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Comment by fqb | Hacker News Reader

Could you elaborate about the salaries for remote workers? I'm a frontend developer in southern Europe and I'd love to work for Gitlab because I love the product.

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Example: https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/developer/...

Full details are here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

Not great pay - very interesting to see a direct comparison of pay levels in different locations though, e.g. Scotland pays 1/3 of New York.

I think it comes down to their policy of adjusting to provide the same quality of life, which I disagree with for remote companies. Their London salaries are fine, but one of the main reasons for me working remotely would be to increase my quality of life by living more remotely but still earning a London-like salary. Otherwise you've moved away from many conveniences, will likely have to pay much more for travel, but will still have to live with the quality of housing you could afford in the city.

Yeah this is very much discouraging you from living in a low cost of living area. After all, compensation should be about the value of the work you're doing. Not the value of the money to you. If we experience high deflation, should my salary go down?!

Thanks, this made me discover that GitLab doesn't hire everywhere it seems; these countries are excluded:

    Brazil, Crimea, Cuba, France, Iran, Ireland, Japan, North Korea, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Syria

https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines

Seems like my country it's excluded. Gotta look for another company then

I wonder why Spain, France, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden… are excluded, but not Germany or the United Kingdom or many other EU countries.

Disclaimer: Working for GitLab since March.

Several countries are on hiring stop currently, mainly those that you have listed. This is due to administrative reasons, as people from those countries work as contractors, as we have no entities there. In Europe we currently have an entity in NL, BE, UK and DE. Furthermore we have an Indian, Chinese and of course US entity.

The page specifies that even contractors from these countries are excluded.

I think leipert is saying that people from those countries only work as contractors, and that involves specific administrative problems/burden which Gitlab can't cope with at the moment.

@aissen this is a temporary roadblock for us. As we scale, we are working on a better payroll solution in these locations. We are hoping to remove some of these roadblocks in future entirely. We have already moved a few successfully, like Australia and Canada.

We don't have an entity in India and China put can hire people there as employees via other companies.

GitLab would love to hire from the places above but I guess taxes and government policies are a big barrier IIRC

The QoL adjustments seem less granular than needed in the UK. "Everywhere else in England" covers a wide range of living conditions/costs. Areas like York & Harrogate are far more expensive to live in than the not-all-that-far-away Grimsby & Hull, to give one of many possible examples. If you are going to change what you pay geographically, I would suggest you need more local variance to do it properly.

You can read everything about it here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

They once had a online calculator where you put in your location (basically only SF, non-SF US, and outside US) and position but apparently they switched to another model that includes employee performance and other factors.

I don't have any first-hand experience, and I'm sure there are exceptions. I've heard that GitLab will pay around $80k for a remote software engineer in a country with a low cost-of-living. That engineer could be earning $150k-$250k at a different company (e.g. Basecamp, GitHub, etc.)

I realize that $80k is a lot of money for Europe/UK/Asia/South America/rest of the US. But if you're a top engineer, you could double or triple your income by working for a different company (or as a consultant.)

I should mention that I don't have any problem with GitLab's compensation, and I think it's actually pretty fair. But fair doesn't really matter. A top engineer will just go to the company that pays more. I'm sure GitLab has a lot of great engineers, but just based on their compensation, I'm pretty sure it's not one of the best engineering teams in the world.

Here's a few references/articles/job boards:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10924957

* https://dev.to/sam_ferree/why-i-think-cost-of-living-pay-for... (see some of the comments in there)

* https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...

* https://weworkremotely.com

* https://remoteok.io

Thank you for the information

They have a calculator [0]

The same job, with the same experience is paid less than half what it is in SF in the UK. That's not really very enticing.

https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/developer/...

I don't know how they came to that calculator. But it seems that someone in Ethiopia would earn $20k more than someone in the Netherlands (outside of Amsterdam)

There are other advantages of being a cheaper remote worker, cheaper than 'market rates'. One is that since you are cheaper, there may be less pressure on you to deliver at a certain speed. Which, in turn actually may allow you to work more carefully and over time deliver your work at a higher level of quality. This combination can lead to you being happier in the job and wanting to remain at it for longer and since you are cheaper your position is less at risk when your employer is going through restructuring.

That might be true sometimes, but I've also heard about some cases that are the exact opposite [1]. There are some software engineers making high six figures (e.g. > $600k including RSUs and bonuses), and the company respects them a lot more and values their output. These engineers aren't frantically cranking out code or working 12 hour days all the time. They're often doing very important work and have to be very careful.

And I've also heard about cases where lower pay means worse employers, higher expectations, and higher levels of stress, because the company doensn't value or respect the employee as much.

[1] https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/992779314532790273

> you could double or triple your income by working for a different company (or as a consultant.)

... and relocate? Many remote jobs require you to move at the very least in the company's country.

No, I'm talking about as a remote employee living in any country. It's true that most high paying software jobs require relocation, but there's some that don't.

A top Engineer will go to a company which aligns with his personal and professional goals. With your example, no one would have created a startup and simply working for someone who pays more.

This is really interesting. I live in Czech away from Prague and made a joke on local dev meetup that "I will not work for 22k". Answer was "everyone here wishes to work for 22k". I don't think anyone I know here makes anything close to 100k even in Prague.

I should investigate this bit more to get closer to SF salaries if possible.

22k USD is far too low for a good developer. I’ve met a few developers from Eastern European countries that charge $100+ USD per hour.

You will always be able to find work at ~$70 per hour if you join TopTal. It should be easy to book projects for 30 hours per week and earn $100k USD per year. (Or you can work 6 hours per week to make $22k, if that’s all you need.)

That’s still on the low end for web/mobile dev. Top developers will charge 2x or 3x that amount (but you won’t find that work on Toptal.)

Full-time salaries will be lower than contract work, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find a remote web/mobile development job that pays $80k. (And that’s still very low for a good developer.)

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