It’s kinda funny everyone here arguing they should be paid the same regardless of location - but then complaining when the reality of that wish is not what they’d imagined.
yes, very silly that people desire equally well paid jobs regardless of location. how very silly of them.
But if you're from the US, remote could mean you're competing with prospective employees from all over the world, who will often be cheaper. So equal pay would be getting lowballed even more, I'd think?
It’s kinda funny everyone here arguing they should be paid the same regardless of location - but then complaining when the reality of that wish is not what they’d imagined.
yes, very silly that people desire equally well paid jobs regardless of location. how very silly of them.
Agreed. Underpaying engineers is not funny. Perhaps desirable for a cookie-cutter, third-tier, sweatshop that runs on labor as dumb as their management. But not desirable for profitable firms that require real talent.
As a a manager who's hired remote engineers across 3 countries, Gitlab's salaries are laughably low.
GitLab doesn't charge based on the location of their customers.
Gitlab ideally wants clients in Silicon Valley but staff in Lahore.
For GitLab it doesn’t matter where their client resides because they don’t charge based on location. A client in Lahore pays the same as a client in Silicon Valley.
Then you missed the biggest advantage of remote only: they can hire from any market.
When I interviewed there in 2017, when I (temporarily) lived in Argentina, I was told the role would pay $60k USD in Argentina pesos. Assuming they made no adjustments, In today's USD, my pay would of been $52k/yr due to currency value loss. Even in 'any market' their pay didn't make any sense.
I appreciate a lot of what Gitlab has done, but as someone who has been permanently remote for nearly a decade, I don't really consider them to be a leader in remote work. One of my biggest issues with Gitlab is that they pay based on locality, many other fully remote companies pay below Bay Area salaries, but they pay flat globally, meaning you can be location-independent without a pay-cut and it helps to bring in h…
For that reason I would not call them a leader in the space; however, if we only consider the day-to-day of remote work, everything from meetings, to your schedule to meeting co-workers IRL, in that part of the space I believe they are currently leading. As a new manager of an all-remote team, I find myself going to Gitlab quite a bit for guidance and their advice on a matter. It's to the point where I think Gitlab, if they really wanted to, could turn that whole day-to-day operational knowledge base into a pretty solid product.
I appreciate a lot of what Gitlab has done, but as someone who has been permanently remote for nearly a decade, I don't really consider them to be a leader in remote work. One of my biggest issues with Gitlab is that they pay based on locality, many other fully remote companies pay below Bay Area salaries, but they pay flat globally, meaning you can be location-independent without a pay-cut and it helps to bring in h…
I hate that as well, but from the point of view of the employer it makes sense no? They are supposed to pay as little as they can afford, and location impacts that.
I appreciate a lot of what Gitlab has done, but as someone who has been permanently remote for nearly a decade, I don't really consider them to be a leader in remote work. One of my biggest issues with Gitlab is that they pay based on locality, many other fully remote companies pay below Bay Area salaries, but they pay flat globally, meaning you can be location-independent without a pay-cut and it helps to bring in h…
I hate that as well, but from the point of view of the employer it makes sense no? They are supposed to pay as little as they can afford, and location impacts that.
Location impacts that only if the hiring is constrained by location. If you hire remote worldwide, then by all means, go for the cheapest developers that you can find worldwide, or go for developers who have my skills. Either way, it doesn't matter where we live.
Especially if (as myself and many others) we don't live in one place and travel between different countries with drastically different local income levels.
My favorite part of their story is how they changed the interview process to not be terrible and built a dashboard to quantify it: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/03/19/the-trouble-with-te...
I've interviewed with them twice (2016 & 2022), didn't receive any feed back other than a generic decline e-mail. And this was despite promises to the contrary from recruiters, I was ghosted when I asked for it too. I even recall teaching the interviewer some javascript quirk during a coding challenge the first time and solved whatever silly brain teaser question that was asked, with test cases too! Yet zero feedback as to why I was not going to move past that first technical challenge. Disappointing really.
EDIT: More on topic, I did really enjoy the MR based technical interview way more than the common coding challenge.
My favorite part of their story is how they changed the interview process to not be terrible and built a dashboard to quantify it: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/03/19/the-trouble-with-te...
Unfortunately the dashboard seems to be very broken now :(
GitLab team member here. Thanks for flagging. I contacted the owner of the dashboard and asked if they can get it working. Will report back if/when it is repaired.
> why would they pay more for someone from San Francisco? I can't answer for GitLab, but widely, people often believe that San Francisco has an "exceptional" talent pool and that companies pay a premium for that because of competition.
But in that case, it's not the same work, no? You can simply pay more for exceptional talent regardless of location, just as how org (theoretically, at least) already differentiate pay based on skill level within the same location.
I agree, I was just putting in plaintext what I've heard others say over the years when I complained about living in a state where I was paid nearly a third of what people doing my same job in SF made. I think those kinds of comments and attitudes that got us here need to be preserved, especially for how combative some of those folk were.