8 ms·

GitLab the company exists because of HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 Ask me anything.

by sytse 7y ago

AmitJS 7y ago
How can I be qualified to get a role as Frontend/React dev at GitLab ?
- sytse 7y ago
  Please see https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/frontend-engineer/ https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/frontend-e... We're hiring for role and many others https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/apply/ https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/apply/
option_greek 7y ago
How did you get your first 100/1000 customers ? :)
- sytse 7y ago
  We got 100,000 users of the open source distribution before we introduced a paid one. In the first year that Dmitriy made the open source distribution (and I didn't even know it existed) 200 people contributed to GitLab and probably 10,000+ people used it. Read more about how we turned that into revenue in https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/09/monetizing-and-being-open-source/ https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/09/monetizing-and-being-ope...
IloveHN84 7y ago
Do you plan to switch from Ruby to some more performant language (e.g. C++17 onwards, Rust or Go)?
- sytse 7y ago
  We tend to remake performance sensitive parts in Go. GitLab consists of more than 30 services in multiple programming languages https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/architecture.html#component-diagram https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/architecture.html#com...
gquiniou 7y ago
I see that Gitlab does not currently hire in some locations (e.g. France, Italy or Spain). Is it because of local laws or other reasons ?
- sytse 7y ago
  Local law is the most common reasons although there is also non-local law such as US sanctions and other reasons. For a complete list see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines
  - zegl 7y ago
    How come you're not able to hire in some countries in the EU? Sweden, Italy, Spain, and France are on the blacklist. A Spanish citizen can work for a company registered in any other EU country without any problems.
    - giobox 7y ago
      There are 28 States operating their own legal systems in the EU and each is free to pass (and does pass!) its own employment and business related legislation albeit within some boundaries of EU law. While I can’t answer this question, it’s not that big of a shock there might be legal issues. The EU’s “Freedom of Movement” alone does not guarantee a business a right to employ individuals in all 28 States, even if it does greatly help in removing some barriers and permits you as an EU citizen to work In any of them. Any of these states can place additional legal burdens on Gitlab as the employer that it may not be able to meet in its current form, which is presumably what has happened.
    - sytse 7y ago
      This probably has to do with local regulations. For example (this might be part of our reasons to hire there) in Spain all employees now have to clock in and out https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/13/inenglish/1557739540_969503.html https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/13/inenglish/1557739540_96...
IshKebab 7y ago
Have you ever had to deal with employees that "work remotely" but don't get a lot done (perhaps because they're spending all day on HN)? How do you detect that & deal with it?
- brianwawok 7y ago
  Why would it be any different than someone in the office that didn't get a lot done?
- sytse 7y ago
  Identifying and taking action on underperformance is essential to running a great company and we have a lot of information on how we do this on https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/underperformance/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/underperformance/ I don't think that working remotely is the main cause of this. There are people underperforming in many companies who work on-site. I'll be the last person to say something about spending a lot of time on HN since I do so myself. In general we don't want to talk about how you spend your time but about your output. We measure results and not hours https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#measure-results-not-hours https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#measure-results-no...
- 0xfeba 7y ago
  How do you detect when someone doesn't get a lot done that doesn't work remotely?
mr_puzzled 7y ago
What's your policy on employees' side projects? Let's say I want to work on a side project and one day hope to turn it into a business (and get into YC), do you allow me to retain intellectual property for the side project which is of course unrelated to my gitlab work?
- sytse 7y ago
  You have to declare the project and get permission to ensure it doesn't conflict with GitLab. I don't recall us ever denying permission. I can't find the handbook link right now.
  - mr_puzzled 7y ago
    I am interested in working at Gitlab as a software engineer and will be applying approximately 6 months from now. Do you have specific suggestions on how I can improve my chances of landing a position? I had the following in mind : - Start contributing non-trivial patches to the community edition - showcase my skills through side projects which will be rails webapps - brush up on my CS fundamentals for the interview From the outside, the bar seems quite high, I remember coming across a tweet mentioning 20,000 applications over the past few months. Any other suggestions on how I can improve my chances? And how long does the hiring process take from my application to accepted/rejected? Thanks.
    - sytse 7y ago
      I think contributing to GitLab itself would send the strongest signal of the three things mentioned. Please note that this isn't required, we hire a lot of people who never contributed to GitLab before getting hired. I've asked our recruiters to comment as well.
    - spestorich 7y ago
      I am one of the recruiting managers here at GitLab. I would agree with @sytse that contributing to GitLab would be the strongest signal. While we do keep the bar quite high from a technical perspective, we also do so as it relates to our values. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/ With us going through this current hyper-growth phase we have to make sure that everyone who comes into GitLab aligns with these. For Engineering hires in the month of June we averaged ~65 days to move someone all the way through the interview process. I am more than willing to set up some time to chat with you 1:1 if you have any more questions.
