> Anyone who doesn't want to work for GitLab can easily work somewhere else.

That's certainly true. But as a GitLab user, I want to make sure they're hiring the best candidates to work on the product. Is that an unreasonable thing to want?

Ok but that's a different topic. I also think you want the best product, regardless of how that's done. Asking for the best candidates is a rather indirect way to get there and I'm sure they understand their business better than anyone here.

I think they understand their business well, but I'm not sure if they understand market salaries well, given that our culture is notoriously opaque about salaries and one would hope that senior leadership at GitLab is not in the habit of applying to individual-contributor jobs at other companies to get a sense of what offers look like. That means that hearing people complain about their pay bands is probably one of the only good ways for them to get information about whether they're significantly below market or not - as I mentioned in another comment, I just didn't bother applying to GitLab because they were so far below what I could get elsewhere, so they have no information from their normal HR process that I even exist, let alone what a competitive salary for me would be. Once they have that information, then yes, I trust them to make decisions that are good for their business (I wanted to work there, after all!), but I still think that it's appropriate for users to express opinions if we think they're making poor decisions.

Their CEO is very active here on HN so I'd assume they do know all the feedback, but the bigger goal here is the business itself which seems to be doing well (as evidenced by this new round) so they are probably meeting all of their talent needs.

You are just rephrasing the flawed argument in favor of not increasing minimum wage.

Flawed? Where was minimum wage discussed? That's a completely separate topic that has no bearing here.

Any argument depends on context and in this case, none of the GitLab employees are facing minimum wage, working in hard labor conditions, or facing removal of their last chance at employment. The reality is that they're paid a very transparent amount without much negotiation hassle and they can easily choose to work elsewhere if they want to.

Nope but your argument is the same.

I wouldn't be in favor of increasing the minimum wage if I knew that most of the workforce could easily find a better paying job elsewhere if they weren't happy with the compensation. This is clearly not the case for the general population but probably mostly true for the type of profiles gitlab wants to hire.

Furthermore while I can believe that gitlab's salaries are below the average I doubt they're below any reasonable proposal for minimum wage. If software developer salaries start dipping below what we consider fair I think the most efficient solution would be unionizing to raise the salaries for the profession at large.

Quite frankly I find it a bit obscene to conflate both these issues.