GitLab Remote Work, 15 Apr 2020

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Going Remote Pt. I: Five Lessons from Scaling GitLab

Description

We recently launched a series of virtual Fireside Chats and Q&A sessions with distributed teams across the globe to hear their hard-earned lessons as we all adapt to the new reality of remote work culture. The first conversation was with GitLab’s Head of Remote, Darren Murph. GitLab has a team of ~1200 employees, all of whom are remote, distributed across 67 countries and 6 continents. GitLab has built an impressive organization and culture, and given their success in running a business without an HQ, we thought Darren could provide some valuable advice.

A

Oh, can you want to kick it off yeah.

B

I guess let's go ahead and get started um all right. Thank you all so much for joining us and it's these are pretty unprecedented times and I hope you all are safe and your families are safe. Your your friends and teens are safe and we're really hoping that this conversation can be helpful, as all of us make a big adjustment and just take some of the stress off of a new way to work and we're really really thankful for the get lab team and for Darren for joining us um to get start.

B

I didn't get started. I just thought. We'd kick off with with some introductions, so you know who's on the call and so I'm Kat I work at 2, Sigma Ventures and lead our talent efforts here. I have Mickey here with me who leads coms and marketing efforts at 2, Sigma, Ventures and and if you are not familiar with 2 Sigma ventures, we are VC firm based out of New York City currently distributed across the country, but but usually there.

B

We invest primarily in seed series, a and series these startups and across a wide range of different types of industries, including enterprise technology, consumer tech, biotech with the underlying thesis that all companies use data science or advanced engineering to transform their industries and we're really excited to have about we've made about 70 investments, thus far, including gitlab, and really excited to have Darren Murph, the head of remote at gate, lab joining us today and they have a team of about 1,200 employees across all remote across 67 countries.

B

And so, with that I'll hand it over to Darren, to tell us a little bit about his background about gitlab. And if you don't mind, Darren we'd love to hear the best zoom background, you've seen from home gate lab employees, yeah.

C

Sure, thanks so much for having me and to all watching. Thank you for being gracious with your time and joining out. You'll find this very useful. So I've worked my entire career across the spectrum of remote from hybrid remotes. All the way to all remove now I get loud, I will say it's a lot easier to work remote these days when I started, 3G was not a thing and laptop batteries lasted about 20 minutes, so you really had to want it. We've got to made these days with the tools and infrastructure that we have so.

D

My role at gate lab is.

C

Multifaceted I work to help our teammates acclimate as they on board. It can be different coming from the collocated space into an all my work.

E

C

Need adjust to the culture, get them get them, what they need and whatever element that is, and I'm also responsible for the all remote section of our handbook. So if you go to all remote info, that's a shortcut to get into the weeds of how we do all things. Remote, you'll find guides on synchronous meetings, hiring compensation, and so on and I'll reference.

C

A lot of that in the call today, but all of the guides there that you see I published those based on my experience, as well as what we've learned at get lab in terms of the best zoom in the background. Halloween gets really funny. I think the best one I saw last year was a wall of french fries.

C

B

Awesome and so one other, but before we get started in the questions, I just wanted to give everybody a rundown of how things will go in the next hour, and so we posted a Google Doc that you'll see in in the chat you can follow along there. We have the agenda there and we get when we get to the questions portion and we'll also be posting questions there, so that you can see the order that they're coming in you'll know when your question is coming up.

B

I'm guessing Darin will talk about this, but this is a gait lab best practice um and then we'll spend about the first 25 to 30 minutes I'm, going to ask some questions that we've heard from founders and that our team has been thinking through as we you know, move over to remote and then we'll spend the second half of the call opening it up to Q&A. I did just want to give everybody a heads up that we are recording.

B

This call we're hoping to share the record and potentially a write-up following for anybody who can't join, but in the write-up we won't keep all questions anonymous. So you can. You can keep that in mind and and to post a question. If you have a question um you know leading up to the QA or once we started the QA, you can use the Q&A button on the bottom of your zoom screen and post the question directly there.

B

When we get to that portion, Mickey will have listed all the questions out in the Google Doc and then will call on people and will actually turn your mic on. So you can actually ask the question and any follow-up questions directly um with that. I think we will go ahead and get started with questions so Darren first question and that's been really top of mind for me: I'm meeting a talent function and that I've heard from some of our founders and HR leaders.

B

Obviously, gitlab has built its culture around working remotely and you've been able to kind of iterate and build on that over time for HR leaders that might be on the call or any founders that are on the call. What do you think are one or two changes that a team could make immediately to help their team's work more efficiently as they adjust yeah.

C

So you're in a tough spot if you've been thrust into it, work from home environment, but no planning or preparation, you don't have the benefits that get loud pad, which is we built the infrastructure for this, and so.

D

If you're yanked out of an office where.

C

All of your infrastructure is, if you work from home setting, you do need to anticipate some change. I think the two biggest things are opening up lines of communication is the first one you're going to have people scattered all over the world and they're all going to experience things a little bit different everyone's office now is different. Everyone has different internet providers.

C

They have different home set ups, there's going to be a need to provide a feedback mechanism and we'll touch on this in a bit, but I would recommend standing up a handbook or some sort of centralized repository where people can can feedback into leadership. So for two of this, what's the next thing you can do is establish a remote leadership team. What I've often times seen is where does the remote element of our prai's fit it's in between HR people and operations and IT, because there is elements of tooling and access that you need.

C

Obviously, it changes the way you operate. It enables you to operate asynchronously, so there's some changes that come with that and then there's a huge people aspect to it.

