Hacker News Reader

Comment by ernstvn | Hacker News Reader

Would love to get more input from you to make sure the calculator reaches its goal of providing fair market compensation in your location. Can you please send me an email to let me know your city and whatever further data you are willing to share? ernst@gitlab.com

View on HN

My local city, but the data isn't so much mine as data that the US government shares.

Sacramento, CA. Mean Salary (per latest BLS data) [0] for Software Developer, Applications: $107,540; for Web Developer: $78,050

Sacramento, CA Gitlab locality pay index: 0.39+0.25=0.51

Vs.

New York City, same BLS figures [1]: $108,770/$81,430

NYC Gitlab locality pay index: 1.00+0.25=1.25

Sac/NYC Salary Ratio (BLS): 0.989/0.958

Sac/NYC Salary Ratio (Gitlab): 0.512

Fundamentally, the rent index based methodology you are using is, I would guess, giving you below market pay almost everywhere that isn't NYC or San Francisco, assuming that you've hit the market wage for the skills you are targeting in your NYC baseline.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_40900.htm#15-0000

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_35620.htm#15-0000

Thanks; this is useful. I've made an issue ( https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues/23 ) to make sure we cross check BLS data with the calculator.

I'm not sure what it is about small Midwestern cities but the calculator seems to dislike them. The calculated rates for Cincinnati are roughly half of market rate here. I understand the calculator will not be perfect in every city worldwide but it might be better to have no calculator as the current one is extremely discouraging even though I like GitLab.

It's based on rent. Each city is punished in proportion to how much cheaper its rent is than the rent in NYC. As NYC is one of the top 5 most expensive cities worldwide for real estate [0], any city marginally more reasonable is going to get pummeled.

[0] http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/most-expensive-cities

Perhaps it's that there is lots of cheap housing in the suburbs here, and in the greater metro area but that is outside the city proper. But most of the tech / startup activity ie concentrated in one small gentrifying neighborhood where rent is much higher (+50–100%), so coincidentally people in tech aren't buying those houses because the commute is so far from the core.

I wonder if any of these indexes breaks down a city by zip code. A good analogy for here would be if you averaged all rent over the neighborhoods in Brooklyn then used that number for a bunch of candidates in Williamsburg.

It really penalizes living in a third- / fourth-tier startup hub, for example, vs either a first- / second-tier hub or a non-hub.

Taken from another perspective maybe it's an intentional filter on the candidate pool to specific cities or countries. That wouldn't seem to be consistent with most remote philosophies but it's something to consider.

Interestingly, Buffer's salary calculator is almost the opposite with a relatively small percentage difference between Nashville or Austin vs SF or NYC for instance.

Correction: even though the ratio calculated from it and the calculation for it are correct, I somehow mistyped the Sacramento locality index, which is 0.64, not 0.51.

Didn't notice it until after the edit window was closed.

I sent you a more detailed email, but basically it is preposterous to assume a "very experienced" senior engineer in ANY part of the United States is going to be happy with making $65K.

Exactly this. A very experienced engineer who is capable of working remote will likely be pretty intelligent. They'll realize a company is attempting to steal the surplus they created by living a low-cost lifestyle. I don't really understand why a company feels they have any claim to this.

Remote employees who are good at being remote have some very good options at this point of their career. Why the heck would they take less money simply because they had the foresight to move to a low cost of living location? Half the (stellar) people seeking remote work have built their entire lives around this fact - and have made very conscious decisions regarding their career and lifestyle.

Obviously it's working out for Gitlab, but I can't imagine any of my senior remote talent finding this acceptable in any way. I guess I could see it working for a couple years "converting" an engineer who is super excited to move into remote work vs. on-site. But beyond that, this policy seems extremely dangerous to me.

This is precisely what turned me off applying for a job at Gitlab after initially being hugely enthusiastic. My family and I moved away from London to the city we grew up in to save some money, partly because I knew I could work remote for the same sort of money I had been making while paying considerably less on rent and living expenses. The cost of living adjustments Gitlab do would mean entirely negating that benefit.

I'm not really sure what the justification for CoL adjustments is, beyond "we can get away with it". Apparently I'm worth paying $120,000 working from home in London, but if I move 70 miles south I'm worth half that. Not only does it make little sense logically, there's no way cost of living here is less than half that in London, so its not even calculated correctly.

Thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com