Gitlab and remote work | Hacker News Reader

Gitlab and remote work

about.gitlab.com

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I appreciate a lot of what Gitlab has done, but as someone who has been permanently remote for nearly a decade, I don't really consider them to be a leader in remote work. One of my biggest issues with Gitlab is that they pay based on locality, many other fully remote companies pay below Bay Area salaries, but they pay flat globally, meaning you can be location-independent without a pay-cut and it helps to bring in high quality talent from across the world. Gitlab instead seems to be focused on maximizing revenue per headcount rather than actually allowing their employees to enjoy the benefits of remote work.

I spent many years working at companies where I was underpaid relative to peers who went to the office, but I got paid the same whether I was currently residing in Prague, Santiago, or Kansas City, and that was a much fairer trade-off than getting pay-cut if you relocate to a lower cost of living area, and I have no doubt that the reverse is not true (they don't increase pay because you move to a HCOL).

Locally-adjusted pay is a fluke if revenues are not locally constrained (like a coffee shop). It's just another way employers try and nickle and dime workers, and it's sad that a large class of workers have been brainwashed to support it because somehow they're more upset at the other workers making more, than the company trying to pull a fast on on them.

"But you would make so much more than your neighbors!". Fuck off with that noise. I don't care what my neighbors make, I care what the company is earning from my labor and getting my fair share. I have no problem extorting more from a company that has no problem extorting more from me.

You also won't see this for senior management. As a VP/C-level, I've never had a potential employer put pressure on salary during a negotiation because of my location (though it's always been domestic). It's never even come up besides relocation discussions.

> You also won't see this for senior management. As a VP/C-level, I've never had a potential employer put pressure on salary during a negotiation because of my location (though it's always been domestic). It's never even come up besides relocation discussions.

This is absolutely true and it's because executives usually have spent at least some amount of time doing "sales" type roles where they learn what value selling is. I always do value selling during my salary negotiations, and I too pretty much concern myself only with how much I bring to the table and what a fair cut of that for myself is. My location has absolutely nothing to do with that, and I've delivered a ton of value in my career from far more remote locations than most remote workers find themselves in.

> This is absolutely true and it's because executives usually have spent at least some amount of time doing "sales" type roles where they learn what value selling is.

or because there are two orders of magnitude fewer VPs/C-levels than line workers. an extra +100k for a single unicorn employee is easier to justify than +20k comp x 100 replaceable employees

And, when execs give other execs high salaries, it's simpler for them themselves to keep their own high salaries?

Otherwise, after a while, maybe others in the company would say:

The other execs don't make more than this:... Why should we pay you so much?

Value selling isn't an option for most employees. Try it in a typical salary negotiation and you'll get funny looks followed by a repeat of their standard offer.

It also only works if people stay put. I made less than my CA counterparts for nearly a decade, constantly reminding me just how expensive CA was.

Fast forward 10 years, a quarter of them sold their house and basically retired in my area. Yay.

How did this affect their salaries? (If at all)

This has been rather recent - the ones that stayed with the company did not get adjusted down. As you may imagine, it's caused a ton of turmoil. Which then led to 'stop sharing your salary' type suggestions, of course.

>Locally-adjusted pay is a fluke if revenues are not locally constrained

You don't get paid based on company revenue, you get paid based on the lowest amount you (or someone you're competing with) are willing to agree to sell your labour for. That amount is going to be lower if your cost of living is lower. People earning less if they work remotely in Podunk, Idaho compared to SF is no different from someone earning less in Bangladesh than in Italy even if they do the same job.

Fair enough. But it would seem that for a remote worker, the value for the company comes from what they produce, not from where they produce it from.

To me, this would instead be an argument that "since engineers are equal, might as well get the cheapest one". Which is an argument I can understand, even if I don't agree.

But this would mean that your compensation would be mostly fixed, and you'd mostly look for people living in cheaper places, since this should give you a better bang for your buck. Which would mean, basically, that you'd be looking to pay en engineer in San Francisco the same as one living in a tent in Africa. If they're the same, why would you pay 100x more for the one in SF?

If you change the argument to this:

"Among equal engineers, get the cheapest one"

Absolutely true in labor markets where supply exceeds demand, but tech is not currently one of them.

It absolutely is, when speaking on a global/remote scale.

Actually senior management takes this into account — they’d only be making 3 million if they lived in Fremont but since they live in Malibu they get $30 million plus a stipend for their SF penthouse.

How does HN have such ridiculous ideas of what other people are making? I had someone yesterday tell me that a mid-level marketing role at Stripe was pulling in 3-5M per year, and probably made 20M over their four years there.

An SVP is pulling down a base of $300-600k, and stock comp (option grants & RSU's) may be doubling or even tripling that but very few are getting 10-100x base. Maybe C-levels, but even then I'd wager more people can fit in a Boeing 777 than are seeing packages like that.

Lots of people on HN don't understand the difference between C-level exec roles ("management") and functional management roles ("management").

They also look at salaries at non-public startups where some part of the package is denominated in the stock options price (which may or may not be fiction).

People always take the outlier as the norm.

If you once got to work in 30 because there was absolutely no traffic, many people will from then on say it takes "30 minutes" to get to work, and be perpetually late.

Varies a lot. I’ve seen people at smaller public companies get $5m+/yr offers and they managed maybe 15 people total. SV is weird - some people get really big offers.

With crazy stock valuations and growth - some people do be getting big stacks. They might’ve gotten a $300k + 600k offer but then it turns into $300k + 3000k because stock went up 5x. Happens a lot here.

More people are struck by lightning than stumble into comp packages like these.

> $300k + 3000k

No one is getting millions of options/shares outside of founders and investors. A mid-stage growth start-up might give a few hundred thousand shares to a non-founding C-level exec, or a pre-IPO CFO taking point on going public might get close.

Outside of nepotism and incredibly rare skill sets aligned with growth initiatives, these deals only exist in our fantasies.

