
I'm leaving GitLab to help everyone work remotely - snow_mac
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/im-leaving-gitlab-help-everyone-work-remotely-job-van-der-voort/
======
neya
There's an interesting downside about remote work that most articles don't
talk about. Pay.

The brutal fact is most companies simply re-brand outsourcing as "Remote"
employees. Case in point, a few years ago, a DIY website builder (a company
with a name of a coniferous plant species which I won't name directly)
contacted me for a "remote" position.

I passed all their tests and we eventually went to the salary negotiation
stage. I agreed to this interview in the first place because I read online
they paid really well for their employees, particularly in the US (Bay area).

So, when we were discussing the pay, I threw in a number that's common for the
Bay area employees and what seemed very, very reasonable for me. In fact, my
current salary was almost the same, just so to make it clear to you that I
wasn't trying to take advantage of them or anything.

Immediately, the founder got offensive and told me, "What? Are you serious??
You live in Asia (I was living in Singapore at the time, which already had
better pay as opposed to PH), for our employees in Philippines we pay 1/3rd of
that and I can still get the job done. Why would I want to pay you _that_
salary?" I told him, "Well, this is what you pay your Bay Area employees,
don't you? Besides, my experience more than matches the job profile and
requirements and my test results just proved to you I am more than capable for
this position."

His answer? "But, you don't live in the Bay area". I thanked him for his
opportunity and advised him to contact some sweatshops instead of playing the
"remote" game. Since then, I very very carefully ask anyone who uses the word
"remote" a LOT of questions, qualify them if they really know remote isn't the
same as outsourcing before even going into the interview.

I would have happily agreed to a lower salary if it was fair enough. But,
asking me to go down to 1/3rd of my price because of where I lived in seemed
ridiculous to me. In the last 10 years, I've lived in 7+ different countries
and 35+ different locations within them as I'm that sort of person who likes
to travel and explore new cultures. Basing my salary or worth based on where
I'm from, where I live in at present seems the most ridiculous thing to me
about remote work.

Edit: Typos and clarifications

~~~
fyfy18
GitLab themselves have this issue too. They openly publish their formula for
calculating salaries [0], but it is very strongly weighted against the local
rent index. If you spent all of your salary on rent, then yes it would be
fair, but if you want to buy a car, new iPhone or go on a Caribbean cruise,
it's going to cost the same whether you live in the Bay Area or Belarus.

For example in the UK if you live in London and earned £60k, according to
GitLab's 'Move Calculator' in Bristol you would earn £42k, or in Brighton
£38k. Yes there is a difference between the living costs, but there is not
that much difference. A 1br apartment close to the center of Bristol is around
£900/mo, and in London zone 2 around £1200/mo.

I've seen a lot of remote startups offering salaries around $100k USD,
independent of location. For most of the US (outside hot areas like SF or NYC)
and Europe that's a good salary, but what if the person you want to hire likes
living in the middle of SF and doesn't want to move? For them that salary is
going to be too low. I'm not really sure what is the middle ground here.

[0] [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-c...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-compensation/)

~~~
sschueller
I don't think adding a location factor for anything that is less than 100% of
the companies core location is fair. You are doing the exact same job and have
the same skill level, you should be paid the same. If you decide to move
somewhere where living is cheaper then that is up to you and should not affect
your earnings.

This is how you keep poor countries / states poor. Instead of paying people
the same which would result in larger taxes paid and more spent in those
locations you are keeping status quo.

~~~
jedberg
Location is a factor though. If you live in the middle of nowhere, your
chances of finding another job are low. If you live in SF, your chances of
finding another job are high (because most jobs are still in person jobs).
That is why location matters.

It has nothing to do with _your_ value and everything to do with what the
company has to pay to get the talent it wants.

~~~
chii
Then let it be enforced via competition and market forces - rather than just
using location to lowball somebody.

If lots of people are applying from a low-cost country, the employer is free
to choose and thus, would be able to offer a lower salary. But from my
understanding, employers want the same level of quality as they would get from
the bay area, but insists on paying 3rd world wages if the remote is at a low
cost of living location, even though there are very few other candidates
suitable!

~~~
SamReidHughes
Well, it is enforced by competition. Not every market player is going to be
rational, though. And it was rational for the CEO to try to pay lower than
SFBay pay, but maybe not to bail on the negotiation entirely.

------
stevenacreman
Has anyone tried signing up for remote.com?

I just did and they wanted an email for jobs which I thought was OK.

Then I tried to add a profile and it prompted me to export my entire LinkedIn
history. It says to export "The Works".

My LinkedIn is quite massive and I've checked the export for "The Works"
includes my entire contact list.

That's pretty shady. Why not just import my profile? There's an option to
export only profile data. How many people will follow these default
instructions and upload everything they have ever done on LinkedIn?

