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Gitlab compensation calculator is not open to everyone anymore (gitlab.com/gitlab-com)
134 points by why-not on Oct 26, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 89 comments



I've seen 10x more people on HN criticising their compensation model than being pleased about their honesty about their compensation model, so this is an understable reaction to incentives as created.

I am not attempting to promulgate any opinion about their compensation model or their chosen level of openness, only to point out that if the compensation model is working for them and they want to keep it, closing it off is a logical choice on their part.


I think you are overestimating HN's influence. Not sure if honesty is the right word here either. The open compensation model was probably deemed a competitive advantage for their target audience and it is no longer the case. Taking a side on some controversial topic will always invite criticism.


> I think you are overestimating HN's influence.

I was using HN as a proxy for "geeks being Mad Online" on the basis that reactions everywhere else were probably if anything worse.

I agree re competitive advantage, though, I was explaining one of the reasons I thought that had come to pass.


I would point out that transparency is a good value, but often is highly overvalued. Not a commentary on gitlab in particular necessarily, but if someone is screwing you behind closed doors vs doing it openly which is worse? Should you not criticize?

I think transparency is so highly promoted by the managerial class and their media because by appearing to have a certain kind of ethics and virtue that do not impact the bottom line, it allows them to rationalize their actions to themselves or to others.

For example, if a powerful person performs an action in the open that is kind of sneaky and underhanded and no one says anything because they're afraid, then to the powerful person it seems like it's A-OK.

That said, I prefer transparency to opacity because without information you are blind and have to criticize the lack of information rather than material conditions.


I'll take your good points one step further: transparency without honesty is like a window on a blackbox, in a room with no light.

Let say there's a CEO who presents facts and figures signalling their company's success. Investors are happy, employees are happy, regulators are happy. A month later, the company goes bankrupt.

How did no one see it coming?

Chances are the CEO did but knew other people wouldn't. She knew the decay was not yet solid enough, not yet visible enough, for outsiders to recognize it as decay. So, she chose not to highlight it. She gave their followers a nice, wide window into the company's activities as required by law, focusing on the easy parts, while leaving the decaying lines between the parts decaying in the dark.

The journalist phrase "shine a light" comes to mind: if leaders don't give followers a true belief they need (honesty) to organize the information they're given (transparency), then outsiders must bring or draw their own insight instead. To peer through the cracks and connect the dots while others fumble in the dark.

Effectively, transparency without honesty becomes a tool for manipulation. It enables the powerful to appear clear while maintaining their invisibility, and therefore their invulnerability.


Same applies to giving candidates you don't hire feedback. It's 100% a disaster. Most folks trying that learn pretty quickly!


I've given feedback to dozens of candidates over the last 3 years, only when the candidate has specifically asked for it. In all cases people appreciated that another human gave them an honest impression of the interview.

Perhaps "quickly enough" is over 3 years. Regardless even when it does go poorly with one candidate, I've had 3 years of people I've at least been a normal person to, instead of acting like a drone who is constantly afraid of the proverbial lawsuits from candidates.


I strongly disagree. My experience with that has been positive, _especially_ when candidates request detailed feedback and I provide it.

Caveats: this is in Australia, and I believe we've had legal advice a few times encouraging us to stop, because it could expose us to litigation.


I have a candidate feedback once, and they showed up at our office drunk & demanding a second chance. I gave a lot less feedback after that.


I feel this says more about the mental stability of that specific person and has very little to do with giving feedback, no?


The feedback was the trigger. Basically the point is it’s worth asking whether the downside of giving feedback and having it go poorly is worth it. A much more common experience is to give feedback, and have the job candidate challenge your feedback and/or share a sob story about how they really needed the job. Trade offs and all that.


Wow, okay, never experienced that myself.

OTOH, sounds like you made the right call on hiring :)


Caveats: this is in Australia, and I believe we've had legal advice a few times encouraging us to stop, because it could expose us to litigation

The situation in the EU is the exact opposite. As any company can be compelled to disclose electronic records, and all recruitment is done that way now, good companies get ahead of GDPR requests by proactively providing feedback.

