GitLab has an exclusively remote workforce that is globally distributed. They put their compensation guidelines up on their wiki for the world to see and readily acknowledge that they adjust salaries for cost-of-living. It’s not a huge problem for them, I suppose, because they are willing to hire workers in lower-cost areas where tech jobs at well-known companies are relatively scarce.

Personally, this goes against my hiring philosophy and as a remote manager at another company, I insist on remote salaries for my team that match Bay Area salaries. I make up the difference by getting pick-of-the-litter hires that I wouldn’t have a chance of getting if I was going up against the Facebook/Google/Netflixes for a local SFBA hire.

I don’t know if GitLab employees have much recourse individually or collectively. It will probably take a market change to get them to adjust.

I have no beef with them and would have considered them more seriously during my last move—such a rad product!—�-but their comp is close to $100K less than what I can get working remote for many other SFBA startups.

That's a good thing though, paying with regards to market rate - it's what SF has to do, given how cost of living there is exorbitant and even with the high wages there unaffordable.

I (American) interviewed a Gitlab while earning "SF money" from Argentina. During the phone screen, they told me if I chose to live in SF, they would pay me $121k, but if I wanted to continue to live in Argentina, I would take a massive pay cut $70k. Not to mention, ARG is have massive currency inflation, so each month I would work there, my pay would drop 1-2%.

For remote workers, the job market is actually pretty small. Many of the "remote only" companies (Buffer, Gitlab, RainforestQA, etc) pay based on how expensive of a lifestyle the employee chooses to have.

One remote company I interviewed at mentioned how one of their SF employees moved in with their parents and how they talked about cutting his salary significantly because of his cheaper lifestyle.

I live in Uruguay and I don't earn "SF money", a 70k paycheck would be huge here (and in Argentina as well).

And to avoid the currency inflation you should of course choose to earn in U.S. dollars, or negotiate to be tied to the regular - currently bi-annual in Uruguay - pay increases in countries with inflation (which usually lag inflation and are a bad deal, but offer some buffer to it).

My $0.02 your pay should not be based on how much you spend. If your co-worker chooses to buy an expensive car or live in an expensive city, then they should not get paid more than the guy that lives with his parents because he wants to save money.

Unfortunately that's how it works for companies today - they know they can pay less depending on where you live (even within the same country, like SF vs Midwest US).

It's because it's a market; there is less demand in non-hub / smaller places. Think about the same thing for houses - should you pay SF house prices living in the midwest?

but that logic breaks down when if you factor in competition from other remote companies.

The moment one remote company offers an SF rate compensation outside of SF, then the job candidate's market rate is an SF rate.

I totally understand if a company doesn't have the budget for talent and looks to exclusively hire in non-hub / smaller places in order to keep costs low. But I hate when a company says: we understand you have an SF rate offer and we would normally compete with that if you lived in SF, but, sorry, our excel spreadsheet says we can only lowball you.

Rainforest QA co-founder here; We actually now pay percentile of local equivalent, which is fairer if you want to compare apples-to-apples when looking for work without moving. We found that places like LA, with our previous structure, we just couldn't hire - LA actually has a better $ / living cost ratio for developers than SF! Meanwhile in other places, we'd be 95-100% percentile.

Anyway; compensation is really hard to get right and keep everyone happy, you do your best, but haters-gonna-hate.

p.s. also we're not remote only - we have some great SF engineers - but 90% of our eng is remote; we just want the best people regardless of location :)

I think everyone's financial situation is different. I agree with you that if you try to cater compensation by a hire's lifestyle choices, then it does get really hard to keep everyone happy.

IMHO, living in SF is a choice, especially at a remote company. Just like buying a Tesla or choosing to live in your car instead of renting an apartment is also a choice.

I don't think companies should pay one employee less because they choose to have a cheaper lifestyle than the employees that buy Teslas or live in San Francisco.

I think employees should be paid fairly (which works both ways) based on where they live; if we can pay you above the local average for your role and you don't want to move, then we're an attractive offer.

JW, but how do you think about taxes? Would an American living in Denmark earn more than a Danish living in Denmark, because the American has much higher tax liability?

Or maybe the American doesn't report the income to Denmark so has very low taxes compared to a danish or American-based co-workers since they qualify for FEIE?

Does the married American with the marriage tax breaks get paid more or less than a single American?

This is why paying a percentile of local rates makes the most sense, imho.

> -100% percentile

not likely :-)

haha, wasn't supposed to be 100% accurate ;), so maybe, but in a small enough market I buy this.

how do they verify where you actually live? do you have to provide them proof of residence everytime you move?

I would not feel right lying to them about my location. I currently changed countries every 1-2 months so maybe I could of worked something out for them to pay me in USD, but they also said they wanted to pay me in local currency.

Ok, getting paid in local currency sucks.

I work for an U.S. company from Uruguay and I get paid in USD.

> Have you worked there? Do you know what the total compensation package is or are you just knowledgeable about base salary?

This is pretty rude given that you're the one who's not knowledgeable here. GitLab is extremely public about salary - if you go any job application page they'll tell you what the pay bands are. There is very limited room for negotiation, on purpose.

I agree that nobody is forced to work for GitLab. I completely skipped them over in my last job hunt because their pay bands were much lower than anything else I could find, even though I would have enjoyed the job. I have a friend who did the same. I think that's unfortunate for GitLab / the world and wish they would raise their pay so they can attract candidates who are getting higher offers elsewhere, so they can build a better service.

This is a very different sort of complaint from wage slavery, so I'm not sure why you brought that up.

> Have you worked there? Do you know what the total compensation package is or are you just knowledgeable about base salary?

There have been multiple threads about this. Some being hundreds of comments related to Gitlab's salaries, which they and some people who work there are pretty public about. I could try to find the threads on HN, but they shouldn't be too hard to find yourself.