~~~
jobvandervoort
We should be much more transparent about this, you're right.

We're going to split this up between your profile and your contacts, and make
it explicit what happens.

~~~
purephase
I know it's nice to see you in here and commenting, but I have to weigh in a
bit to offer advice. These types of issues shouldn't exist in a modern
application. Particularly one that deals with a fairly sensitive subject for a
lot of people (looking for work).

I hope it's not an indication of the overall data handling approach within the
application in general and just an oversight for launch. It might be
worthwhile to re-visit your internal policies/review practice for safe harbour
and be upfront about it.

Just a suggestion!

------
mooreds
I agree with a lot of his points about the value of remote work, but the
biggest one is that the labor pool is much much larger. This is such an
advantage that I believe it outweighs the higher bandwidth conversations and
the deep talent pool in the Bay area, but it does require reconfiguration of
the company. Sharing of data, leveraging of online tools, _trust_ in
employees, adjustment to communication differences.

In fact, I don't know if you can take a company that is built onsite and
revamp it to succeed in a 100% remote manner. Perhaps, if you replace one
department at a time? I don't know, and haven't encountered any stories of
such a transformation.

Anyway, congrats to the OP. I don't know if we need another remote job board,
but heaven knows we need more remote jobs.

~~~
ebg13
> _I agree with a lot of his points about the value of remote work, but the
> biggest one is that the labor pool is much much larger._

That's clearly an advantage for the employer, but not necessarily for the
employees who live in globally-more-expensive places. Taken to the obvious
conclusion, remote developers in India can do the same remote work for a lot
less money than remote workers in the US can afford to.

I know it sounds crass and protectionist, but US _workers_ cannot afford
globalization despite the increase in profits for employers.

~~~
freddie_mercury
I'm always amazed at all the developers who are in favor of remote work....as
long as you don't offshore....

If I'm going to hire remote workers why wouldn't I hire great talent in
Vietnam or China or Poland instead of in the US?

~~~
rock_hard
Because many tech companies are not looking for sweatworkers but people who
fully understand the context in which the product they are working on
exists...from my expierence you won’t find these folks offshore

~~~
freddie_mercury
I don't work in the US. I guarantee you those people exist outside of the US.

You think the engineering team behind Alibaba's singles day sale are just a
bunch of sweat workers? You think people in Bulgaria can't understand context?
Engineers in Canada can't?

~~~
rock_hard
I should have been more clear, I meant in your typical engineering offshoring
shop.

Of course you can find talented engineers with product sense
elsewhere...though so far a majority keeps flocking to the pacific north west.

------
sam0x17
Being well-rested pretty much all the time (no commute, no two-hour pre-work
morning routine), having a much bigger talent pool, not having to pay for a
physical office, and eliminating office-related distractions (open offices
suck) all make remote work pretty much a win-win for employees and employers.
My company is in the middle of the transition, and the dividends are paying
off already.

~~~
ehnto
It isn't always a win win. I prefer remote myself, but not everyone has a
quiet or understanding home to work in and not everyone can work well
completely isolated. When the last place I worked at asked if the team wanted
to go remote, only a handful said yes and even those people still wanted the
option to come into the office. For a lot of people, the workplace is where
they have friendships and structure that makes them feel happy and like they
are progressing in life. I don't feel the same way but I empathise and I
suspect it may even be the majority.

~~~
mooreds
> It isn't always a win win.

Agreed. Especially with less experienced folks, remote work can be hard
because there's less context. You can't see someone struggling quietly at
their desk, they have to ask for help or you have to ping them.

------
m0zg
I wish he'd write a book about how to run fully remote companies, especially
_international_ ones, like GitLab. Having recently founded a company myself, I
have no plans of ever renting a permanent office if I can avoid it. So far
though, I only had to deal with regulatory stuff in two states (DE and WA),
and I get a throbbing headache from just contemplating doing this in every
state and internationally as well. Would be pretty cool to know where the
rakes are buried under the leaves so to speak, and how best to
structure/manage such an organization, even besides the usual communication
related challenges.

~~~
thirdsun
You probably already know the book, but Basecamp's founders collected their
thoughts on the matter a while ago:
[https://basecamp.com/books/remote](https://basecamp.com/books/remote)

~~~
munchor
Unfortunately, this book does not address any of the complicated legal
logistics aboute remote work (setting up multiple companies abroad like GitLab
has done, hiring contractors, giving stock and stock options to people around
the world, benefits, exclusivity, etc.).

