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Comment by leetrout | Hacker News Reader

Just absolutely fantastic values for work-life balance and certainly makes GitLab look _very_ appealing...

Some of my favorites:

We're a distributed, remote-only company where people work remote without missing out. For this, we use asynchronous communication and are as open as we can be by communicating through public issues, chat channels, and placing an emphasis on ensuring that conclusions of offline conversations are written down. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#communication

Don't frown on people taking time off, but rather encourage that people take care of themselves and others. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#paid-time-off

Runbooks for the on-call person for common issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/runbooks

Edit: Link formatting

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This will sound like blatant propaganda for GitLab, but you'll have to take my word that I'm being sincere here:

GitLab is by far the best company I've worked at and the best company you could work for, as far as I can see. The values that you see in the handbook are really what every single one of my colleagues works and lives by.

People frequently take time off and the team is always supportive, whether it is for a long vacation, personal matters or just to play a newly released videogame. This happens at every level in the organisation.

Asynchronous communication is hard. We were lucky that we've stuck to insisting on doing this well since the very start of GitLab Inc and we're continuously working on making it easier to contribute to documentation and to encourage everyone to do the same.

Interestingly, more and more of my colleagues (and myself included) are moving house to their favorite places to live. Often in other countries. Remote work in itself does not guarantee that you're comfortable enough to make big life changes, you need trust in the company you're working for. I believe that by being transparent, fair and understanding of what makes a good work/life balance, we are slowly achieving to gain that trust.

What if i want to "sleep" for 30min?

Third line in taking time off in the handbook [0]:

> You don't need to worry about taking time off to go to the gym, take a nap, go grocery shopping, doing household chores, helping someone, taking care of a loved one, etc. If something comes up or takes longer than expected and you have urgent tasks and you're able to communicate, just ensure the rest of the team knows and someone can pick up any urgent tasks.

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#paid-time-off

Sounds amazing. You need any London based project managers? ;)

Thanks! We rarely need someone in a specific location. Sometimes we do need support engineers in a specific time zone. We don't have projects managers yet, we try to use GitLab as our project manager :) But have a look at our vacancies on https://about.gitlab.com/jobs

Well, we don't care where you're located!

We're not looking for project managers. But you can see all our current jobs on our job page [0].

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/

No junior jobs, eh?

We have a few junior team members [0]. If you think you would make a great fit in one of the roles, but at a more junior level, I urge you to still apply. The respective hiring manager can let you know whether it's possible to fulfill the same role as a junior.

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/team/

If you are open to people applying that don't quite meet the requirements of the position, you should change the position description. It's well documented that this type of approach tends to reduce the diversity of applicants.

(Not to be a nag - I think it is great that you folks are sharing this, and it sounds like a great place to work.)

The diversity is indeed an important issue. We thought about this and all of our job posts contain the following text: "Avoid the confidence gap; you do not have to match all the listed requirements exactly to apply.". Confidence gap links to http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-conf...

For an example see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/production-engineer/

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions.

> [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/team/

That team page has very few women listed, not to mention women in engineering roles.

Do you see this as an issue, and if so, what steps are you taking?

There were a couple engineering/dev jobs that had sections for Junior (in the individual descriptions). Check the support listing(s).

I've been pondering about applying for way too long, forever waiting to complete this or that FOSS project of mine, but your feedback sounds too much like the people I want to work with: kind and open (which I've experienced when contributing), from which trust comes naturally.

Screw it, I'll be applying soon.

Great to hear. Good luck with the application!

If you don't mind me asking, is the pay competitive?

I definitely like the ethos of GitLab, but unfortunately most of the remote-only companies I've interviewed with just don't offer salaries competitive with either SV/NYC tech or what I can make doing remote contracting.

Our pay depends on your location. So if you're currently charging an SF rate without the expenses of living there you're better off.

Have you considered open salaries (just the formula really would be all that was needed) like Buffer?

Yes, we're working on a global compensation framework. This is hinted at on https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/#hiring-processa-na... "The hiring manager can then make the actual offer to the applicant. This may change if/when we have a global compensation framework in place." and in the job description of the Director of People Operations https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/dir-or-vp-of-people-ops/ "Compensation guidelines that work worldwide but tailored to local markets, to the city level"

For now only are principles are detailed on https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/#compens... one important one: "We pay on the lower end of market rates for engineering positions because we offer the benefit of working on open source (great workflow, peers, build reputation); most engineers take a pay cut to join."

Cool.

I look forward to seeing a blog post when you have that compensation framework completed. :)

I've seen/heard words like that meaning anything from a 10% paycut to a 55% paycut in practical terms, its too big a range for me to really take away an effective idea of GitLab's pay level which is why I was curious about the more concrete form.

A 10-15% haircut for a place as good as GitLab sounds on paper seems reasonable, a 50% haircut...not so much.

