25 Mar 2020
One of our Support Engineering Managers recently participated in the CEO Sadow program, this is an AMA with team members from Support to get a better understanding of the program and the insights from it
- 6 participants
- 34 minutes
24 Mar 2020
Wave 1: move water cooler communication to online. Wave 2: Use collaboration tools to truly be more productive
- 1 participant
- 2 minutes
20 Mar 2020
Issue - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/211367#note_306612944
GoogleDoc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6bupY5emrkN6aD8f84OSb8rBFOv7yiq4qyTFTnbgo0/edit#
GoogleDoc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6bupY5emrkN6aD8f84OSb8rBFOv7yiq4qyTFTnbgo0/edit#
- 3 participants
- 10 minutes
13 Mar 2020
TOPIC: The End of the Office: How Fully Remote Teams Thrive at Scale
The future of work is 100% remote. Global talent is truly global, and companies unwilling to harness the power of minds across geographies risk missing out on invaluable and diverse perspectives.
Learn from the CEO and co-founder of GitLab, Sid Sijbrandij, as he discusses how he's enabled a 100% remote company of 1,200+ team members across 65+ countries. What are the tools and technologies that have allowed Sid to source wonderful team members, keep them engaged and productive, and support happiness on and off the clock?
Sid will take on common concerns and misconceptions of businesses grappling with offering remote work. He'll explain how working in the open benefits not only the team but the wider community, detailing the mindset and infrastructure necessary to thrive as a business across time zones.
This fireside chat is moderated by the one and only Savannah Peterson, founder of Savvy Millennial: http://savannahpeterson.com/
###
Resources are below.
Remote work emergency plan: What to do (and where to start): https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/remote-work-emergency-plan/
Remote work starter guide for employees: how to adjust to work-from-home: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/remote-work-starter-guide/
GitLab's guide to working remote: http://allremote.info/
###
The future of work is 100% remote. Global talent is truly global, and companies unwilling to harness the power of minds across geographies risk missing out on invaluable and diverse perspectives.
Learn from the CEO and co-founder of GitLab, Sid Sijbrandij, as he discusses how he's enabled a 100% remote company of 1,200+ team members across 65+ countries. What are the tools and technologies that have allowed Sid to source wonderful team members, keep them engaged and productive, and support happiness on and off the clock?
Sid will take on common concerns and misconceptions of businesses grappling with offering remote work. He'll explain how working in the open benefits not only the team but the wider community, detailing the mindset and infrastructure necessary to thrive as a business across time zones.
This fireside chat is moderated by the one and only Savannah Peterson, founder of Savvy Millennial: http://savannahpeterson.com/
###
Resources are below.
Remote work emergency plan: What to do (and where to start): https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/remote-work-emergency-plan/
Remote work starter guide for employees: how to adjust to work-from-home: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/remote-work-starter-guide/
GitLab's guide to working remote: http://allremote.info/
###
- 4 participants
- 53 minutes
30 Jan 2020
- 1 participant
- 1 minute
23 Jan 2020
During Clement Ho's (Frontend Engineering Manager, Monitor:Health) CEO shadow rotation, Sid mentioned that he was once so stressed that he couldn't walk. In this video interview, Sid shares about his experience, what he would have done differently and how GitLab team members can become allies for one another in mental health.
- 2 participants
- 8 minutes
3 Jan 2020
Sid (co-founder and CEO) and Darren (Head of Remote) discuss GitLab's values and culture.
➜ Learn more about GitLab's values: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/
➜ GitLab's value hierarchy: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#hierarchy
➜ Learn more about GitLab's all-remote culture and processes: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/
➜ GitLab's biggest risks: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/biggest-risks/
➜ The importance of living out GitLab values and maintaining companywide support at scale: https://youtu.be/oRbEuSYwBAg
➜ Discussing GitLab Sub-values — 'No Ego' and 'Low Level of Shame': https://youtu.be/n9Gfe9p1tmA
➜ Associated merge request documenting takeaways from this interview into relevant places in the GitLab handbook: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/37695
✪ A list of questions and topics covered are below ✪
1. Were all six values documented at GitLab’s inception?
2. While the top-level values are somewhat common across organizations, the sub-values strike me as highly unique and serve to describe the nuance in what makes GitLab unique. Would you agree with that?
