Comment by mlthoughts2018 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlthoughts2018 | Hacker News Reader

I really think remote-first still hurts workers over all, and is just taking advantage of offering relief from atrocious open-plan offices.

For example, Gitlab’s “compensation principles” [0] are horrifying to me. I could absolutely never work for an employer who openly acknowledges people who provide the same value to the company are explicitly paid less because of location, in a situation (unlike with physical offices in different locations) where there is no excuse for it.

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/global-compen...

Notably it’s not just about paying different rates to different locales. They also actively adjust your salary if you move, even though it has no effect on them at that point (they are already paying you a certain rate at that point and don’t depend on your location). And they control the definition of multiplicative factors that determine pay between locations (instead of it being a negotiation), and those multiples are often ludicrously wrong (e.g. NYC & London compared to SF).

This is a big point of contention. I recently had a conversation on this with someone in Marketing/Creative industry. He lives in SEA while being contracted with a Big Brand in USA. The Big Brand employs people all over the world, and they pay disparately according to location.

I asked him about fairness and he thinks it's fine. He finds that CoL should be paid according to area. When the company has a regional meet-up, he knows that people from around the region have the same capability to buy "tertiary" things, and that's a signal of fairness to him.

I'm not saying this is the right approach; just maybe a thought that companies have done this for longer than software companies.

For example, if I put in my own level on the compensation calculator of GitLab [0](Junior level, Learning The Role, FE Engineer, 0-2 years experience, living in Jakarta, Indonesia), I get $48k/year. That is pretty much the top 5% income bracket, not considering level. Entry level programmers here are paid $500-$1500 here, amounting to $18k/year at the most. That is a really large gap, and the vast majority would take it.

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/global-compen...

If not Gitlabs, what do you think is a good policy for setting salary rates? Paying based on SF/NYC rates seems ... dumb. Maybe companies should choose a salary that's competitive in any mid-tier cost of living American city and leave it at that? I'm genuinely not sure.

> “Paying based on SF/NYC rates seems ... dumb.”

Interesting! SF & NY based companies do it all the time.

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