Stock appreciation... I was one of these people who saw 7 figure TC and I was just a senior IC. So, you're wrong. It's extremely common in SV. You have to be past $3.5m income to be in the 1% here. You think it's only execs at big companies making $3m+/yr?

>I care what the company is earning from my labor and getting my fair share. I have no problem extorting more from a company that has no problem extorting more from me.

This just feels naive to me. You aren't being paid based on what your labor is earning your company. That number is totally irrelevant in a world in which businesses can run on VC money instead of actual revenue. You are paid based of both yours and your employers next best alternative. The reason people in high cost of living areas have traditionally had higher salaries is because there are more jobs in high cost of living areas and therefore more alternatives for potential employees. It is easier for an engineer in the Bay Area to get a competitive offer than it is for an engineer in Akron, Ohio. That is why companies in Akron pay less, there are fewer employers there looking to hire developers.

While I understand all the arguments about fairness, we can't ignore that all these companies are purely responding to capitalist incentives. If we demand they pay employees the same regardless of location, the wage rate they pay will drop. This is because there are more developers living in low cost of living areas willing to work for that set price than in high cost of living areas. Why would a tech company hire a developer in San Francisco for $300k when they can get a similar one for $100k in Akron? That company isn't suddenly going to be generous and decide that the employee in Akron deserves $300k too. They are going to decide that cost of living shouldn't matter and maybe pay everyone $110k. Sure, that improves the situation for people living in Akron, but does it improve the situation for developers as a whole?

> You aren't being paid based on what your labor is earning your company.

I've managed P&L at multiple companies. Salaries are inevitably influenced by cash flow projections and revenues, and are absolutely aligned in multiple dimensions to revenues.

> cost of living shouldn't matter and maybe pay everyone $110k

No, they're going to pay whatever their margins can tolerate while competing for labor. If Google can manage the salaries they have with staff living mostly in high cost-of-living cities, so they can also support those margins with staff living anywhere else in the world.

Why is it only capitalism when the company is greedy?

>I've managed P&L at multiple companies. Salaries are inevitably influenced by cash flow projections and revenues, and are absolutely aligned in multiple dimensions to revenues.

How mature were those companies? Did they have investors willing to accept extended periods of time without profit like many VC and Wall Street investors have come to accept from many tech companies? Did increases in cash flow or revenue lead to across the board raises? Or did cash flow and revenue exist purely as a cap on salaries?

>No, they're going to pay whatever their margins can tolerate while competing for labor. If Google can manage the salaries they have with staff living mostly in high cost-of-living cities, so they can also support those margins with staff living anywhere else in the world.

Yes, Google can support those margins, but why would they? Why would Google pay a developer a dollar more than they need to? If they can get the same work out of employees in low cost of living areas, they will expect to pay all employees low cost of living salaries.

>Why is it only capitalism when the company is greedy?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There was no positive value judgement on my use of the word "capitalism". I was not praising companies for this behavior. I was making a value neutral observation on their behavior. Don't take my observation of behavior as and endorsement of that behavior.

> How mature were those companies?

Early stage to public, all VC-backed.

> Did increases in cash flow or revenue lead to across the board raises?

That doesn't happen anywhere, unless a board member recommends it or you have a very generous CEO (like Gravity Payments). Either an employee asks for a raise, or a manager fights for one using new hires/open req salaries as negotiating leverage. Turnover is part of life, and if no one is fighting for you then you're expected to fight for yourself.

> Or did cash flow and revenue exist purely as a cap on salaries?

G&A is a huge chunk of expenses for most companies, and after a few years of operating you'll have reasonable historical data combined with future financial projections to figure out where you want that G&A % to hover around. This is what determines salary caps, as your leadership team juggles figuring out whom they need to hire to hit those projections and how much they can pay in the given market to find the talent they need/want.

For an e-comm business that might be 30-35% of total expenses. For SaaS, could be as high as 70%.

So your leadership agrees on some growth plan, and the CEO hits the button on hiring X new heads with a combined Z salary cap. What ends up happening is that you max out Z by X-N new hires, and the CEO has to decide to spend more to reach X hires or tell teams to make due with the headcount they have while reminding them to "hire faster next time".

Over a long enough period of time, the executive and finance teams will implicitly agree on some tolerance that G&A needs to stay within, and the company will be managed and decisions will be made to make sure those commitments are made. We've probably all seen this as sudden hiring freezes or lay-offs, when either current results or projections show that some target isn't going to be met but that tweaking these other numbers (headcount, payroll) the company can keep the first number (costs as % of revenues) consistent.

Over an even longer period of times, those salary bands will ossify into comp levels like "SDE 5" or some-such and this becomes the aggregate in which salary is managed.

So for a company like Google that has its finances literally down to a science, which is already operating multi-year roadmaps with high salaries baked into every assumption and model and even the stock price, would not want to rock the boat of missing those targets by tweaking something that could cause more harm than good. It's not worth it to them.

Keep in mind that Google's margin are still healthy even after salaries have skyrocketed since they were discovered colluding with other companies to artificially keep salaries low.

You are basing your logic on conflicting assumptions. First you say that you need "a very generous CEO" to raise salaries as revenues increase, but that isn't just a requirement to get a raise. That is also a requirement to get hired at a higher than market rate. Why would Google hire a developer in the Bay Area when they can have 3 in Akron or a whole team in India? Why are you assuming that just because Google has "high salaries baked into every assumption and model" that they won't go "tweaking these other numbers" as soon as "projections show that some target isn't going to be met"?

Paying everyone the same regardless of their location means that people in the highest cost areas need to compete on salary with people in the lowest cost areas. People in the low cost locations outnumber people in the high cost areas so it will be a race to the bottom. Google isn't going to pay everyone Bay Area salaries. They will pay everyone as little as possible to still reach their target headcount/production.

You get paid a fixed salary, that fact alone means it has nothing to do with the income you bring into the company, it's perfectly fine and is the norm. It's always about what number would make you happy, not what is fair, nor that "being fair" is well defined.