Source: recent experience on both sides of the table. Location: South Wales.


The EU situation sounds much better. To be super clear, we ignored the legal advice, because we considered that it was much fairer to provide the best feedback possible to clients who asked.


Depends on how you provide feedback. If you get it back from the recruiter, there will be information loss. If it's written by engineers, or given you by engineer (or eng manager, who understand the feedback) personally, it end up much better -- because it's easier to mitigate any misunderstanding.


To give a counter-example, Riot Games does a pretty good job of giving that feedback though.


As a CEO for a bootstrapped tech startup, coincidentally using Gitlab for our repo, Gitlab's (free) compensation calculator was a godsend as I analyzed the costs of hiring and scaling up. I would never have had access to salary information as nice as this, had Gitlab not put it out there. I certainly don't "deserve" such nice resources on the web, and I appreciate it while it lasted, but is there a way I can find a replacement for information like this?


You can still find it cached at http://web-old.archive.org/web/20200721063326/https://about....

That said, the resource will become more and more obsolete as the time goes on.


> Gitlab's (free) compensation calculator was a godsend as I analyzed the costs of hiring and scaling up.

Well I wouldn't rely on it if I were you as it gave nonsense results for where I live. Recommending senior salaries so low that I wouldn't advise a new-grad to take them.


We have an open salary calculator[1]. This is how we've decided how to calculate salary in a totally remote setup[2]

[1] https://buffer.com/salary/

[2] https://buffer.com/resources/salary-formula-changes-2019/


"Hey if you were to live in SF, that would be your pay. But since you live in a shitty rural area, we deduct 15% of that."

I mean, thanks for being open, but I don’t get this at all. Cost of living depend on so many factors. Why take it into account at all? Why charge customers based on value you provide, but pay employees by what their own expenses are?


Buffer doesn't compete for San Francisco talent and that's OK. Of their 85 employees, they have 1 engineer in SF. Maybe that person isn't making bank. But the 3 persons in Barcelona appear to be. Average engineer salary in Barcelona is $44K and Buffer is paying $100K+. Good for them!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11s9VSyf4yaYUsqBKLaVH...


Yes if that 15% is the maximum deduction, sounds good. I was afraid they so like -50% if you live in another country with lower COL.


Apparently it goes up to 25%... I'm not a fan, even at 15 (I know my worth, and even though I live in a high COL city, they're not willing to pay nearly enough)


If they were to pay their employees based on the value they provide (and factor in the labour market), they would probably not arrive at SF salaries, and couldn't afford anyone from SF. That's why they benchmark it against SF and then go down from there. 80% of a SF salary is still plenty!

So while it's not perfectly "fair", the outcome for most people involved is still pretty great.


> Why charge customers based on value you provide, but pay employees by what their own expenses are?

This is incorrect. Costs and salaries are market based, shaped by supply and demand.


That explains variations in the case of people having to show up daily at the office in some location. The market is that location and you have to pay a rate expected in that area / market.

But in the case of remote, isn't the market the whole area to which you're open? If a company is open to hiring from the entire US, the market becomes the whole country. So if you decide on hiring engineer E, why would you pay more if E decides to live in SF instead of [low COL city]? E is the same exact person and whatever work they do is not dependent on where they happen to be.

The only variation I could see as "fair" would be dependent on how taxation varies. I'm not familiar with how these things work in the US, but if there's variation in payroll or income tax due to the state where the employee actually works, I can understand that for a given cost the company, the employee's after tax salary may vary.


Fair is not relevant, supply and demand are. Those are geographically different in major ways. Compensation offers follow this including for remote work.


I agree that fair is irrelevant, but my point is that the supply and demand dynamic is different in the remote situation.

Indeed, if all companies went full remote overnight, the demand wouldn't change that much, whereas the supply would be much larger.

If the company doesn't expect the employees to be physically present in a given location, the supply of talent is increased since it isn't restricted to a given area anymore.

