind regional discrimination so much (and if they do, they don’t work for Gitlab).
      • wolco 7y ago
        Not sure that reasoning flies. Many more customers would be on gitlab if regional pricing exists. The profit number would go down though. More candidates would apply to work for gitlab without the policy. In both cases gitlab makes more money. Which is fine but spinning it doesn't seem right.
• lordfoom 7y ago
  > I like how Gitlab promotes remote work, but I don't like that their salaries are based on employee's costs of living. Especially since they don't do region based pricing - everybody pays the same price worldwide, but they only pay cost of living salaries? Hypocrites.
• notus 7y ago
  Yeah I 100% agree. I prefer the remote companies that remain agnostic to where you live when they determine salary (which is like all of them except for gitlab). It allows me to do things like move to smaller towns without established tech scenes and save money. Zapier and Duck Duck Go are both like this.
• sytse 7y ago
  For our reasoning please see https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ and https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c... TLDR; we want to pay close to market, and location still is a big factor in market wage.
• JohnFen 7y ago
  > I don't like that their salaries are based on employee's costs of living. I don't know, it seems fair to me. If you pay your workers in a high-COL area the same in terms of absolute money as those in a low-COL area, then the people in the low-COL are effectively making a lot more than those in the high-COL area. What's important, in terms of business or personal finances, isn't gross income -- it's net.