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Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

about.gitlab.com

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Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#131

Post by clarry »

mic47 wrote: post #125
wpietri wrote: post #2

I appreciate they have a whole section on disadvantages, but this stands out to me: "All-remote companies should consider meetings as a last resort, instead relying on asynchronous collaboration tools[...]" To me, this implies a further disadvantage: extremely high latency when compared with in-person collaboration. That can be fine for some things. But there's all sorts of work where I really value live discussion.…

> To me, this implies a further disadvantage: extremely high latency when compared with in-person collaboration. First, it's high latency, not extremely high latency. Second, it has huge advantages: 1.) While latency (in terms of how quickly you finish task) will increase, your bandwidth will increase too. Everyone get more done. 2.) With asynchronous communication, you are not interrupted by communication, you can d…

> 1.) While latency (in terms of how quickly you finish task) will increase, your bandwidth will increase too

It has to increase to make up for the round trips you can't afford: you try to communicate more information in one batch. Whether this is good or bad really depends. On one hand, I think it just forces communication to be better, on the other hand you might waste time communicating things that you'd immediately find to be unnecessary if you were interacting live with the other party.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#132

Post by C1sc0cat »

AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #38
skissane wrote: post #24

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…

Local employment laws. They are totally not the same in EU, not to mention Latin America or Middle East.

Yes the Eu has directives about employment law which are implemented locally.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#133

Post by lbotos »

sschueller wrote: post #3

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.

Most large multinationals do not pay everyone the same. Remote or not:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21127827

Google uses pay scale based on your location. I'm sure hundreds of others do as well.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#134

Post by jcims »

soren_dahl wrote: post #10
sschueller wrote: post #3

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

Google does the same thing, they just aren’t this transparent about it. In fact every company I’ve worked for has a COL multiplier in their comp plan. It’s odd seeing everyone bandwagon on this about Gitlab as if it’s an uncommon practice.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#135

Post by lbotos »

usrusr wrote: post #42
skissane wrote: post #24

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.

It's mostly related to employment entity complexity vs. organizational demand for that location.

To operate legally as a business in most of those countries on that list adds complexity that leadership has deemed "not yet". Doesn't mean forever, just means, not yet. I've seen countries come and go off of the list.

Source: 3.5 years at GitLab.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#136

Post by dzikimarian »

pkolaczk wrote: post #19
dzikimarian wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it even made a sense to hire you then? When local employee costs the same? One of reasons to hire remotely is to optimize cost of conducting business. Without it a lot of these positions wouldn't exist in the first place.

One of the reasons to hire remotely is access to a bigger talent pool. You can also save up big on not running offices in all major cities.

That's another valid reason, but it doesn't allow to dismiss factor of cost of employee entirely.

Company, I work for, has office in capital city, and offices in smaller cities. Talent pool of capital city would easily accommodate us. Other offices exist because it's cheaper to hire there. If cost would be the same, they would simply cease to exist. Cost difference in means of the building is less than 5% of overall monthly budget, so, while helping it's not deciding factor.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#137

Post by bluGill »

aidos wrote: post #43
eloisant wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software companies like Gitlab don't address a local market. They target a global market, which is the same no matter where you're based and no matter where your employees live. If you can afford to pay San Francisco developers a given salary, you can afford to pay Des Moines employees as much. Let the employees benefit from their cheaper location rather than taking that away from them. Otherwise where is the incenti…

> If you can afford to pay San Francisco developers a given salary, you can afford to pay Des Moines employees as much. That’s not really true. There are companies with a few employees in expensive locations and many in low income regions. If you switched everyone to the same salary you’d bankrupt the company. I certain don’t assume to know what Gitlab’s financials look like. What if a company is paying above market…

Are the employees in San Francisco required to be there? If so, yes they should get San Francisco wages. However for people who can work anywhere it should be the same wages - if you want to live in San Francisco don't work for us we will hire the cheaper people in Des Monies who are just as good. If they can't hire people in Des Moises cheaper that means they are not paying enough

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#138

Post by sweeneyrod »

sleepychu wrote: post #44
keiferski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries are in large part determined by local factors: cost of rent, food, gas/public transport, tax rates, etc. There is no "universal" salary for a particular position. Developers in San Francisco are not paid 3x of those in Des Moines because their skills are 3x better. Their salaries are higher because living in SF is more expensive. If the cost of living in SF were lower, the salaries would be lower, too. If an…

> Salaries are in large part determined by local factors Salaries should be a function of value produced amortized across the convenience and reliability of a predictable salary for the employee. Where I am sitting has no bearing whatsoever on the value produced and it is the primary thing that prevents me from pursing a job at gitlab. Also this argument ignores the side benefits having an enormous salary offers you.…

If you're refusing to pursue a job at Gitlab because it would pay less then the market rate where you live then the issue isn't that their salaries vary geographically but just that they don't pay enough in your area. If you you object even though they pay higher than your local market rate then you have a weird aversion to money that I don't see a reason for anyone else to care about.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#139

Post by bluGill »

DrScientist wrote: post #72
keiferski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am making a more fundamental point, which is that the current developer salaries (in general, worldwide) would not be as high if the cost of living were not high in the specific places where software companies congregate. These high salaries would otherwise not exist, because they are not based on an objective skills or supply-based metric. It is not as if SF developers are 3x more skilled than Des Moines ones. Cle…

> because they are not based on an objective skills or supply-based metric Then you have to ask why do these clusters exist - with high skills, high salaries and high costs? In my view, that's because there is value created by proximity. It is more productive to have people co-located in the same office. Also if you live in a major university town, or high tech area then that accelerates the exchange of ideas, partic…

The context here is an all-remote company though. As such they have rejected the advantages of proximity. They should be searching out the great but cheap people who want to live elsewhere.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#140

Post by patrec »

tossing67GL wrote: post #120
tasuki wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I hate to break it to you guys, but the reason Shitsville, TN has has a higher multiplier is not because someone at Gitlab is terribly confused about the relative cost of living in Shitsville, TN vs Paris and London.
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