sandGorgon 7y ago
could you talk about your development model (people management). For example Basecamp recently wrote about its 6-week sprint mechanism. What did you guys end up with ? im assuming you optimized it for your remote working style. Do you do daily standup video calls ? what works and what doesnt ?
- sytse 7y ago
  We do month long sprints, GitLab ships on the 22nd https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/21/why-gitlab-uses-a-monthly-release-cycle/ https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/21/why-gitlab-uses-a-monthl... We do a daily company call and group conversation https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ You can find more details on what works for us on https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/tips/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/tips/
jeena 7y ago
I was in the team where we decided what to use to serve git repos + to do peer reviews for a big German car manufacturer. We decided on GitLab because it had a normal fork-workflow but was open source and we wanted to divert some of the money into one of the open source projects. Now we have around 600 users in that project. Most of the things work great but we have the problem that we want to use Jenkins instead of the build in CI/CD solution but the only way to trigger MR jobs from GitLab forks in Jenkins is this non maintained plugin which has been in alpha since we started two years ago https://github.com/Argelbargel/gitlab-branch-source-plugin https://github.com/Argelbargel/gitlab-branch-source-plugin So I wonder, what is the reason behind not investing into integrations with other CI systems like Jenkins which are hugely popular and used by so many people?
- sytse 7y ago
  We are investing continually to have integrations with tools such as Jenkins, GitHub, and JIRA. I'm not sure why https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/jenkins.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/jenkins.html apparently doesn't support forks and our CI people to comment here.
- emilycook 7y ago
  In the meantime before someone from CI jumps in, here's the issue that has some more information relevant to your question: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/58301 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/58301
- Aeolun 7y ago
  Why would you want to use Jenkins? Genuinely curious. Jenkins has been nothing short of the devil for me.
  - jeena 7y ago
    Mostly historical reasons.
- jl-gitlab 7y ago
  Hey there, PM for CI/CD here. Can you point me to an issue in either GitLab or the Jenkins Plugin repo that has more info specifically on what you're looking to do that isn't possible today? Or share specifically what you need here so I can make one? That other project seems to have a few different features and I'm not sure which use cases exactly are important for you. In any case, we definitely want to make sure you have the right functionalities you need.
sunaurus 7y ago
Are you guys planning on ever removing the "location factor" from your compensation calculations? That's the only thing that's preventing me from applying - apparently I'm only worth 0.4x as much as a "SF Benchmark" developer to you guys right now, because I choose to live in a cheaper part of the world.
- emilycook 7y ago
  The best response to this that I can give is a link to our blog post about this, where we break down why we pay local rates:https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ So disclaimer, I work for GitLab. But the draw to working here isn't the possibility of making an SF salary, it's to work remotely for the same salary as working for a local company. I don't really care if I'm making less than a colleague in SF, because the benefit of working remotely while not taking a pay cut is already worth it. It's not for everyone though, so if you don't see working from home as a big enough benefit then that's valid.
  - napoleond 7y ago
    Your local adjustments aren't competitive, though. I live in a low cost of living area, but I could easily make at least 50% more than what your salary calculator shows at any of a number of local companies. And, in practice, I work remotely for a Silicon Valley company and make even more than that (while still saving them money relative to SV rates).
    - emilycook 7y ago
      That's fair, I had the same experience coming from a lower COL area, and when I was interviewing I was able to negotiate for a higher salary and they adjusted. If GitLab wants you badly enough then they'll do what every company does and try and make themselves competitive. You just have less leverage to negotiate in general because you're competing with international talent vs local talent.
  - jedberg 7y ago
robocat 7y ago
How do you protect your copyright assignments in the face of an employee paying someone else to do their work?
froskur 7y ago
The backend engineer position lists ruby experience as a Strict Requirement. The linked explanation makes sense when trying for fast growth. However, the text is about 3 years old now so my question is: Do you expect this policy to change in the near future?
- sytse 7y ago
  I don't. We had a few hires new to Ruby and I think it took them much longer to get up to speed and more of them never got up to full speed.
evanslify 7y ago
I've interviewed with GitLab when I first changed my career into software engineering, a few years ago. It was a bad call in my opinion since I'm not as good as I thought back then. However, is it a good idea to apply again since that was a long while ago and I've accumulated a considerable amount of experience compared to what I was? And can you do your own independent security research when you're working for GitLab? What's GitLab's stance of this situation? It'll be nice if you can post your/a recruiter's email ID here - I'd like to send over a couple more questions.
- gitlab-security 7y ago
  Thank you for your post and questions. We would welcome you to apply for a role at GitLab that looks interesting to you. Our guideline for security researchers is that if you are a GitLab employee, you would not be eligible for a bounty award through our public bug bounty program. Other than that, independent security research is fine, as long as it does not call out our customers in a negative manner. Here is our hiring page: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/ https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/

