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Comment by matthewvincent | Hacker News Reader

I had an interesting interview with one of their recruiters in which within the first 5 minutes I was asked to agree to compensation below what their calculator (which was a part of the job posting) indicated was their pay scale for my location and that position. I was told my resume wouldn't be passed to an engineering lead until I had (in writing) agreed to the lower salary range. Liiike why even...

Edit: Didn't intend to make a scene or put anyone on blast here. Just thought the calculator was a little silly. Thanks for the responses gitlab staff.

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Hi Matt, I am the recruiter at GL, I've reviewed your case, and I wanted to follow up personally. I'd like to address your concern and explain our process. Since the time of your interview, we have changed the process of discussing compensation within the first 15 minutes of a conversation to the end of a phone call. We understand it's uncomfortable and sometimes awkward to talk pay when you've just met someone. Hopefully this improvement will prevent misunderstandings in the future. Secondly, we never would ask you to agree to something that is below the calculators suggestion, however your expectations based on Level, Experience, or Location may differ from the recruiter or hiring managers' assessments. We do talk about compensation early and upfront with every candidate, because we use it to guide our offers. I'm very sorry that your experience was less than ideal, and I apologize for any miscommunication that happened as a result! We are always striving to improve our process so any more details/feedback you'd like to share about your specific situation would be appreciated so our PeopleOps team can ensure this mistake isn't repeated.

I'm not sure this really addresses the issue? Personally I actually would appreciate the upfront salary discussion as it could potentially save a lot of wasted time.

It seems to me the issue is more there was a difference in expectations between what the candidate perceived was their situation and what the recruiter believed. This is of course not uncommon, however from the sounds of it the candidate was not given an opportunity to reason their position. It could be that GitLab is simply not offering competitive renumeration based on what the candidate believed they could achieve in the same market. It could also be that GitLab undervalued the particular skill sets of the candidate. Of course the opposite may also be true.

Clearly there were differences in opinions, however by asking the candidate to sign an agreement to a specific salary based on no discussion is only going to cause issues for everyone. Either the candidate agrees, goes through the interview and decides "it's not worth it, and now there's no flexibility", they disagree and a potentially good candidate is immediately lost or they agree, take the job and feel like they are not being fairly compensated, which can have all sorts of consequences.

This is usually why the discussion happens at the end of an interview process, after the candidate has had the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and experience. Then if there is still a perception of a mismatch this can be reasoned with respect to what has previously been discussed.

> Secondly, we never would ask you to agree to something that is below the calculators suggestion, however your expectations based on Level, Experience, or Location may differ from the recruiter or hiring managers' assessments.

The candidate has clearly stated they were offered less than what the calculator suggested. It was your recruiters opinion that they did not meet the parameters entered into the calculator, however clearly the candidate believed that they did. In this case the recruiter must judge the cause of the disparity through discussion with the candidate and set expectations in terms of the results of this discussion. Again, simply telling a candidate "this is our opinion, you must agree to it" is not going to benefit anyone.

Just to be clear: the calculator takes Level, Experience, and Location into account. If the candidate and recruiter arrive at different numbers while typing into the calculator, then there is apparently miscommunication about one or more of those factors. But being asked to agree to something that is lower than what comes out of the calculator is just not something we do at GitLab. If it came across that way then something got lost in the communication.

Matt, since I deal with the comp calculator every now and then, if you'd like to provide more specifics of your situation, can you please email me on ernst@gitlab.com ?

I want to second this, we should never ask people to agree to something below the calculator. But of course the applicant and the interviewer might disagree about the appropriate title and experience factor for a candidate.

We have to decline 200 applicants a week at GitLab. We realize that interviewing is very stressful. We send a survey afterwards to get a net promoter score. The current average is 4.2 out of 5 for people that did not sign with us. Most applicants don't fill out the survey, we're not sure how that influences results.

You are saying most people don't do the survey and I think also most would think it matters how they rate the company for their own future prospects. 4.2 is actually pretty low considering this.

If you're actually calculating an NPS, the non-respondents should be considered detractors for a more accurate rating. Happy to talk more if you're interested (have done a lot of this as a user researcher).

Cool! Thanks for the offer for help. Can you maybe reach out to joan@gitlab.com?

Your calculator would probably need to be updated? I just tried it out and the difference between the locations Mumbai and Bangalore, the latter is close to 2.5x less than Mumbai (0.08 vs 0.20).

Your data-source for this is very clearly wrong.. any income/cost-of-living report for India will show that the cost of living is the same for these 2 cities.

Just FYI.

This response is quite in the style of the Yelp/TripAdvisor response to a negative review. A thin veneer of consolation around an attempt to save face.

Agreed, the underlying process is still there.

