Can you maybe share what position you where considering and in what metro are you life?
... Oregon... entire state is same modifier?
I can rent a 4 bedroom house 2 blocks away from the university in La Grande for $1200/m.
I can rent a 3 bedroom house 2 blocks away from the university in Portland for $3900/m.
Does not compute.
It doesn't speak well that you need to be told which metro areas to add.
The US government had to address a similar issue and came up with a handy list of metro areas:
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
I find it a little odd that you would be so adamant about your compensation algorithm and not do basic due diligence exploring what others in the space have done in the space.
HN commenters shouldn't need to tell you what metro areas are missing - you should have proactively identified them.
The disparity is slightly decreased since I last run it but still a bit out of touch from "at or above market" in this case.
My local market (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) _severely_ underpays. It's common for people with 5+ years' experience to be making under 60k CAD (50k USD), if not way less. Because of that, many of the city's best devs either work remotely, or they move to Toronto, or New York, or the Bay Area.
When you base your salary calculations on local market rates, in very-low-market-rate areas, you're looking at an artificially lowered pool. I'm not surprised people balk when they find out how low you pay, because in their mind they aren't competing with local onsite developers. That isn't their market.
Also, there are many benefits to working onsite that don't appear to be factored into your calculations. Not all remote workers can work comfortably out of the home, and so there are office rental costs. Many onsite jobs provide things like free lunches, as well. It's possible these things are factored in; if so, it might be worth mentioning them here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/benefits/
EDIT: Removed a complaint about #3, as I saw from another comment that I misunderstood it. I still disagree with the premise - if I was unhappy at my current job, there are plenty of other remote companies that pay well, and even if there weren't, I'd gladly take a pay cut to do more fulfilling work - but it doesn't strike me as condescending anymore. Just ill-informed.