So while I understand that people living in SF wouldn't appreciate having their salaries cut to the level of [low COL city], I don't see how companies would continue to pay SF rates when they can access talent for a lower price just because they live someplace else. And said talent could even be the same exact SF engineer deciding to live someplace else for personal reasons.


Companies have found that to hire engineers living in SF, they need to pay more than hiring someone living in Idaho. That is supply and demand.

Could those employees move elsewhere? Sure. That may in fact happen. But right now, an engineer in SF has both remote demand and local demand at FAR higher rates than someone in idaho.


Why companies care about hiring people in SF? If the company is fully remote, it shouldn’t matter. If it does matter then saying it’s fully remote is a lie. If there’s a need for a specific role to be physically in SF then hire in SF for that role. Also at this day the idea that they are competing against companies hiring locally is ludicrous. That might have been the case 5 years ago, but today most companies are hiring globally for remote positions — that’s your competition. Paying based on where people live is just burning company to subsidize insanely high real estate — and ensure your SF bros can keep their jobs.


That's also incorrect, as any hired employee creates a surplus which is divided to the firm and employee through Nash bargaining. Equations of supply and demand go into the coefficient determining how large a fraction the employee receives.


They don't pay employees based on what their expenses are. They pay employees based on what alternative employers would be willing to pay them.

Someone in SF can get high offers from companies in that area, so you have to match to get him.


Perhaps it seems more understandable if you ask a different question.

How much of a surcharge do employers need to pay in order to attract people who live in SF? And is the talent pool there worth paying that?


Part of my comment is exactly that. Buffer takes SF salary as the baseline and reduces from there. It’s framed as reduced salary. Not as a bonus for people in SF.


Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought your subject was about the practice, not the framing.


> Cost of living depend on so many factors. Why take it into account at all? Why charge customers based on value you provide, but pay employees by what their own expenses are?

To be totally fair, companies that sell in more than one market universally charge higher prices for the same thing in areas with higher cost of living.

That's pretty much what "higher cost of living" means.


Yeah, but usually the reason products are more expensive in a higher cost of living area is due to production and distribution costs being higher. Real estate for stores costs more. Onsite employees cost more. With a digitally distributed product and fully remote employees, none of those factors come into play.


But both Netflix and Spotify adjust subscription price based on country, presumably not depending on how difficult it is to negotiate with local copyright owners or connectivity providers, but based on local cost of living.


The granularity isn't the same, either. Companies seem to apply CoL adjustments for remote jobs inside the US. Does a Netflix subscription vary by where you are in the US?


Yeah you're right. That's price discrimination[1]. I guess varying salaries by CoL for remote employees might be sort of inverted price discrimination, because it's being done by a one buyer against multiple sellers, instead of the usual one seller against multiple buyers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination


> instead of the usual one seller against multiple buyers

I'm intrigued by the progression of the subthread from "it's weird for GitLab to do this on the employee side when nobody does it on the customer side" to "it's weird for GitLab to do this on the employee side when everybody does it on the customer side".


Lol, yeah. I have a bad habit of arguing flawed positions then occasionally even arguing against myself. I need to stop...


[deleted]


I'm not sure how that works in practice. Even with the CoL adjustment, people from lower CoL area still cost less.

Say a company has a choice between engineer H from a high CoL area and engineer L from a low CoL area. They are otherwise comparable in their skills, experience, etc. Why would they hire H when L is expected to be able to do the job to the same standard?

How is this eliminating competition based on location? People would move to a lower CoL area, so they could get an advantage.


> Even with the CoL adjustment, people from lower CoL area still cost less.

How so? If the CoL adjustment is high enough, they should have equal costs.

But I do see your overall point that with a CoL adjustment people in a low CoL area would in theory be able to be hired easier, because in theory they wouldn't need to be held to as high of a hiring bar.


Yeah, you are right, that didn't make much sense...


I wasn't talking salaries, I was talking about prices for selling products, same as thaumasiotes. I mentioned salaries only because payroll is a component of the production cost of a product.

