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Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

about.gitlab.com

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Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#151

Post by nitely »

hocuspocus wrote: post #144
nitely wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the promise of working fully remote that you can be a "digital nomad"? What if I just want to visit poor countries while my home is in the US?

Whose promise? According to tax and immigration laws that is certainly not the case in most of the world.

The many blog posts (from people doing it) suggesting working remote and traveling the world is as easy as getting a remote job and travel the world:

https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/how-i-perfected-tra... https://doist.com/blog/travel-remote-work-digital-nomad/ https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/remote-work-digital-nomad https://www.thebalancecareers.com/working-remotely-while-tra...

etc

Here's a US tax attorney talking about it:

https://www.whereverwriter.com/digital-nomad-tax-questions/

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#152

Post by GordonS »

rdsubhas wrote: post #100

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 don't need a whiteboard often, but have tried Microsoft Whiteboard and quite like it: https://whiteboard.microsoft.com

I believe it's built into Teams now too.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#153

Post by YorickPeterse »

rdsubhas wrote: post #100

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…

We generally don't as far as I know. Most communication happens async anyway due to the timezone differences. When I do need to diagram things I tend to create Mermaid graphs in issue comments, but beyond that I never really felt it was necessary.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#154

Post by globular-toast »

Gitlab's remote manifesto speaks to me in so many ways. I'd also love to work for Gitlab anyway. But, alas, I don't know Ruby on Rails and I think it's too late for me to gain the proficiency that I'd require for my expected salary from Gitlab. Are there any fully remote companies doing Python?

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#155

Post by flyingfences »

alkonaut wrote: post #76
hackerbabz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when I work I produce a product for my employer. My employer sells that product at the same price regardless of where it was produced.

They buy your skill at the market rate, and sell the product at the market rate in a different market .

For an all-remote, international company, "the market" at both ends of that process is "the world".

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#156

Post by globular-toast »

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.

Yes, you should get paid the same. That's exactly what they are doing. Stop thinking about it in terms of cost to them and think about compensation to the employees. The cost to Gitlab of paying a competitive salary in London vs Berlin is going to be very different. But both developers will receive the same benefits relative to their location. Remember, you can't eat money, you can't drive money or live in money. Paying people the same dollar amount means the actual lifestyle of employees doing the same job will be vastly different.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#157

Post by ghaff »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #108
soren_dahl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They nicely make this public. Given how rare this is, we probably should praise them for the transparency. Because what we are doing here is the very reason companies are not transparent in the first place: you never get praises, only critics.

Yes, almost everyone does this. It's just opaque in most cases. I will say that, assuming they follow their adjustments literally, you do have some odd situations. Your ideal strategy to maximize comp vs. cost of living is to live in a state where the comp for the whole state is set by a relatively high CoL city but to live in a lower cost area in that state. (At least that was the case last time I looked.)

[ADDED: Although it looks as if they've made their calculator more granular so that high CoL city doesn't carry over to other areas as much.]

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#158

Post by darkwater »

nadam wrote: post #86
rizz0 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have the same skills, you should be paid the same? Why is that? I don’t necessarily disagree with your statement. But why would it be fair for someone of equal skill to be able to afford less food and healthcare just because they live in a place with higher prices and higher taxes? Should everybody be incentivized to relocate to a developing country or tax haven because of the internet and your equality rule…

>Should everybody be incentivized to relocate to a developing country Absolutely. I am living in an Eastern European country, and yes, the local market would absolutely need people with western income: all the restaurants, local services, and the local economy would benefit from this. With practices like Gitlab, our local market would be locked into this shitty state it is in right now. Basically they lock us into no…

In your all remote vision you are locking out all the companies in your country that won't be able to pay salaries like an American one.

Re: Gitlab's Guide to All-Remote

#160

Post by sschueller »

ratww wrote: post #148
geodel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does McDonald's burger flipper gets paid same everywhere in the world? Or for any other local service or product do these people will pay Silicon valley prices? Otherwise it would just mean software people do think of themselves as a superior species that earthly rules of economics must not apply to them.

McDonald's burguer flippers don't work in the same codebase, nor they work remotely.

Nor does the Burger cost the same.
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