Gitlab foundation established to increase people’s lifetime earnings | Hacker News Reader

Gitlab foundation established to increase people’s lifetime earnings

gitlabfoundation.org

50 pointspyrodactyl39 comments

If Gitlab wants to increase peoples' lifetime earning, why not start with its own employees? Didn't they layoff hundreds of people?

Yes, they let go 130 employees a couple of months ago. They're also a company whose remote pay is dependent on location. So they're unwilling to pay people what they're actually worth.

> They're also a company whose remote pay is dependent on location. So they're unwilling to pay people what they're actually worth.

They are also paying significantly less than their competitors. No wonder they are falling behind.

I have no clue what this "foundation" is, the wording is extremely vague.

"They're also a company whose remote pay is dependent on location."

What is it with companies doing this? It never made sense to me that a company would pay me more or less depending on where I lived. If I'm doing the same work why should my location matter?

Oh man, I agree with you. The typical answer is: market.

But on a side note, this should make us blatantly clear that, all else being equal, our work has no inherent value.

To take the point further: nothing, ultimately, has any inherent value.

I use it to my advantage - if I'm remote working for the Bay Area I can double my local salary but still be significantly lower than a Bay Area local.

Yeah, just like you pay same price for house, food, daycare, school, medical treatment and so on. If it is same square foot why does it matter if house is in Cleveland, Ohio or San Francisco, CA.

Evil GitLab is unwilling to pay people what they're actually worth. Poor GitLab employees worldwide cannot resist from being taken advantage of and have to work for unworthy amounts...

Every time GitLab comes up someone will bring this topic up.

San Francisco salaries are not a worldwide benchmark of people's worth.

There are valid reasons why GitLab doesn't pay engineers in Kenya $200k.

Should I also swing your logic the other way?

If an engineer in Kenya for $50k does the same work and output as you, a $200k engineer in SF, can we now say you're being overpaid 4x what you're actually worth?

If people don't understand why companies pays local labour market rates, either look at GitLab's income statement and multiply 2000 employees by your definition of "worth" or start your own business and show how everyone in the world can pay 8 billion people the same salaries. Good luck.

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

https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-ra...

> If an engineer in Kenya for $50k does the same work and output as you, a $200k engineer in SF, can we now say you're being overpaid 4x what you're actually worth?

No. If GitLab thought the work was only worth $50k, they wouldn't pay anyone anywhere $200k for the job.

If they do pay $200k for the job anywhere, they must expect to receive more than $200k in return, and pocket the difference.

It doesn't work like that. It's more like: there's a 250k budget. We got an ex-googler-ex-meta-kid for 200k, so that leaves us 50k for a... Kenya engineer. Then, once both are on-boarded, gee, the Kenya engineer is twice as productive as the googler kid. Jackpot!

Exactly, jackpot! Because the Kenyan engineer is getting paid a lot less than he's worth.

Why do they need an ex-googler-ex-meta-kid then? Why not 5 Kenya engineers?

Because the "HR-system" has a high-salary bonus payoff in many cases (think of headhunters who get paid as % of the hire's pay). HR people also work on a "prize" mindset, the word "headhunter" says it all. Getting someone out of a FAANG into your team is highly valued, independently of early performance indicators. The whole IT team thing also has a social-status and peer-pressure game on, so the next hire may ask "who will I'll be working with?". Finally, hiring is imperfect, it's human nature almost all the way and it suffers from a lot of guesswork, due to lack of hard data on the candidate, scarcity and critical time pressure on the process. So hiring managers are biased and tend to project an image of who they are hiring based on prejudices and a rigid mindset.

It needs to be pointed out that, although an ex-googler may not be as productive as our imaginary highly productive Kenyan engineer, they could bring valuable experience with things such latest/secretive tech, hot contacts in the business with the resulting network effects, great communication skills and novel and healthy work habits and team culture.

People are not paid based on their value. They are paid based on what the labor market drives. There’s some relationship to value, but it depends on how many people can and are willing to do the job.

People are actually worth what they are able to get paid, and are willing to accept. Period. End of story.

That would result in a $1 increase per dollar spent, which is 1% of the ROI they're aiming for.

Increasing people's lifetime earnings != "you shouldn't be allowed to fire anyone, ever." I mean come on.

I understand your point, but Gitlab is a productivity company. They increase peoples' lifetime earnings by making them more productive, allowing them to increase their economic output and demand more compensation for their labor. Laying off people is an admission that Gitlab isn't able to deploy additional capital towards making people more productive anymore. So to then announce that Gitlab is establishing this foundation just seems like delusional management.