And when it comes to location, I was talking about the location of the buyer. You're talking about the location of the employee. With a physical product being sold by onsite employees, the location of the buyer and the employee are the same. But with a digital product the location of the buyer and the employee are not necessarily the same, so something purchased in a high CoL area could have been produced by an employee in a low CoL area, and vice versa. So it doesn't make much sense to change the price of a product based on the location of the buyer in that case.

Typing this out, I realized there's an error in my previous comment, I didn't need to say "and fully remote employees". A digital product is sufficient to uncouple the employee's CoL from the buyer's CoL. The employees can all be onsite and the CoLs between the buyer and employees would still be uncoupled.


When talking to friends making almost double what I'm doing in California, I end up making more after tax.

Added to that, I pay a lot less for rent, food, and entertainment, and I have the freedom to move anywhere I want.


Wait, how does that work? In California, the effective tax rate for an engineer is going to be in the ballpark of 40–45%. If somebody is making about double then their income after taxes is about the same as your income before taxes. Even with a relatively expensive house (and high property tax), the effective rate is still not going to go far above 50%.


That's not how taxes work


15% off a SF salary for a much lower cost of living? Sign me up


Because that’s how economics works. If one dev wouldn’t do the job for some salary, there would be another that would if they can support their lifestyle.


Is it universally accepted in the industry that it’s OK to pay engineers who live in cheaper places less than those with high cost of living? I mean, the company is getting the same value in either case.


You pay as little as you can get away with.


This is the way.

This is also how you establish yourself as an outlier ;)


I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's pretty much universally the case across all industries and roles. I'm always surprised to hear that software engineers are surprised about this.

The interesting thing will be to see how remote work will change this over the next few decades.


You mean right now? Gitlab sells itself as a full-remote global-hiring company and there are plenty of others. With Covid and everything the exception now is being physically in the office. I don’t expect things to go back to how they were ever.

If you’re being hired for a remote role then at most salary could vary according to time zone, perhaps a small difference due to taxation issues.

Paying 40% more to get the same value from someone living in SF has no possible justification (from a business pov) if you’re hiring for a global remote position (which is what Gitlab does)

If there’s actually a business reason someone living in SF might add more value they should hire locally.

This all sounds like a lame way of ratinalizing paying more to some employees who happen to live in SF (early hires likely) while pretending everyone is treated the same according to some equation.


The same reason it's acceptable to pay less to a cleaner than it is an engineer. It's about supply & demand and attracting the talent you need. If people are willing to work for less then employers will pay them less.


Is it universally accepted that it is OK for consumers to pay less for goods produced in cheap regions?


I paid a fair bit for an iPhone made in China, which is supposedly on the cheaper side…


You pay a lot less for the Chinese built iPhone than you would for an American built iPhone.


No, you made Apple more money.

In fact I'd really wager that an iPhone is something that costs much less in manufacturing costs than other things made in China.


If there was a very good and expensive phone produced in, say, Vietnam, I don’t think I would discriminate and consciously choose a more “appropriately priced” phone instead.

Global trade & containers are to thank for that, I suppose.


I mean, the company is getting the same amount of value in either case.

No, they're not. Someone living near the main office (or if the company is fully remote just near the rest of the team), can attend face-to-face meetings with their team, they can be there for in-person client demos without needing prior notice and plane tickets, they're in the same time zone for remote meetings, if the team is international then people in different countries cost most for buying services and dealing with legal stuff..

Having staff live and work remotely does come with additional costs, and there are downsides, so it's not unreasonable to suggest the value isn't the same. When you're assessing the cost of staff you don't only look at the outputs.


Except Gitlab is fully remote, so these face to face meetings shouldn’t be happening.

If anything, creating this situation is actively creating a disadvantage to remote workers by not allowing them access to this privileged information. In my previous role, this was a real problem (and I was part of it!) where the remote team members didn’t have access to the in-depth information that those of us in the office did. That should have been on us to fix, but we didn’t and the company suffered as a result.

