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Our Handbook is open source: here's why
- sytse 10y agoI'll be around for 30 minutes to answer any questions.
- derekja 10y agoNice, thanks for posting that! You all are doing things right.
- sytse 10y agoThanks derekja.
- Odenwaelder 10y agoThank you for free unlimited private repos and GitLab CI. This made me switch from GitHub.
- Trundle 10y agoAre you guys focusing on ramping up direct sales yet? Emailed Michael earlier in the year and he said that he's focusing on your reseller program at the moment and to get back to him in August to see where you're at. Still very much on my calendar but I figured it can't hurt to check now if you're offering answers!
- jobvandervoort 10y agoWe have a solid sales team. Michael happens to work with resellers mostly. I've pointed our CRO (Chad) to your comment to provide further insight.
- Trundle 10y agoThank you very much! I'm located in Australia by the way, which is probably why I was originally referred to Michael.
- chadmalchow 10y agoWe are hiring. For the APAC market we are selling through partners at this time. However we are a remote only company and if we find the right people that can do the job, their location does not matter. I encourage you to apply at https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/account-executive/ https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/account-executive/.
- Trundle 10y agoThanks for getting in touch with me, I'll be sure to!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sytse 10y agoI'm almost going to bed (it is 10:30pm in San Francisco) but I thought it might be interesting to share some deep links: The marketing team has their OKR embedded in the handbook https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/#okrs https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/#okrs If we meet our sales target everyone in the company gets a free dinner https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#sales-target-dinner https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#sales-target-dinner There is a pretty sweet Kramdown SSG guideline https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relations/technical-writing/markdown-guide/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relati... It is always sad to see people go, but it happens and after the decision is made we do have a checklist for the process https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/offboarding/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/offboarding/ A recent addition (thanks Eliran) has been our remote coffee break calls https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#coffee-break-calls https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#coffee-break-calls
- groovy2shoes 10y agoCoffee break calls are such a great idea! As someone who works remotely, that is something I will be doing as well from here on out :)
- sytse 10y agoThanks, all the credit is for Eliran who joined us less than 2 months ago and already coined this term and wrote it up in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/2504 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...
- eliranm 10y agoThanks! I indeed contributed this idea - I think that's something that is definitely missing in the remote work environment, those casual conversations.
- leetrout 10y agoJust absolutely fantastic values for work-life balance and certainly makes GitLab look _very_ appealing... Some of my favorites: We're a distributed, remote-only company where people work remote without missing out. For this, we use asynchronous communication and are as open as we can be by communicating through public issues, chat channels, and placing an emphasis on ensuring that conclusions of offline conversations are written down. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#communication https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#communication Don't frown on people taking time off, but rather encourage that people take care of themselves and others. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#paid-time-off https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#paid-time-off Runbooks for the on-call person for common issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/runbooks https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/runbooks Edit: Link formatting
- jobvandervoort 10y agoThis will sound like blatant propaganda for GitLab, but you'll have to take my word that I'm being sincere here: GitLab is by far the best company I've worked at and the best company you could work for, as far as I can see. The values that you see in the handbook are really what every single one of my colleagues works and lives by. People frequently take time off and the team is always supportive, whether it is for a long vacation, personal matters or just to play a newly released videogame. This happens at every level in the organisation. Asynchronous communication is hard. We were lucky that we've stuck to insisting on doing this well since the very start of GitLab Inc and we're continuously working on making it easier to contribute to documentation and to encourage everyone to do the same. Interestingly, more and more of my colleagues (and myself included) are moving house to their favorite places to live. Often in other countries. Remote work in itself does not guarantee that you're comfortable enough to make big life changes, you need trust in the company you're working for. I believe that by being transparent, fair and understanding of what makes a good work/life balance, we are slowly achieving to gain that trust.
- kimmshibal 10y agoWhat if i want to "sleep" for 30min?
- kriro 10y agoPretty interesting that you use "1password (PeopleOps vault)". I guess I never thought about using PW-vaults in a corporate setting. Seems like an interesting approach (compared to some alternatives I know that don't work well).
