[throwawaypolicy]

I've been told (at a different company based in a different country) "don't bring your work laptop to China, don't bring materials to China without authorization, we'll provide what is effectively a burner device for whatever you are bringing to China (I believe they re-used them as different employees went to China)".

I imagine Gitlab would have a similar but less restrictive policy, "don't bring a work laptop <with credentials that gives you access to one of these roles> to China, ...".

I don't see why a policy against residing/working in China would care about who you are married to or where they live.

[cyberferret]

Consider this scenario: Loyal and long time high performing Gitlab employee Bob, is happily married to Su, who originally hails from China. They live and work in the US. All good.

Until Su's ageing parents back home succumb to ill health and she decides that the family need to move back to China to care for them for maybe one or two years - perhaps longer.

Bob then has to make the choice between (a) resigning his job or (b) being forced into a long distance relationship with lots of travel between China and the US, or (c) divorcing his wife.

When company policy gets in the way of important life decisions, I think it is a dangerous line to walk.

[throwawaypolicy]

Consider the exact same scenario at any non-remote company.

If Bob wants to move to China, where the company doesn't have an office, he's going to have to resign or take a leave of absence.

This decision on Gitlab's part would be moving their incredibly generous "you can work from anywhere you want except places where we legally can't let you like Crimea and Iran" to a nearly as generous "you can work from anywhere you want except places where we legally can't let you like Crimea and Iran, and places that are known to coerce people into spying for them like China and Russia".

Most companies operate on a whitelist of places where you can work (where they have offices), not a blacklist. Even many remote companies operate on a whitelist (e.g. "Remote, US only"). Really, I'm amazed they feel that they can operate on a black list approach at all and not accidentally violate tons of local laws.

[kevml]

I may be reading into things here but it sounds a lot like the reason for this is to gain business from the US Government. Limiting reach from governments such as China and Russia is already standard practice for most security/defense related functions of the government.

[nateburke]

Yes, and didn’t they also just have a fairly abrupt about-face in terms of doing business with ethically-questionable customers?

MSFT just recently won a 10B cloud deal from the DoD, perhaps the purse is still open there?

[em-bee]

there aren't that many countries. turning the black-list into a white-list is not hard, so it really wouldn't make any practical difference.

[fastball]

There are a lot of countries.

[em-bee]

there are about 250 or so. it's not hard to make a complete list and drop the few undesired ones.

[fastball]

The point is that those 250 countries all have different legislation and cultures. The only concern is not "we don't want the Chinese government to have access to user data". That's the only concern for Gitlab (well that and not violating US laws in regards to who they can do business with), but it is not as simple for many other companies.

Going from a whitelist to a blacklist is hard because you need to either individually vet every country and decide if they're ok, or you need to just assume a lot of countries are ok.

Going from a blacklist to a whitelist is obviously trivial.

[edoceo]

Sound like "loyal and high performing" Bob could land a new gig. Life is about choice and Bob might have a difficult one. I hope he'd stay with Su. Better and Worse and all that.

[rurounijones]

> (a) resigning his job or (b) being forced into a long distance relationship with lots of travel between China and the US, or (c) divorcing his wife.

You forgot D that gitlab is actively discussing which is a role change while staying with the company.

[type0]

Then the good thing is that you are not married to the company you work for. You can even work for more than one at the same time; to be married to more than one person is so much more difficult :/>