►
Description
Join Kelly Fitzpatrick of RedMonk and Darren Murph (Head of Remote at GitLab) in a fireside chat on remote work, communication, and documentation.
For transcript and links see https://redmonk.com/videos/remote-work-with-darren-murph-gitlab
A
All
right,
hello
and
welcome
this
is
kelly
fitzpatrick
from
redmonk,
and
we
are
here
today
to
talk
about
remote
work
for
some
of
us
myself
included,
we've
been
working
remotely
for
a
while,
but
you
know
for
others.
Remote
work
is
part
of
these
kind
of
larger
and
sudden
changes
that
have
been
brought
on
by
the
ongoing
covid19
pandemic.
A
So,
while
we'll
be
focusing
on
remote
work
today,
we're
also
going
to
talk
a
bit
about
some
strategies
around
communication
and
documentation
that
you
know
might
actually
help.
You
know
kind
of
teams,
kind
of
adjust
to
this.
What
our
you
know
for
some
folks,
some
really
really
big
changes
so
now
on
to
the
part.
Joining
me
today
is
darren
murph,
who
is
the
head
of
remote
at
get
lab,
which
is
a
company
that
kind
of
offers
solutions
that
cover
the
entire
devops
lifecycle
and
which
has
been
entirely.
A
B
Absolutely
kelly
thanks
for
having
me
it's
a
pleasure
to
join
you
today,
so
I
kind
of
fell
into
remote
work.
I
loved
travel
early
on
and
I
love
storytelling,
so
I
became
managing
editor
at
a
consumer
technology.
Publication
called
engadget.
It
took
me
all
over
the
world
to
cover
trade,
shows,
conferences,
interviews
and
it
dawned
on
me
that
I
was
writing
and
working
while
traveling
all
over
the
world
and
that
suited
me
much
better
than
commuting
into
an
office.
So
I
fell
into.
B
And
in
fact,
I
attribute
in
large
part
the
ability
to
get
that
record,
because
I
was
able
to
work
remotely
and
ditch
the
commute,
so
that's
kind
of
where
it
began
and
then
all
the
way
till
now
I'm
the
head
of
remote
at
get
lab.
As
you
mentioned,
we
have
over
300
people
in
more
than
65
countries
with
no
company
owned
offices
and
we've
been
that
way
since
inception.
So
I've
worked
across
the
spectrum
of
remote.
B
A
Yeah-
and
there
was
a
really
great
kind
of
fortune-
article
that
came
out
a
couple
months
ago,
talking
about
how
you
know
you
were
brought
on
as
head
on
a
head
remote
at
git,
lab
well
before
the
coven
19
pandemic.
I
think
was
july
of
last
year.
So
can
you?
Can
you
tell
us
a
little
bit
about
for
those
of
us
who
haven't
read,
read
that
article
or
can't
get
it
because
there's
like
a
paywall,
you
know
a
little
bit
of
a
summary
of
you
know,
get
labs.
A
B
Yes,
so
the
head
of
remote
role,
I
think,
is
one
that
you
will
see
proliferate.
A
lot
of
companies
are
realizing
that
remote
is
so
nuanced.
It's
very
difficult
to
just
add
it
as
a
line
item
to
a
chief
people
officer
or
chief
operations
officer.
It
requires
a
lot
of
intentionality
and
I
do
think
you
will
see
a
lot
more
companies
looking
for
this
when
git
lab
recruited
for
this
role.
Obviously
it
was
well
before
the
coven
pandemic,
but
we
were
scaling
rapidly.
We
tripled
in
size.
B
In
2019
we
were
bringing
a
lot
of
team
members
in
that
needed
to
acclimate
to
remote.
Many
of
them
came
from
co-located
environments
and,
frankly,
a
lot
of
the
ways
that
gitlab
works
would
feel
downright
troubling.
In
other
organizations
we
say
that
there's
as
much
to
unlearn
as
there
is
to
learn,
and
we
outrightly
tell
people
that
the
ways
get
lab
works.
It's
not
a
trap.
We
truly
do
try
to
work
with
short
toes
and
no
ego
and
blameless
problem.
B
Solving
our
culture
is
very
deep
and
very
specific,
and
a
head
of
remote
helps
to
re-emphasize
that
across
the
onboarding
across
learning
and
development
manager
training.
So
that's
a
good
portion
of
my
role,
but
also
when
I
came
in
we
had
about
five
guides
dedicated
to
how
we
do
remote.
So
if
you're
familiar
with
get
lab,
we
are
very
transparent.
Our
entire
company
manual
called
the
handbook,
is
available
online.