- jobvandervoort 10y agoWe used Lastpass Enterprise before this, but we found that 1PW works better.
- wingerlang 10y ago1Password recently introduced "1pw for teams". https://1password.com/teams/ https://1password.com/teams/
- lukevers 10y agoWe're using 1Password for teams at MM.LaFleur and it really is nice. A lot of our employees were already 1Password personal users, and the Teams for 1P just started in Beta when we started looking for a new way to share passwords in a corporate setting, and after trying some different options out this was by far the best. You can add people to specific vaults and it works really well.
- fapjacks 10y agoEspecially considering there is no native Linux client. They say that's explicitly why your choice for development machine is one of the following: 1) Macbook.
- deanclatworthy 10y agoIs your only source of income right now the paid hosted repos? If so, how do you plan to scale that to support a staff of over 100 as well as compete with GitHub and Bitbucket who already have a huge market share?
- petepete 10y agoThey also offer a self-hosted Enterprise Edition for $39 per user per year. I imagine this makes quite a large portion of their income.
- jobvandervoort 10y agoYep, the vast majority.
- jobvandervoort 10y agoOur main source of income is organisations running GitLab Enterprise Edition on-premises, paying us a yearly subscription fee [0]. GitLab.com is completely free, public and private repositories, CI and unlimited collaborators. [1] [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/ https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/ [1]: https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/
- danso 10y agoThere's an "unlimited time off" policy; what does Gitlab do to prevent that policy from being punitive in practice to employees?
- Daviey 10y agoWhat sort of punitive things do you mean?
- dagw 10y agoIf you go over some secret 'limit' that no one will tell you about, you'll get put in the back of the line for promotions and raises and the front of line when it's time for cutbacks.
- jobvandervoort 10y agoWe don't track how much time you take off. If you want to take off more than 25 consecutive calendar days, you should discuss this with your manager first [0]. We expect that our people make sensible judgements about the time off that they take, but if it's not written in our handbook, there are no further rules. > Always make sure that your job responsibilities are covered while you are away. [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#paid-time-off https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#paid-time-off
- vinu76jsr 10y agoI believe opposite case is usually prevented, people don't usually take time off for no reason, they go on vacation, family emergency etc., an observed side-effect of unlimited time off is usually people don't take time off at all, purely a cultural(company's) thing.
- sytse 10y agoWe are afraid of people taking too little time off. We're considering introducing a formal performance review point that will penalize the team member and/or manager if someone took less than two weeks of vacation (full weeks, not counting days) for not taking care of themselves. But we're not sure yet this is needed. For now the executive team tries to set the right tone by taking vacation themselves. I'm going to burning man and Hawaii this year and I don't work weekends.
- drinchev 10y agoFrom the handbook [1] : > Technical interviews > Try to get a real sample of work (which we already do for developers by working on GitLab issues) Avoid puzzles or weird algorithm testing questions. Probing for data structures is fine as long as it is relevant to the job the person is going to do. > Be mindful of the background of the candidate, someone who knows 10 languages already (and some languages in particular, Perl for ex), may pickup ruby in a second given the right chance. Don't assume that someone with a Java background will not be capable of moving to a different stack. > Consider including non technical people performing soft skills questions. Because technical people should be capable of talking to non-technical just fine, we should assess it. Kudos to GitLab for these sentences. I think this is far better approach than the usual technical interviews. 1 : https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/#technical-interviews https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/#technical-intervie...
- sytse 10y agoThanks, credit for this goes to our infrastructure lead Pablo if I'm not mistaken. He joined us from Amazon so it might be inspired by their process of which he speaks highly.
- noxxten 10y agoIt's a great process to have too. Hire personalities that fit and work well with teams, and train them to be the ideal candidate instead.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- trumbitta2 10y agoI don't know... less than a year ago I didn't even get an interview because they were (legitimately) concerned with my lack of experience with Haml and Rails. I mean, kudos to them if they changed their view on this. I just wanted to let you know about my experience on the topic at hand.