I haven't read a lot about this online but I know it's one of the problems
with remote work.

~~~
mikro2nd
I'd guess that the whole arena is just so complicated and idiosyncratic that
it's basically impossible to generalise the way you'd need to for a book.

Details/legalities are going to vary depending on where your company is
registered, where your nominal "offices" are (some/most legal jurisdictions
still insist on the fiction of a registered office, even though the whole
point is to work completely decentralised) and where you're hiring people. So
a book/website/wiki/whatever covering all the legal, tax, compensation, worker
rights, healthcare, etc., etc. for all the combinatoric possibilities seems
unlikely. A high bar and of limited value, since the rules are in any case
shifting all the time. So it ends up roughly where we are, with each company
hacking through the specific cases that cross their paths with their
respective lawyers and accountants.

In this regard, the one thing I have seen is that most Remote First/Only
companies I've tripped across seem to throw the questions of healthcare, home
office allowances and even income taxes over to the employees... it's already
too complicated for them to deal with unless they severely limit the number of
countries they'll hire from.

~~~
m0zg
I mean, healthcare is OK to throw to employees, IMO, provided the employer is
willing to pay more to compensate the employee. It's not a difficult thing to
procure. I've had my own insurance for over a year, and yes, it's pretty
expensive, but if I were someone else's employee and my employer covered a
half or 2/3rds of the cost, I'd be pretty happy. The cognitive overhead is
about the same: you just review your cost increases at the end of the year and
sigh.

------
Zarath
Is anyone else not as optimistic about remote work? I feel that the workplace
is the single largest facilitator of friendship/relationship/community
building that most adults have in the modern day. If this goes away I really
fear that the loneliness problem will become even worse.

~~~
Down_n_Out
Remote work doesn't mean solitude, it means being free to work wherever, and
often times whenever, you feel comfortable. It also means less commute, less
cars, less pressure on the environment. If friendship/relationship/community
is a worry go work in a nearby co-work space or a coffee shop or the park
even, it might be a walk or bike ride away.

~~~
joelbluminator
You're simplifying things. I don't think parks or co-work spaces will cut it
for most people. Many software developers are introverts to begin with so
meeting new people will become impossible for them in a remote work setting.

~~~
lostctown
Yeah, as someone who is on the extreme end of introverted (not shy, just happy
to be alone) this was the case for me. I got a membership to the co-working
space, did many of the social events, attended some meetups even, but the
connections just wouldn't stick.

On the flip side, when I have worked at an office I have always come out after
a year or so with a couple close friends in the organization. Because of the
physical proximity many of the shared experiences are more intense. Putting
out production fires, after work beers, dropping in on a co-worker to talk
about the product, etc, lead to longer lasting relationships.

Developers have a tendency to assume that technology can solve more of our
issues than possible. I have plans to start my own company with a bit more
savings and network under my belt, and I will be doing zero remote, assuming I
can afford to.

~~~
joelbluminator
Humans are not robots, we may be some sort of an algorithm but a very
complicated one: we need emotional bonding and physical proximity is very
important for that.

------
sigmaskipper
I am glad he is expanding remote work as it can be beneficial to companies who
need it and motivate workers morale; however, working remotely full time is
not always the greatest if you do not have other priorities in your life.

For example, for my first job out of college, I was placed in a team where my
manager was working in a different city, and half the team was in a timezone
12 hours ahead. It was great if I wanted to leave at 3 or come into work at
10, but man, it was isolating as a new hire coming into the office and not
speaking a word to anyone or interacting with anyone on my team while other
teams around me had productive meetings or team lunches. Working remotely in
this case did not give myself any extra motivation to work for the team or
help the team because I did not know them personally. Maybe there are other
ways to work remotely and still foster this camaraderie, but I find it hard to
see when most conversations are phone calls where people looking into their
computer screens.

~~~
dx87
I had the same experience when I first started working remotely, I would go a
couple of days in a row without talking to anybody at work because everyone
had there own thing they were working on. Another coworker left his remote job
after 7 months because he felt so lonely that he ended up working at bars and
coffee shops with free wifi just so he could have normal human interaction.
I'm at a new remote job, and my solution to loneliness has been hanging around
in smaller twitch channels talking to streamers and regular viewers. I get
less work done, but I don't feel like a miserable piece of a machine now.

~~~
mac01021
> I get less work done, but I don't feel like a miserable piece of a machine
> now.

Why don't you just do that work faster without being on twitch, and then use
the extra hours to go outside and participate in an actual community or engage
in some more gratifying activity?