> I care what the company is earning from my labor and getting my fair share.

If you think that your work has more value than you are being paid, why don't you just stop working for those companies and start working for yourself?

This applies whether you work remotely or on site, actually.

The difference is that without remote opportunities people are constrained to their local area so companies can indeed pay, say, an engineer in India much less than one in Silicon Valley although output for company may be very similar.

Their location adjustment figures used to be open source. It was a flat text file of locations and coefficients. But they backpedaled on that, and last I looked you couldn't find them anymore and it had been replaced with vagueness.

That's not leading. That's fleeing with your tail between your legs.

If you poke the repo and dig, the file still exists in history. They didn’t git filter-branch it (and force push) it away.

... and the digging: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/blob/4293020d...

Hesitant to wade into politics but here we go. I think paying remote workers competitively regardless of their place of residency could lessen the political polarization in the US. The (mostly liberal) brain-drain from middle America to the coasts is real, and exacerbates the undemocratic nature of the Senate (etc). It would have profound economic benefit for the “flyover states” as well, reversing the flow of money out of small-to-medium towns. I say this as someone from a small town in Alabama who had to leave to have a career: give me a reason to make a life there.

I don't really understand appealing to the concept of "fair" regarding salary.

I guess I'm showing some assumptions about labor being a free market, but isn't your salary by definition acceptable to both you and the employer?

You could exchange "fair" for "reasonable" (as in "buying at a fair value"). I think OP's point is not on justice, but more on how acceptable of a trade-off it is.

Either way I think Gitlab will be paying different taxes and other fees depending on where the employee is registered, so IMO it kinda comes down to the message they want to send to their employees.

And that's one big reason why I'll never apply to Gitlab!

The point is it isn't acceptable, since I wouldn't apply to GitLab.

They could attract a more good people if they paid globally consistent wages.

Location based salary has nothing to do with cost of living. It has to do with what your local labour market pays.

I live in New Zealand - a gallon of petrol is $7.241 USD. A macbook air m2 is $1680.70 USD. Gitlab would not pay someone in NZ more than someone in the US because their cost of living is higher.

For that reason I would not call them a leader in the space; however, if we only consider the day-to-day of remote work, everything from meetings, to your schedule to meeting co-workers IRL, in that part of the space I believe they are currently leading. As a new manager of an all-remote team, I find myself going to Gitlab quite a bit for guidance and their advice on a matter. It's to the point where I think Gitlab, if they really wanted to, could turn that whole day-to-day operational knowledge base into a pretty solid product.

I came here to say this. They contacted me several years ago for a kubernetes role. The pay was half my current position which was also remote... They didn't feel like a leader.

I hate that as well, but from the point of view of the employer it makes sense no? They are supposed to pay as little as they can afford, and location impacts that.

"as little as they can afford" is still completely subjective, as they will pay more for an employee that is better valued on the market for any specific reason, regardless of the actual results once they join Gitlab.

If tomorrow they declared they "need" to pay their employees 2x more to hire "A players" and get an edge on their competitors, we probably would have to take their word for it.

I'm not sure I understand. The way it works is that you look at the market where you're hiring someone, and seeing how people pay in that market (using different apps you can pay for). Then you decide which percentile you want to be part of (average payer, top payer, etc.)

Of course I imagine that you can make up a number and say "I'll pay my employees X because I have money right now and this is what they deserve" but it doesn't sound like a good financial decision for a business.

You set a range when looking for someone, but you’ll hit people that request more and can anchor their numbers onto something tangible (e.g. their previous pay). You’ll be paying that + alpha if you want them.

You can also set a range (let’s say “top payer”), and find no one that matches your criteria in that range. You’ll either choose to settle for lower requirements, or increase the pay to get people who match your requirements.

The above all sound logic, but in the end it’s a made up number for subjective requirements, so you might completely be paying any arbitrary number to satisfy your criteria.

Location impacts that only if the hiring is constrained by location. If you hire remote worldwide, then by all means, go for the cheapest developers that you can find worldwide, or go for developers who have my skills. Either way, it doesn't matter where we live.

Especially if (as myself and many others) we don't live in one place and travel between different countries with drastically different local income levels.

Not sure I understand. But remote companies are doing exactly that, they're hiring not based on location to get talent from the whole world, and then they pay accordingly to the market of the candidate.

> they pay accordingly to the market of the candidate.

But what, exactly, is "the market of the candidate"?

You seem to be claiming that for these remote employers, "the market" is their whole nation, or even the entire world... So why wouldn't that be "the market" for their remote employees too?

I'm still not convinced whether it's good or bad.

Yes, you should be paid regarding the value you bring BUT by paying me fairly for my market, they can hire more people, especially in emerging countries.

Does that also mean that remote employees can move from rural India to Manhattan or SF and get their pay adjusted for cost of living?

Exactly. Getting paid less and therefore forced to relocate to a cheaper place is very detrimental.

You build less real estate equity. And there is less room for saving cash.

In general, living in very expensive cities is great for saving cash if your salary is proportionally higher. Saving 10% of a median Lisbon salary is a lot less than 10% of a median SF salary.

I understand you frustration, but this is how a free global market works. The cost of workforce depends on taxes and cost of life, primarily rent and utilities, then childcare and healthcare.

Gitlab's company handbook is absolutely amazing if you haven't read it: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/

Every company should be handbook-driven.

Handbook-driven is a lot better than location-based pay. So at least they've got one solid thing going for them.

"They're the writers of their own press releases, Morty."

My favorite part of their story is how they changed the interview process to not be terrible and built a dashboard to quantify it: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/03/19/the-trouble-with-te...

I've interviewed with them twice (2016 & 2022), didn't receive any feed back other than a generic decline e-mail. And this was despite promises to the contrary from recruiters, I was ghosted when I asked for it too. I even recall teaching the interviewer some javascript quirk during a coding challenge the first time and solved whatever silly brain teaser question that was asked, with test cases too! Yet zero feedback as to why I was not going to move past that first technical challenge. Disappointing really.