- 10y ago
- abalone 10y ago90-day exercise window on options.[1] That means you may lose your vested options when you leave before a liquidity event.[2] However they do allow early exercise. That means if you can afford the strike price when you join, then you won't lose your vested equity when you leave. Taxes are the main reason people can't afford to exercise their vested options when they leave, but if you early exercise then you pay no up-front tax (or very little). So that's better than average, but not as good as the new hotness of 7-10 year exercise windows like what Quora or Pinterest are doing.[3] Reason being, the strike price can still be expensive for folks so it's better if you can just keep your vested options. [1] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/stock-options/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/stock-options/ [2] https://zachholman.com/posts/fuck-your-90-day-exercise-window/ https://zachholman.com/posts/fuck-your-90-day-exercise-windo... [3] https://dangelo.quora.com/10-Year-Exercise-Periods-Make-Sense https://dangelo.quora.com/10-Year-Exercise-Periods-Make-Sens...
- sytse 10y agoThanks for posting this. We discussed this internally and have a blog post in the making. Since most options where issued at a relatively low valuation we have not experienced this problem yet. But we are thinking about how to get ahead of the problem before it occurs.
- dudul 10y agoI haven't read the whole thing, but I really like this idea. I was always shocked to see that, when starting a new job, many documents weren't brought up until the 1st day - that is, after I had accepted the offer and left my previous position. How does it make sense to not show me your company handbook before I decide if I want to work with you? Now, I'm always pro-active and during the negotiation I'm very upfront: "I will not sign any new document after accepting this offer. If you have a non-compete, NDA, handbook, IP, etc I want to see them and review them with my attorney before accepting the offer." Has worked pretty well so far, helped me avoid very agressive non-compete.
- sytse 10y agoTotally makes sense. Many of our applicants have read the whole handbook by the time they have their final interview. One person remarked: 'I know more about your company than the one I currently worked at for three years'. Because our issue trackers are also open (for example https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/issues ) people can see how we actually work. It really helps letting people know what they are signing up for.
- skoocda 10y agoThis is an excellent resource for a new startup such as my own. We're interested in evaluating the less-tangible choices that need to occur to develop company culture, and this helps us see these options very clearly. I hope more companies follow suit!
- sytse 10y agoGreat to hear that it is helpful. We're hearing reports here and there of new companies adopting part of our handbook. One recent hire tried to have their department write down more to help with scaling. It was hard to convince the rest of the department so he ended up joining GitLab.
- mgrennan 10y agoApplause! Applause! Hands Clapping!
- sytse 10y agoThanks mgrennan!
- moosingin3space 10y agoDoes GitLab do internships?
- jobvandervoort 10y agoWe don't actively look for interns, as we don't always have the time and resources to properly mentor someone without prior experience. We do have a few talented interns that could get started immediately as they already showed some experience with the position they'd be taking. If there is a position you're interested in as an intern, you can consider applying to the position, but it's up to the team lead and the circumstances whether we could give you a position as intern.
- throwaway412 10y agoThis handbook looks great! However my experience interviewing at Gitlab stands in stark contrast to what is outlined here. Is this a standard/process the company is working on achieving?
- jobvandervoort 10y agoIf your experience has been different, we'd like to hear what happened and how we can improve. I'm sorry if it has been unpleasant. Feel free to reach out to me (job at gitlab com) or our VP of Scaling Ernst (ernst at gitlab com), who is currently in charge of hiring. We're always working on improving our hiring practices, which can be different for different positions. Anyone applying to GitLab should have a great experience, independent of the outcome.
- sytse 10y agoI'm sorry that you didn't have a good experience interviewing with us. We recently hired a senior director of people operations https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/db5c01d2afa6c9563d88241488ef9ad0411a13dc/source/jobs/senior-director-of-people-operations/index.html.md https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/db5c01d2af... that will also focus on improving the interviewing process. We're also considering assigning every candidate a guide that they can consult throughout the process. Would that have helped in your case? Anyway, we know there is a lot we can improve, feel free to reach out anytime to sid at our company domain.