C

What does this mean in terms of mental health and isolation and relationships between between teammates, so I would say, get those people in a room and determine who's gonna be accountable and it can be a shared accountability, but there needs to be a team where everyone knows this team is there to sort out the issues that may arise and that will help stabilize things, because people are gonna be fearful of change. It's going to feel strange at first and it's not just because you're going remote this.

A

E

Happening right.

C

Now is not even for us: I get lab, we've been all remote from the start. It still feels a little weird and it's not just the work from home part. It's weird. If you thrust all of get lab into an office tomorrow, we would also be kind of shocked. So the opposite is true as well.

B

All right, thank you, that's really helpful and so you'd you touched on this briefly I'm answering, but how? How might one think about setting up a handbook? What do you think if you were just getting started if I was to just start building one tomorrow? Where should I start and- and maybe you could also touch on how this serves like the purpose that it serves over time and how it's been called again.

C

Commonly you'll hear if you're going remote focus on documentation like you'll, just hear people throw that term out, but it's actually kind of dangerous and get loud, and we would say we work handbook first and then documentation is a part of that and the danger with just wild-west documentation is you: have some people documenting in Google Docs some people in notion some people in repository that people don't even understand how to use communication become siloed and fractured as a leadership team, you want to do everything you can to avoid that so actually narrow the scope of communication and be very intentional about what communication happens where so, maybe slack is used for informal communication?

C

Zoom is used for meetings and then we use get lab the crowd for all of our asynchronous work, actual project work being intentional and deliberate about that is essential. So the handbook we use get lab to build our handbook, we're actually in the early stages of working on a Gil lab pages tool where other people can use get lab in an easy way to build a handbook. Anyone can use get lab to build one. It's an open course. You can go, try it out, but it is a bit complicated for non devs. It's it's not!

C

What you see is what you get editor or anything like that to get started. You could use something like notion or ask Almanac those don't scale very well mostly because they don't allow for request.

C

But the point is just get something started, but get labs handbook if you printed it out today is over 5,000 pages, but it started it's one. So don't let that overwhelm you and if you say well, where do I start start it as an FAQ just start answering the core questions that most people have. It's probably gonna be something like who do I contact to get this. Where do I turn for this access?

C

I can't get access to this, who holds the key to it, even just a repository of directly responsible individuals on who needs what who do I contact. This just goes back to communication. You want to help people communicate by documenting that way. They have to ask as few people as possible. That's kind of the actual purpose in the handbook is to build a single source of truth.

C

So whatever that form looks like for your company as long as it's a single source of truth, that everyone knows that this is the place we go to for all information, and if it's not in here, it doesn't exist, instilling that in your culture can create a lot of calm and it just it gives people a central repository. This is where we look for our information.

B

Thanks, um how about company culture? You know again kind of keeping those any company culture that we thought we already have in place thriving and maybe trying to use this opportunity to be remote to even build build additional company culture I've seen a lot of things floating around the past couple weeks on this so curious. What you've seen and what you think is most helpful. Yeah.

C

I mean it can be jarring if you get a lot of positive energy by seeing someone in person and then all of the sudden they're, not there and meanwhile you're trying to like set your office up in your home and make sure your kids have what they need and don't injure themselves as well.

C

So there's a lot going on I would encourage companies not to just try to press copy their office environment and then paste in a virtual environment, but in the early stages, when you're trying to acclimate like we can have some grace they're like I, understand that you're just trying to replicate to whatever degree you can.

C

The biggest thing here is to just pause, take a deep breath meet with your people team and just imagine what could be possible now that you have the virtual landscape so I'll give you a good example of how we did this at Gale on this week. So we had a marketing talent show. So we have 135 people across the marketing team across all six continents, and this was scheduled two weeks in advance. So there was a Google Doc agenda attached to the calendar, invite, and so anyone that wanted to sign up it could be them.

C

It could be. Family could get pets whatever if you've got the talent and bring it to the zoom camp, sign up and we'll go in order and then there's going to be. Judging and people get prizes, I mean this is a big deal. So this is a serious event and it went off without a hitch. Wait, a hundred thirty-five people on the zoom call all across the world. It was hilarious. It was the ray of sunshine that we all needed and I dare saying that wouldn't have been possible in an office environment.

C

So a lot of people are kind of down and out, like I, don't get the office energy, but it this actually opens up a lot of opportunity to do some things. Some innovative things that you could not do. My difference is your people team in your culture team have to be intentional about creating the atmosphere where this can happen and creating the opportunities for it to happen.

C

So our people team meets with with leadership routinely and they say like what are we want on the calendar like what opportunities do we want to get people in the same room or get some teams at the same room? And that's a that's a good start. You.

E

C

Intentional about it, if no one in the company is intentional, none of these meetings show up on the calendar and that culture does start to erode.

B

Got it cool and we're? Actually, our team has been doing a few things mostly, but mostly over slack, we've created some new channels and then and sort of some new non formal communication so that we can kind of keep in touch and we've also started coffee, chats and weekly happy hours, which has been helpful to those are helpful tips. um What do you, what are some tools, or maybe best practices to facilitate creative work? So I've been able to kind of maintain meetings and and regular check-ins and started to figure out.

B

You know my own routine, but how? How should I be thinking about creative work amongst teammates, especially you know types of creative work that we used to do in person on a whiteboard or something like that. Yeah.

C

This is another one of those instances where people immediately want an office counterpart virtually so people love the whiteboard they're, like does a whiteboard exists. Virtually that's the wrong question. Was the whiteboard ever the best way to get to the result that you were gunning for even in the office and so.

F

E

D

On this is like hey.

C

Let's just wrangle ten people, I'll put them in a boardroom. We just broke their broker stream of conscious from whatever they were doing. Let's just let's get them in the same place for an hour and like maybe some ideas will happen, I mean sometimes that works, but is that really the best way to do it? A great.