3. “Loss of the values that bind us” is in our Biggest Risks. We’re working to surface them as early as possible to applicants and make sure that new hires are given time to ingest them, but what else do you think the company needs to do as we scale?
4. Do you feel that all departments are given equal opportunity to internalize the values during onboarding? How are those in sales, compensated based on quota, encouraged to take time learning values rather than jumping straight into sales?
5. I was shocked at how real the values felt when I joined. Many feel like traps. Embracing GitLab values could get you blackballed or terminated at other organizations. How can we ensure that people give themselves permission to drop prior organizational baggage and embrace a fresh start and new values?
6. What’s the recommended approach for speaking up when you feel that values aren’t being lived (or they simply aren’t understood/someone isn’t aware of them)?
7. Many of the values seem to express a desire to not pass judgement on colleagues. In prior organizations, I’ve felt that a lack of perfection could lead to reprimand — that every move would be heavily judged. Is it intentional that GitLab’s values promote a less judgmental and more trusting atmosphere? What benefits have you seen from this, and why don’t more companies do this?
8. Does the Values Hierarchy exist to resolve disputes when two or more values could be argued to support two different outcomes?
9. Do you have a desire to see other companies copy and implement GitLab’s values? Have you seen any companies do this to date?
10. Have investors or outside parties remarked on our values in meaningful ways that you’d like to share?
11. Have you thought about new ways to reinforce our values? How would you recommend a team member propose new ways to reinforce values? An MR to our values page?
➜ Learn more about GitLab's values: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/
➜ GitLab's value hierarchy: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#hierarchy
➜ Learn more about GitLab's all-remote culture and processes: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/
➜ GitLab's biggest risks: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/biggest-risks/
➜ The importance of living out GitLab values and maintaining companywide support at scale: https://youtu.be/oRbEuSYwBAg
➜ Discussing GitLab Sub-values — 'No Ego' and 'Low Level of Shame': https://youtu.be/n9Gfe9p1tmA
➜ Associated merge request documenting takeaways from this interview into relevant places in the GitLab handbook: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/37695
✪ A list of questions and topics covered are below ✪
1. Were all six values documented at GitLab’s inception?
2. While the top-level values are somewhat common across organizations, the sub-values strike me as highly unique and serve to describe the nuance in what makes GitLab unique. Would you agree with that?
3. “Loss of the values that bind us” is in our Biggest Risks. We’re working to surface them as early as possible to applicants and make sure that new hires are given time to ingest them, but what else do you think the company needs to do as we scale?
4. Do you feel that all departments are given equal opportunity to internalize the values during onboarding? How are those in sales, compensated based on quota, encouraged to take time learning values rather than jumping straight into sales?
5. I was shocked at how real the values felt when I joined. Many feel like traps. Embracing GitLab values could get you blackballed or terminated at other organizations. How can we ensure that people give themselves permission to drop prior organizational baggage and embrace a fresh start and new values?
6. What’s the recommended approach for speaking up when you feel that values aren’t being lived (or they simply aren’t understood/someone isn’t aware of them)?
7. Many of the values seem to express a desire to not pass judgement on colleagues. In prior organizations, I’ve felt that a lack of perfection could lead to reprimand — that every move would be heavily judged. Is it intentional that GitLab’s values promote a less judgmental and more trusting atmosphere? What benefits have you seen from this, and why don’t more companies do this?
8. Does the Values Hierarchy exist to resolve disputes when two or more values could be argued to support two different outcomes?
9. Do you have a desire to see other companies copy and implement GitLab’s values? Have you seen any companies do this to date?
10. Have investors or outside parties remarked on our values in meaningful ways that you’d like to share?
11. Have you thought about new ways to reinforce our values? How would you recommend a team member propose new ways to reinforce values? An MR to our values page?
- 2 participants
- 34 minutes
2 Jan 2020
- 2 participants
- 24 minutes
24 Nov 2019
Professor Prithwiraj Choudhury from Harvard Business School interviews GitLab CEO, Sid Sijbrandij on remote work
- 4 participants
- 51 minutes
3 Nov 2019
In this GitLab Unfiltered video, GitLab co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij verbalizes how he discovered the value of iteration.
Referencing GitLab's time at Y Combinator, Sid shares that by iterating quickly, you're able to achieve more without working longer hours, thereby creating a more sustainable approach to work.
