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GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

forbes.com

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Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#181

Post by zegl »

sytse wrote: post #88
gquiniou wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that Gitlab does not currently hire in some locations (e.g. France, Italy or Spain). Is it because of local laws or other reasons ?

Local law is the most common reasons although there is also non-local law such as US sanctions and other reasons. For a complete list see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines

How come you're not able to hire in some countries in the EU? Sweden, Italy, Spain, and France are on the blacklist.

A Spanish citizen can work for a company registered in any other EU country without any problems.

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#182

Post by jedberg »

nakodari wrote: post #5

The first half of the article doesn't even name the business. The name of the business, GitLab, is hidden in the second half of the article. This is an example of a publication optimizing blindly for Google Search Optimization where they want to improve "Time on site" and other data by keeping the readers on the page as long as possible. It's frustrating. Google's algorithm needs to be updated to make it smarter othe…

I don't think this is a new trend that has anything to do with SEO. It's called "burying the lede" and has been done since the beginning of commercial journalism.

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#183

Post by AmericanChopper »

wastedhours wrote: post #105
AmericanChopper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate it almost as much as the ‘soft lede’, where the author decides to spend a few paragraphs describing the weather and kind of jacket the subject of their article is wearing before they get to the point. Maybe it’s SEO, but it just gives me the impression that the author had a failed career as a novelist, and wants to waste my time as an outlet for their creative writing impulses.

Or maybe that's their writing style and the story they're writing? I'm not usually dismissive, but honestly, people are free to write the article as they wish to, and we're free to read it or not. It always annoys me when people complain about recipe sites for example "I don't want to know what clothes you were wearing when you cooked it, just give me the measurements". > waste my time as an outlet for their creative…

> What gives us the right to demand something from a writer that isn't what they were writing?

I’m not demanding anything, I’m just making a statement about my personal taste. If I click on an article, it’s because the headline interested me. If I start reading it to find the content is not at all related to that headline, I just feel annoyed and usually close the page.

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#184

Post by giobox »

zegl wrote: post #181
sytse wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local law is the most common reasons although there is also non-local law such as US sanctions and other reasons. For a complete list see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines

How come you're not able to hire in some countries in the EU? Sweden, Italy, Spain, and France are on the blacklist. A Spanish citizen can work for a company registered in any other EU country without any problems.

There are 28 States operating their own legal systems in the EU and each is free to pass (and does pass!) its own employment and business related legislation albeit within some boundaries of EU law. While I can’t answer this question, it’s not that big of a shock there might be legal issues.

The EU’s “Freedom of Movement” alone does not guarantee a business a right to employ individuals in all 28 States, even if it does greatly help in removing some barriers and permits you as an EU citizen to work In any of them. Any of these states can place additional legal burdens on Gitlab as the employer that it may not be able to meet in its current form, which is presumably what has happened.

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#185

Post by sytse »

zegl wrote: post #181
sytse wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local law is the most common reasons although there is also non-local law such as US sanctions and other reasons. For a complete list see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines

How come you're not able to hire in some countries in the EU? Sweden, Italy, Spain, and France are on the blacklist. A Spanish citizen can work for a company registered in any other EU country without any problems.

This probably has to do with local regulations. For example (this might be part of our reasons to hire there) in Spain all employees now have to clock in and out https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/13/inenglish/1557739540_96...

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#186

Post by emilycook »

jedberg wrote: post #180
emilycook wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best response to this that I can give is a link to our blog post about this, where we break down why we pay local rates: https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ So disclaimer, I work for GitLab. But the draw to working here isn't the possibility of making an SF salary, it's to work remotely for the same salary as working for a local company. I don't really care if I'm making less than a collea…

It doesn't bother you that one of your colleagues in SF doing the exact same work as you gets paid double to also work from home?

Not really, my motivation to accept a job at GitLab didn't come from how much I could make relative to everyone else in the company, it came from how I could be doing the same work I was doing for a local company but from home. Salaries aren't the only thing that make one company more appealing than another.