E

Example, I get lab.

C

Just this week, we're looking at our marketing vision for the year ahead and our SEMA took time to think about here's. What I think it could be. Here's some options.

C

Here's some thoughts, any documented, those in a get lab issue like an asynchronous piece of work, and then he sent that out on the marketing channel in slack so that everyone in the marketing team, no matter what time zone it is, can I have access to that and then they have a full week to read it ingest, it think about it and provide a detailed, thoughtful response, and so, after.

D

C

He's gonna have this amazing catalog of input that if you had forced this into a one-hour meeting, when it wasn't ideal for 90% of the team, you would end up with a lot less to work with and.

D

So, for me, it's like this gives.

C

You opportunity to kind of deconstruct what you used to do and if you really do thrive on like. Let's just do this thing, ad hoc, let's get everybody in the same room I mean zoom is like that. You can totally just throw a zoom link in slack and whoever is available and willing to just jump into it, and the same ideas can happen. The whiteboard thing is a little tough, but you just get someone with two computers. One of them pulls up a screen. Chair I mean literally point the camera at a whiteboard it it's.

D

Kind of ad hoc, but.

C

Hey, if you're in the situation, where you don't have time to really plan it is, it is an option right.

B

All right that makes sense yeah, it's a good. It's a good point. You can't a lot of us are still trying to take what we've done in the office and just replicate that, and that's not always the best approach. um So once again, I know that get lab is asynchronous and you you're on all different time zones working on all different hours. But given many of our the participants today are still going to be working. You know a set set hours in one timezone for the next few weeks and are still adjusting.

B

What do you think are some best practices and kind of creating a routine and setting boundaries both for the work day and and beyond. Yeah.

C

To your point, Remote allows async, but in the here and now it might not be the best idea if you might want to try to keep people on the same page again, don't introduce any more chaos.

C

So what I recommend is, if you had a commute proactively proactively.

D

Plan something in.

C

Place of that commute so.

D

C

Helps Onion blur the lines between sleep and work because otherwise it's like I woke up I'm working I went to bed I'm working, you know, like my life, is just isolated and work now. But if you say, okay, I usually get 45 minutes to a commute. So, instead of doing that, I'm going to cook or I'm going to clean I'm going to spend time with my kids I'm gonna go on a walk and then read a.

E

C

I'm gonna call my parents something but plan it like I, actually put it in your calendar, but this thing is happening. Reminder comes up, this is happening and what this forces you to do is it's kind of an on ramp into work. So you wake up. You do this thing instead of commuting and then you work and then it's an off-ramp out of work. You do this thing at the end of the day, instead of community, because otherwise it becomes way too easy to just like fill those gaps with work and overtime.

C

That's a great path to burnout. The other thing I would recommend is life's a little more chaotic right now, so I would say communicate with your team. If you need some breaks within the day and work on nonlinear workday like maybe you go two hours and then you need an hour to hang out with your kids and then you do another three hours. I think that's totally acceptable right now.

C

Everyone is in the same boat and if you can manage some sort of schedule like that and communicate it out, I would also say, write it out and like stick it on the refrigerator or somewhere else in the house, so that when you're in your work space, your family can see this schedule. I don't know. Is it okay to interrupt? Is it not? Oh cool they're gonna be out at this time. We can expect to do this. Communication.

E

C

Key even back to your family, because they're gonna say.

B

Yeah, that's I love the idea of taking little taking breaks as you need. It, I mean even in the office, you take a break to go, grab a coffee. You know around the block or something like that and um and also I've always I've, never really made that connection with with the commuter time, but that is when I decompress. That's when I listen to a podcast, I read I, listen to a meditation app or something like that, so just it given. This is already a more stressful time. It totally makes sense to utilize that time.

C

Notice, a common theme remote makes you be intentional about everything about what you're feeling your commute time with attentional about the breaks that you're gonna take during the day, cuz you're right. When there's no one around you to remind you, you should get up. It is totally possible, especially with a nice chair, ergonomic chair, to just sit through the whole workday like I.

F

C

Left you sit on, you might not notice about day one. But after a couple of weeks of that, it's gonna wear you down right.

B

That makes sense, um and how do you think managers during this time? We have a about half of the participants today? Are people managers? How should they be thinking about setting expectations for teens and and kind? You know communicating that the.

C

Last thing you want to do is lead with micromanagement in fear. If the first thing you think of is, let me implement some rules so that I know and can understand that people are working 100%, the wrong approach. You need to lead with grace trust people give them autonomy and empowerment and if you're concerned that you won't be able to measure their productivity.

C

What you're really concerned about is you need to give them better, metrics, clearer, metrics, clear deliverables, because in theory, even in the office, if you go on vacation or you go fly around the world for a month, you should still be able to trust they're, getting their work done in the office. But that's not going to happen if the deliverables and the metrics aren't clear.

C

So it's a theory, the onus may fall back on a manager to get clear about that communicate the expectations, but the expectation should be paying me when you need something I'm, not going to tell you what you need to do in this situation. I'm gonna give you your deliverables I'm, going to understand that all of our situations are a little bit chaotic right now and more than ever, I'm an open book like I'm here to help out give me feedback on what is working. What is not working, what are the communications boy?

C

It's one of the silos that you're seeing because more now than ever, I won't know what's wrong. Unless you tell me and I think that's a core message to give to teams is: please tell me whenever things aren't working, so we can fix this, because I can't just look across the room and get a vibe that something is at work got.

