a lot of assumptions here. Cost of living is proportional to quality of services, or else people would move. Shouldn’t gitlab also pay more so that the people who live in cheaper cities get better food/schools etc?

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