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Comment by alt_f4 | Hacker News Reader

As long as GitLab continues to pay location-adjusted salaries for remote employees, talented employees don't want to work at GitLab either.

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They can only do that as long as there aren't many remote companies who compete for workers. If remote work becomes more mainstream they will have to compete globally. There are already tech companies that don't look at local salaries, but it's still far from mainstream.

Agreed. This is a nice article about some of the problems with remote pay based on location: https://dev.to/sam_ferree/why-i-think-cost-of-living-pay-for...

What a shitty post.

>That apartment in the bay area has great weather, it's above a fun little Thai fusion dive bar, and within walking (or public transport) distance to some of the worlds largest tech conferences and meetups. Meanwhile, an employee in Iowa has to drive an hour for a P.F. Chang's and has to wake up 5am to shovel his driveway 5 months out of the year to get his kid to school.

Could we inject just a little more Bay Area condescension for the flyover states?

To be clear, I understand the visceral appeal of the fairness argument and reducing two locales to a single ratio is incredibly simplistic. But ultimately, almost every distributed company lets market forces set different salary ranges--which may or may not be a better approach than a preset ratio.

And if you make a higher than average salary in a lower COL area, all of these "remote" companies want to give you a paycut for some reason.

The reason is clear: it's saving money by paying you less than what you're worth.

How do they ensure that their employees actually live at that location and dont just have a po-box or a buddy there to score an extra 20k a year? When you work remotely home is subjective.

This is sort of a case of malicious compliance.

What if you start at a low salary because you live in Mississippi, and later decide you want to move to NYC. Do they automatically give you a raise?

According to their policies, if you want to relocate, you have to tell the company which will choose to extend you a new contract or not.

(Presumably this partially relates to salary but they also make the point they're really not indifferent to location. They take things like timezones, proximity to customers, etc. into account.)

So, essentially, even though you're "remote", you are tied to your current location and you're their bitch. Reject companies like GitLab, don't work there, don't support that.

Some companies are more flexible than others, but it's pretty common that "remote" employees can't just pickup and move anywhere in the world they feel like it. Honestly, if one really wants to have that kind of flexibility they should probably consider consulting.

GitLab hires all "employees" in non-mainstream locations as contractors anyways. So, legally, it is consulting. But they treat you like an employee anyway. Legal grey area?

I don't really care about the legal status. I was suggesting that, as a truly independent contractor, you can set your own rates and if you're fulfilling your contract remotely you can certainly choose to charge the same whether you're in SF or a beach in Thailand.

I stopped reading when you claimed you don't care if it is legal or not to treat someone as an employee, but hire him as a contractor instead.

I care if it's legal or not. But hiring people as full employees requires certain legal structures/organizations to be in place in a location. There are costs associated with setting up those structures. This often doesn't make sense if there's only one person in a country or other such political entity.

Small companies do indeed not expand geographically for this reason--or hire through a partner or other entity that is already established there.

Well, for starters, you're probably violating the law because the residency you're claiming for tax purposes, etc. isn't your actual residency. I expect you're also in violation of your employment agreement. (And I very much doubt you're going to keep this a secret especially if you do any travel.)

Why? What company doesn't adjust salaries based on location?

They still pay very well in lower cost areas.

Anybody who doesn't grasp why location-adjusted salaries are a thing is probably not worth hiring.

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