If
you,
google,
get
lab
handbook,
you'll
find
it.
B
We
fundamentally
believe
that
making
the
world
a
more
remote
friendly
place
is
going
to
be
a
part
of
our
legacy
going
forward,
and
we
do
that
by
documenting.
So
I
joined
before
kova
to
start
building
that
library,
and
now
that
covet
has
happened.
It
has
become
an
incredible
resource
for
companies
all
over
the
world.
We've
heard
from
dozens
of
companies
from
10
person
startups
to
100
000
person,
multinationals
that
they're
using
this
as
the
blueprint
for
their
new
go
forward
plan.
A
B
Yeah,
it
is
one
of
the
things
that
suddenly
remote
companies
are
struggling
with
if
their
onboarding
was
not
well
documented,
where
it
was
intentionally
people
heavy
instead
of
documentation
heavy.
It
is
extremely
hard
to
pivot
in
real
time
and
get
labs.
Template
for
onboarding
is
available
online.
You
can
see
what
we
go
through
on
weeks,
one
through
six,
exactly
what
you
have
to
go
through.
So
it's
very
systematic.
B
A
Yeah,
I
will
have
to
say
like
when
I
started
at
red
monk.
Rachel
stevens
was
like
my
unofficial,
well
now
term
onboarding
buddy
and
she
she's
amazing.
So
of
course
I
had
a
really
good
kind
of
onboard
experience
so
shifting
a
little
bit
more
to
what
are
some
of
the
changes
that
you
know
you
have
seen
or
you
have
had
to
make.
You
know
with
the
onset
of
the
kovid
19
pandemic,
which
we're
about
almost
like
six
months
into
now.
B
Yeah
one
of
the
big
changes
is
about
20
percent
of
our
company
actually
works
outside
of
their
home,
so
at
get
lab
it's
not
exclusive
work
from
home.
We
will
support
people
if
they
want
to
work
outside
of
the
home.
We
realize
that
not
every
home
is
amenable
to
remote
work.
Some
people
live
in
very
small
spaces.
B
They
have
a
spouse,
that's
home,
maybe
there's
homeschooling
going
on,
and
so
we
would
allow
people
to
submit
expense
reports
for
co-working
spaces
or
communal
centers,
like
cody,
and
about
a
fifth
of
our
company
did
that
on
a
somewhat
regular
basis
and
now
they've
all
been
thrust
back
into
their
home,
so
that
has
been
a
bit
disorienting
for
them.
The
second
big
thing
is
parents.
B
We
have
a
lot
of
parents
around
the
world
and
most
of
them
now
have
kids
back
at
home,
and
if
you
look
forward
into
the
fall,
a
lot
of
them
will
be
doing
remote
schooling,
so
we're
trying
to
figure
out
how
to
distribute
the
work
and
make
sure
that
we
support
our
parents
so
that
they
can
be
there
as
a
teacher
aid
while
also
working
at
get
lab.
It
is
a
herculean
challenge
that
a
lot
of
companies
are
going
through
and
the
third
thing
is
the
invention
of
the
family
and
friends
day.
B
So
one
of
our
sub
values
is
family
and
friends
first
and
work
second,
and
we
do
everything
we
can
to
reiterate
and
reinforce
that.
But
we
saw
in
the
pandemic
that
productivity
was
actually
going
up,
and
so,
although
we
were
saying
and
telling
people
to
prioritize
well-being,
prioritize
their
mental
health,
take
care
of
themselves
first
for
a
lot
of
people
when
there's
nowhere
to
go,
or
you
feel
very
constricted
from
travel.
A
I
love
that
practice
and
I
need
to
talk
to
the
other
monks
and
and
figure
out
how
we
can
incorporate
that
into
our
kind
of
you
know:
kind
of
red
monk
calendar.
So
you
have.
You
have
tweeted
and
you've
also
written
about
git
lab's
handbook
first
approach
to
documentation,
and
this
is
how
you
ended
up
on
my
radar,
of
course,
because
you
know
I
love
all
things.
You
know
documentation
right.
B
So
we're
careful
to
say
handbook
first,
instead
of
documentation
and
the
reason
there
is
that
documentation
could
be
interpreted
differently
depending
on
who
you
ask.
In
fact,
you
may
have
your
finance
team
documenting
their
processes
in
a
notion
doc
and
your
hr
team
documenting
their
processes
in
an
almanac
dock
or
a
google
doc,
and
they
don't
even
talk
to
each
other.
So
the
practice
of
documentation
without
a
systematic
approach
doesn't
really
solve
a
lot
of
organizational
challenges.
