> It’s not that we want to pay you based on your rent or compensate your cost of living. We want to make sure that we pay at or above market.
The blog post is very clear, and supported by the CEO's post above, that they are interested in paying the lowest amount they can get away with- that which they think is "at or above market". They don't care about cost of living. This is also made clear in their relocation policy, wherein they require you to get their permission to move to a different area, and you run a real risk of being denied/fired if you want to move to a higher cost of living area (The CEO has to approve such a move).
I really like that Gitlab and their CEO are so open about their true motives like this. If they didn't pay so poorly, I would consider sending them my resume!
It is true. The things you pointed out in GitLab's post don't disagree with my points, they just go deeper. GitLab's 'market rates' are based on, at least in part, cost of living calculations. They are simply saying they go one step further and try to pay you above the standard cost of living, and hopefully above what others pay as well. It is completely missing the point to say they "don't care about cost of living", because while it may be true that their objective isn't to match COL exactly, COL is a major factor. In their actual compensation principles guide [1], they specifically state that the location factor component of their compensation is almost entirely based in Numbeo data (numbeo is a site that quantifies regional cost of living).
Huh, I directly quoted them saying that it wasn't true! They explain in their post that they found that market rates correlate with rent costs, and that is why their pay correlates with rent costs.
This is absolutely not true. Gitlab says so very plainly in this blog post- https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/
> It’s not that we want to pay you based on your rent or compensate your cost of living. We want to make sure that we pay at or above market.
The blog post is very clear, and supported by the CEO's post above, that they are interested in paying the lowest amount they can get away with- that which they think is "at or above market". They don't care about cost of living. This is also made clear in their relocation policy, wherein they require you to get their permission to move to a different area, and you run a real risk of being denied/fired if you want to move to a higher cost of living area (The CEO has to approve such a move).
I really like that Gitlab and their CEO are so open about their true motives like this. If they didn't pay so poorly, I would consider sending them my resume!