Yes, almost everyone does this. It's just opaque in most cases. I will say that, assuming they follow their adjustments literally, you do have some odd situations. Your ideal strategy to maximize comp vs. cost of living is to live in a state where the comp for the whole state is set by a relatively high CoL city but to live in a lower cost area in that state. (At least that was the case last time I looked.)
[ADDED: Although it looks as if they've made their calculator more granular so that high CoL city doesn't carry over to other areas as much.]
I totally understand why a company won't hire from Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, Crimea – exposure to US sanctions threatens to cause severe negative repercussions.
But, why single out France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Sweden and Austria out of EU member states? What problems do they have which other EU member states lack?
Similarly, if Argentina and Brazil are a problem, what about Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, etc?
Likewise, why would UAE be a problem, but not Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Jordan, etc?
Must be related to employee rights, either something highly specific that is a dealbreaker to them (what would Austria have that Germany has not?) or it's a growing list based on precedence, likely full of permanently encoded biases depending on whoever was the initial candidate.
It's mostly related to employment entity complexity vs. organizational demand for that location.
To operate legally as a business in most of those countries on that list adds complexity that leadership has deemed "not yet". Doesn't mean forever, just means, not yet. I've seen countries come and go off of the list.
In Argentina, same pay for the same job is a constitutional right. If they hire someone here they would get a lawsuit asking for Silicon Valley payment.
UAE has weird bans on many VOIP solutions, also VPNs are in a bit grey area - I guess that would make remote work too problematic with the tools they use internaly.
I ran into this while doing work for several companies in Oman, their state telecom provider is in a monopoly position for voice calls, and the VOIP ban is to push business to them.
They had some pretty ridiculous workarounds, like using teamviewer for its voice chat function.
When you sell physical stuff worldwide, nobody will be surprised if you won’t ship to some select countries because of local safety regulations, bad postal services or other local difficulties. When you hire people, these local difficulties increase tenfold, and I can totally understand why GitLab does not hire everywhere.
You may also notice that in most “first world” countries they hire through a proxy (listed in the same file), and it seems like in “no hire” countries they just couldn’t find a proxy yet.
Ouch, even within Australia they have large discrepancies between capital cities. One of the reasons why remote work appealed to me, was that I was hoping to escape the unfair wage difference between cities. The fact GitLab maintains it despite not having to pay for real estate in the city you work from is totally unreasonable. Same work, same pay. I'll never apply for them.
Is it unreasonable for a random Indian company not to pay the same wages as one in SF (assuming the work is the same)? What about if both companies are consultancies doing projects for Gitlab? If differences in those cases are fine, why is there a sudden change if the employees of the above companies start working for Gitlab directly rather than through a proxy?
But I think that if GitLab is able to pay somebody in the US one wage for work, and they hire somebody equally qualified in Australia that will be producing the same work, they should be paid the same. Well, it's up to GitLab to decide what they're paid, they shouldn't be forced to pay them the same, but I wouldn't work for a company that didn't.
I'm also surprised GitLab are away to get away with it with all the fuss made recently about discrimination. Is this a form of geographical discrimination in terms of unequal pay?
I'm not sure anyone here is a big advocate for off-shoring as a cost savings measure, and I don't see anyone in this thread defending it as a practice.
They can set their salaries however they want I guess - none of my business. And it must work for them if they're hiring the people they want.
But I looked at GitLab's compensation recently when I was switching job, and even when I maxed every thing out (not saying I'm that good) the pay for the UK was terrible - completely unworkable for a professional software engineer on the global market. I think they had the UK as having lower cost of living than places like the Czech Republic. I know for a fact that cost of living in the UK is not lower than in the Czech Republic. But worse than that they had these little islands of reported higher cost of living. Individual cities like Bristol. I suspect someone influential lived there and wanted to be paid more and they managed to get a special case.
I think I earned more as an intern while a university student with another company, than GitLab's top-tier engineer salary.
The location factor applies to anyone living within commutable distance or 1.75hours / 1hr 45 mins. So someone living in central Brighton would be in the London location factor.
I hate to break it to you guys, but the reason Shitsville, TN has has a higher multiplier is not because someone at Gitlab is terribly confused about the relative cost of living in Shitsville, TN vs Paris and London.
Google does the same thing, they just aren’t this transparent about it. In fact every company I’ve worked for has a COL multiplier in their comp plan. It’s odd seeing everyone bandwagon on this about Gitlab as if it’s an uncommon practice.
Given how rare this is, we probably should praise them for the transparency.
Because what we are doing here is the very reason companies are not transparent in the first place: you never get praises, only critics.