EDIT: More on topic, I did really enjoy the MR based technical interview way more than the common coding challenge.

So your personal experience with the processes of $BIG_CORP don't live up to the fairy tails $BIG_CORP spins in their blogs, talks and other public relations material? I am shocked, shocked!

They try to paint this feedback as a big difference about themselves is the only reason I brought it up.

Interviewed with them once, it was a while back, more than 2 year, but it was the worst interview I can remember.

They asked me to clone a rather large repo as part of the interview, I cloned it but it was slow, the dude just blamed it all on my internet and my geographic location. Like kept going on about it through the awkward slow clone. I think I wrapped it up early.

I ws cloning other repos of similar size and much faster speeds that day.

Unfortunately the dashboard seems to be very broken now :(

GitLab team member here. Thanks for flagging. I contacted the owner of the dashboard and asked if they can get it working. Will report back if/when it is repaired.

Nine days later. Still down?

Some but not all parts of the dashboard are working.

Thats certainly a self-proclaimed title.

Aye. I like Gitlab for pushing remote work, but sure feels like trying to pivot into selling shovels by claiming to be 'experts' on a 'difficult topic'.

We've tamped it down now. Corporate press releases generally not good for HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) but I guess there's more information here.

Gitlab is a big name with a big headcount and a big… I don’t want to sound rude here, but a big ego, too.

What does my org use it for? A git repository to which we can push and pull, CI, and code review. I constantly feel like I’m missing a party of awesome features and stuff and I feel that way because what Gitlab does for me compared with the perception it projects into the world seem different by several orders of magnitude. What are all these amazing features they are building, which require such a huge team, that I’m missing? I don’t want ACLs. I don’t need per project visibility. We already have task tracking and a wiki. Will Gitlab offer to run my payroll, when I already have software to do that? Is there a calendar app and have they built their own date selector widgets? Those are shark jumping moments for any project so I hope it’s not that bad.

Gitlab feels a bit like a microwave oven that has a popcorn mode, alarm clock, and built in calculator when all I want is X hundred watts for Y seconds.

Ps: poking around their sales site, Gitlab is going after Jira, I guess. Oof.

Imagine trying to rebuild Jira. Essentially making a super complicated crud app lol

A lot of companies feel that way, tbh.

Capitalism encourages growth. It's considered weird to just stop building things when you've built everything you initially wanted to.

It's understandable, but at the same time it also feels like they are pushing away the very people who should be their core customer base.

My paid subscription ends later this month and it isn't being renewed; I'm reverting to the "free" subscription. I'm prefer not to. I would like to pay them for the service they are providing, but like many SaaS companies they have created a pricing structure that does not have anything in between "free" and "very expensive". GitLab might be value for money if you use every bell and whistle in the tier you pay for, but if you don't the value proposition does not seem to be there.

I understand that I'm likely not one of the corporate "whales" they are after, but I would like to think that there would have been a solid, if less profitable, business in providing services to the smaller outfits as well. They have lost me as a customer, and not because I want to be cheap, but because I can't justify the value of their updated pricing model. I would even pay for some of the open source projects I host there because I don't like to be a freeloader, but again the gap between "free" and the first paid tier is simply too great.

This seems pretty spammy for a top-10 slot on HN

https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2015/03/04/gitlab-is-part-of-t...

Still paying according to location for the same work?

I saw a list of companies that paid the same regardless of location. There were even a few bay area companies that didn't cut your pay when you moved away, I wish I had that handy.

Can you name a few who will pay a Senior Software Engineer the same salary in Bay Area vs say Bangalore, India ? I am curious.

Just a few months ago this[0] jobs platform for exactly that - remote, location-independent salary - was discussed on HN [1].

[0] https://remotewide.co/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31225138

Ok I will bite. I randomly checked one company called "MotorK" [0] and I found this line in the job description "Work remotely from any of the countries we operate in". So thats not work from anywhere in the world. I am sure devil is always in the details. I know this is 1 example but I doubt a company will hire from anywhere in the world and pay the same salaries to you. There always will be restrictions.

Ok now I am more curious. I looked at another company "Expensify" [1]. They actually want you to ideally relocate to one of their office locations :). So again, not fully remote anywhere in the world. I think employers say it casually but in practice, it is extremely difficult.

Why would I pay the same salary to a good developer in NYC vs India/Thailand. If that's the case, why would I hire from a totally different timezone and not to mention add legal, HR and compliance issues.

[0] https://remotewide.co/listings/6IBsLC9CWYb4sO8h8xAT

[1] https://remotewide.co/listings/ncCWVkYCZx0dhK0m5Z8v

> and I found this line in the job description "Work remotely from any of the countries we operate in".

Outside of contracting and business-to-business deals, I think we're still in a world where it's hard to legally employ people in countries where you don't have a legal presence (outside of cases where that has been explicitly agreed-upon, like EU).

Something as basic as tax withholding can be literally impossible without creating a subsidiary in that country.

Looking at remotewide.co, they don't say anything about having to accept applicants from all over the world. That is, think SF vs Idaho, not SF vs Siberia.

Pay remote.com $500/mo per employee in a country you don't have a presence in and you're done.

> Ok now I am more curious. I looked at another company "Expensify" [1]. They actually want you to ideally relocate to one of their office locations :). So again, not fully remote anywhere in the world. I think employers say it casually but in practice, it is extremely difficult.

Out of curiosity, what makes you think Expensify wants you to relocate?

Relocation was not required or suggested when I interviewed with them last year. Their current job ad shows that they support working from anywhere: "Our employees work from all over the world" and "we spend a month abroad working from a remote location as a team".

I hypothesize that the part about visa sponsorship / relocation assistance might give the wrong impression:

> if you're looking for a change of scene we offer visa sponsorship and relocation assistance to join us at one of our rad locations...

Thanks for sharing this. That's correct, we are 100% remote first and you are not required to move to a city where we have offices. It's an optional perk.

