Checked it out, and for my region their salary is barely competitive. Must say, I am disappointed by this approach from a company whose product I admire.
As a second data point, last time I checked (I want to say >18 months ago), compensation for my area (Switzerland, urban) was also very low (around the 20th percentile).
Now, it is closer to the median.
Looking at Switzerland on payscale.com, for ruby devs, gitlab's compensation seems above average. Might be looking at it the wrong way, or it might be that payscale.com is horribly wrong (wouldn't be surprised).
As an example calculation, [1] are the statistics for a 30 y.o. university graduate in the Zurich area. At 13 monthly salaries, the median yearly base compensation works out as 110k to 150k CHF.
I'm assuming that at 30, that person might have around 5 years of work experience, so that would land them around 150k using the Gitlab calculator as well. So a bit above median for Swiss citizens, not so much above median for expats.
[0] https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/... [1] https://www.gate.bfs.admin.ch/salarium/public/index.html#/ca...