"There were people in the company, even at the time, who suggested that we should slow down. The response from GitLab has always been, 'No, we'll get the most we can get done. The smaller we split things up, the smaller the steps we take, the faster we can go.'
We still believe that's true today. We want everyone comfortable with taking small steps without a lot of coordination, without a lot of predicting, and without a lot of explaining."
An embraced spirit of iteration helps maintain an all-remote culture. By encouraging small steps and empowering individuals to propose minimum viable change, all-remote teams are less burdened by the need for coordination.
Particularly as organizations scale, the friction of coordinating people and teams can lead to dysfunction and frustration. Coordinating large groups across an array of time zones is impractical, which forces an all-remote team to not lean on the coordination crutch.
This empowers all-remote teams to make small changes and reduce cycle times. This leads to changes which are easier to provide feedback on (and roll back if needed).
Valuing iteration creates a climate where there is a low level of shame. This is extraordinarily difficult to replicate in large colocated settings, where perception is often reality and decisions are swayed by physical appearances. In all-remote companies, this reinforces that a person is not their work.
###
GitLab's Iteration value: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration
How a collection of values at GitLab contribute to an all-remote environment: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/values/
Referencing GitLab's time at Y Combinator, Sid shares that by iterating quickly, you're able to achieve more without working longer hours, thereby creating a more sustainable approach to work.
"There were people in the company, even at the time, who suggested that we should slow down. The response from GitLab has always been, 'No, we'll get the most we can get done. The smaller we split things up, the smaller the steps we take, the faster we can go.'
We still believe that's true today. We want everyone comfortable with taking small steps without a lot of coordination, without a lot of predicting, and without a lot of explaining."
An embraced spirit of iteration helps maintain an all-remote culture. By encouraging small steps and empowering individuals to propose minimum viable change, all-remote teams are less burdened by the need for coordination.
Particularly as organizations scale, the friction of coordinating people and teams can lead to dysfunction and frustration. Coordinating large groups across an array of time zones is impractical, which forces an all-remote team to not lean on the coordination crutch.
This empowers all-remote teams to make small changes and reduce cycle times. This leads to changes which are easier to provide feedback on (and roll back if needed).
Valuing iteration creates a climate where there is a low level of shame. This is extraordinarily difficult to replicate in large colocated settings, where perception is often reality and decisions are swayed by physical appearances. In all-remote companies, this reinforces that a person is not their work.
###
GitLab's Iteration value: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration
How a collection of values at GitLab contribute to an all-remote environment: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/values/
- 2 participants
- 4 minutes
11 Oct 2019
Impromptu Zoom discussion with GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij which stemmed from the creation of a new job role to improve education and enablement efforts to help customers accelerate the time to value of using GitLab technologies and to accelerate the time to productivity of partners and internal sales and customer success team members for their respective responsibilities.
- 2 participants
- 32 minutes
7 Oct 2019
- 2 participants
- 7 minutes
20 Sep 2019
Sid's thoughts on the monitoring strategy during our product scaling meeting.
Follow up issue was created by the GitLab Monitoring Product Management team. You can track our progress here - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/Product/issues/461
Follow up issue was created by the GitLab Monitoring Product Management team. You can track our progress here - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/Product/issues/461
- 2 participants
- 5 minutes
25 Jul 2019
GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij and Mark Frein of InVision talk about why all-remote is the future, and moving beyond 'But how do you know they're working?'
- 2 participants
- 48 minutes
24 Jul 2019
A Q&A session with the GitLab CEO about the Chief of Staff position
https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/chief-executive-officer/Chief-of-staff/
https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/chief-executive-officer/Chief-of-staff/
- 2 participants
- 11 minutes
18 Jun 2019
I highlight a few key takeaways from my experience in the GitLab CEO Shadow program.
- 1 participant
- 8 minutes
1 Jun 2019
GitLab CEO Shadow John Coghlan (@john_cogs) gives three reasons why you should participate in the shadow program.
- 1 participant
- 3 minutes
30 May 2019
An update from GitLab's CEO Shadow (and Evangelist Program Manager) on what he's learned while shadowing the CEO.