I agree some companies don't really mean it when they claim to be remote first, but at Expensify we truly are. Please apply if you like the sound of our open roles :)

https://we.are.expensify.com/#workwithus

So how many developers do you actually hire out of Thailand? The prime minister of Thailand earns 3804 USD per year. If you seriously hire them at $380k, that's 100 times what the leader of their country earns. The US equivalent would be $40 million a year. Seemingly, every even remotely qualified person in the country would be rushing to apply. No need to immigrate and go through the Visa process? Earn enough money to buy your entire hometown within a few years?

Surely, there has to be some sufficiently motivated and intelligent person born in Thailand who is able to do the work you require. Have you hired any of them?

I only see one recent applicant from Thailand, but we welcome applications regardless of where they live (with a few obvious exceptions). I don’t want to dox any colleagues by listing individual countries as we’re a relatively small company, but we have hired from 6/7 continents in the last 12 months (all except Antarctica).

Also happy to answer any other questions you have. And again, if anyone reading this is interested, please take a look at our open roles [0]. This is one of many, many things which makes the company great [1].

[0] https://we.are.expensify.com/#workwithus [1] https://we.are.expensify.com/benefits-perks

What percentage of your employees are Asian who work from Asia and what are their average salaries ?

Maybe Fly? Not sure.

https://fly.io/about

We do at Stellate: https://stellate.co/blog/one-job-one-pay

Do you guys share the distribution of title by location? Maybe Engineer 2 gets paid the same everywhere, but maybe San Francisco is all Engineer 10s and India is all Engineer 1s.

37 Signals. https://37signals.com/19

Last I checked they only hired in the US

37signals hires outside the US, see their HN ad from June, 2022[1]:

> The salary for candidates matched as Programmer is $165,410. The salary for candidates matched as Senior Programmer is $197,819. Irrespective of where in the world you live.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31583175

We do at Expensify. A good % of our team works fully remote: https://we.are.expensify.com/benefits-perks

Also, check out remotewide.co for a list of remote companies with location independent pay. I think this is exactly what you're looking for.

https://primer.io

We're US only, but our salaries are flat across the US. Same salary in the Bay area and say, Moscow, Idaho.

Company?

If you want to get the same pay for remote work no matter where you are, just become a contractor.

Last I heard they were which makes them NOT a leader in remote work lol

They underpay in general which is why their product is buggy

> They underpay in general which is why their product is buggy

I understand the sentiment but I am not convinced that underpay is the cause of buggyness. They compete with a behemoth and it is quite a feat to stay in the game in spite of having a fraction of resources at their disposal compared to thier completion.

Yeah fair it's somewhat cultural, in that they are trying to roll out an insane number of features to best Github, but aren't building them with high quality

My gut feeling is that "a higher salary will make me care more" is one of things that is such common sense that the silent majority doesn't even feel like it needs to be pointed out. I find it difficult to be convinced of the contrary every time someone thinks they have a survey that says otherwise.

What's the problem with that? If Gitlab is not paying top of the market salaries, then they're just going to miss out on top talent, and clearly they're fine with it. It's a free market after all, you don't have to join Gitlab.

From what I've seen the usual points of critique were/are:

* "This person does the exact same work, obviously they need to be paid 30% more than you because they could afford to move close to an expensive city before applying" doesn't sound exactly fair

* "We'll value your work less financially if you move somewhere cheaper (not the other way around though)" isn't particularly great

* The message(s) of "You can work from everywhere, people can move back to rural places and reverse demographic drain from there, you can be close to nature, ..." seem a bit hollow when paired with "oh, and if you actually do any of those great things we'll cut your salary"

* At least when it was public, their salary calculator had some hilarious blind spots (one would hope they have a better process when it actually comes down to it)

For the other perspective, they've written about why they do it: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation..., https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-ra...

They have changed the areas to less specific. Like in Europe not individual countries and cities, but thigs like "nordic". Try paying a Norwegian and a Finn the same multiplier.

Imagine spending so much time and effort to justify paying your employees less. It makes financial sense for a public company with no soul, but I feel bad for gitlab employees.

> They have changed the areas to less specific.

but with a rental-price index for local-ish area instead of trying to capture that in their regions? or total flat?!

> At least when it was public

Thank you, I was thinking I imagined that that existed.

Backpedaling on transparency is the antithesis of leadership.

Is there a word for that? Sabotage? Maybe too dramatic, but if we're going to toss around terms like "world leader" maybe it's not.

Yup, that was my same thought. I live in a "cheaper market" location (Mexico) and at some point looked about working in Gitlab as a Tech Lead / Sr. Dev or something similar, because I liked their service.

The problem is that when I saw their compensation tables for Mexico, their offer was going to cut my salary by about 30% of what I was actually earning (I think it was about $70k USD annual at most, I cannot find the calculator now), in another US company with an office in my hometown. Instead, I went to another US company which is also remote, and got a pay bump to $140,000 USD, working from my country.

I am not asking to get paid in FAANG Valley salaries ($400k+) but even paying me 50%-60% of what they pay to someoneone in the US makes a win-win situation IMHO.

I wonder if Gitlab takes current salary into account? Or is the location-based pay scale the only thing they use? It would seem silly - incompetent even - to not even offer someone's current salary just because of their little calculator.

Although I recent interviewed for a place (the whole gambit) and their offer didn't even match my salary, let alone total comp. And I was very clear. They blamed their "salary bands."

Absolutely nothing is wrong with it.

Just don't call yourself a world leader.

It's in your own personal definition of remote work that people should be paid an universal salary.

Gitlab might not be a world leader in salaries, but they might very well be a world leader in providing the best remote work environment to their employees.

can it really be "best" if you're treated unequally just because live somewhere different?

For some people, sure! There are dozens of other metrics that can be used to evaluate a remote work environment, and for a lot of people "my salary matches my coworkers" doesn't matter as long as it's a good wage relative to what they'd be able to get working in an office locally.

You stance seems to be you can't be the best unless you do _everything_ better than everyone else.