B

It on one other quick follow-up question to that: how how has get labs seen on one-on-ones work most effectively. You know how often what kind of ad hoc check-ins are our managers, our direct reports, doing between each other and also team meetings? If you have smaller teams who are regularly meeting, you know an hour a week, how should how should we think about doing that remotely for.

C

Those we mostly replicate what would be doing office experience so I'll link this in a bit, but we have a standard one-on-one procedure in our handbook and that extraverts that all leadership, all managers do their one-on-ones the exact same way. Now, of course, the timing of it depends on the manager and the direct what time works best for them, but one.

D

Was just a simple.

C

Zoom meeting and in that zoom meeting are in that calendar invite there's a Google Doc agenda, it's the permanent one-on-one agenda and it's this continual threat so like it literally goes back to the beginning of the relationship, so you can always come and find and see where things were even archived get an understanding, there's always context. It's super important team meetings are the same way.

C

It needs to be a never-ending document or you can always look back and find context because you're kind of new people joining your team and it's really unfair- that they have no knowledge of what happened prior so by doing is something as simple as fixing a Google Doc, with a permanent record of this meeting, you're now paying it forward for any team member that that joins after, but I, don't think they're there to dramatically different.

C

We have a really really strong meeting hygiene and that the documentation- that's always there you're, always responsible for writing down your question.

E

C

Then writing down and documenting what if the answer was, and then we start on time and we end on time, because all of our meetings can be asynchronous because there's an agenda attached to it, you can actually ask a question the day before, knowing that you're not going to be on the call and then someone else that will realize it for you and document the answer, so you don't even have to be there. So they start on time. They end on time very inclusive.

C

If you're traveling around the world and your time zones change totally fine.

B

That makes sense um and and just to touch on quickly if you had a really really large meeting. um You know, as you mentioned meeting of over a hundred people, um we're still kind of getting used to this to zoom, and you know raising our hands and QA and Chapel, but I you know. Are there any best practices that we should keep in mind for those larger knees, yeah.

C

The larger meetings made documentation even more essential, so the reason like last week we had a zoom called over 600 people on it simultaneously and probably 20 or so talked at some point, and there was it was totally seamless and the reason is in a meeting like that. We write it down what we want to say. First, and everyone can see it being popular in Google Doc. It happens in real time, and so as soon as one person raps up, they say, okay on to John.

C

He has the next point and it just works seamlessly like that. We.

D

F

C

You can you can feel free to interrupt someone interrupting someone in a video actually feels very awkward for most people, but there's a natural latency there, so it just shouldn't it's one of those things that you should just delete from your memory. From the from the in-office experience. It is no longer rude to interrupt someone. We.

D

Also have another.

C

Thing about meetings meetings are about the work, not the background. There's been this stigma for so long that your backdrop needs to be a sterile and as clean as a in office boardroom. Thankfully we're beyond that. It doesn't matter what your backdrop is in fact make it genuine like if your kids run by that's totally fine, it's a great reminder that we're humans first and colleagues second, and so that has helped alleviate. Oh, like my office environment, isn't isn't perfect, it doesn't matter like we're.

C

Just happy you're here in the prep, for this call I showed up right out of a workout. I did not look my best, but I was in the meeting it was accomplished. It was better than the meeting not yeah.

B

C

B

That um yeah I'm still getting used to that so I yeah I, was I. Was thoughtful I've been taking a lot of calls from like random spots around my house, so that's a good reminder and a good thing to make a norm amongst the team so that, even if nobody I wouldn't care, if one of my colleagues did but it's funny how, when it's you, you worry about it. So um what makes a lot of sense. um So we've talked a little bit about communication. I'm communicating effectively I just want to give you a chance.

B

If there's any other tips, you know all of us are probably relying on email, slack, zoom, um any any other tips outside of creating a handbook and that we should keep in mind for.

C

The communications this gives you an opportunity to do things very differently, and one of the things that most people see extreme when they hear about it I get lab is that we expire all of our slack messages after 90 days like gone forever. Why do you do that? It's a forcing function do not do work in slack, because if you know, if you start a project in slack, you're, never gonna be able to query it and find any of the history.

C

So it forces you to think if I'm going to start this work, I need to do it where it's gonna end up, which in our case, is in a kit lab issue or a merge request for other companies. It could be other things, but the point is this is a really important forcing function you might want to try. It also solves another problem with suddenly remote teams, which is people just feel disconnected.

C

So the question is: if we don't use slack for work when we use it for informal communication, the exact thing you're trying to solve. For so we have tons of public channels based on topics with hiking fitness, mental health, cooking music. We have one on parenting that in recent weeks, has been quite the place to be because so many good levers now have never.

D

C

Home experts they've never seen anything like this, so we have people across six continents that are giving each other parenting tips. They're, like hey, try this app try this learning program. Try this website like this is this is how we're keeping our kids saying and calm and educated in the midst of all of this, and that's a way better use of slack than oh, my god, another red bubble.

C

I've got to respond to this immediately, like that's what may be better for your mental health, it's way better for for everyone, it's better for efficiency, it's better for everything. We use it primarily for informal communication, so you might want to try doing something like that again, it's gonna feel weird until it doesn't because you're used to doing it one way, and so what you implement change, no matter what change comes with friction, even if it's better on the other side, another.

F

C

That it's enabled us to do is we've started this channel about juicebox, chats and so for any gitlab or after the meeting. If you don't have a backpack, you can just leave your webcam on, and everybody's, like whoever's got kids invite the kids in and they'll just take over for the next half hour. So it's like sharing, music and laughter and speaking a different language. It's incredible and, of course, we can schedule a juice box chances well, a lot of people. Five o'clock rolls around.

C

They just leave their cam on for the next hour and let their kids just have at it gives us a break too I.