------
shaklee3
I think he overvalues _temporary documentation_. There is a difference between
writing extremely detailed notes on something because you know you won't be
available for 12 hours rather than documenting a summary and asking questions
if needed. The former is only a shortcoming of working remotely. You end up
writing a tremendous amount of documentation that is really ephemeral, just to
allow people to work in that manner. There is no substitute for face time, and
video conference doesn't do that. The only companies I've seen be successful
at this are extremely small, and the employees they do have are highly
independent.

~~~
sverhagen
"Big" is a subjective measure, so I don't know if you think 450 is big; it is
in my world. This 450 staff company GitLab, that this person is leaving, is
well-known for being successful at being 100% remote. Maybe they're an outlier
(probably they are), maybe they're the one proving you wrong.

Maybe your experience is with "remote-friendly" companies, versus GitLab being
a 100% remote company. Purportedly, they don't have any number of people that
are commonly colocated.

~~~
shaklee3
I suppose they might be the one to prove me wrong. But I think the larger they
get, the more they'll hit the problems big companies face, and it's compounded
by being remote.

Good for them for making it this far, and from what I've read their product is
great.

------
jaggederest
I was sitting in a meeting a while ago, and someone said something about being
physically present in the office for an engineering process, and it just
really struck me that I honestly didn't even consider that relevant, let alone
valuable.

At least in tech, anywhere that can hold a stable SSH session open is a
workplace, as far as I am concerned.

~~~
ghaff
I do think F2F (and not just videoconference) time is valuable and companies
need to budget that if they’re remote. You probably need some T&E to make up
for people being scattered.

~~~
mac01021
> I do think F2F (and not just videoconference) time is valuable

Can you say why?

~~~
michaelt
If I ask someone "We need to add spidev to the dtb, can you do that?" there
are several possible answers they can give:

"Yes" meaning "This is a <1 hour job for me, I've done such things several
times and have all the tools, skills, data and experience needed"

"Yes" meaning "This is a <1 day job for me, I've done similar things once or
twice with some difficulty"

"Yes" meaning "This is a <1 week job for me, I don't know precisely what to do
but I can probably figure out how to do it with my general programming
knowledge, and Google"

"Yes" meaning "I have no idea, but you wouldn't be asking if it was impossible
and I don't want to say no to my senior"

The differences between these yeses is often lost in nonverbal communication.

~~~
mac01021
Sounds like you're not asking precisely the question that you want the answer
to.

------
stephenr
I'm sure the hive-mind will make itself known in response to this, but I think
the 'problem' is more nuanced than just "you pay X in SF, I want X".

I agree completely that location shouldn't really affect the pay - I've worked
with a company (heavily skewed to remote work) that favoured (Central/Eastern)
European workers because they could hire 2 for the price of a single US worker
to do the same job.

I think the issue with the OP's case specifically is that SF salaries are
ridiculously over-inflated - the solution is to pay people _less_ and
encourage them to live somewhere that's actually liveable.

Factor in how much money the company is probably spending on it's own costs in
SF (i.e. office rental etc) and they should probably pay the remote workers
_more_ because they provide the working space/etc themselves.

~~~
apta
> I think the issue with the OP's case specifically is that SF salaries are
> ridiculously over-inflated

When the employing company is making billions of dollars, it's only fair to
pay its employees accordingly. This attracts talent. There's a reason why you
generally find the best tech workers in the Bay Area and other tech hubs.

~~~
stephenr
You're suggesting that SF salaries are high purely because a small number of
the companies in the area make billions of dollars in profits, and the rest
are just playing "Keeping up with the Jones" on salaries?

You think it has nothing at all to do with ridiculous cost of living caused by
a massive influx of workers, in turn caused by an almost cult-like obsession
with a particular geographic location funded by billions upon billions of
other peoples money?

~~~
apta
It's cyclic. When employees are highly paid, rents will go up. Other people
will also want in on the high salaries, so competition goes up to acquire the
best employees, salaries go up, rents go up, rinse and repeat.

~~~
stephenr
Landlords don't know what their tenants earn. They know when there is a lot of
demand for available living space. Higher demand means they can ask for more
rent, with a greater chance someone will agree to what they ask for.

