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Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

about.gitlab.com

111–120 of 254 posts

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#111
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no fair. There's supply, demand and people trying to make their ends meet in between. You are just the same hired worker as everyone else, and if your bosses found a way to get your work for less money, they would gladly do it - it's just they can't. People with other professions are not paid less because of you, they are paid less because of capitalists, who get much more money than you and maintain this sys…

> Do you really feel "rich" as a hired employee? Relatively rich, yes. I don't think any other kind of rich exists – there's always a bigger fish :) Were we on a different website with a different audience we may be having this conversation about private jets – or a dinner at a restaurant. Perhaps "rich" was the poor choice of the word (no pun intended), but I think the meaning is preserved. And yes, you're right: it…

> I don't think any other kind of rich exists

There are many definitions. I think the most useful and wide-spread one – even among non-economists – is from the OECD: you are rich if your household equivalised disposable income is ≥150% of the median of the country.

If you want to find out whether you meet the criterium, then try to find some newspaper articles on the Web about the poverty line or poverty gap that embed JS calculators. Otherwise see http://enwp.org/Equivalisation if you want to crunch the numbers yourself.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#112

How do people whiteboard remotely? This is a big problem for many development teams. Sometimes you just want to open a blank whiteboard and scribble some boxes and brainstorm or troubleshoot some things. The whiteboard is an inseparable part of nearly every meeting. And no, remote "canvas" whiteboards don't work. They end up looking like this: https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2015/3-3/jLndYAfNf... . Is there…

I actually found remote whiteboards to work quite well when used with a proper pen tablet (like a Wacom Intous). Downside of that is of course increased cost, as equipping everyone with one of those isn't that cheap. It also takes some time to get used to using those, but for permanent remote situations this is about as close as you will get to in-person whiteboards.

A less sophisticated variant that works well for a lot of cases is draw.io (personal preference; other diagramming tools might work just as well). It doesn't give you real-time collaboration of the same board and also no freeform drawing, but a lot of the things you want to articulate in meetings are diagrams anyway. Whenever you want to articulate an idea, you just open the page, and screenshare that.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#113

How do people whiteboard remotely? This is a big problem for many development teams. Sometimes you just want to open a blank whiteboard and scribble some boxes and brainstorm or troubleshoot some things. The whiteboard is an inseparable part of nearly every meeting. And no, remote "canvas" whiteboards don't work. They end up looking like this: https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2015/3-3/jLndYAfNf... . Is there…

Google also has a tool for this that seems promising:

https://gsuite.google.com/intl/en/products/jamboard/

I can access it under drive.google.com > New > More, on my gsuite account

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#114

I find it interesting how they achieve this and it also gives people in remote places the ability to work for such a company. What I don't agree with is the pay scale they use based on your location. If you have the same skills, you should be paid the same.

The regional coefficients they use to set salary are a real turn off. https://about.gitlab.com/salary/data.json

Ouch, even within Australia they have large discrepancies between capital cities. One of the reasons why remote work appealed to me, was that I was hoping to escape the unfair wage difference between cities. The fact GitLab maintains it despite not having to pay for real estate in the city you work from is totally unreasonable. Same work, same pay. I'll never apply for them.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regional coefficients they use to set salary are a real turn off. https://about.gitlab.com/salary/data.json

Ouch, even within Australia they have large discrepancies between capital cities. One of the reasons why remote work appealed to me, was that I was hoping to escape the unfair wage difference between cities. The fact GitLab maintains it despite not having to pay for real estate in the city you work from is totally unreasonable. Same work, same pay. I'll never apply for them.

I went through the interview process and got turned off by the same thing.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#116
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand why a company won't hire from Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, Crimea – exposure to US sanctions threatens to cause severe negative repercussions. But, why single out France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Sweden and Austria out of EU member states? What problems do they have which other EU member states lack? Similarly, if Argentina and Brazil are a problem, what about Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ve…

Must be related to employee rights, either something highly specific that is a dealbreaker to them (what would Austria have that Germany has not?) or it's a growing list based on precedence, likely full of permanently encoded biases depending on whoever was the initial candidate.

(edit: precedent, not precedence, if that wasn't obvious, sorry for the spam)

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#117

How do people whiteboard remotely? This is a big problem for many development teams. Sometimes you just want to open a blank whiteboard and scribble some boxes and brainstorm or troubleshoot some things. The whiteboard is an inseparable part of nearly every meeting. And no, remote "canvas" whiteboards don't work. They end up looking like this: https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2015/3-3/jLndYAfNf... . Is there…

Actually I wrote just such a solution: https://whiteboardfox.com

It's a canvas solution, but if you have a stylus with a table then you can get pretty good outcome: https://s1.whiteboardfox.com/s/27e946824d29abc2.png

You can also 'replay' your whiteboard session: https://whiteboardfox.com/1428618-3583-6927?replay&speed=4.0

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#118
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay people less not because of "relative purchasing power" or because they want them to have the "same relative quality of life" or some such sentimental nonsense but because they can get away with it. The cost of life is totally irrelevant, the alternative options someone has in he market-place based on their location are. Did you look at those numbers at all?

I wonder how this works. If someone could work remotely for GitLab, they could also do another remote job for another global player, so local prices don't matter that much. Maybe this strategy can work now when there are only a few remote jobs to choose from. But I guess the coronavirus will accelerate growth of remote jobs when more companies see remote has some benefits.

This is absolutely the case. About a year ago I was looking for new work and, having previously enjoyed managing a GitLab installation, was very keen to interview with them.

It felt like it would be a perfect fit, based on our shared cultural values regarding remote work, transparency, open source and other technology choices.

After seeing the calculator, I decided not to interview at all, and had another remote job a few days later with more pay than I had in Boston and New York. I live in Bangkok, Thailand.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#119
post #111
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really feel "rich" as a hired employee? Relatively rich, yes. I don't think any other kind of rich exists – there's always a bigger fish :) Were we on a different website with a different audience we may be having this conversation about private jets – or a dinner at a restaurant. Perhaps "rich" was the poor choice of the word (no pun intended), but I think the meaning is preserved. And yes, you're right: it…

> I don't think any other kind of rich exists There are many definitions. I think the most useful and wide-spread one – even among non-economists – is from the OECD: you are rich if your household equivalised disposable income is ≥150% of the median of the country. If you want to find out whether you meet the criterium, then try to find some newspaper articles on the Web about the poverty line or poverty gap that emb…

> you are rich if your household equivalised disposable income is ≥150% of the median of the country

Sounds sensible, thanks.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#120
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regional coefficients they use to set salary are a real turn off. https://about.gitlab.com/salary/data.json

Apart from being a turn-off, the location factors are also off: Poland - 33.3 Czech Republic - 37 Belarus - 41 Moldova - 41

You can actually open a Merge Request to fix it! (or raise awareness)
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