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Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

The GitLab compensation calculator seems really odd. At least personally, when I saw it, it drew almost all of my attention away from the mechanics of the role and towards trying to game this thing in order to get paid comparatively well.

If someone takes a job with a London postcode and then moves a few hours north, what happens? Do they just get docked in pay?

Do you trust them to tell you they've moved house even though they're going to lose tens of thousands a year in income?

I'd considered applying in the past but don't really feel comfortable with the fact that it's not really 'remote' because if I actually live where I want to, I'd get paid peanuts.

Evidently it works for them, but to me it looks like some weird way to push everyone into the expensive cities.

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>London postcode and then moves a few hours north, what happens? Do they just get docked in pay?

Apparently, stupendously, yes (based on what apparent employees in this thread are saying)

>Do you trust them to tell you they've moved house even though they're going to lose tens of thousands a year in income?

It's in the contract. I would absolutely lie to them, I would 1:1 fiscally motivated to do so.

The whole thing baffles me.

I dunno. I'm sure it works if you just take jobs without caring what you get paid.

Maybe that describes most of GitLab's staff. It's a cool product, so it wouldn't surprise me.

The mental overhead of maintaining a London postcode just for the sake of it I think would have me looking elsewhere (and I live in London and have no intention of leaving). I'd be wondering about where they draw the line, and whether if I move two stations out they'd try and dock my pay or whatever.

Yea, theres a massive thread above us getting into the weeds about like, the very nature of capitalism, but for me it boils down to a simple issue: I think it's unfair that I get paid more than my equally productive colleague, just because I happen to live in SF and he happens to live in Indiana.

Also nearly entirely defeats the purpose of remote work. I'm into it cause it'd be dank to pull a San Francisco salary while chilling in Vietnam and paying 200$/mo for rent.

If you really think it's unfair then you would have moved to Indiana to downward adjust your salary. Sounds like posturing to me.

That does not resemble any definition of fair I'm familiar with. I think it's unfair some children are born blind - I'm not going to remove my eyes.

Why does the solution to "something is unfair" necessitate me equalizing the situation on my own? That's some cronyism right there. That's like... I dunno, apologizing to my boss for him firing me for taking a sick day.

The arbiter of the unfairness is the company policy. That's who we blame, not the employee who happens to benefit. They are no more to blame than the person who doesn't benefit. The causal relationship simply doesn't exist. I'm actually curious about the reasoning you applied to somehow pin the duty of responsibility to the employee that benefits?

I don't really care about "fairness", it's more that the process seems to be so convoluted that I imagine a ton of people just not bothering.

The application process for GitLab, for me, seems to be:

1) figure out the highest paying area I have access to (visa or whatever)

2a) actually move there if I have to or it happens to be where I am, or 2b) get a postbox or rent a studio apartment pointlessly

3) actually apply for the job and potentially get it

4) if at any point I want to move, figure out how to do it without anyone finding out because otherwise I effectively lose my job (the UK salaries outside of London are comedic)

(as an aside I'm not convinced this "your rate will be reduced" stuff is even legal, I imagine it'd be considered constructive dismissal)

Contrast that with an on-premises job (you can move, the commute length is your own problem) or a real remote job (completely unrestricted).

Again, it seems to be working for them, but it looks really odd from my perspective.

Do you actually make more, or just on paper? You can't just disregard the difference in living expenses.

The salary for a "Senior Expert" developer in London is 100K GBP.

The salary for a "Senior Expert" developer in "Everywhere else in UK" is 60K GBP.

You would make more money overall by renting a 1 bedroom flat in London, leaving it completely empty and telling GitLab you live there.

Yes, even accounting for tax.

You could sublet that apartment too to recoup some costs.

if you have nothing else to do in your life, yes you could do that

Yeah, who wants to make money? What a waste of time.

I mean, this whole thing is arbitrary.

You could just get a postcode. Ask a friend to take mail for you. Get a flat share and use it as a pied-a-terre. And so on and so forth.

Who knows. They can play the code golf, not me.

(I love GitLab. Their hiring is just odd.).

> I think it's unfair that I get paid more than my equally productive colleague, just because I happen to live in SF and he happens to live in Indiana.

I mean you can extend that to it being unfair to be paid less because you didn't get competing offers; they have nothing at all to do with how good of an engineer you are or how productive you will be.

Sadly supply and demand are what drive prices and I guess in this case incomes.

But the Indiana engineer has plenty of other remote jobs they can apply for, I see tons on stack overflow every day. Gitlab isn't the only one.

The labour market, like any market, is primarily governed by supply and demand. Worker productivity is a much smaller factor in determining salary.

Companies should get away from this as soon as possible. It is essentially the same strategy as off shoring your dev work except it is distributed.

I would be happy to have my salary based on the value I bring into the company rather than based on where I happen to leave.

If you can answer the question how to measure that value for any given pair of worker and company, I don't think you will need a job anymore. :)

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