I have coworkers in Nebraska. They make a different amount than I. They also have and own a house on that salary. Do they move? No, they like it in Nebraska.

It is not GitLab's job as a large remote company to "fix" global economics.

GitLab is a "small multinational". If you look at other multinationals (or even large nationals) like Google Microsoft, GE, Comcast, etc, I'm 100% positive you'll find that they don't pay the same in different cities.

It's no different. One step at a time. GitLab is offering remote. In 10 years, if local economies level out more due to globalization, this can be less of an issue.

Until then, I'll just keep reading this argument on HN...

If they were a brick and mortar business operating in all these regions, fine, costs vary and it makes sense that salaries would too. But they are just using the excuse of locale to grow their margins, simple as that. It’s their business, and employees can work wherever they want. But let’s not pretend they are doing anyone any favors with that policy.

- What company? - What role? - What's your comp range indexed to? - VC Backed?

https://careers.hotjar.com/o/customer-support-americas - this role is $45,000 to $62,000 (looking for EST, would be hired as a contractor)

https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/dotcom-sup...

For intermediate (of which you can go to senior) and you'd be an employee of GitLab in the US, so no dealing with self-employment tax etc)

- Florida $46,740 - $57,126 - Raleigh $54,940 - $67,148 - NYC $63,140 - $77,172

Very comparable except in NYC which is a higher cost of living. I'd love more data. I know Basecamp is doing the "everyone indexed to Chicago" which means that most regions are getting a little bit more purchasing power.

I would be quite let down with the pay range you have mentioned.

Gitlab doesn't have these constraints. They could pay the same, they just don't want to.

On the contrary, as a participant in global economics it has a responsibility to pay its workers fairly. No one is asking them to "fix" the economy, just to not perpetuate unfair hiring and salary practices like regional salary limits.

The work you do is worth it to GitLab or it's not. The value of the work doesn't change whether it's done in Nebraska or New York or Amsterdam.

Here's Glassdoor info about Google. I chose the following cities because Glassdoor said they had "high confidence". Consider it anecdotal:

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Sa...

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-To...

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Ba...

- Glassdoor San Francisco SWE - "AVG Base - $129,065"

- GitLab Average at Intermediate: $160,000

- Glassdoor Bangalore Google SWE - ₹1,691,257 current exchange == $23,785.84

- GitLab Average at Intermediate: ₹3,406,961

- Glassdoor Toronto SWE Google - $119,055 CAD current exchange == $89,925.81

- GitLab Average at Intermediate: $114,075 CAD

(This doesn't account "perks" and RSUs and such which I assume Google's are larger, so Google comp can probably be 20-40% higher. Consider doing a search of your own with $company of your choice to compare.)

----

Do I want to live in a world where everyone gets paid the exact same for the same work, and everything costs the same everywhere because we have perfectly efficient markets, absolutely.

Do I think companies are dumb for making competitive wages for local markets? Not at all. We live the majority of our life in a local market.

Can workers find companies that are "outliers" that will pay them the same for their work no matter where they are? Yep.

Do I think that due to globalization and a remote work force over time we will have more evenly distributed salary. Yep.

All I want is for you (and others) to bring the same vigor for salary to any tech company thread as people do to GitLab's. We are a tech company that built our compensation model like many other tech companies (and other global companies). We also allow you to work where you live and want to pay a wage that is respectable in that region. Just like Google.

The next time a thread comes up for any company on HN, I want anyone reading's first thought to be: "I wonder if they pay people the same in different cities?" Let's talk about it more than just in GitLab threads, and we can start that acceleration towards perfect salary around the world.

Edit: I think it goes without saying, but I wanna be abundantly clear, these thoughts are my own, and I'm a longstanding member of this community first, and an employee of GitLab second. No one asked me to go on this rant this AM, I was just tired.

SF is very expensive. Where I live, my salary provides an extremely comfortable standard of living (I'm in the top 5% income bracket overall here). If I made the same amount in SF, I'd be hard-pressed to afford a small apartment.

The NYC rate is justified if they work you harder or if your job requires face-to-face interactions in NYC.

