> Isn't that Capitalism 101 ? If employees are happy, company is happy, why does it matter ? I don't blame them for applying "Capitalism 101", but on the other

> Isn't that Capitalism 101 ? If employees are happy, company is happy, why does it matter ? I don't blame them for applying "Capitalism 101", but on the other hand, Gitlab is selling an ethos, not just a product¹. Surely, nobody likes to hear "when it's about management, we're rainbow and unicorns, but when it comes to the bottom line, we're capitalism 101". I also think that they target talented but (from a career perspective) inexperienced engineers (a bit like old Google's free lunch and table tennis tables), which I find - at least - distasteful. Gitlab cleverly capitalizes on their brand, and in addition to the location-based salary optimization, they also offer substandard salaries (or at least, they did for a significant time; I interviewed with them, and by that time, they were paying at least 20% less than comparable companies). ¹: amusingly, they're not immune to marketing nonsense; see, for example, https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/all-remote-vs-hybrid-remote-comparison https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/all-remo....