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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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.).

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?

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