------
markbnj
I love this post, and as someone who has worked remotely for a decade or so,
and currently works for an all-remote company, I agree strongly with his
points. I'd add that remote work offers us an opportunity to spread the
economic benefit of working in tech into more areas that don't traditionally
have a lot of tech employment. In the U.S. wealth is heavily concentrated in a
few coastal and metropolitan regions. Encouraging the growth of remote work
should help us spread it around, and I think that would be awesome.

~~~
isostatic
But why spend $80k employing someone in Kentucky, when you could spent $20k
employing someone in Khatmandu?

------
thedevilslawyer
Some of the comments here criticizing the remote work concept are doing it on
the following lines:

    
    
      1. It's bad for SF workers - pay is worse.
    
      2. No separation of home and work life.
    
      3. It's lower quality work.
    
      4. Regulations require local residents.
    

Then let's agree that remote work/process is to be the default, as long as

    
    
      1. the measure of quality is quantifiable.
    
      2. the work does is not for the government.
    
      3. work pays for a co-working seat/equivalent.
    

The above is close to 95% of the tech/startup industry. It's probably bad for
SF engineering, but that's OK. They'll figure it out.

This is better for the world, and for the industry. Let's do this. Everyone
has a birthright to opportunity of good life, not those that luck allows to
move to SF.

------
apohn
Quote from the article "The first day in the hospital, I left a message to my
colleagues in Slack and didn’t worry about work for another two months. When I
did check in with my co-workers, there were no frantic demands for my time -
in fact, there was nothing but support and people telling me to take it easy."

Not that the author attributed this to remote work, but companies respecting
people taking time off is less about remote and just more about having a good
manager and being in a company with a good culture with _typically_ a positive
cash flow. Gitlab will probably get some applicants based on this paragraph.

I had a remote job in the past where there was always an overwhelming amount
of work. One time an amazing colleague needed some time off to handle a major
personal issue, and was at 50% productivity for a few months after. I could
see our manager and other folks resented them for this. There was simply no
culture to support people who needed time for their personal lives. At the
time I didn't have the sense to realize how toxic the work environment was. At
least with "ass-in-seat" time you can sit in a conference room doing personal
stuff and people will assume you are working.

That being said, I love remote work!

------
arosier
Interesting interview about the acquisition of the domain remote.com
[https://www.namepros.com/blog/inside-interview-why-this-
comp...](https://www.namepros.com/blog/inside-interview-why-this-company-paid-
six-figures-for-remote-com.1013432/)

------
nnd
I've been working remotely for the last few years. Here is my take on the
arguments presented in the article:

> First, it becomes easier to focus on merit, actual work, rather than on how
> long people stay in the office. In other words: you don’t need to count
> hours to see whether someone is being productive. You can now allow people
> to work whenever they want.

Sure, working remotely boosts individual productivity, but it deteriorates
group productivity due to the inherent inefficiency of online communication.
It works better for more senior specialists and in scenarios where everyone is
working more independently doing heads down work.

I've also noticed that because I could work whenever I wanted and because I
was judged by my output only, I tended to work overtime and eventually became
more and more burnt out. I'd argue that separating life from work when working
remotely is a challenge in itself, and one has to have a very strong
discipline to _not_ work all the time.

> Third, you can now hire the best people on the planet in any particular
> function.

Not necessarily. Most of the time a mediocre developer would do just fine, and
this essentially becomes a form of outsourcing labor to cut the costs down.

Then, there is an issue of trust online. Unless you have an established
relationship with a professional, you'd probably use middlemen marketplaces
like Upwork or Toptal to mitigate the risks of making a wrong hire. So even if
it's true that there is a vast amount of talent available worldwide, it's
still a challenge to tap into that talent not only due to trust issues but
also because of the legal restrictions and international payments.

Most importantly, when working remotely you are making a sacrifice when it
comes to your career development. Likely, the work you'll be doing wouldn't be
as challenging as what you could do in top tech companies. It does allow for
more flexibility to work from wherever and whenever you want, but personally,
I didn't find that as valuable, as having meaningful work.

Again, this is just must experience, and I'm curious if anyone is happy with
their career path working remotely.

------
ArthurBrussee
The more you think about salary based on location the less it makes sense. I
got an offer for FB London that is as half of offer for bay area. Where does
that $$$ go? Maybe some tax, but then a bay area office is also more
expensive. I'd be doing the exact same work.

Coming from a freelance perspective, the only equation should be 'how much
value do I provide company X, how much of that do they give back'

------
tracker1
I've generally stayed in the Phoenix area because the local pay for software
development is far better than the average cost of living for the area. Just
because the average person here doesn't make what I do, doesn't change the
average for the industry in this area. That's why I wouldn't even interview
for GitLab.

------
buboard
It's always good news to hear about people promoting remote work. I wonder how
are interpersonal relationships for people who work in fully remote companies.
Things like , are you friends with your coworkers, or do you share your
personal lives and to what extent?

------
barbs
What do people here use to find remote work? Is remote.com a decent option?

------
rajasimon
Wow, that cool domain he has!