B

Love that that's awesome and well we're talking about kids joining weave I mean similarly, in especially larger meetings. We have a long meeting once a week and you'll see kids and dogs and and so on, popping in to the call and it just lights everybody up when they see that happen, and with that in mind how I'm not sure, if you, if you have kids and I've, got 160 months old, but and how? How would you recommend you have you seen any tips pop up in that slack channel?

B

That could be helpful to the rest of us and sort of trying to wrangle our children. While we get work done, yeah.

C

I have a 15 month old as well. Thankfully, my wife is home to manage, manage him for the most part, but it's usually a combination of hey I tried this learning program. It was really engaging for my kids and and also a lot of people are setting up secondary webcams, where their kids can actually play like board games together. If they're older, you just put the camera on the board games like I'll, move the piece, then you move the piece I mean it's unconventional, but I've even seen some adults playing Settlers of Catan, like hey.

D

We're innovating.

C

Now that we're all home together but I, think the biggest thing is just give gift kids a way to have culturally explore. You can open up their world they're in your home, but like now, they have access to way more than they would have in a physical, school and I think that's just been really cool and it allows people to bond in a human way like it reminds us all that we're humans first in colleagues.

C

Second- and this is kind of like a forced way to make those personal relationships really really important when we need the community more than ever,.

B

Totally I completely agree with that I love seeing my my colleagues real world and that's been a really fun part of you know one of the fun few fun parts of the past few weeks.

B

So do you have any other tips or thoughts on you know you mentioned at the beginning of the call that this this is a hard time for all of us, for many reasons, so just best practices for us to keep in mind as we make this adjustment. Both you know as individual contributors and as managers just things to keep in the back of our minds. The.

C

Biggest thing is to lead with empathy like if you just lean into all of the changes with empathy, instead of an eye of frustration. Take it it's like lean into it with an eye of like what's the opportunity, how can I be him apathetic in this situation? You're actually gonna enable people to be more than they ever were, because the truth is really good workers. If you give them the autonomy to live and work with our most fulfil and the life.

C

Is it totally crazy once that gets under control, they're actually, gonna be better workers and they're gonna pour more into the work, because they're in a place that makes them really happy and communicating over Xoom is going to become less.

E

C

It is now, and of course you you have in-person moments to look forward to me. Gil Adam is all remote, but we're very attention all about in-person interactions, and so, if you, if you see your company transitioning to more remote long-term start, putting some of those things in place like are.

E

C

To get our team together once every six or twelve months, those really matter, but the core thing is leave with them, but they leave with co-op with trust. Micromanagement fear is the worst possible thing you could do in a team right now and if people.

D

C

Struggling through it communicate with them be empathetic like give them grace, because not everyone loves working from up like there will be some people that, when this is all over, I can't wait to get back to the office, and then there will be some people.

D

C

Will never go back because the genies out of the bottle and they just love the freedom that comes along with it, but everyone's different. So you can't expect everyone to react to it. The same.

B

That makes a lot of sense um how about any other favorite productivity tips? This goes beyond just working from home, um but we talked a little bit about this in the last call. um You know ways to remain productive. It's you know throughout your workday, the.

C

Biggest thing for me: I loved white space I need time, like a large blocks of time to do, uninterrupted, deep work, and if you don't plan for that in a virtual world, it's way too easy to just throw a meeting on someone's calendar. And then you look up and you're like I, haven't zero time to think today.

C

That can happen really quickly and so I'm, very intentional about blocking out sections of time and the whole company is like if we need to go pick the kids up from school, if we're going on a workout like what is a blocked Fitness like no shame in that and we'll say like block family time, please ask before booking like these are the things that we put in our calendar.

C

We block away whitespace, and so that might it's like what does that do with productivity I mean it makes you more productive if you go into your time and you're the owner of your time, because it's very easy for the rest of the world to kind of dictate your time if you're, not attentional about that.

B

Content that makes that makes sense, one quick follow-up question to that and then um and then I'll hand it over to Mickey to walk us through QA and if you've I'm, sure you've spent I, know I know you spent a lot of your career working remotely and thinking about remote work and and all the benefits that it has. But if you could compare it to um you, know friends or peers that you have that work in an office. Is there a significant difference in the number of meetings you have?

B

You talked about guarding your time, I'm and I'm curious. If, if you've seen it change, they're, definitely.

C

Lower in a remote setting, but not always you.

E

Need to be intentional.

C

About that and the reason why it's lower at gitlab is that there's a very high.

E

C

For meetings so to have a meeting, you have to have a Google Doc agenda attached to it. So if you get a meeting, invite and there's no agenda attached, you're totally cool to just hit decline, play absolutely not going this, because the person who organizes it it's on them to make sure that there's an agenda at least some starters. In context of why this matters it's.

F

Also, the inclusive way to have the.

C

Meeting so that, if you send this, it lined out with 20 people and ten.

E

C

Come for whatever reason, if they have, if you have the agenda there, there's no like. Oh I, can't make this meeting what am I gonna. Do it's like? Oh no problem, I'm, just gonna, add my comments right and then this agenda gone totally. Fine removes that stress altogether. Additionally, coming out of the meeting, the meeting organizer has to take anything that was documented.

C

That is going to be important to a broad array of people to the company and then actually document that in the handbook in the respective correct places in the handbook, so the burden for having a meeting is really hot, like it's actually a lot of work to have a meeting and that's the point: I'll share a guide and chat on remote, first, forcing functions and high burden.

C

The meeting is a forcing function you want to have because it makes you think, is there any other way in asynchronous way more inclusive way and then I can move. This project forward is through literally anything I can do, and sometimes the meaning is the most efficient way and that's totally fine like there are some days where I'm, just in meetings all the time and then there's some days where I have almost none, but at least.