So
in
gitlab
we
have
our
handbook.
B
It
is
written
on
gitlab
the
platform
we
use
gitlab
to
build
on
it
to
iterate
on
it.
So
we
use
our
own
product
to
build
our
own
handbook,
and
that
is
the
single
source
of
truth
for
everything
at
the
company
and
it
is
ingrained
in
our
culture
that
it
must
be
in
the
handbook
or
it's
not
true,
and
because
we
reinforce
that
company
wide.
B
So
that
is
the
genesis
and
the
notion
behind
handbook
first
and
why
we
want
to
work
handbook
first
and
why
it
extrapolates
the
efficiencies
over
time
it
takes
intentionality
for
this
to
work.
It
can't
be
something
that
you
just
give
lip
service
to.
This
really
has
to
be
baked
into
your
value
set
and
how
you
actually
get
work
done
and
you'll
see
it
reiterated
at
get
lab
if
we're
in
a
meeting,
and
someone
starts
talking
about
a
project
and
they
pull
up
a
powerpoint.
For
example.
B
Inevitably,
someone
on
the
call
will
say
well:
is
this
linked
or
embedded
in
the
handbook?
Can
we
screen
share
the
handbook
instead
of
the
slide
deck,
because
that's
a
more
accessible
link,
that's
a
more
inclusive
way
to
communicate,
but
it's
baked
in
and
people
know
what
they're
getting
into
when
they
sign
up
to
work
at
get
lab,
you
have
to
love
low
context,
documentation.
B
It
is
much
more
difficult
for
suddenly
remote
companies
to
get
to
this
point,
because
many
people
have
opted
into
an
atmosphere
where
it's
verbalization
first
and
documentation
either
only
if
you
want
to-
or
it's
not
really
enforced
at
all
and
now
you're,
seeing
that
documentation
is
a
vital
part
of
a
cohesive,
remote
team.
The
one
thing
I'll
say
there
is
for
team
leaders
that
do
go
through
the
trouble
of
making
documentation
of
value.
It
will
pay
dividends
down
the
road
because
it's
not
remote
exclusive.
B
This
will
make
even
co-located
teams
much
more
efficient,
they'll
have
to
rely
on
meetings
and
synchronicity
much
less
because
things
are
written
down.
So
it's
worth
doing,
even
if
you
do
plan
to
migrate
to
a
hybrid,
remote
team
or
in
fact
go
fully
co-located
after
covid
documentation
is
still
something
that
should
be
considered
and
be
at
the
heart
of
your
operation.
Fundamentally,
it
makes
you
more
disciplined
and
talented
people
want
to
work
at
disciplined
companies.
A
Yeah-
and
I
mean
I
found
that
documentation
that
I
have
created
to
you,
know,
communicate
or
you
know,
set
things
for
for
other.
You
know.
Team
members
has
benefited
me,
especially
because
I
don't
have
to
rely
on
my
own
memory
of
of
how
something
happened
at
a
certain
time.
It's
like
we've
written
it
down
it's
there,
but
I
love
this
idea
that
doc,
you
can't
just
throw
documentation
at
something
and
it
provides
this
magical
solution.
B
Yeah
it
it.
You
have
to
think
handbook
first,
instead
of
verbalization
first,
and
it
takes
a
lot
of
reinforcement
to
get
this
right.
It
is
not
the
default.
I
tell
people
that
it's
going
to
feel
awkward
until
it
doesn't
and
honestly
it's
one
of
our
remote
first
forcing
functions,
and
I
don't
think
it's
coincidental
that
the
word
forcing
is
in
there.
These
are
things
that
do
not
come
naturally
by
default,
but
over
time,
documentation
matters
so
much,
and
for
new
leaders
that
are
on
small
teams,
you
have
five
or
ten
people.
B
You
may
think
we
don't
need
to
document.
Everyone
can
talk
to
each
other,
but
it's
so
important
to
do
it
now,
because
it's
so
much
easier
with
five
or
ten
people
and
when
you
scale
to
a
hundred
or
five
hundred
or
a
thousand
people,
it
only
gets
more
important
as
you
go
and
more
painful
to
do
it
with
each
additional
day
that
you
let
pass.
A
B
Yeah,
I
think
well,
I
hope
that
remote
work
gets
even
easier
as
new
tools
and
technologies
come
online.
I
do
think
that
the
pandemic
will
create
this
new
era
of
focus
and
innovation
on
creating
tools
that
will
enable
remote
teams
to
function
better.
We
use
gitlab
to
collaborate
on
all
of
our
projects
and
we
have
a
very
specific
way
of
running
meetings.
