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Thank you all for taking the time to give us feedback on our handbook and ___location factors. Why we pay local rates as outlined in the following section: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/global-compen....

We work handbook first at GitLab (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/handbook-usage/#why-handbo...) in line with our value of transparency so that each relevant page acts as a reference for company policies and internal operating procedures. In this case, that may mean the community would see how we define ___location factors, but also how they are calculated by the compensation team. I understand how the latter can feel very operational when reading through. If there is any feedback on how to make certain sections feel less cold, please open an issue in our compensation issue tracker (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/people-group/Compensation/issu...) or tag me in a merge request (@brittanyr).

With respect to our ___location factors not having all cities, this is due to taking a geographical areas approach. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/global-compen... If there is a city that is 1) not listed or 2) not aligned to local market rates, please feel free to send us an email with this information ([email protected]) or open an issue in our compensation issue tracker with the following issue template: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/people-group/Compensation/issu....


We ran linear regressions to see which factor was more statistically relevant between Cost of Living, Cost of Living with Rent Index, and Rent Index. We chose rent index from Numbeo based on those evaluations, which expresses the ratio of cost of rent in many metro areas. Since we are using San Francisco salary benchmarks, we divide by 1.26 to normalize the rent index to San Francisco. We multiply the Rent Index by 0.7 and then add 0.3, so the sum would equal 1 (i.e. we pay San Francisco rates in San Francisco).


So where does the 0.7 and 0.3 come from?


We are working on our 2019 iteration of the compensation calculator currently, which will create additional metro areas, one of which will be for Portland.


>We are working on our 2019 iteration of the compensation calculator currently, which will create additional metro areas, one of which will be for Portland.

It doesn't speak well that you need to be told which metro areas to add.

The US government had to address a similar issue and came up with a handy list of metro areas:

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

I find it a little odd that you would be so adamant about your compensation algorithm and not do basic due diligence exploring what others in the space have done in the space.

HN commenters shouldn't need to tell you what metro areas are missing - you should have proactively identified them.


REMOTE ONLY GitLab - We're hiring production engineers, developers, designers, and more, see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/ We're a remote only company so everyone can participate and contribute equally. GitLab Community Edition is an open-source Ruby on Rails project with over 1000 contributors.


Follow-up from last month's comment [0]:

A few days after that post, I got an email from a human who had actually read and reviewed my application materials. Very refreshing response and left a great impression. Did not progress further in their process at this time.

I can see how responding individually to a large volume of applications would be very tough to do in a reasonable timeframe.

Total time from my first submission to a human response was 15 days. If that represents a peak period, maybe it's a good upper bound on what to expect. I wonder what the lower bound is.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12629705


Hello! We try to respond to candidates as quickly as possible depending on the where the pipeline is at with any give role. If you would like an update on the status of your application please feel free to reply to People Operations, and we will respond to let you know exactly where your application stands.


REMOTE ONLY GitLab - We're hiring production engineers, developers, designers, and more, see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/ We're a remote only company so everyone can participate and contribute equally. GitLab Community Edition is an open-source Ruby on Rails project with over 1000 contributors.


The "ruby is strictly required" copy on the apply page is pretty off-putting. I'm not a ruby expert but it's not fucking rocket science.


Filled out one of the applications a while ago to see what would happen. Got back an email confirming my submission. No further contact (yet).

Was hoping to at least get something from a human.


Thank you very much for sending in an application. I do apologise for the delay in responding to you. We are receiving a large volume of applications at the moment.

If you can send an email to [email protected] with your name and the position that you have applied for I can take a look and find out what the status is.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us at GitLab!

Abby


REMOTE ONLY GitLab - We're hiring production engineers, developers, UX designers , and more, see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/ We're a remote only company so everyone can participate and contribute equally. GitLab Community Edition is an open-source Ruby on Rails project with over 1000 contributors.


We're hiring production engineers, frontend and backend developers, UX designers, and more. Work on mostly open source software!

https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/

We're a remote-only company so everyone is on an equal level. GitLab is an open-source Ruby on Rails project with over 1,000 contributors.


REMOTE ONLY - GitLab

We're hiring production engineers, developers, UX designers, and more. Work on mostly open source software!

https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/

We're a remote-only company so everyone is on an equal level. GitLab is an open-source Ruby on Rails project with over 1,000 contributors.


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