Isn't that a vital part of market economies functioning. I don't entirely agree with free markets, but IF we have this kind of system then this kind is absolutely crucial.
Gitlab seems fine but it's just not as smooth / good looking as Github. Github is one of the best websites ever made in my opinion. I do like the fact Gitlab is more aggressive in adding CI features. Maybe I'll check them out...
I've been at GitLab since early 2015 (employee #10), and the culture is one of the major reasons why I joined, and stayed. :)
Would you mind elaborating?
For anyone else reading along, our Handbook (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/) covers our culture (and every other aspect of working here) very well.
My impression was just based on some things I've been hearing about compensation, and a couple of negative comments and articles.
I think the best way to explain it is that GitLab sounds like a more traditional place to work. Similar to companies in the UK, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It's very unlikely that I would accept a job in one of these countries for the same reasons. Software engineers are typically not paid very well and are treated more like "code monkeys" who report to their managers and don't have any self-direction.
I guess I've just been spoiled by Silicon Valley, so the rest of the world doesn't feel very competitive compared to some of these SV startups.
There's nothing about a healthy engineering culture that makes it unique to Silicon Valley, and there are many, many companies in those regions you mention that would take significant issue with that generalization.
If you want to optimize for annual salary, Silicon Valley is probably the place to be, but if you want to optimize for happiness (however a developer may define that for themselves), it's just one of many potential places to go, and if you want to optimize for work/life balance, it's probably not even in the top 10.
It’s just my personal experience interviewing at a number of startups/companies in these countries, and from friends who work at them. I would really love to move to Toronto, but the salaries are just way too low. Hopefully I can find another way to move there.
Thanks!
Can you elaborate on that?
Because ripping off and competing against original developers is what open source specially allows. That's one of it's benefits of open source. If someone can improve and and do cheaper, they should do it. I don't see any moral implications.
Software business service business not manufacturing business. (at least 99%). If you are against ripping off, maybe put more restrictive license or go closed source. Then you can leverage accumulating IP from work you do.
Reframing the question:
Isn't ripping of and competing with the implementation of an idea is just normal business. Or is there something like gentleman rule where you should not copy business ideas as fast as you can?
I'd consider "normal business" to be some combination of creating new benefits for your service that your competitors don't have and replicating the kinds of benefits they add, hopefully doing them better.
As an example: both GitHub and GitLab have recently launched features in the "security monitoring for your projects" space, but they're both independently good features. Had GitLab launched the feature and then GitHub just copied all the css/js and stood up a clone of it, I'd consider that to be highly questionable.
That would’ve been great and maybe they still will now that they’ve become part of Microsoft.
Full details are here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
Brazil, Crimea, Cuba, France, Iran, Ireland, Japan, North Korea, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Syria
Several countries are on hiring stop currently, mainly those that you have listed. This is due to administrative reasons, as people from those countries work as contractors, as we have no entities there. In Europe we currently have an entity in NL, BE, UK and DE. Furthermore we have an Indian, Chinese and of course US entity.
They once had a online calculator where you put in your location (basically only SF, non-SF US, and outside US) and position but apparently they switched to another model that includes employee performance and other factors.
I realize that $80k is a lot of money for Europe/UK/Asia/South America/rest of the US. But if you're a top engineer, you could double or triple your income by working for a different company (or as a consultant.)
I should mention that I don't have any problem with GitLab's compensation, and I think it's actually pretty fair. But fair doesn't really matter. A top engineer will just go to the company that pays more. I'm sure GitLab has a lot of great engineers, but just based on their compensation, I'm pretty sure it's not one of the best engineering teams in the world.
Here's a few references/articles/job boards:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10924957
* https://dev.to/sam_ferree/why-i-think-cost-of-living-pay-for... (see some of the comments in there)
* https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...
The same job, with the same experience is paid less than half what it is in SF in the UK. That's not really very enticing.
https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/developer/...
And I've also heard about cases where lower pay means worse employers, higher expectations, and higher levels of stress, because the company doensn't value or respect the employee as much.
[1] https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/992779314532790273
I should investigate this bit more to get closer to SF salaries if possible.
You will always be able to find work at ~$70 per hour if you join TopTal. It should be easy to book projects for 30 hours per week and earn $100k USD per year. (Or you can work 6 hours per week to make $22k, if that’s all you need.)
That’s still on the low end for web/mobile dev. Top developers will charge 2x or 3x that amount (but you won’t find that work on Toptal.)
Full-time salaries will be lower than contract work, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find a remote web/mobile development job that pays $80k. (And that’s still very low for a good developer.)
... and relocate? Many remote jobs require you to move at the very least in the company's country.
We do look at rent index as a factor within Compensation. It is not the only factor but it would be unfair not to take it into consideration. Afterall, there are not many locations in the world where $117,000 is considered low-income. (https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/06/26/hud-117000-low-...). I'm thrilled that we can provide team members with a meaningful career without forcing them to move to a high-cost area. I have often seen cases at other companies where we make a great offer to an out-of-area candidate. They think the compensation is amazing and jump on a plane to start their new job in the Silicon Valley only then realizing that they can't afford a home here and may need to get a roommate to pay the rent unless they live far enough away and endure a long commute. The big salary suddenly looks a lot smaller after seeing the cost of living.
However, it is not the only factor we look at and we are continuing to improve the model we have for compensation. We also set a minimum rent index so those very low cost areas are actually paid above market. We do this to ensure that the gaps are not too large. We also pay the market data for a region widely. If you're within a 90 min. commute of San Francisco, for example, you would still make the SF pay.
Where you see region broadly represented (like the example of "the rest of the UK), that is because the rent index across the region was less or equal to the minimum rent index set. When you see a location that you perceive to be a lower rent index, getting higher compensation, that could be because we also add a contractor factor in those locations where we are hiring as contractors, knowing that there are often additional expenses to cover as a contractor.
With that being said, we are constantly trying to get meaningful compensation data in various locations so we can rely more on the market data and less on the rent index. It is my intention that if we see that the market is changing with more remote companies, we will also adjust our benchmarks to be an accurate reflection of the market. I know that there will always be a company out there willing to pay more and that we will lose some talent because of that. I also know and have seen, that GitLab is able to attract and retain some of the best engineers I've seen (and I've seen some great engineers!) due to its product, culture, and all remote work life.
Is that anywhere near the calculation information? I didn't see it. This is very helpful if you are looking for people in the DC area, particularly Northern VA as you have the Rent Index as:
Washington DC - 0.780 Virginia - 0.488
Northern VA, even a bit further than your 90 min number, can still be on par with DC pricing.
There were a lot of things I would have loved to build at GitHub, and they were all the same things that GitLab is doing now. I felt that there was so much potential to build things like CI, DevOps, and eventually a PaaS to compete with Heroku. I really think they should have acquired something like TravisCI or CircleCI and made that part of their platform, but it seems like they haven't really done anything significant in the last 5 years.
I'm a very happy user of GitLab now, and the product is awesome. But I don't think I would ever join the company. First of all, they don't pay competitive salaries for remote workers (cost-of-living adjustments). I also don't think they have a very good company culture, and to be honest, it still feels a bit sketchy that they ripped off GitHub and undercut them on pricing. But I'm sure I'll get over that eventually.