E

It gives you the option.

C

To do work another way, I feel like in a co-located space meetings are the work very often it's like work only happens in a sequence of meetings which is kind of a really poor way to get work done, and at least in a virtual environment. It gives you the opportunity to pause. Think about. Is there a different way to go about this.

B

Got it awesome, um alright, cool I think we'll go ahead and move over to the QA for anybody who missed this at the beginning of the call. If you have questions you can post them in the contras press, the Q&A button on the bottom of your screen and post them there. If you're posting in chat or that's, that's totally fine too um well. Actually, the third way you could post is on twitter.

B

Our twitter, twitter handle is two sigma or you can use the hashtag TSE town hall and will be aggregating all questions onto the Google's Google Doc that we've shared in the chat. So you can see when your question is coming.

A

All along on the Google Drive I'm gonna call on people's names, ask their own questions and we're getting any latency or any other issues. So I'll just kind of hop in and ask ask for you awesome.

B

And then one other quick thing before Darren's mentioned a few resources, he's posted them in this chat, we'll move all resources over to the Google Doc as well, following the call and we'll have all the questions listed there too yeah.

C

Doc: first yeah thanks for doing the Google Doc I really appreciate that sure.

A

Taking your advice to heart there and much.

C

Appreciate that okay, cool.

A

So I'm seeing a lot of come a lot of questions come in we'll try to get to a few of these now so Dominic you're, the you're, the first I'm going to go ahead and add you to the call now go ahead: dominate okay.

E

Hi I'm speaking to you, from from London from nearly ten o'clock in London, so I got a glass of wine in front of me. Sorry.

E

A

Goes for everyone, but when you, when you ask your question, can you just tell us your company and I'm.

E

Calling yeah so I'm in London I work with Index Ventures, so the VC fund and I really appreciate you guys putting this together as well.

A

E

You Dan so I was I was my question: was around onboarding both like get labs, standard, onboarding process and what's the balance between remote and in-person, you do with with onboarding unusual circumstances and how you're doing onboarding now because I'm sure you've add new joiners over the last couple of weeks since lockdown Staller to happen and how you're dealing with lockdown, with with with onboarding in that circumstance, and what best practices for sort of virtual onboarding programs.

E

C

Thank you for the question. This is when we're getting a lot right now, the.

E

Good news is get lab, has always been.

C

Built for virtual onboarding and we onboard everyone, always we interview people remotely like we. Never we never meet you person ever doing the onboarding process or during the hiring process and.

E

It works for us because.

C

People opt into this if you google, what's it like to work and get out, there's an FAQ section that I wrote that essentially answers any question you can have about what it's like to work here before you even apply and we make that public. So it's respectful for your time, because if you read that- and we think this is not at all a place where I would thrive, then you're probably not going to apply it.

D

C

Keeps no recruiting pipeline really fresh and with great candidates. No one accidentally ends up here so.

D

E

Things I'll offer.

C

Here how we are more people is in a kit lab issue. It helps people get acclimated with kit lab, but it's also very prescriptive. There's over 200 check boxes over for weeks and when you're done with the check boxes, you're done with onboarding. There's no ambiguity: you either saw it all or you did not, and so, if you're, in a situation now, where you on board someone and you're used to a way more in the u.s. in person, operation you're- probably not going to be able to stand up a virtual version of that overnight.

C

So what I recommend instead of that, is using something that get lot of uses called onboarding, buddies and I will link the link for onboarding buddies in chat and then the two sigma team can port that over I don't have edit rights to that Google Doc. They.

E

C

E

The idea of an onboarding buddy is.

C

You assign a new hire to someone, that's been in the company, ideally at least three or more months. They are there 24/7 to be our on-call buddy for anything, there's no dumb question. They can ask as many questions as they want and the benefits here are numerous one of which is they only interrupt one person, so they can just go straight to this person and then that person can connect the dots so in a virtual environment right now.

C

This is crucial because you can be a just drop, a zoom link with this person whenever they can always get their answers and they're not going to feel like oh I'm, honoring someone. This is their job. They are assigned to be your onboarding buddy and we list out all of the tests that go along with the onboarding, but it.

D

Just goes a long.

C

Way giving someone a dedicated friend that has been there- that's been around the block and can answer a lot of those questions. So in lieu of having a proper onboarding issue to stand up, buddy can help a lot.

A

Awesome so Bobby Simpson you're up next. Let me add you to the call here: go ahead: Bobby you're on the line Thanks.

F

And thank you guys for putting this on today. I said some I had a question. It's kind of general, but I was curious as to what other visual tools or software you guys use besides zoom when you're working synchronously and need to present information, because from what I'm seeing I guess, a lot of stuff I use. It's you know, it's really kind of one. I can only show one item at a time or can only work on one item time curious. What else is out there?

F

Besides kind of general presentation, one person screen kind of thing.

C

Yeah, it's a good question on the talk about actual design. We some of our teams, use figma and mural. We use Google slides for all of our presentations, but in terms of collaborating the festival. What I've seen so far is a tool called a co screen.

C

Ceo screen, it's I think it's still in beta, but it's very interesting where it allows multiple people to see both of their screens and whatever windows and like give each other permission, it creates a peer-to-peer virtual private network where you can actually allow them to have their cursor over there, and you can actually like move.

F

Objects around they.

C

Kind of collaborate on a visual piece of work- I, don't know how many screens it goes up to I know. It'll do two and I think they're working on doing more. Now that all this has happened, I met the development is moving rapidly, so I would expect it to address that need really quickly.

A

Okay, great you're at you're up next you're on the line I see you're muted, though so you might have to unmute your mic.