Why would you judge what I want as an employee. If I am happy living in a low cost of living area with the salary I am getting, why is it your problem to worry for me ?

Who would you consider to be operationally and culturally superior in regards to remote work than Gitlab? Asking sincerely, because Gitlab is one of the first brands I think of when people mention "remote first culture".

Kraken has a few thousand employees, has been a remote first company for a decade, and pays the same no matter where you live.

Kraken operates in over 60 countries (according to their website). They pay the same amount across all those territories, including benefits etc.? I find that hard to believe.

For engineering/product etc. that's the case. Doesn't matter if you move from San Francisco to Thailand or some other low cost of living area, your pay remains the same.

Not cutting someone's pay when they move is very different to hiring someone in Thailand on a Bay Area salary.

Why? If both do the same work in the same location, why would one get more than the other.

Either you don't adjust the pay when they move because you are already paying everyone an equal salary. Or you adjust it and pay everyone a local salary.

Gitlab does the latter.

If both do the same work in the same location, why would one get more than the other.

I totally agree. But kirbypineapple's point was about someone's salary not being cut when they move. That's much less interesting than someone in Thailand getting the Bay Area salary when they're hired.

If Kraken pays the same salary for a role regardless of location when they're hiring then that's awesome. I would find that incredibly surprising though, if only because advertising a role on 50* the typical local salary would make hiring really hard because you'd be swamped with low quality applications.

Gitlab just outsources development. It’s that simple.

Why? Because that’s how basic market forces work.

Kraken's offers are not affected by geography in any way. The are engineering salary bands are completely agnostic of region.

Isn't Kraken part of the crypto game? Not sure they can be compared to more mature businesses. Are they paying their employees in tokens?

Ah, so this wasn't gitkraken that was meant, then?

Damn! You just made me spit out my drink!

That's as flimsy a strawman as you could find.

Automattic

If there's nothing wrong with it, why would it preclude one being a world leader.

(not saying GL are, there could be other unrelated things precluding it)

Because being a world leader in remote work would imply they don’t do that?

That doesn’t make sense? Just like universal pay doesn’t make sense unless there is a universal cost to everything.

It makes sense relative to actual world leaders in tech that do not adjust pay based on location.

Why should the definition of "World Leader in Remote" be based on how they pay. Why can't it be based on the fact that they allow fully remote and pay reasonably well for your area. Who decides the definition ?

Well that would be fine and all but there are a zillion tech companies that allow remote work that pay reasonably well. It doesn’t mean they’re a world leader in remote work.

I worked at a small company that paid me a lot, gave me free stuff, perks etc. It doesn’t mean they’re a world leader in remote work. It just means they offer those things.

The point is — they are not a world leader in remote work. They are a tech company with perks and this is good marketing for them to convince people like you otherwise.

> They're only asking for an explanation of your metric: that location based pay grades preclude leadership in remote working. I have yet to see any reasonable case for why this should be?

Not sure how I reply to the comment below by lucideer, I guess HN has a limit on children?

Anywho, this is for him, not you :)

Isn't the burden of proof on the one making the claim?

I have yet to see a reasonable case for why they should be called a global leader when they treat their workers differently for the same output.

Inequality is never going to be associated with a leader in my mind. Maybe from a c-level suit perspective they seem like leaders because they are getting away with making more money at the expense of the people building the product.

> Isn't the burden of proof on the one making the claim?

Yes. It is.

> I have yet to see a reasonable case for why they should be called a global leader when they treat their workers differently for the same output.

My point was no-one has made that claim (nor any similar positive claim - your rephrasing uses weasel words* to bias the interpretation)

The claim being made is as follows: "paying workers geo-adjusted wages precludes a company from being a global leader in remote work".

Noone has claimed that geo-adjusted wages do make them a leader, nor that GL even is a leader. Only one commenter has made a claim: that is that geo-adjusted wages preclude leadership.

* Aside to explain my comment on weasel words: paying the same wage could be as easily interpreted "treating workers differently" given spending power is actually a product of wage / cost-of-living ratio; the value of money is geographically variable

> The claim being made is as follows: "paying workers geo-adjusted wages precludes a company from being a global leader in remote work".

That's just a counter-claim; a denial of the original claim, which was Gitlab's "We are a global leader".

With quite a lot of people saying"No, your behaviour is by definition not that of a leader", I'd say the burden of proof still lies squarely on Gitlab's shoulders: They made a rather bold claim, they get to show that it isn't BS.

> to convince people like you otherwise

Nobody here is "convinced by their marketing" or has even mentioned they believe GLs claim. They're only asking for an explanation of your metric: that location based pay grades preclude leadership in remote working. I have yet to see any reasonable case for why this should be?

Can you name a couple?

The problem is that they don’t offer „location adjusted pricing”. An engineer in Serbia contributes the same value as an engineer in NY to every buck turned by GitLab.

What I don't get is: why would they pay more for someone from San Francisco? I'd expect the incentive to be to indeed pay the same for the same work, but that pay would be the lowest they can get away with. (i.e. I wouldn't expect that to lead to Silicon Valley salaries all over the world.)

Unless it's not actually the same work, and location affects work. It does at least affect gross pay in any case, I suppose.

> why would they pay more for someone from San Francisco?

Because they probably want someone from the area working in the company. If they pay a flat rate globally, they only have to pay average or lower and get great people in LCOL areas. But then you have a company with no people in CA or NY, which means you dont have contact with local trends or contacts in the big tech companies.

Right, so then location does affect the quality of the work provided. Although it then still is weird to base differentiated pay on cost of living / local market rates; surely those don't all correlate with the quality of the work delivered? If you can get an engineer with the same skills from Spain for less money than you'd pay for the equivalent in Germany, why would you hire the latter?

The Bay Area usually commands a premium because a) quality of talent b) the ability to scale out a team.

Quality of talent means not only intelligence and skill but also people who have spent years working on the specific thing you are building (hardware/firmware, AI, at scale codebases or services).

