I'm with you. GitLab would be near the top of my employer targets if not for their bizarre location-based salaries. I want a remote-work job in large part so that I can move around. I relocate every 2-3 years, all over the US and internationally. If I get hired in the NYC area I'm not willing to take a 50% paycut because I want to spend a year living somewhere else.

Their calculations and reasoning are completely irrational. Rent is more a lot more in NYC, but utilities are the same; medical costs are the same; groceries are roughly the same (I found them cheaper in Manhattan than in nearby suburbs); you don't own a car (or two, as a couple); you don't have the expense of maintaining a large home and yard; etc. It costs a lot to live in NYC, but you can't compare the rent on a 1BR NYC apartment with a 1BR suburban apartment and say it's three times as expensive. It's a completely different lifestyle, and the choice for people like me is between a shoebox in the city with the perks of city life, or a comfortable 3BR home with a yard in the suburbs and a car and maybe a swimming pool or a boat or something. It's not a cheaper life, it's just a different life.

Is this a popular thing inside of gitlab? Personally, I'm conflicted: it's an interesting experiment, and I get where it comes from, but it's perhaps a bit too nearsighted.

In the end, I think zipcode (and COL) is a weak proxy for talent. It's very easy to measure zipcode, compared to talent.

But, think about it from the other angle: if you have a history of this talent (earning high salaries in high-COL zip codes or otherwise), why on earth would you accept anything less than that, when moving to a lower COL area?

To me, it seems like a decision that would hurt the employer more than help them, since the people with proven talent would work for companies that don't discriminate on zip codes. And that costs more than the investment in assessing incoming talent levels.

Gitlabs salaries are historically low compared to what I'd expect, but their talent is also much more global than a lot of big tech corps so while you won't find someone from CA expecting a "high" CA salary there you'll find a lot of great global talent that probably has a more difficult time working at a $big_name since they might not have offices in their country.

None of the salaries I've seen there seem remotely "senior/architect" level if you want Bay/WA talent.

That's the way I see the company, at least.

I'm glad you are principled. Get paid what you're worth folks!

All this might change if there are enough candidates that have become suitable now there is a WFH policy in place.

Wait, so you can move to a super expensive place and the company will subsidize your mortgage investment?

My company generates revenue and my talent directly affects the revenue. The salary that you give me is correlated to that revenue that I help to generate. The company figured out my value when they made me an offer.

My location during any of this transaction bears absolutely zero significance. If I'm worth $300k to generate $5mill for you don't worry about whether I'm living in NYC or on a ranch in Wyoming.

If you're willing to take $60k for a remote job you can make $160k at because that's the actual global market value you're doing all of us in the field a disservice by working for the low COL wage. It's bad enough salaries have barely risen for other fields since the 70s. Our field can work anywhere but we need to make sure we don't let our salaries slide by letting the Gitlab style take hold.

Often on hn I see people thinking they need to take a pay cut to work remotely. You don't! Same thing.

Agree 100%. Same employee, working remotely, but they move somewhere else? Great, we pay them less even though it affects their performance in no way at all. Makes sense /s

When I was looking for remote work I had hard time finding any offer beyond 60k.

Don't forget that there's a really high competition among applicants so someone will take those 60k offers. And when it's 8-10x their average salary in their home country, then you can't really blame them.

I live in Barcelona which is almost on par with Madrid. My plan for my next job is to get a remote job with Barcelona salary, then move to Canary Islands which is much cheaper but way nicer.

I'm not really serious, I can probably get a better offer from a US company, but it still irks me.

I'd also imagine remote employees are cheaper anyways because they don't require office space.

Yep. Gitlab's salary formula is publicly available. You can go take a look. I'm currently in the bay area, but I would love to permanently move to Southern Oregon (where I already own a house). Gitlab's salary is normalized to the bay area (i.e. the bay area gets a 1x multiplier). If I wanted to do the exact same job from Oregon, my hypothetical salary at Gitlab would arbitrarily get multiplied by 0.6x... and that's why I'm never going to apply to Gitlab.

I think you have things the wrong way around. If you are able to pass the interview bar for a selective company that pays market rate in a tier-1 tech city, then yes, you get to move. But, if you don't, you won't get the job whether you move there or not.

No they're saying for a Gitlab employee moving to a higher COL area is essentially getting gitlab to pay for the mortgage (assuming the higher wage actually covers the increased mortgage of course).

Adjusting by CoL is only good for the employer, if a worker is worth X working remote in SF they're worth the same amount in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah I get it, I just don't buy it. Move to a higher COL area, and you tend to get access to a market with expanded labor demand. So, it's $HIGHER_COL_MARKET_EMPLOYER (or $HIGHER_COL_MARKET if you catch my drift) increases your wages which pays for your mortgage.

But the competition tends to be fiercer in a higher COL area, so you are still not guaranteed even a median pay job in that area if you cannot get it. Many do not. The "higher COL area = higher pay" equation seems magical except it hides that it also includes higher competition.

But we're specifically talking about someone who already has a job at Gitlab here and how the CoL adjustment affects them and the weird situation it creates, so the competitiveness doesn't really matter, they've already got the job.

> But we're specifically talking about someone who already has a job at Gitlab here and how the CoL adjustment affects them and the weird situation it creates, so the competitiveness doesn't really matter, they've already got the job.

Of course the competitiveness matters. It informs the level of optionality and leverage they have to negotiate. I would say that it's the only thing that matters. What about the CoL adjustment is weird besides it being reflective of the somewhat ugly and distasteful truth that to the company, you are a human resource and fungible cog? That's what they're paying for.

This employee will have to think about what happens if they do not come to a favorable agreement with their employer. Their BATNA completely depends on 1) the demand of other firms in the area (or remotely) and 2) their relative ability to compete. If they can perform well enough to move to a competing employer in the same locale that pays better, they will.

>There are plenty of remote companies that don't do that

Care to name some?

This is a good list and lets you know if they're globally competitive or not. I'm not sure how much it's been maintained since covid so ymmv; https://github.com/yanirs/established-remote