I think author gets many things wrong.
As for location, the motivation is stated here, and in my opinion, it really makes sense: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensat...
Imagine they would pay Bay Area salaries everywhere including Philippines or Ukraine. People there would be in "golden handcuffs" and burn out instead of changing job when it's time to go. This would produce terrible results for both the company and people.
And of course, if they chose to pay some kind of world-median salaries, then they wouldn't hire people in California or London at all.
There are other controversial things said about product managers being unneeded, and that the company shouldn't have more than 100 developer for a product.
I think it's pretty clear that the author is a great autonomous engineer who would be happy and very successful in a (relatively) small startup. Maybe if not for the tax rule changes waiting, he would have left the company earlier, and would write a happy article about his experience there.
This gets us back to the location-based rates again by the way:). Imagine how difficult it would be for the author to leave the company if in addition to stocks, he would have had $300k compensation in Amsterdam.
As for location, the motivation is stated here, and in my opinion, it really makes sense: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensat... Imagine they would pay Bay Area salaries everywhere including Philippines or Ukraine. People there would be in "golden handcuffs" and burn out instead of changing job when it's time to go. This would produce terrible results for both the company and people. And of course, if they chose to pay some kind of world-median salaries, then they wouldn't hire people in California or London at all.
There are other controversial things said about product managers being unneeded, and that the company shouldn't have more than 100 developer for a product.
I think it's pretty clear that the author is a great autonomous engineer who would be happy and very successful in a (relatively) small startup. Maybe if not for the tax rule changes waiting, he would have left the company earlier, and would write a happy article about his experience there.
This gets us back to the location-based rates again by the way:). Imagine how difficult it would be for the author to leave the company if in addition to stocks, he would have had $300k compensation in Amsterdam.