- 1 participant
- 4 minutes
28 May 2019
Valerie Silverthorne and Sid about multi-cloud computing
-- If refer to https://medium.com/gitlab-magazine/multi-cloud-maturity-model-2de185c01dd7 proposal first and OSS maintainability
-- If refer to https://medium.com/gitlab-magazine/multi-cloud-maturity-model-2de185c01dd7 proposal first and OSS maintainability
- 2 participants
- 35 minutes
22 Mar 2019
NOTES
Q: Are you concerned about any potential legal actions from another company?
A: We did an internal investigation. If there is legal action we'll do it external too.
Q: How happy are you with how we have scaled as a company, culture-wise and communication-wise? Has it gone as you expected?
A: Much better than expected. Values are great. Big problem is re-enforcement of practices:
No short meetings, we need to be more efficient. YouTube visibility https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/youtube/#visibility
Q: Do you think there’s an upper-limit to the handbook-first approach? More people contributing means more changes, will there be a point where employees can no longer keep up? Or maybe a point in which it’s too much content to digest for onboarding?
A: Consume on-demand, what and when you need. Handbook is a guide, except for the code of conduct portion. It should be checked first to see where the company has landed before on a discussed subject but if there is a better way, it should not be used as law.
Q: What inspired the CEO shadow initiative?
A: Goal is to give leaders within GitLab a whole perspective of the company. We want leaders who understand of how the company works and can make global improvements.
Erica Lindberg is on Day 2. She is making handbook edits left and right.
Q:What can we do to ensure we’re not slowing down?
A: Engineering? 10 MRs per person per month.
Q: What feature of GitLab still needs to be added according to your opinion?
A: Defend. Secure team is adding this.
Q: If you had to make a choice between the USA or the Netherlands, which country would you choose?
A: Don’t plan to move from San Francisco, which has a high concentration of talented and ambitious people. Love organization building, the speed and scale with which it happens is amazing. Talked to someone who is making a slingshot to shoot something into space.
Q: What's the best part of your day?
A: Group conversations. Enjoy hearing how each group is improving their department.
Q: I heard that we will be only keeping 90 days of data in Slack, is the reason to re-enforce practices of using GitLab and creating issues?
A:Our informal conversations happen in Slack to a large extent. Imagine how weird it would be if someone put a microphone on you and recorded your whole day. Don’t think it’s appropriate.
- It would be great to have more things in issues and merge requests.
- Slack is like a day-long meeting. DMs are bad.
- Additionally, Sid, what is your perspective of the feedback given on the Slack retention issue so far?
Q: Can we import the Questions channel data into a knowledge base?
A: #questions channel should result in an edit to the handbook. No sense in going back; go forward. Treat Slack
Q: Do you see remote only organizations rapidly becoming more accepted and commonplace?
A: All remote is going to be the future. We’re not the biggest remote company so far, but we’re leading the way. Everyone should be an ambassador for all-remote work.
Q: How do you see the company changing fundamentally, if necessarily at all, as it more than doubles in headcount over 2019?
A: We’re planning for 1000+ people. As we get bigger, there will be more layers of management. Automating onboarding will be important instead of 50 checkboxes.
Q: As a company, we value velocity over predictability. How are you, personally, balancing these two items?
A: By making the minimum thing. Many times when I have an idea, I’ll just put it out as a suggestion for a relevant report. Most of the time that person makes a minimal change, or say, “I won’t do that.” I meet a lot of people, and I want to share this information with the rest of the company. For example, yesterday I copied and pasted an e-mail I received in the #ceo channel.
Q: What are you most excited about for contribute coming up?
A: We have better systems in place; it’s going to feel more like a produced event. I hope we can keep the intimacy of the excursions.
Q: Any thoughts on yesterday’s announcement about Atlassian acquiring AgileCraft?
A: Shows a big need for value-stream analytics, high-level roadmaps. We’re right in adding that in our Plan stage. Confirms there is a lot of demand for that. Atlassian is a company with many products that you have to integrate together; contrast that with the benefit of a single application without handoffs.
Q:Since we are doubling in headcount every year, I’d like to hear your thoughts about making more with less.
A: I do want every person to have a big impact. Example stats: 10 MRs a developer. Our security requirements are going to increase. We’re going to be a public company and have FIPS certification. We want to make people more effective, fewer roadblocks.
Q: Are you concerned about any potential legal actions from another company?
A: We did an internal investigation. If there is legal action we'll do it external too.
Q: How happy are you with how we have scaled as a company, culture-wise and communication-wise? Has it gone as you expected?
