Just to be clear: the calculator takes Level, Experience, and Location into account. If the candidate and recruiter arrive at different numbers while typing into the calculator, then there is apparently miscommunication about one or more of those factors. But being asked to agree to something that is lower than what comes out of the calculator is just not something we do at GitLab. If it came across that way then something got lost in the communication.
Matt, since I deal with the comp calculator every now and then, if you'd like to provide more specifics of your situation, can you please email me on ernst@gitlab.com ?
I want to second this, we should never ask people to agree to something below the calculator. But of course the applicant and the interviewer might disagree about the appropriate title and experience factor for a candidate.
We have to decline 200 applicants a week at GitLab. We realize that interviewing is very stressful. We send a survey afterwards to get a net promoter score. The current average is 4.2 out of 5 for people that did not sign with us. Most applicants don't fill out the survey, we're not sure how that influences results.
You are saying most people don't do the survey and I think also most would think it matters how they rate the company for their own future prospects. 4.2 is actually pretty low considering this.
If you're actually calculating an NPS, the non-respondents should be considered detractors for a more accurate rating. Happy to talk more if you're interested (have done a lot of this as a user researcher).
Your calculator would probably need to be updated? I just tried it out and the difference between the locations Mumbai and Bangalore, the latter is close to 2.5x less than Mumbai (0.08 vs 0.20).
Your data-source for this is very clearly wrong.. any income/cost-of-living report for India will show that the cost of living is the same for these 2 cities.
Matt, since I deal with the comp calculator every now and then, if you'd like to provide more specifics of your situation, can you please email me on ernst@gitlab.com ?