A

Hey there Monica. Can you hear us it's okay, I'll, ask your question for you. So mana was wondering: how do you suggest teams remotely continue on the job, learning and personal development.

C

D

C

It happens pretty. Naturally, it get lab because we're all so acclimated to using slackin zoom like it just comes to second nature. For example, if I have an issue and get and I'm not really sure where to turn, we have a channel where you can just get help and it's nothing to just go in there and say.

E

C

Is the issue I'm having and throw my zoom link and then whoever around the world that is online and has the bandwidth to help me out, will just jump into my zoom room and help me out so like I, don't even know who's going to jump in there, but somebody who's going to jump in there and help me out, but that takes a certain amount of cultural acclamation to be okay with that. The first thing that comes to mind is just take that onboarding buddy example and extend it like.

C

Maybe you have a champions of teams that they are the kind of on-call person where they sort of serve as the beacon this one, a centralized point that you can reach out this person for mentorship, and things like that you have to be intentional about it. Learning is one of those things that you need. You need a student and you need someone teaching and you just need to openly communicate about that.

C

If that's an issue in your team, I would actually bring that up with management and do it on a meeting or in an agenda dock with a broader array of people say who who wants to volunteer to be on the mentor side of this? We want to set up kind of some one-on-ones to make sure that learning is still happening so.

A

Darren I actually snuck one in here so.

C

That you know, as all.

A

Go remote and they're kind of you know, leaning into a distributed workforce. I'm curious. You know from your perspective kind of philosophically what are the benefits of remote? You know why would you encourage a team to go remote, I, think kind of nice thing. There are some people that are hesitant that I haven't fully embraced it. Yet so could you give us just a little bit of your perspective on on? You know why you think teams should be distributed. Sure.

C

So, first of all, it's not perfect for everyone, but if you're in the anti remote camp at least give it a shot, we actually have someone on my team who join get laugh not because we were all remote, but actually it's fight of it like she loved the interview, love the work, but she was like I, don't love being at the office? I love the happy hours, I think I miss it, and within two months she was like I'm, never going back to my office total convert.

C

So it's all about the environment that you create that's going to determine whether or not you'll remote experience is positive or not. Why should you do it? I mean the list goes on and on it's, it's a more efficient way to work and we think of a team at scale where no one can use I mean diem. You can literally do the math on how many hours you're going to save and give back to this person, not.

E

C

So that they contribute more work to give back, so they can spend more time with their families and more time of that community spend more time on themselves and better people or better workers and you're getting nothing from that commute. Nothing like it is a waste if anything.

E

It makes people.

C

Matter angrier and snippy ER by the time they get to work like actually sets the wrong stage, and so.

E

C

Get rid of that like a lot of things, go right right away, it's more inclusive, you're able to look at the world in for what it really is and hire the world's best talent, no matter where they are so many heads of recruiting their main issue is how do I get people to move to this one place? It takes a long time. It takes a lot of money once they're there they're immediately at risk of being poached their value. Their loyalty is very low because they move to a place. That means nothing to them anyway.

C

They just came here for the work, so your retention is going to struggle and then on a business level, it significantly D risks. Your business London is a great example who saw Briggs it coming. So every business that was jira geographically based in in London now has to deal with the ramifications of that. That has nothing to do with the business, but it is going to impact their business, and then you have global crises that have hurt and impact certain regions more than others and you're just kind of crossing your.

F

D

Like I hope it doesn't, you.

C

Know my town, where my business is: doesn't you can sidestep all of that? If you're all remote, it makes you much more amenable to these things, much more adaptable, much more agile, so the the benefits are numerous but remote. Is it for everything? If you, if you're dealing with Hardware production, scientific laboratory equipment, that's not easily ported into the house, it is possible that at least operating some of your business from a physical location is the best way, is the most efficient way but I think coming out of this.

C

You will see a lot of businesses. Question that that's a you know. 10% of the business requires physical touch, high touch, we gotta have it in this place, but our finance team HRT marketing, comms team. They can be anywhere so we're going to save some money on the real estate open up our talent pipeline and what our employees to be a lot happier good.

A

So one more from an anonymous attendee here, so I'll just go ahead and ask it for them. What percent of the teams that get loud haven't removed daily standup? Are these useful meetings.

C

For sure I'd say: probably half do this on a regular basis, we're currently in a sprint around remote for our corporate marketing team and so we're actually doing three stand-ups a week and so.

E

We've just started that I.

C

Think they're going really well I. Think stand-ups go really well. If you have the agenda there, because people can put their blockers and what they're working on in in advance- and so most of it could just be read silently like gives you a minute to just take a breath. If we're just gonna read this as a group, if you have any questions, then we can vocalize it.

C

It just makes for a much calmer meeting so yeah we do them and the benefit of doing them with that never-ending Google Doc is that on days not either, you still can contribute in advance, and you can still read up on what happened after the meeting occurs.

A

Awesome I'm one more from Francis on our team who wanted to make sure we got this in so it multi-faceted question here, but I think it breaks down into two parts kind of how do you guys think about the in-person Portsmouth business ie, dev, m'angil ISM, you know: do you guys host remote meetups or non remote meetups? You do any in-person events and then also kind of potentially what is the biggest downside of remote? Do you think you know friendships and trusts or created in less. You know rigorous ways.

C

So I'll answer the first one of that we are very intentional about in-person interactions. It's very important for us. I'll actually drop this as a chat. We get a whole team together at least once a year for a week-long contribute summit and there's almost no work. It's just personal bondings like we just do a bunch of excursions. You know opt into the ones you want and we do a series of events each year about get lab commit.

