Our Handbook is open source: here's why • Hacker News Board

Re: Our Handbook is open source: here's why

#101

Post by x1798DE » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 1:13 AM UTC

sytse wrote: post #63

repomies691 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people are paid according what they spend, not what they produce? That doesn't sound very sensible to me.

We thought about paying independent of location. If we pay everyone the same we would have either a huge burn rate or we could never hire great people from the Bay Area. Another consideration is that people's costs are strongly related to where they live. But I can also see the case for paying everyone the same. But I think other remote friendly companies are doing the same as us, this video shows how Travis CI think…

> Another consideration is that people's costs are strongly related to where they live.

I think what's more important is that their competing offers from local companies will necessarily be higher, so assuming they're worth the higher price, you have to pay it.

Re: Our Handbook is open source: here's why

#102

Post by elliotec » Sun, Jul 17, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #98

elliotec wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay is not even close to competitive. I've been through the interview process and they wouldn't budge on what would be a 40% cut for me. Very disappointing considering how amazing everything else is. I felt a bit insulted, considering their inflexible rate was several thousand dollars lower than my first dev job.

Right. It's pretty ridiculous that they don't put that front and center, but that "the low pay issue" has to bubble up somewhere in the comments. I find it rather distasteful to lean on open source as the primary reason for paying engineers less. It's plain from comments here and elsewhere that the main pressure is to keep the burn rate low. Which is fine, that's not a dumb thing to want to keep under control. But as…

Completely agree. Bit of a shame honestly.

Re: Our Handbook is open source: here's why

#103

Post by kirtant » Sun, Jul 17, 2016, 8:16 AM UTC

sytse wrote: post #7

Odenwaelder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for free unlimited private repos and GitLab CI. This made me switch from GitHub.

Glad to hear that. We'll try to keep providing amazing value on GitLab.com. We working on introducing a browser IDE and review apps.

Browser IDE sounds interesting to me integrated with gitlab. Can't wait to try it out!

Re: Our Handbook is open source: here's why

#104

Post by sytse » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #98

elliotec wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay is not even close to competitive. I've been through the interview process and they wouldn't budge on what would be a 40% cut for me. Very disappointing considering how amazing everything else is. I felt a bit insulted, considering their inflexible rate was several thousand dollars lower than my first dev job.

Right. It's pretty ridiculous that they don't put that front and center, but that "the low pay issue" has to bubble up somewhere in the comments. I find it rather distasteful to lean on open source as the primary reason for paying engineers less. It's plain from comments here and elsewhere that the main pressure is to keep the burn rate low. Which is fine, that's not a dumb thing to want to keep under control. But as…

We do try to be open about it: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/#compens... "We pay on the lower end of market rates for engineering positions because we offer the benefit of working on open source (great workflow, peers, build reputation); most engineers take a pay cut to join."

And we're working on a Global Compensation Framework https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TEHZTvg9jxlwvKvsc5fm2FvZ... so that you can calculate your compensation before even applying.

Re: Our Handbook is open source: here's why

#105

Post by eliranm » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 8:30 AM UTC

groovy2shoes wrote: post #13

sytse wrote: post #5

I'm almost going to bed (it is 10:30pm in San Francisco) but I thought it might be interesting to share some deep links: The marketing team has their OKR embedded in the handbook https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/#okrs If we meet our sales target everyone in the company gets a free dinner https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#sales-target-dinner There is a pretty sweet Kramdown SSG guideline https://about.gitl…

Coffee break calls are such a great idea! As someone who works remotely, that is something I will be doing as well from here on out :)

Thanks! I indeed contributed this idea - I think that's something that is definitely missing in the remote work environment, those casual conversations.