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#187

Post by WA »

emilycook wrote: post #167
sunaurus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you guys planning on ever removing the "location factor" from your compensation calculations? That's the only thing that's preventing me from applying - apparently I'm only worth 0.4x as much as a "SF Benchmark" developer to you guys right now, because I choose to live in a cheaper part of the world.

The best response to this that I can give is a link to our blog post about this, where we break down why we pay local rates: https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ So disclaimer, I work for GitLab. But the draw to working here isn't the possibility of making an SF salary, it's to work remotely for the same salary as working for a local company. I don't really care if I'm making less than a collea…

Why not compare with other remote companies, but with local ones?

Furthermore, I’d care a lot if I made a lot less than a colleague for the same type of work at the same company.

Living in a cheap area comes with drawbacks. It might be a good choice for some, but a necessity for others (maybe they have relatives to take care of). I don’t really see how my choice of location should affect my payment in a remote company at all. But then, maybe a company like Gitlab wouldn’t be the right place for me, because I don’t share their salary philosophy.

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#188

Post by peterbell_nyc »

emilycook wrote: post #167
sunaurus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you guys planning on ever removing the "location factor" from your compensation calculations? That's the only thing that's preventing me from applying - apparently I'm only worth 0.4x as much as a "SF Benchmark" developer to you guys right now, because I choose to live in a cheaper part of the world.

The best response to this that I can give is a link to our blog post about this, where we break down why we pay local rates: https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ So disclaimer, I work for GitLab. But the draw to working here isn't the possibility of making an SF salary, it's to work remotely for the same salary as working for a local company. I don't really care if I'm making less than a collea…

That's a great way of hiring people who aren't good enough to get a remote job at SF wages. The problem is that it cuts off the ability to hire the top of the market. I currently live in Boulder, Co, but I never even considered working for a business that wasn't in (and paying like) NY or SF.

For top talent you're not competing with the local crappy .NET consulting shop paying $60k a year, you're competing with every SV startup that's open to going remote for the right hires.

All that said, lots of reasons other than comp to take a position, and it seems to be working just fine for GitLab!

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#189

Post by pkaye »

jacquesm wrote: post #154
mynegation wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing petty about it. Everyone does it, but GitLab is just more transparent about it. It is up to you whether you accept the compensation level or not, GitLab is far from a monopoly on labour demand

> Everyone does it We don't. Obviously we're not at the scale of Gitlab but we do not care whether you live in France, Italy, Germany, Poland, NL, Canada, the United States or any other place. (But those are the places that our colleagues are in, and there are more on the way.)

So what kind of vacation/sick days plan does your company offer globally?

Re: GitLab – A $1B business where all employees work remotely

#190

Post by emilycook »

peterbell_nyc wrote: post #188
emilycook wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best response to this that I can give is a link to our blog post about this, where we break down why we pay local rates: https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ So disclaimer, I work for GitLab. But the draw to working here isn't the possibility of making an SF salary, it's to work remotely for the same salary as working for a local company. I don't really care if I'm making less than a collea…

That's a great way of hiring people who aren't good enough to get a remote job at SF wages. The problem is that it cuts off the ability to hire the top of the market. I currently live in Boulder, Co, but I never even considered working for a business that wasn't in (and paying like) NY or SF. For top talent you're not competing with the local crappy .NET consulting shop paying $60k a year, you're competing with every…

> The problem is that it cuts off the ability to hire the top of the market.

To be frank, I don't think the gap in skill between the top-top-top tier employees and those who are competitive candidates for non-SF salary remote positions is all that wide, nor do I think it's necessary for a company's success to only hire the absolute pinnacle of talent. We're also not competing in the same consumer market as many SV startups, so if a different remote company has a higher saturation of top-tier developers, I'm not sure why that affects us unless they're a competitor.

I do see this point though, and I'm sure Sid does as well, but the level of skill that the people I work with have vs the employees at my previous (local) company is incomparable. Everyone is very good at what they do, and are motivated to continue working here because of all of the other perks of working for a company like GitLab.

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