If you assume that timezone matter and relevant experience working in large orgs is important, the Bay Area premium will continue for the foreseeable future.

Scale means you can hire 100-200 talented IC's within a year that meet the quality of talent criteria and have experience working and getting things done in larger orgs, the ability to do so also commands a premium.

Only a few other places in the USA have this scale, i.e New York and Seattle.

Coinbase the company I work for is fully remote and does salary bands by location. Within the USA, Seattle/New York and the Bay Area all are in the same top tier band. Also, the majority of our USA engineering workforce is still based in these hubs despite being fully remote for nearly 2 years. I don't expect this trend to change any time soon.

More like a) well-funded || revenue-generating firms competing in a limited pool of local talent and b) high salaries have yielded high costs of living, so to hire local, we must pay said premium

Coinbase is fully remote, i.e no local talent pool dependency, with no expectation of coming into the office, can hire from anywhere in the USA and still it mainly hires people in those locations.

It's not the only remote company where I've noticed this happening.

> why would they pay more for someone from San Francisco?

I can't answer for GitLab, but widely, people often believe that San Francisco has an "exceptional" talent pool and that companies pay a premium for that because of competition.

But in that case, it's not the same work, no? You can simply pay more for exceptional talent regardless of location, just as how org (theoretically, at least) already differentiate pay based on skill level within the same location.

I agree, I was just putting in plaintext what I've heard others say over the years when I complained about living in a state where I was paid nearly a third of what people doing my same job in SF made. I think those kinds of comments and attitudes that got us here need to be preserved, especially for how combative some of those folk were.

Isn't that Capitalism 101 ? If employees are happy, company is happy, why does it matter ? Why should a company worry about pleasing everyone who is not necessarily part of them. If someone likes what Gitlab does, applies there and gets the salary they want, what's the issue ? If they don't like Gitlab's offer because someone else in a HCOL area may get more, you are essentially comparing with someone else. Not a good idea.

It's because talking about your salary is so widely taboo that you may think your rate of $40k salary is good because it's comfortable in your area, but most chances are you don't realize that your co-worker who has the same skill level and workload is getting paid $80k and that's a good way to piss off your employees.

Pay for skills not for cost of living. You hire someone for what they can bring to the table not how much you can profit off them.

I have no opinion to express on adjusting pay for area of residence, but note that Gitlab's salaries appear to be unusually exceptionally transparent, so your story of taboos about discussing salary and secrecy of colleague's salaries probably does not apply to them.

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...

"You hire someone for what they can bring to the table not how much you can profit off them."

Not sure if I agree with this naive view. Yes, you hire people and give them what they want in exchange for work but at the end of the day, I am absolutely trying to save money as a company and increase profits as long as I am doing it reasonably.

fascinating how people come to the defense of corporations like this.

why? do you feel that someday you'll be in their shoes and have the power to dictate salaries?

you are likely a worker like everyone else here. demand better.

You don’t have to like it, or harbor power fantasies, to be realistic about how supply and demand works out.

> Isn't that Capitalism 101 ? If employees are happy, company is happy, why does it matter ?

I don't blame them for applying "Capitalism 101", but on the other hand, Gitlab is selling an ethos, not just a product¹. Surely, nobody likes to hear "when it's about management, we're rainbow and unicorns, but when it comes to the bottom line, we're capitalism 101".

I also think that they target talented but (from a career perspective) inexperienced engineers (a bit like old Google's free lunch and table tennis tables), which I find - at least - distasteful. Gitlab cleverly capitalizes on their brand, and in addition to the location-based salary optimization, they also offer substandard salaries (or at least, they did for a significant time; I interviewed with them, and by that time, they were paying at least 20% less than comparable companies).

¹: amusingly, they're not immune to marketing nonsense; see, for example, https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/all-remo....

You pay according to location for the same bottle of Coke? How is work pay different?

Why shouldn't payment for work be tied to local price ranges and cost of living?

GitLab doesn't charge based on the location of their customers.

Gitlab ideally wants clients in Silicon Valley but staff in Lahore.

For GitLab it doesn’t matter where their client resides because they don’t charge based on location. A client in Lahore pays the same as a client in Silicon Valley.

The metaphor is SV has stacks of cash for revenue

Never thought about this, but man, very much this.

It hits pretty hard when you think about it. The "product distribution" cost is the same worldwide on the internet, vs a physical good like a soft drinks can.

Because physical goods are subject to differently priced logistics and local ingridients and remote work is not? Seriously, how can you even compare?

in the tech job market generally, the value of the work to the company puts an upper bar on a salary, but competition with other employers for the same worker puts a lower bar on salary (obviously along with other factors like the company's reputation, mission, benefits). In practice all salaries are set by the latter rule, which means they depend on the job market, which varies by location. That salaries should not depend on location is a fantasy based on some weird idea of people getting "paid what they deserve"—a fallacious association between your salary and your worth as a person, which people would do well to get over.

> which means they depend on the job market, which varies by location

Aren't you commenting on a post about remote work? Their job market is global (within limitations.)

It’s only a global market if there’s a meaningful number of employers treating it as one. From what I’ve seen, and what the comments on this post have been able to show, such employers seem few and far between.

The price of Coke is influenced by logistics but ultimately it's determined by the market (supply and demand), exactly the same as your work, that's capitalism.

What's the market in this context is of course the interesting question.

The market for Coca-Cola is very different from that of software programming labour: Soda pop can only be consumed where it is actually located, so is affected by, as you pointed out, logistics and (local!) supply and demand.

Remote programming work, on the other hand, is the opposite: At least the demand side is, as this whole discussion exemplifies, global -- Gitlab isn't local to all the locations where their remote employees live. (If it were, they wouldn't be remote.)

But then the employees' supply of labour isn't local either: They're offering their labour to Gitlab, a non-local employer (and potentially to other non-local employers too).

It's utterly baffling how much of this discussion seems to be assuming that Gitlab (or other remote employers) play on a global market, but their employees on a local one. If that were the case, how could any of those employees ever be employed by any of these employers? The very fact that any transactions -- i.e. employment contracts -- ever arise shows that both parties are playing on the same market.