Every
meeting
has
to
have
a
google
doc
agenda
attached
to
it,
and
every
meeting
has
to
have
temporal
documentation
that
happens
in
that
meeting
and
after
the
meeting
is
over.
B
B
That
aren't
even
awake,
they're
on
the
other
side
of
the
world,
and
so
we
do
this
to
force
people
to
think
about
work
differently
and
to
not
just
default
to
having
a
meeting.
But
one
of
the
things
and
the
reason
I
bring
this
example
up.
One
of
the
things
I'm
encouraged
by
is
the
advancement
of
artificial
intelligence
as
it
relates
to
machine
learning
and
language
translation.
B
And
if
we
need
to
tweak
it,
we
can
that
would
make
meetings
a
lot
easier.
We
would
have
much
less
manual
process
in
making
our
handbook
better,
so
the
bottom
line
there
is,
I
think
that
there
are
tools
and
technologies
on
the
horizon.
That
will
make
it
much
easier
for
us
to
work
handbook
first
and
for
documentation
to
feel
much
less
like
a
short-term
burden.
A
I
mean
I,
I
certainly
hope
so
and
I
can
see
applications
for
the
type
of
you
know,
kind
of
application.
The
type
of
you
know
aiml
product
that
you
just
described
in
in
many
other
ways
outside
of
the
you
know
how
to
make
your
the
meanings
that
you
don't
want
to
have
that,
often
because
you
don't
want
to
have
them,
but
how
to
make
them
better
when
you
have
to
have
them.
B
And
mid-sized
communities
that
feel
like
they
have
to
lobby
for
a
corporate
to
come
in
and
build
a
skyscraper
and
bring
a
certain
amount
of
jobs
to
improve
the
tax
base,
but
we're
not
far
off
from
town
council
members
saying:
let's
just
build
great
green
spaces,
great
medical
facilities,
great
access
to
things
like
grocery
stores
and
salons
and
coffee
shops.
Let's
just
make
a
really
livable
city
and
then
just
let
people
bring
their
jobs
there.
People
are
yearning
for
community.
B
This
one
concept
has
the
potential
to
massively
change
how
society
operates.
Just
the
level
of
joy,
happiness
and
impact
that
we
can
all
have
if
we
don't
have
to
work
life
around
the
rigid
schedules
of
work.
I'm
really
encouraged
by
that.
I'm
definitely
a
long-term
optimist
on
on
how
that's
going
to
transform
people's
lives
and
small
and
mid-sized
towns.
B
Yeah
and
it's
not
just
good
for
people,
it's
good
for
business-
we
do
this
because
it
makes
our
business
stronger.
We
have
a
naturally
more
inclusive
and
diverse
workplace.
We
have
people
from
65
countries
and
regions
that
are
able
to
pour
local
cultural
understandings
back
into
our
products
back
into
our
culture.
This
is
much
stronger
than
manufactured
diversity,
where
you
try
to
recruit
people
from
different
countries,
but
then
relocate
them
to
an
entirely
different
country.
It
is
amazing
what
it
does
for
business.
It
opens
up
your
recruiting
pool.
A
B
First
of
all,
get
a
remote
leadership
team
or
a
head
of
remote
and
I'll
dive
into
that.
The
second
thing
is:
get
a
documentation
strategy
and
stick
to
it,
and
the
third
thing
is
reevaluate
your
culture
and
your
values
so
I'll
touch
on
the
first
one.
Remote
is
so
nuanced
that
you're
really
going
to
need
to
put
a
lot
of
brain
power
on
getting
it
right,
so
whether
that's
hiring
a
head
of
remote
or
pivoting,
your
chief
people
or
operational
officer
to
focus
specifically
on
this
for
now
and
then
building
a
team
around
it.
A
B
Remote
transformations
look,
this
is
new.
There
are
a
lot
of
leaders
that
have
done
well
in
their
career,
but
have
no
experience
whatsoever
leading
a
remote
team
and
that's
totally.
Okay,
there
is
expertise
out
there.
It's
a
bit
hard
to
find
and
in
high
demand,
as
you
can
imagine
right
now,
but
it's
worth
putting
the
brain
power
into
it,
because
remote
is
not
a
binary
switch
that
you
flip.
B
This
is
something
that
you're
going
to
need
to
put
quarterly
and
annual
goals
on,
for
example,
if
you
want
to
become
50
more
asynchronous
year
over
year
and
have
50
less
meetings
with
the
same
amount
of
productivity,
you
will
need
quarterly
milestones
of
what
you're
going
to
accomplish
quarter
over
quarter
to
achieve
something,
much
larger,
you're,
fundamentally
re-architecting
how
you
do
work.