For sure we'll do a blog post about it. By the way if you want something now the Travis CI talk is really good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8u9H6JDAzo

We don't have any hard data on this but I think we're in the reasonable range.

when it comes to deciding compensation levels, what metrics do you use? what companies in the area pay? real estate prices? a mix or something else?

there are places in the world where, say, the real estate is red-hot (obviously making higher salaries more desirable) but where local companies have not kept up with that (making cross-company surveys skew really low) so in that case what would you do?

Managing a distributed remote-friendly company definitely seems challenging, of course you're open source and have an awesome reputation, so salary is very likely not something prospective employees consider as much as they would otherwise when joining (which likely works in your favor in creating a very nice working environment full of engaged folks)

We're still in the early stages of this. Our current thinking is in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TEHZTvg9jxlwvKvsc5fm2FvZ...

We will maybe end up with a mix of cost of living, cost of labour, and rent.

We address red-hot real estate by considering to add rent to the mix, but it is tricky since some team members might be living in rent-controlled apartments and we want to have a number that doesn't depend on personal circumstances.

thanks for the follow-up, it must be hard also because of say areas where the real estate is skyrocketing due to investment money coming in from abroad, but where rents aren't moving nearly as much (because local salaries aren't moving really), which makes compensation indexed on real estate skew very high, but compensation indexed on rents skew very low if one wants to be able to afford buying a house at some point

So people are paid according what they spend, not what they produce? That doesn't sound very sensible to me.

We thought about paying independent of location. If we pay everyone the same we would have either a huge burn rate or we could never hire great people from the Bay Area.

Another consideration is that people's costs are strongly related to where they live.

But I can also see the case for paying everyone the same. But I think other remote friendly companies are doing the same as us, this video shows how Travis CI thinks about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8u9H6JDAzo

> Another consideration is that people's costs are strongly related to where they live.

I think what's more important is that their competing offers from local companies will necessarily be higher, so assuming they're worth the higher price, you have to pay it.

From just above: "Interestingly, more and more of my colleagues (and myself included) are moving house to their favorite places to live."

How does pay vary with location changes? If I live in SF now, and get that pay, then move, do I wind up getting paid less? If I start in a small town with low expenses, does that mean I can never afford to move to SF?

That is indeed what is difficult. Any time you move metro regions we'll need to negotiate about the compensation. And if you're moving from an expensive to an affordable region your compensation will be lower.

This kind of removes a lot of the draw about being remote - you'll get a pay cut if you move?!

You get a pay cut if you move to a less expensive metro area. And you have to contact us before you move. But so far we have always been able to make it work. I think most of our team thinks it is great that you do not have to switch jobs when you need to move because of family, the job of your partner, or some other reason.

Who decides what an SF rate is though? SF rates are highly variable, like in any other city.

We try to set rates per metro area so people can move in the metro area without renegotiating. We're still working on the framework, please see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TEHZTvg9jxlwvKvsc5fm2FvZ...

Thank you for being transparent. You've saved both of us some time.

The pay is not even close to competitive. I've been through the interview process and they wouldn't budge on what would be a 40% cut for me. Very disappointing considering how amazing everything else is. I felt a bit insulted, considering their inflexible rate was several thousand dollars lower than my first dev job.

Was it due to your location? I read they base salary offer on applicant's location... something I am feeling very undemocratic lol... I was idealist thinking I could get paid as per my skills, talent, effort, contribution etc... hell with my location, I could be in India , then in Indonesia and next year working from Mars :-)

I felt the same way, but then you get a pay cut when you go to Mars, and another when you go to Indonesia. If the max rate they told me was based on my location, I'd be shocked if they are even be able to find a mid level dev within several hundred miles of me.

Pay cut will be awkward. Thank you for adding more info, so offer was not even matched to your location...

Right. It's pretty ridiculous that they don't put that front and center, but that "the low pay issue" has to bubble up somewhere in the comments. I find it rather distasteful to lean on open source as the primary reason for paying engineers less. It's plain from comments here and elsewhere that the main pressure is to keep the burn rate low. Which is fine, that's not a dumb thing to want to keep under control. But as we used to say in the Army, you can shine a turd but it's still a turd. And I mean no offense to Gitlab. I use Gitlab in production and think it's great software. All the more reason to pay the engineers well for their excellent work.

Completely agree. Bit of a shame honestly.

We do try to be open about it: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/#compens... "We pay on the lower end of market rates for engineering positions because we offer the benefit of working on open source (great workflow, peers, build reputation); most engineers take a pay cut to join."

And we're working on a Global Compensation Framework https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TEHZTvg9jxlwvKvsc5fm2FvZ... so that you can calculate your compensation before even applying.

Between this and the above comment about interviewing practices (especially regarding language proficiency), I would so apply to GitLab if I hadn't just started a new job last month.

Still... circumstances might force me to move out of state next year, and if that happens and I can't stay with my current employer, I'm certainly going to check GitLab's openings first.

Glad to hear that GitLab will be on top of your list if you have to start interviewing again :)

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