Why would you pay two people doing the same job vastly different salaries because one lives in A and the other lives in B? That's the better question to be answered. I am not bottle of coke, and neither are my colleagues, we're humans, so your analogy makes zero sense.

Well, it is great way to make talent in HoCL areas get priced out of the market, should the market reach a point where there's enough talent in LoCL willing to work for lower rates. Theoretically, anyway.

> Why shouldn't payment for work be tied to local price ranges and cost of living?

Why should it be? You pay someone enough to get them to work for you instead of someone else. That's the sole reason you pay someone anything at all. And there's no reason to pay them any more than that. How do local prices and cost of living fit into that equation?

Presumably GitLab will stop using local prices and cost of living when continuing to use them gets in the way of hiring developers they'd like to hire. As of now, it seems that it's working for them.

If we enter a world where most SWEs work remotely and few other companies are paying location-based, we might see GitLab change their tune. For now, they're competing first and foremost against local jobs.

Yes, but that is not a company that should be praised as world leader in remote work.

How do you expect to ever raise the standard of living in poor countries if you exploit their labor for pennies on the dollar. No different from apple and other who move manufacturing to cheap labor.

A real leader in remote work would try to be a part of the solution, not actively fight against it.

Just because a company may not pay salaries compared to say Bay Area, doesn't mean they are not paying great salary for your location. It is a stretch to say that they are exploiting labor for pennies if they are paying a good market rate salary for the area they are hiring in.

Ah, so exactly the same model like the sweatshops in Asia. Pay just good enough that they can't afford to not do the job. Very generous.

Nice but wrong. Sweatshops pay like shit. I am talking about good Pay in your area (greater than average cost of living). Apples and Oranges.

> Sweatshops pay like shit.

Like Gitlab then?

> For now, they're competing first and foremost against local jobs.

'We keep up with mediocre local jobs' is hardly 'world leader' is it?

The cost of most commodities varies by location. This includes Coke. It is called price discrimination.

The whole reason DVDs had regions was to price the same DVD differently based on location. As long as companies can, they will price and pay different amounts for the same thing based on local factors.

But price discrimination by region doesn't fit great with boasting about "leadership". Say what you want about the MPAA (and RIAA), but who would buy them crowing about anything like "leading the free global market for media"? Leading the world in exploiting the free market, sure.

So, you were saying that's the kind of "leadership" Gitlab is boasting about, or...?

If I work for a US based company, my wages should go up relative to the higher USD.

It's cheaper for them to hire people while things around foreign works are going up in price. The pay should be adjusted accordingly.

Because you're paying me for my skills and expertise, not for where I live.

100% absolutely agreed. You're paying me for the work I can do for you. If someone else on the team with the same role and JD as me, gets paid more while you expect the _same level of work_ from us both, that's bullshit. Admit then you the company are paying less because you want the cheaper labor and don't complain when I put in less effort thsn the other person you're paying more. Paid for effort and knowledge, not the goddamn city I live in. If it's the same job, it should pay the same wage. Period.

This is likely correct in the long run and it means software engineering compensation will be dropping significantly in the next decade.

This line has been repeated ad nauseum but I have never seen any backing data. Why would salaries decrease? Software development, done well, is a highly technical craft. Maybe for the first rung of developers it'll go way down but those Staff/Senior Staff I would expect to still command large salaries.

This is the “eat it too” aspect which a lot of other threads here seem to be ignoring.

Incredibly naive to assume that in the knowledge industry, you can compare two people's work.

How do you measure this?

Their pay was abysmally low last time I applied. The company seems cool but the salaries as a senior were honestly kind of silly in this market.

Then you missed the biggest advantage of remote only: they can hire from any market.

It’s kinda funny everyone here arguing they should be paid the same regardless of location - but then complaining when the reality of that wish is not what they’d imagined.

yes, very silly that people desire equally well paid jobs regardless of location. how very silly of them.

But if you're from the US, remote could mean you're competing with prospective employees from all over the world, who will often be cheaper. So equal pay would be getting lowballed even more, I'd think?

It just doesn’t match the reality of market forces and it’s obvious.

Agreed. Underpaying engineers is not funny. Perhaps desirable for a cookie-cutter, third-tier, sweatshop that runs on labor as dumb as their management. But not desirable for profitable firms that require real talent.

As a a manager who's hired remote engineers across 3 countries, Gitlab's salaries are laughably low.

When I interviewed there in 2017, when I (temporarily) lived in Argentina, I was told the role would pay $60k USD in Argentina pesos. Assuming they made no adjustments, In today's USD, my pay would of been $52k/yr due to currency value loss. Even in 'any market' their pay didn't make any sense.

I’m very sorry to jump out with this but there is no such thing as „would of”: https://grammarist.com/usage/would-have-wouldve-or-would-of/.

:'(

Evidently not. Can't hire in a market where your offers aren't competitive.

I think their remote pay is based on some kind of survey of local salaries? There's no tech jobs near me, so I guess they picked up the next-best-thing which was maybe like call centre workers or something? It was so low I wouldn't recommend to a new-grad, and this was for senior level. When you looked they also had these peculiar small islands of higher pay - so I guess it's really pay by what you can negotiate and they create an island for you if you're important enough?

What pay was that? Last I checked Gitlab's pay for a junior QA/SDET positions was about $15,000 $30,000 more then most local Canadian tech companies pay for senior/staff level.

The comparation is great: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/all-remo...

Although it is comparing with a thing they basically say "we define it as not having these benefits". I know companies I would define as "hybrid" were not all those negatives apply.

To elaborate, the above is a table highlighting all the benefits of Full Remote over Hybrid Remote.

Looking for a free ad, Gitlab?

I think it would be nice to, and probably time for, gitlab to get its playbook finalised and in printed form, with an isbn and everything.

Lol, absolutely not. Top remote talent would never put up with their location-based pay bullshit.

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