C

These are in-person user events and we try to get as much of the team as possible to various ones of those and other meetups and things like that sales events there.

D

C

Lot of events, and so we try to get as many people as possible to those because in person matters relationships were built in person and it matters, and we try to give our employees as many of those opportunities as we can. One thing you can do is wear a low team is take a note from our incentive called the visiting cricket, so we will actually partially reimburse travel for any get lap team member to travel somewhere else to see another get lap team. Member and there's.

E

C

No capitis, so, a few years ago we had two people that travel to all six continents like a half year, crazy trek just meeting about 40 people. It was insane, but it's awesome, I mean that's what that's the tone you want to set like, encourage people to go out and explore. We had some.

C

We had people from like five countries flying from that reimburse timidly. How amazing is that some of them, North Dakota, gets married in New York and has friends from five countries. That's not something that you can do in a remote setting down the sides. I. Will the interest of time I actually have a page on the downsides of drawbacks? I will link that there make.

D

You I do I answer that one.

C

Question, if you have time for Dominic there, yeah.

A

Absolutely we can fly through these. Maybe just do one or two-minute answers on the rest of them. I'm gonna add Colin to the line. He had one question: hey Colin yeah you're on, can you can you go ahead? Yeah.

D

Mike, it was just a quick, totally practical question about what happens if the speaker has bandwidth issues. Are there any quick tricks about? We turn off all video or to some way to overcome that when it's happening to me, yeah.

C

For sure, disabling video is step number one step number two: is we zooom for everything and that always has a boys up phones, and so it's very rare that you don't have solid internet and you have no phone signal. Usually the phone works as a backup.

A

Awesome thanks: Colin Alissa had a pretty similar question to what we were talking about earlier, with just different tools, specifically whiteboarding tools for engineers and UX designers. I know you had mentioned Sigma and the one other one so we'll drop those in the resources yeah.

C

And I will say give me some give me some time on that one. We actually have our design team everyone in our design, putting together their best practices on what they use to collaborate, a whiteboard right now and we're gonna. Have our content team compile that and build a handbook page on it. So Allroad got info, look for a collaboration link to show up there, berries awesome.

A

And then Julia, maybe we can come back to her question at the end. If we had time it was pretty similar to kind of onboarding and hiring which I think we talked through pretty pretty well so I'm gonna add Dominic back to the line for for one more question here: hey Dominic, you're back on.

E

Thank you so Darren, sorry, I'm hogging with a second question. The question was around really: do you have any Geographic particular thinking in terms of time zones globally groupings on particular teens or squads, or is your working approach entirely asynchronous, so you talked about stand-ups. If you've got people on opposite ends of the globe, that's gonna be pretty unsocial or impossible. So do you make yeah? How asynchronous do you adapt to that? Or do you actually have some restrictions on squad composition or whatever is so just for that yeah.

C

Very little we're is purely asynchronous. I think one can possibly be. There are like client services, for example, there are some clients that, as part of their package, they expect service from this hour to this hour. So we have two structural teams. They.

E

Could be anywhere in the world.

C

Like if they want to work in the middle of the night, they can, and that would be someone else's day so.

E

They can live wherever.

C

They want they. Just might you know, that's the job you take to serve in that outside of that, though, we do try to be completely asynchronous and the stand-up.

F

C

A good example where we try to if it's good, if there's a huge gap like that, we try to alternate when the meeting is held so that it's inconvenient for someone people once and then it's really convenient for them again. That way, like kind of share the pain on that, but again, if you're really diligent about using the document, the Google Doc it alleviates. Some of that. Another thing that I think is really interesting.

C

Is this tool Cognac y AC, comm they're, enabling asynchronous video clips and so I think this is kind of the next stage of this, where you can give your stand-up block your three minutes on video, the 1904 and just leave a link to it in that Google Doc. In that way, the whole team could just hit play as screen shares to them, and it's almost as if you're in the room, that's really cool. So if that's gonna be a big issue for your team, look in the Yaak for that and one.

D

E

Final thing, I'll.

C

Say about this, this is really hard as a small team like if you have four people, and everyone is six hours apart- really hard. If you push through it, actually get way easier at scale when you're now.

D

The Gilliam.

C

Is 1,200 people we have such a deep level of experience across every part of the company. There's almost always someone that's within two hours of someone else.

C

We have so completely filled all the major time zones around the world that it's so easy to just hand work off from one to the next to the next, but it was a lot harder early on, but once you, you know any decent level of scale, it actually becomes easier where, as this gets harder in a co-located space, if you've got eight offices and they've each got 80,000 people in them. Those offices are never going to get closer to each other, so someone is always sacrificing, but truly remote environment.

C

You can kind of hire people intentionally in zones that you need fill.

A

Awesome well, I think that just about wraps us up for those of you whose questions we didn't get to I'm sorry I, hope we tried to kind of batch a few of them and I hope we were able to cover. Most of you know what what you were trying to get at the heart of your question, but.

C

Definitely anybody else, questions you're, welcome to just tweet me I'm at deira, Murph and uh my goal is to answer you with a handbook and if I can't answer you with an awesome.

A

I was gonna, say you definitely feel free to shoot us a note as well, and we can link you up with Darren and we'll put together all of the answers to these questions and then further build out this resource page and we'll share it with this group of everyone who is on the call, so just keep an eye out for that, and just once again, you know understand how crazy these times are and really appreciate if I'm taking an hour out of their busy schedules, should join us today and Darren.

A

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, your knowledge, it's really great to kind of kind of walk through the remote. The remote first approach. There's.

D

B

B

A

Absolutely and we'll be in touch soon so again really appreciate it cool.

B

Thanks happy well, I take.

A