Imagine someone making the argument it is OK to pay less for X class of people, because we can get away with it. X being some historically marginalized, but now protected class. And they should be grateful because some other place pays even less!

It would be really nice if remote discriminating companies could not be called equal opportunity employer at the very least.

https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/sa...

(Note that is ~700 sq feet, not meters)

But, you also make literally twice as much money, so it easily offsets the extra rent.

For people who need space, just forget it. House prices are roughly 10x higher than in the ordinary small cities, ignoring the difference in land area. Families need the space.

I know a former San Francisco resident, now in Florida, with enough space to raise sheep and shoot an AR-15 in his yard. He's not rich. He earns a salary as a good software developer, and he decided to buy that kind of space. It's 11 acres if I remember right. He couldn't have that in San Francisco, even earning literally twice as much money.

https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...

Really? My impression is that nobody wants to live in expensive tech hubs where they can't even own a place to live, but they can't leave because there is much less work elsewhere.

There are certainly people who are convinced that they can only find meaningful work in a handful of tech hubs--first and foremost the Bay Area. I'd argue they're mostly wrong but you won't convince many of them.

However, there are others who genuinely like the Bay Area in spite of all its downsides for reasons that I even somewhat understand when I visit. The culture, the lack of snow, etc. Others are like New Yorkers who consider every other city a provincial cowtown.

As someone who kind of feels this way, I guess it depends on how you define meaningful. I grew up and live in the Southeast. Its not like there arent jobs out here, but majority of jobs around here a corporate, "code monkey" jobs. Yeah, there are startups and some markets that are outliers, but its rare for me to see a job in this region and thing "wow this would be a really cool job". OTOH I've seen job listings for companies in say, the bay area or Austin that seemed really interesting (to me), from companies large and small and it just seems to come down to where the companies have offices.

The reason why doctors get paid more in underserved areas is because very few highly educated people want to live in rural Alabama, even if the houses are cheap.

I certainly wouldn't want to trade Amsterdam for the town I grew up in. Then again, my dad clearly disagrees. On the other hand, Amsterdam probably isn't quite as expensive as London, New York or San Francisco.

"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

There are some reasons to want the ability to hire anywhere regardless of salary cost. But, if you are going to pay everyone competitive Bay Area salaries anyway even if they work from a beach in Southeast Asia, there's going to at least be a bias towards hiring for nearby timezones, language fluency, the ability to get together physically on a regular basis, etc. You're essentially paying for it after all.

(And if you conversely pay a salary that's decent for a typical midsize city in the South or Midwest, you're probably going to have a lot of trouble attracting talent that can get jobs and wants to live in or near major US coastal cities.)

As others have said, GitLab is transparent about it which most companies are not. It does let you see that the best "deal" is to live somewhere that the salary multiplier is determined by a high CoL urban area--but then live in a low cost area of the same state.

But, even historically in the Bay Area, that's not really the norm. Compensation in high CoL areas is often higher but not really equivalent with respect to housing, etc.

I don't understand what "transparency" has to do with anything here? Given that we know their algorithm for pay, based on CoL, it sound that they are being transparent?

as well as the fact that paying for insurance out of your own pocket entirely is unfeasible, when I was contracting I was paying like $400 - $600 for health insurance I barely used (I can't remember the exact number, but it was a hit),

If you assume you work 1800 hours a year and your insurance is $600 a month, it’s $4/hour you add to the amount you charge per hour. (Insurance is pretax).

Companies don’t generally hire contractors to save money, they hire them because it is a lot easier to get rid of them. You should be able to charge a premium as a contractor not make less.

But then you better be damn good at budgeting, networking and keeping your eye on the market.

I've been working remotely from different parts of south/southeast Asia for almost a year now and my cost of living is comparable to my previous residence in Amsterdam. If I was paid less just because I'm in Asia now, I'd be a bit peeved.

I spend a somewhat similar amount on rent because I expect a certain standard of living. I also bought recently bought a new laptop, which ended up costing more than if I had bought it in most expensive countries. Last time I checked, most of the items I regularly buy (e.g. a cold brew coffee) cost exactly the same here.

You should be paid for the value you bring to the company. Your location WRT earning potential is none of your employer's business.