At Hotjar, like Gitlab, we’re 100% remote so we don’t have this 2-tier information system. There are costs, however ALL of these are good costs to have. They improve organisational resilience immensely and they’re things colocated offices should have but typically don’t until the time comes (usually after something bad happens).

Unlike Gitlab, we don’t split compensation based on location, it’s simply based on your role and seniority. It comes with some challenges but it makes me feel as valued as someone working from London or Munich, where the cost of living is higher.


This is a fair point, but theirs is a fully remote setup.

Honestly, if I get hired by Buffer while living in a low-cost area, I’d immediately move to a high-cost city to get better pay. Supposedly, HR shouldn’t bat an eye on that, since there’s the calculator? Or would they ask me to not move?

Would an engineer living out of a hostel in LA get paid more than one who has a mansion in Bali?


I know a few people in some companies who managed to move to cheaper locations, switch to remote and keep their salary. Imagine a recruiter trying tl convince them to work for Gitlab but having to move back to a big city and WFH in a tiny condo or otherwise get paid 50% what they make now lol It makes absolutely zero sense from demand/supply PoV and eventually they will have to catch up to the times. Fully remote isn’t an exclusive perk anymore Saying your hiring people anywhere in the world then telling the candidate the offer is shitty bc they don’t live in an hyper-inflated real-estate area is not just silly but insulting


I am also building a similar tool. It's not a salary calculator. It's a tool to predict the salary range from the job opportunity.

https://predictsalary.com

So if I wanted to predict the salary range from the job opportunities in Gitlab, I would have to take the "location" of the user into account. That's interesting.


Heh, pay looks better than Stack Overflow; not saying much.


Awesome as always


Continue to be disappointed by their regional pay without regional pricing


Great news, no need to be disappointed any more as the information wont be disclosed from now on. Unless you are employed there.


Everybody's doing this - e.g. Apple pays manufacturing workers peanuts in China, but doesn't sell iPhones for peanuts there.


Which still doesn't mean that it's ok.


HR departments pay big bucks for access to this kind of data: job descriptions, bands, and regional cost of wages. Makes me wonder if they were running afoul a licensing agreement or other companies were using this instead of paying for the data themselves.


Must have been ironic for the person who authored this commit to be editing the #transparency section.


That's too bad, a lot of companies rely on this... although I assume that's why they removed it.


Yeah, and they seem to receive only shit from publishing it. This is why we cant have nice things.


If you'd like to see the last data that was public, here's the commit that merged in the removal: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/commit/5ed24d...


"Cost of living" is not that straightforward to compute. In many Asian cities, the greatest cost is rent/mortgage. The cities are typically expensive and overcrowded because suburbs have no good schools and other amenities. However, most of these open salary calculators take raw purchasing power (like cost of commodity) to arrive at a rate.


Not just Asian! I live in Melbourne, Victoria. Until we had three children and sent them to a private school, rent and later mortgage was our largest cost by a long margin.


The never published sales compensation talking about openness.


Still complaining even after they are gone...


You access the cached version here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201003095006/https://about.git...

P.S. If you'd like to simply compare two offers, we have a total compensation calculator here: https://www.levels.fyi/calculator/


Some more salary calculators:

  * Buffer - https://buffer.com/salary/
  * StackOverflow - https://stackoverflow.com/company/compensation/calculator
  * Codacy - https://www.codacy.com/careers#calculator
  * SparkSuite - https://salaries.sparksuite.com/


The internal link is: 35.196.91.102.nip.io (using a service that automatically points the subdomain of numbers at the corresponding IP).

It seems like a really bad idea to use these for a security sensitive product, as an attack on the redirection site or its software could silently change which IP the address points to. IDK why GitLab couldn't use a subdomain of their own name or just buy a new one if needed.


Hi, Developer Evangelist at GitLab here.

Thanks for flagging this, the subdomain was a work in progress which has now been deployed. We have updated the handbook to reflect this change: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_request...


The link only references the documentation, is or was tool ever open source?




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