there are places in the world where, say, the real estate is red-hot (obviously making higher salaries more desirable) but where local companies have not kept up with that (making cross-company surveys skew really low) so in that case what would you do?
Managing a distributed remote-friendly company definitely seems challenging, of course you're open source and have an awesome reputation, so salary is very likely not something prospective employees consider as much as they would otherwise when joining (which likely works in your favor in creating a very nice working environment full of engaged folks)
We will maybe end up with a mix of cost of living, cost of labour, and rent.
We address red-hot real estate by considering to add rent to the mix, but it is tricky since some team members might be living in rent-controlled apartments and we want to have a number that doesn't depend on personal circumstances.
We don't have any hard data on this but I think we're in the reasonable range.