A: Much better than expected. Values are great. Big problem is re-enforcement of practices:
No short meetings, we need to be more efficient. YouTube visibility https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/youtube/#visibility
Q: Do you think there’s an upper-limit to the handbook-first approach? More people contributing means more changes, will there be a point where employees can no longer keep up? Or maybe a point in which it’s too much content to digest for onboarding?
A: Consume on-demand, what and when you need. Handbook is a guide, except for the code of conduct portion. It should be checked first to see where the company has landed before on a discussed subject but if there is a better way, it should not be used as law.
Q: What inspired the CEO shadow initiative?
A: Goal is to give leaders within GitLab a whole perspective of the company. We want leaders who understand of how the company works and can make global improvements.
Erica Lindberg is on Day 2. She is making handbook edits left and right.
Q:What can we do to ensure we’re not slowing down?
A: Engineering? 10 MRs per person per month.
Q: What feature of GitLab still needs to be added according to your opinion?
A: Defend. Secure team is adding this.
Q: If you had to make a choice between the USA or the Netherlands, which country would you choose?
A: Don’t plan to move from San Francisco, which has a high concentration of talented and ambitious people. Love organization building, the speed and scale with which it happens is amazing. Talked to someone who is making a slingshot to shoot something into space.
Q: What's the best part of your day?
A: Group conversations. Enjoy hearing how each group is improving their department.
Q: I heard that we will be only keeping 90 days of data in Slack, is the reason to re-enforce practices of using GitLab and creating issues?
A:Our informal conversations happen in Slack to a large extent. Imagine how weird it would be if someone put a microphone on you and recorded your whole day. Don’t think it’s appropriate.
- It would be great to have more things in issues and merge requests.
- Slack is like a day-long meeting. DMs are bad.
- Additionally, Sid, what is your perspective of the feedback given on the Slack retention issue so far?
Q: Can we import the Questions channel data into a knowledge base?
A: #questions channel should result in an edit to the handbook. No sense in going back; go forward. Treat Slack
Q: Do you see remote only organizations rapidly becoming more accepted and commonplace?
A: All remote is going to be the future. We’re not the biggest remote company so far, but we’re leading the way. Everyone should be an ambassador for all-remote work.
Q: How do you see the company changing fundamentally, if necessarily at all, as it more than doubles in headcount over 2019?
A: We’re planning for 1000+ people. As we get bigger, there will be more layers of management. Automating onboarding will be important instead of 50 checkboxes.
Q: As a company, we value velocity over predictability. How are you, personally, balancing these two items?
A: By making the minimum thing. Many times when I have an idea, I’ll just put it out as a suggestion for a relevant report. Most of the time that person makes a minimal change, or say, “I won’t do that.” I meet a lot of people, and I want to share this information with the rest of the company. For example, yesterday I copied and pasted an e-mail I received in the #ceo channel.
Q: What are you most excited about for contribute coming up?
A: We have better systems in place; it’s going to feel more like a produced event. I hope we can keep the intimacy of the excursions.
Q: Any thoughts on yesterday’s announcement about Atlassian acquiring AgileCraft?
A: Shows a big need for value-stream analytics, high-level roadmaps. We’re right in adding that in our Plan stage. Confirms there is a lot of demand for that. Atlassian is a company with many products that you have to integrate together; contrast that with the benefit of a single application without handoffs.
Q:Since we are doubling in headcount every year, I’d like to hear your thoughts about making more with less.
A: I do want every person to have a big impact. Example stats: 10 MRs a developer. Our security requirements are going to increase. We’re going to be a public company and have FIPS certification. We want to make people more effective, fewer roadblocks.
- 8 participants
- 29 minutes
5 Dec 2018
- 1 participant
- 1 minute
4 Dec 2018
All-remote working is a new concept for many. In this video, Todd & Sid discuss Sid's remote working environment - screens, apps, etc.
- 2 participants
- 10 minutes
23 Feb 2018
The CEO AMA call from 2018-02-23 contains the discussion as an extension from Company call on the same day. John Northrup actually made the suggestion of Distribution.
The conversation is an example of feedback process at GitLab, and how open discussion can breed better solutions for all parties.
The conversation is an example of feedback process at GitLab, and how open discussion can breed better solutions for all parties.
- 4 participants
- 12 minutes