It looks like a perfectly reasonable response to me. What face is there to save? The fact that this was brought up "within the first five minutes" is far better than "after a plethora of interviews".

I had an interview with Parsely a few years back. Took over 3 weeks of back & forth before they rejected me with a reason that should have been squashed the first hour of the interview.

I don't understand. Why does Location matter? Does it matter if have 10 kids, or a lease on a Porsche, or 2 alimonies, or live in a McMansion, or my kid has cancer? Are those factors relevant? What makes Location special?

Especially for remote position when you can live wherever you can imagine.

Because not all jobs are remote, so local jobs make up for a considerable amount of the job pool. For this reason, it's easier to get another job at your current location, so that's the competition the employer is faced with. If you live in an expensive area they're not paying you more to help you, they're paying you more to be more competitive with other companies in your area.

This line of argument is ridiculous. Are software companies pricing their computer programs based on location? Do folks in Ohio get to pay less than folks in New York?

What if you hire a great remote developer who lives in San-Jose, then she moves to Kentucky 6 months later, and their contribution is still the same. Why should their pay be adjusted?

Because a huge factor of pay is cost of living. The only reason people in San Jose are getting paid so much is because they are in San Jose and could not survive otherwise.

> Are software companies pricing their computer programs based on location? Do folks in Ohio get to pay less than folks in New York?

Yes?

I would like to repeat this comment here:

This is the sentiment I usually see but how are one's expenses or expected living standard is relevant regarding compensation for work? Imo it is very hard to argue against equal work => equal pay. At least from a moral pov.

Btw that is a lot of incorrect assumptions about expenses, including where someone's children might want to go to college, globally fixed costs like work equipment and cloud services, not to mention goods which are actually cheaper in the US.

> Yes?

Since when? I'm pretty sure I've never seen any variation in software prices except international variances, which are most often a case of with/without tax and currency fluctuations.

I think he simply read that as "Do they pay less (for living)?" and not that they pay less for software. No one could seriously think that you pay less for software based on your location, compared to other people in the same region/country.

S/He quoted the whole thing:

> > Are software companies pricing their computer programs based on location? Do folks in Ohio get to pay less than folks in New York?

> Yes?

Yes, he did, unfortunately. Gasp. The humanity. Now get over it. You understand that he meant paying less for a flat, not for an OS. So stop pretending and go on with replying that you still think it's wrong to base the compensation on the location's living expenses, for whatever other new reason that you now need to come up with.

> You understand that he meant paying less for a flat

No. If I understood that, I wouldn't have replied as I did, would I now?

> go on with replying that you still think it's wrong to base the compensation on the location's living expenses

But why is it a location's living expenses? If a company is paying people to work remotely, location should have zero impact on remuneration: they aren't asking you to live anywhere specific, so there is no business reason to use location as a cost factor.

I'm not hearing a counter-argument. The company needs to get good people to work for them. And this is a way of getting someone from a high-cost location to work for them. If the location's higher living expenses aren't covered for, the person would be unable to take the job. I don't know if you mean that the company should adjust their lowest pay according to the world's most expensive location, but that would probably not sustain the business.

> this is a way of getting someone from a high-cost location to work for them

Why is that a requirement? Do you somehow think the Bay Area has a monopoly on good developers?

If the company finds a person that they want to recruit, and that person happen to live in a high-cost location, they will need to pay up in order for the recruitment to happen. The only alternative would be to offer relocation to a lower-cost region. It doesn't have anything to do with any requirement. It's just a result from the way the world works.

Given that most people aren't hired that way, it's more like:

If a person wants to work for the company but their offered salary isn't high enough to sustain a high cost of living environment, the person will need to either move or find another job.

The company has literally the entire world to find staff - that's the whole point of remote workers.

True. Still, I think most companies will take cost of living in the area where the potential employee lives into account. When thinking about it it seems odd, indeed. I guess it is kind of normal and expected. But entirely rational it is not.

GitLab has made a big deal about working remotely; I thought that's what they did. https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/08/the-remote-manifesto/

> not all jobs are remote

GitLab claims to be "Remote Only": https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/

That's correct. We don't have any offices. You're free to work from home, a coworking space (by our expense) or anywhere else, but there's no GitLab office.

We have a 'headquarters', which is also where Sytse (CEO) lives, where there are a number of desks available for special occasions, but no one is ever required to work from a particular place.

So, to quote the original post that prompted the theory about "not all jobs are remote", which I then replied to:

> Why does Location matter? Does it matter if have 10 kids, or a lease on a Porsche, or 2 alimonies, or live in a McMansion, or my kid has cancer? Are those factors relevant? What makes Location special?