This
is
no
small
task.
This
is
not
trivial
and
even
communicating
that
out
to
your
team
members
on
how
the
work
will
begin
to
shift
is
a
massive
undertaking.
B
That's
going
to
require
perpetual
attention
and
iteration
over
time.
The
second
part
on
a
documentation
strategy
we
talked
about
this
earlier,
but
if
things
aren't
written
down,
if
people
don't
have
a
single
source
of
truth
to
go
through,
go
to,
you
will
see
chaos
at
scale.
Communication
silos
will
happen.
Communication
fracturing
will
happen
so
you're
going
to
have
to
have
a
documentation
strategy
and
be
intentional
about
it
and
document
how
you
document
it's
going
to
be
part
of
how
you
deliver
that
message
to
your
your
team.
B
You
don't
know
what
new
perks
are
needed.
You
don't
know
what
stipends
are
needed
for
workspaces
everyone's
going
through
this
a
little
bit
differently.
Instead
of
trying
to
put
a
plan
in
place
that
you
think
will
positively
impact
the
most
of
your
team
put
out
a
survey
just
ask
people
everyone's
going
through
something
a
little
bit
differently
and
you
want
to
be
able
to
support
the
most
people
that
you
can.
A
Yeah,
I
love
this
idea
of
of
it
being
this
kind
of
iterative
and
most
adaptive
thing.
It
sounds
almost
like
training
for
a
marathon.
In
some
ways
you
only
do
you
do
a
little
bit
at
a
time
and
then
you
have
to
keep
putting
putting
that
training
in
until
you.
Finally,
you
know
kind
of
get
there
and
there's
always
the
next
marathon.
B
There's
always
the
next
thing
get
lab
has
been
doing
this
from
inception
and
we're
still
figuring
out
ways
to
get
better
at
remote.
We
have
an
entire
guide
on
how
we
do
informal
communication
and
relationship
building
and
we
added
a
new
one.
Just
a
few
months
ago,
in
the
pandemic,
we
noticed
that
a
lot
of
parents
had
kids
at
home
and
we
thought
hey
what.
B
If
the
parents
synced
up
schedules
opened
up
their
zoom
cameras
and
then
let
their
kids
kind
of
sing
dance,
show
off
toys
and
enjoy
cultural
exploration
across
six
continents,
while
they're
quarantined
at
home,
and
we
coined
this
juice
box
chats,
which
is
a
play
on
the
coffee
chat.
Basically,
the
adult
version
of
just
grabbing
coffee
with
someone
and
chatting
about
anything-
and
it's
been
a
huge
hit.
Kids
around
the
world
now
are
able
to
hang
out
with
each
other.
Parents
get
a
reprieve,
and
so
that's
not
something
that
we
thought
of
nine
years
ago.
A
B
I'm
super
excited
about
this.
This
is
our
first
ever
gitlab
commit
user
conference
with
a
remote
work
track
and
remote
is
such
a
core
part
of
who
get
lab
is,
and
it's
more
timely
than
ever.
We
have
eight
amazing
speakers,
look
at
my
twitter,
darren,
murph
or
my
linkedin.
I
actually
just
put
out
a
post
today
and
tagged
all
of
the
amazing
speakers.
We
have
people
coming
from
net
cells
and
hubspot
and
friday
and
mattermost
just
an
incredible
array
of
people
that
have
a
diverse
array
of
experiences
on
remote
work.
B
Some
of
our
speakers
are
actually
suddenly
remote
themselves
and
they've
just
been
thrust
into
this,
and
so
we're
trying
to
meet
people
where
they
are
and
give
them
actionable
takeaways
to
make
their
life
better
as
a
remote
worker.
It's
free
you
just
go
to
gitlab.com
or
search
for
gitlab
commit
you
can
register
it's
free
you'll,
be
able
to
replay
it.
It's
a
24-hour
event,
with
lots
of
devops
content
as
well,
and
we'll
have
a
virtual
booth
there,
where
people
can
connect
and
ask
questions
in
real
time.
A
Well,
I
will
get
my
coffee
and
my
juice
boxes
ready
for,
for
that
particular
event,
awesome
daryn!
Thank
you
so
much
for
for
spending
some
time
talking
with
us
today,
I
feel
like
we
covered
a
lot
of
ground
in
some.
You
know
short
amount
of
time,
but
you
know,
of
course,
there's.
I
think,
a
lot
more
things
to
talk
about,
and
hopefully
you
know
we'll
see
that
in
get
lab
commit
in
the
coming
weeks.