That doesn't follow. Laying off people is an admission that they hired more people than they need, that's it.

It's like saying "wow Red Cross, why not just invest in your own employees before you talk about improving other people's lives????"

> That doesn't follow. Laying off people is an admission that they hired more people than they need, that's it.

Yes, exactly. Gitlab reached their ability to deploy capital and need to scale back head count.

Using your Red Cross example, it's like the Red Cross announcing a new initiative outside of their area of expertise to help people while actively scaling back programs they had in place to help people.

Yes, and that would be valid if the new initiative is intended to help more people. That should be obvious! GitLab laid off 120 employees. 120 people, that's it. Don't you think that this new initiative is meant to help more than that?

Gitlab is a productivity company. People use productivity products because it increases their lifetime earnings, e.g. this product will allow me to do more work and doing more work will allow me to earn more money. The layoffs aren’t just about the 120 employees. The layoffs show that Gitlab is out of ideas about how to make its users more productive. As a company, Gitlab is clearly falling behind GitHub. So this foundation just seems silly.

> The layoffs show that Gitlab is out of ideas about how to make its users more productive.

I'm not sure you understand what layoffs are...They happen when a company grows their headcount faster than they can monetize it. Layoffs don't mean "zero ideas", they mean "growing slower than their headcount."

You can have layoffs but announce new initiatives in the same week.

While we are at it why not double executive salary. It will increase their lifetime earning.

It would also help if they improved their product with better pricing.

I know they're just starting, but this is so vague...

> grow their lifetime earnings through education, training, access to opportunities, and systems change on a global scale

What is their actual plan? What opportunities? What systems?

I hope they make a positive impact but so far it just seems like marketing hype.

There are some concrete examples here, but it really feels like most of the opportunities are around software as that's still the lowest-barrier, training-time-efficient, highest paying job you can learn remotely. That's by far the easiest way to reach their 1:100 investment/income ratio.

https://gitlabfoundation.notion.site/Activities-47c282c91b54...

https://gitlabfoundation.notion.site/Intervention-Points-50f...

Hypothetically, if every one does the same career, then all salaries will decrease in that career. Supply / demand.

We need a healthy, heterogeneous career market. Driving everyone to become programmers isn't it.

I'm very skeptical of their "North Star". They want the "lifetime earnings" of individuals to increase by 100x their investment. Isn't it extremely difficult to even measure this metric? That is something that would take decades to measure. You can't just extrapolate on temporary increases because people lose/change jobs regularly.

They don't define anywhere in their handbook how they're actually going to measure this AFAICT.

The handbook which is linked is both irritating to navigate, and seemingly anemic. There are, however, hints as to their specific future funding activities, which include Offline Freecodecamp and Last Mile, with hints in the Activities section that lead me to deduce that the activities will be in the communities where Last Mile and the like work. Which is admirable. The results-focused aspect is different to any I've come across before, and I'll be interested to see if there's any future update on how they actually do.

I wonder what the research shows behind increasing peoples profits vs decreasing cost of living vs affecting non-financial changes on peoples quality of life and happiness.

Massive over simplification but surely if everyone keeps trying to earn more money - that money has to come from somewhere, inflation happens and we're at where we are now all over again. The game is rigged.

> Massive over simplification but surely if everyone keeps trying to earn more money - that money has to come from somewhere, inflation happens and we're at where we are now all over again. The game is rigged.

Humans do not all learn at the same rate. We will not be "where we are now all over again", as many people will be much smarter and more experienced.

They're talking about earning though - not learning.

Earning more money over time is a skill, one that people learn after they are born and begin participating in the economy.

Not everyone acquires this skill at the same rate. Some never acquire it. Some acquire it and leave it at an average level. Some are constantly trying to level up this skill.

Seems oddly secretive. Very strange mission. Could be some kind of front funneling money to a rebel group for as vague as it’s written.

What does any of it have to do with hosting repos? Please, just do the one thing.

Relevant S-3 ASR[1] filed last week Friday.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1653482/000162828023...

Who are the "people"??

I'm very confused what this actually is

ELI5, anyone?

Same here, I have so many questions, are they gonna provide tutorials on how to make money, is it in any way related to Gitlab as a product, is it about directly giving away money, I mean it could be a pyramid scheme for all we know...

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