It does not matter how big you are on equal opportunities, work and compensation, when you can use your (cherrypicked) metrics to point your fingers at the market regarding salary discrimination, it would be irresponsible not to do so. Put it another way, if it was legal to discriminate against <underprivileged group> companies would be all over it.

PS it is not about GitLab, I like their service (even better than GitHub) and it is great they are transparent about compensations. IMO if they were to eliminate location from their calculator they could get the cream of a very big talent pool.

Holy crap, you've just done your company - or if you are an external recruiter, your client - a huge disservice by posting this reply. You've done nothing to assuage future candidates' concerns. You've merely confirmed that your compensation offers, and likely the entire hiring process, is driven by undesirable corporate metrics. This makes GitLab sounds seem like a company that only knows how to regurgitate HR 101 tactics. No thanks.

GitLab, diversify/improve your recruitment strategy. Why you only have "the recruiter", aka a single person heading your recruitment, rather than a group of competent personnel, is concerning. Your public image is of a medium-sized company which is already established, not a tiny startup outfit wherein all hires rely on a sole (apparently inadequate) person vetting each potential employee.

Since the first part of your comment is addressed to Sasha I'll let her reply to it, but to address the second part:

There are multiple people involved in the hiring process here at GitLab, specifically several people who handle phone screens and resumes. The responsibility of vetting doesn't rest solely on one person and is actually a pretty collaborative process in my experience. As an example, I was able to vet every single candidate's resume myself for roles I was involved in hiring for.

With all due respect, the parent to my comment - an apparent employee at GitLab - said "I am the recruiter at GL". "The recruiter", not "a recruiter" How else is that to be interpreted? With whom does the candidate discuss compensation? This one single recruiter, or the manager of the team with whom the employee would be placed? Why does GitLab have a "recruiter", rather than an "HR employee" or "hiring manager"? The term "recruiter" generally means an external non-employee who is financially compensated for each new hire brought on board. "HR" or "hiring managers" are company employees, given a flat salary irrespective of the number or quality of hires. Which do you have?

Either way, the parent comment is full of language that raises red flags to competent developers. Personally, my first thought is "oh hell no!". It's possible that their comment is not representative of the company's effective policies, but when one perceives this kind of reply as an official stance of the company's standpoint, it is difficult to retract.

> With all due respect, the parent to my comment - an apparent employee at GitLab - said "I am the recruiter at GL". "The recruiter", not "a recruiter" How else is that to be interpreted?

The way I understood it, at least, was 'the recruiter who handled the interview with "matthewvincent"'. Doesn't imply that there are, or are not, other recruiters at gitlab.

And if so, at least to me it seems honest for said recruiter to come forwards personally, instead of some feel-good mumbo-jumbo from the PR department.

I'd LOVE to hear what red flags are in the comment from the recruiter or the other person - whom I guess is a manager. I've re-read it a few times but I see nothing but reasonableness. Then again, I'm neither a developer myself (does that make a difference) nor a recruiter...

Speaking from the candidate's perspective, I tend to avoid companies where money is discussed upfront. I want to be able to demonstrate the value I can add, and then have a negotiation about remuneration based on that value.

Bluntly, yes, it does put the candidate in a much stronger negotiating position but, hey, if you really want to hire good people then I'm afraid it's hard cheese. Conversely talking about remuneration upfront puts the candidate on the back foot because there's substantially less of a basis for convincing negotiation, so it really becomes about cutting costs for the company.

Unless you absolutely have to - sometimes you might not have any other option, and you shouldn't let pride blind you to that reality when you're facing it - I'd always recommend you avoid working for anyone where you've had to discuss money first.

The discussion of compensation is an extremely simple concept: you wait for the candidate to bring it up, and you discuss it only at that point in time. The interviewer should never bring up compensation before the candidate does, unless the potential employee is so shy that they are waiting for the employer to do so first. The moment an employer tries to pre-emptively bring up the topic of money before it makes sense, it shows their true colors - they care far too much about the money rather than the talent they are hiring.

It really is that basic. When the company cares more about the money than what the employee can bring, they've shown their company cares more about their internal politics then they do about their future success. Simple as that.

> Since the time of your interview, we have changed the process of discussing compensation within the first 15 minutes of a conversation to the end of a phone call.

Cynical read: We discovered people are more likely to compromise on the salary if they've already committed their time to the interview.

Sorry this happened to you, I’ve brought it up with our PeopleOps team and we’re looking into it. Something like this absolutely shouldn’t be happening.

If you have any more information you can share, it'd be great if you could send it to peopleops at gitlab.com.

That all sounds kinda weird and sketchy, like the recruiter had a strange hidden motive.

be nice this is my first comment in Hacker News :D

Interestingly issues gets noticed here!, there was a posting yesterday about FB hiring issue.

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