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Comment by bflesch | Hacker News Reader

Wow, that really is a beautiful piece of software. I think the compensation it returns for Hamburg is very much on point and definitely fair.

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Yeah, I think it depends on the area. I'm out in Denver and the compensation for an average senior developer seems to be on par with what some salary websites tell me but it's definitely way below what I currently get paid (and below what I've been paid for the past 3ish years).

It's a little low for Minnesota in the US, in my opinion. I could definitely get a little higher than that in the Twin Cities but I think being able to work remotely is a perk that people are willing to take a small pay cut for

We also continuously iterate on the compensation calculator, often because of feedback from applicants and employees.

Read about the ideas behind it here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

While I won't comment on the raw salary numbers, I am curious about how long you feel it should take someone to graduate from "new to the position" to "learning the position"? Because it seems like if that time period is less than two years, you'll be underpaying your long term employees vs. a new hire of equivalent skill, which seems like a not good thing.

Also your Experience Factor Worksheet is private, whether or not you care.

Chicago is really low... the calculator returns ~$50k for a position that would pay 85 or 90 around here. I imagine they mostly target european employees? I know salaries tend to be much lower in the EU.

I think the issue is that they don't adjust for what the market is offering, they just take a standard NYC salary and adjust it depending on your city's rent.

So if your city has a better market-salary:rent ratio than NYC, their salaries are not competitive.

Conversely, they pay pretty well in Lisbon, since the rent is actually quite high compared to the pittance that software developers earn (which is why long commutes are common).

as an American remote worker that interviewed there from Argentina, it was really frustrating for them to tell me they wanted to pay me $50k less because I choose to live in a cheaper city. Even though I was currently making market rate SF money.

They had the budget for me if I lived in SF, but they stuck with their lowball offer.

It’s about fairness. Would it be fair if a SF hire had a lower wage (after expenses) than an argentinian hire? No. So Gitlab tries to optimize for every employee having the same disposable wage, no matter where they live.

That’s why they have this system.

It is not a fair system. Thats like saying, "well, Frank bought a BMW and owns a house, so he gets to get paid more." They chose to live in an expensive city and have an expensive life style.

If a hire lived with their parents in SF, does that mean they get paid less than their coworker that rents an apartment?

Fairness isn’t that simply defined.

As is tought in any philosophy class in middle or high school, there’s multiple needs.

Give everyone according to their needs? Everyone the same? Fairness isn’t that simple.

Gitlab is trying to find a solution that is fair in their opinion, and if you disagree with that, you are free to choose a different employer.

This reminds me of a recruiter telling me 'people don't work here for the money, they work here for the opportunity, and it's more than enough to live on' when asking for market rate salary. Big tech company, you can probably guess which.

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