I had to dig up some other sources for info, but this is the case. The new plant has nothing to do with coal, but it is being built to replace the power production and local power related jobs in that area.

Sources:

• TerraPower Press Release
• World Nuclear News Article (trade publication)
• AP Article

The article is critical of GitLabs model, not celebrating it.

What GitLab does is far more open than what you’ll see elsewhere, but the formula is actually pretty near to what most companies do already: Have pay bands for positions, and then a modifier based on the region, level factors, and some other inputs. Normally this produces a range, not a straight number, and then negotiations take place within that band (which is also why this information and formula is not typically shared).

As for the idea of paying a flat salary for a position regardless of where the person works, that is simply a non-starter for most companies, and essentially creates a race to the bottom to locate the region of the world that will produce qualified workers for the lowest possible salary possible. We as a society have no problem seeing fast fashion or other manufacturing that do this as being exploitive and evil, and this model is exactly the kind of thinking that drives that behavior. If we stop caring about where a person lives and instead look only at salary vs production, we will only ever hire in the absolute lowest cost of living places in the world capable of producing acceptable workers.

We need to look at this from another angle as well - Companies are buying labor, much in the same way that they buy raw materials, property, or utilities. When buying any of these inputs to your business, how do you decide how much to pay? Certainly you do not sit down in a board room and agree on a number and then go out into the world with that number and attempt to purchase what you need. You start by looking at what the going market rate for those inputs are. People, like materials, have some wiggle room in those numbers, and sometimes paying a little more will get you better quality or more reliability, so you will need to make decisions there to determine where on the spectrum you wish to fall, but never would you pay significantly more than market rate, nor would you be able to pay significantly below.

I see this kind of discussion constantly in the last few years, and often in terms of tying inflation to annual salary increases. “If inflation was 10%, why is my annual raise only 5%?” - because overall inflation was 10%, but the inflation in the cost for a person that can do your job was only 5%. It’s truly and honestly that simple. You are a commodity item that goes to the highest bidder - act like it.

Being in a small company is different, but not worse (or better). With the roles you have on your plate already, you have a sprawling blank canvas to work from, and in a small company environment, you tend to have a significant amount of flexibility so long as you don’t take your eye off of the main company objectives (vs a large company where “that’s not your department” situations can squash many learning opportunities).

First, figure out what areas you want to focus on. This doesn’t need to be forever, but you are going to need some degree of focus or you’ll risk doing a hundred things poorly and not really learning much.

Once you’ve figured out what you want to focus on first and have done some basic research/discovery, seek a mentor. This is one place where small companies make things harder, as you almost always need to look outside to find mentoring.

With the Project Management and Cloud Architecture bits of your role, you can look at Financial Operations. Just make sure you take a high level look first to see if there’s sense in that (make sure the ROI on you and your co-workers time plus any new services/providers needed makes sense for what you can potentially save - you want to be able to show that your time was well spent with any self-initiated project or you risk someone deciding that you need to be more closely monitored in the future).