[EDIT] actually, looks like they finally fixed it so it's about right. Nice. Glassdoor info on their interviews still make it seem like way too much of a PITA for a lateral comp move, but that's better.

And by "earn" I mean once you deduct taxes, cost of living, and personal required expenses (education, kids, healthcare, rent..). The extra one keeps/gets to use after all those are deducted should be the same for the process to be fair.

Why would someone working remote earn more? That somehow doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

"Shouldn't" has very little to do with salary offers.

Of course, real life is more complicated than that and all things are rarely equal.

ADDED: GitLab actually explicitly states: "All things being equal, we will hire people in lower cost markets vs. higher cost markets."

Otherwise they re just subsidizing the rent seeking behaviour of crazy expensive cities

Wages and cost/quality of living are in a feedback loop. Remote work will net benefit the cheaper cities and will deflate prices in the expensive ones. I think that is inevitable

That's great for lifting everybody out of poverty of course, but how is this suddenly possible? Can we maybe give everybody a Basic Income to take care of all the cost of living stuff?

Also, if living in an expensive city doesn't cut into your disposable income, then even more people will want to live in those cities, driving housing prices up even more.

I'm absolutely sympathetic to the equality for all argument, but I suspect there's a reason why this is not how capitalism usually works.

Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should get fair wages. But that's just not how it works in different societies. "Fair wages" means different things in different places.

in particular, if i want to keep my european lifestyle, malaysia ends up being more expensive than europe. same goes for most other asian countries. it gets worse with kids. education is very expensive in asia if you want to get the same quality as europe. and i also need to factor in expensive travel to visit family back home.

average cost of living is meaningless.

life is only cheaper if you accept the local living standards and if you don't have any family on another continent. so you are telling me that me having to accept a worse standard of living than you is fair?

Up front, I believe everyone should be paid the same. I want that. But I do accept local living standards. I must - and therefore I am paid less. It's just a reality of our world today.

I think this conversation is about how global our economies are. Which I think are more local than people believe. Also keep in mind that cheaper living isn't always worse living, just cheaper.

and i decidedly disagree that cheaper living isn't always worse. it is. that was the whole point of my post. traveling to visit family, sending my kids to a school with european standards, getting insurance for european quality medical care, all are expensive no matter where i go.

i have lived on 4 continents in dozens of countries. i have yet to find a place where a high standard of living was cheaper.

cheaper living always required trade-offs.

Why not?

I understand why GitLab does it, it increases profits, but why can’t you pay someone in Malaysia Silicon Valley wages? If there was an individual contributor they wanted badly enough they’d break policy and I’d be surprised if there aren’t some people for whom exceptions have been made.

Well, yes, but $1 in Malaysia goes a lot further than $1 in SV. So "equal pay" isn't really equal at all.

COL-adjusted salaries are perfectly reasonable in my opinion.

Would I be happy to be paid the regular rate of a Malaysian developer while I live in Silicon Valley? Or would I demand a higher pay? Does that mean everyone in the Malaysian office gets paid more? Does the company go under?

GitLab is in a weird position because they have workers in both. We don't chastise a local Malaysian company for paying the local rates, but we do for GitLab?

It's an unfair reality, but not an unlivable one. A cheaper lifestyle isn't necessarily a degraded one.

That still doesn't make it fair. I personally believe these global companies could step up and try to change that. But that's if it weren't about profits - which is is.

Who budges? Do the global companies lower their prices or do local economies step up and pay more? Or even are they able to pay more?

Especially since they don't do region based pricing - everybody pays the same price worldwide, but they only pay cost of living salaries? Hypocrites.

I don't know, it seems fair to me. If you pay your workers in a high-COL area the same in terms of absolute money as those in a low-COL area, then the people in the low-COL are effectively making a lot more than those in the high-COL area.

What's important, in terms of business or personal finances, isn't gross income -- it's net.

Many more customers would be on gitlab if regional pricing exists. The profit number would go down though.

More candidates would apply to work for gitlab without the policy.

In both cases gitlab makes more money. Which is fine but spinning it doesn't seem right.

TLDR; we want to pay close to market, and location still is a big factor in market wage.