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I don't know how I feel about this blog post but I think it reflects poorly on both the author and GitLab. I feel that a company should always give feedback to

I don't know how I feel about this blog post but I think it reflects poorly on both the author and GitLab. I feel that a company should always give feedback to an employee who is let go. Whether it's a simple letter or an exit interview, individuals should have closure when they're leaving a company and it doesn't sound like the author received that feedback. Furthermore, if nobody - a manager, for example - explicitly says "your job performance is not up to par for your position and we need to improve that" before an employee is let go then that shows a lack of organizational maturity. I think the gripes he had were somewhat fair; if a mid-level engineer is given a task outside his comfort zone and he communicates that he's having trouble then a good senior engineer should be able to provide design and implementation advice to the less skilled employee. In my opinion, that's a huge portion of being a senior engineer - if one employee is floundering in his technical task then you need to be there as a patient, understanding, and willing mentor. Heck, even senior engineers aren't immutable bastions of knowledge and should rely on their fellow senior engineers to be a mesh network of interlinking skill sets. The email about the tweet seemed justified if a little petty. The author was expressing pride over contributing to the product his company was putting forth. While it could be argued that he should have linked to GitLab itself, it is a gray area and I feel that stark admonishment isn't a fair or correct response. In the end, it's still a very public complaint and these articles are mostly frowned on. That being said, I appreciate that this Medium post exists. It's a point of view to take into consideration if I ever plan to interview at GitLab - even if the author is enacting the definition of 'burning bridges.' To conclude, whenever I read articles like this I always have to think "well, what other points of view are there to consider?"

ryguytilidie 10y ago
I guess at some point we should ask ourselves why "public complaints and these articles are mostly frowned on". I get that we should encourage professionalism, but this code of "don't say anything bad about your former employer" leads to a lot of startups getting away with pretty bad things. I feel like if a company has behaviors exposed and they are ashamed of those behaviors, their reaction should be to fix or eliminate those behaviors, not admonish the person who exposed them.
- 5thaccount 10y ago
  ...unless it is Uber, then you can say whatever you want, apparently. The general perception of what is right or wrong is always so situational, and that is weird to me. I agree with your comments, and I can see the other side as well (keep ones mouth shut because opening it likely hurts the individual the most), it just seems like the arguments are used so situationally, and I don't understand why. Maybe it is in our nature to be inconsistent?
  - gtirloni 10y ago
    The arguments are somewhat dependent on the gravity of the acts.
- OhSoHumble 10y ago
  That's why I lack surety over the article. At what point is is it considered tactless to speak about why you were let go from a position? Being fired isn't something unusual and I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. I think it's a similar vein to speaking about your salary in an open way towards your coworkers. Logically, I don't see much wrong with that behavior but it still makes me feel uneasy. Similarly, I can't really say that I have many reasons against speaking against a company post-firing. If my manager held a large meeting so that my firing was a spectacle, then I would create a blog post detailing my experiences because that would be a very cruel way to let someone go. I didn't feel like the author was whiny or overly nitpicky but something about the article made me uneasy. It could be because I have the wisdom of the aforementioned phrase "don't burn bridges" in the back of my mind. The author is now less hireable because he made his opinion public. A blog post isn't a Glassdoor comment; a future employer knows that they're hiring a liability that may 'squeal' at a perceived, and possibly valid, slight against him.
  - spacelizard 10y ago
    >don't burn bridges Once you get ejected from the cool kids' table enough times for random reasons, you see how not worth it is to put up with their bad behaviour. In the case of TFA, sometimes it's someone else that burns the bridge and there isn't anything you can do. I doubt this post is going to make him any less hireable, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, employers should be uneasy about things like this, and not just because of him. Employees have these things called "opinions" and they will happily voice them if given a platform. If we want to continue having a culture where we can hire inexperienced executives and just let them do whatever, we have to be ready to accept the risks associated with it.

ryguytilidie 10y ago

I guess at some point we should ask ourselves why "public complaints and these articles are mostly frowned on". I get that we should encourage professionalism, but this code of "don't say anything bad about your former employer" leads to a lot of startups getting away with pretty bad things. I feel like if a company has behaviors exposed and they are ashamed of those behaviors, their reaction should be to fix or eliminate those behaviors, not admonish the person who exposed them.

5thaccount 10y ago
...unless it is Uber, then you can say whatever you want, apparently. The general perception of what is right or wrong is always so situational, and that is weird to me. I agree with your comments, and I can see the other side as well (keep ones mouth shut because opening it likely hurts the individual the most), it just seems like the arguments are used so situationally, and I don't understand why. Maybe it is in our nature to be inconsistent?
- gtirloni 10y ago
  The arguments are somewhat dependent on the gravity of the acts.
OhSoHumble 10y ago
That's why I lack surety over the article. At what point is is it considered tactless to speak about why you were let go from a position? Being fired isn't something unusual and I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. I think it's a similar vein to speaking about your salary in an open way towards your coworkers. Logically, I don't see much wrong with that behavior but it still makes me feel uneasy. Similarly, I can't really say that I have many reasons against speaking against a company post-firing. If my manager held a large meeting so that my firing was a spectacle, then I would create a blog post detailing my experiences because that would be a very cruel way to let someone go. I didn't feel like the author was whiny or overly nitpicky but something about the article made me uneasy. It could be because I have the wisdom of the aforementioned phrase "don't burn bridges" in the back of my mind. The author is now less hireable because he made his opinion public. A blog post isn't a Glassdoor comment; a future employer knows that they're hiring a liability that may 'squeal' at a perceived, and possibly valid, slight against him.
- spacelizard 10y ago
  >don't burn bridges Once you get ejected from the cool kids' table enough times for random reasons, you see how not worth it is to put up with their bad behaviour. In the case of TFA, sometimes it's someone else that burns the bridge and there isn't anything you can do. I doubt this post is going to make him any less hireable, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, employers should be uneasy about things like this, and not just because of him. Employees have these things called "opinions" and they will happily voice them if given a platform. If we want to continue having a culture where we can hire inexperienced executives and just let them do whatever, we have to be ready to accept the risks associated with it.