GitLab the company exists because of HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 Ask me anything.

by sytse 7y ago

GitLab the company exists because of HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 Ask me anything.

AmitJS 7y ago

How can I be qualified to get a role as Frontend/React dev at GitLab ?

sytse 7y ago
Please see https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/frontend-engineer/ https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/frontend-e... We're hiring for role and many others https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/apply/ https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/apply/

option_greek 7y ago

How did you get your first 100/1000 customers ? :)

sytse 7y ago
We got 100,000 users of the open source distribution before we introduced a paid one. In the first year that Dmitriy made the open source distribution (and I didn't even know it existed) 200 people contributed to GitLab and probably 10,000+ people used it. Read more about how we turned that into revenue in https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/09/monetizing-and-being-open-source/ https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/09/monetizing-and-being-ope...

IloveHN84 7y ago

Do you plan to switch from Ruby to some more performant language (e.g. C++17 onwards, Rust or Go)?

sytse 7y ago
We tend to remake performance sensitive parts in Go. GitLab consists of more than 30 services in multiple programming languages https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/architecture.html#component-diagram https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/architecture.html#com...

gquiniou 7y ago

I see that Gitlab does not currently hire in some locations (e.g. France, Italy or Spain). Is it because of local laws or other reasons ?

sytse 7y ago
Local law is the most common reasons although there is also non-local law such as US sanctions and other reasons. For a complete list see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/#country-hiring-guidelines
- zegl 7y ago
  How come you're not able to hire in some countries in the EU? Sweden, Italy, Spain, and France are on the blacklist. A Spanish citizen can work for a company registered in any other EU country without any problems.
  - giobox 7y ago
    There are 28 States operating their own legal systems in the EU and each is free to pass (and does pass!) its own employment and business related legislation albeit within some boundaries of EU law. While I can’t answer this question, it’s not that big of a shock there might be legal issues. The EU’s “Freedom of Movement” alone does not guarantee a business a right to employ individuals in all 28 States, even if it does greatly help in removing some barriers and permits you as an EU citizen to work In any of them. Any of these states can place additional legal burdens on Gitlab as the employer that it may not be able to meet in its current form, which is presumably what has happened.
  - sytse 7y ago
    This probably has to do with local regulations. For example (this might be part of our reasons to hire there) in Spain all employees now have to clock in and out https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/13/inenglish/1557739540_969503.html https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/13/inenglish/1557739540_96...

IshKebab 7y ago

Have you ever had to deal with employees that "work remotely" but don't get a lot done (perhaps because they're spending all day on HN)? How do you detect that & deal with it?

brianwawok 7y ago
Why would it be any different than someone in the office that didn't get a lot done?
sytse 7y ago
Identifying and taking action on underperformance is essential to running a great company and we have a lot of information on how we do this on https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/underperformance/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/underperformance/ I don't think that working remotely is the main cause of this. There are people underperforming in many companies who work on-site. I'll be the last person to say something about spending a lot of time on HN since I do so myself. In general we don't want to talk about how you spend your time but about your output. We measure results and not hours https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#measure-results-not-hours https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#measure-results-no...
0xfeba 7y ago
How do you detect when someone doesn't get a lot done that doesn't work remotely?

mr_puzzled 7y ago

What's your policy on employees' side projects? Let's say I want to work on a side project and one day hope to turn it into a business (and get into YC), do you allow me to retain intellectual property for the side project which is of course unrelated to my gitlab work?

sytse 7y ago
You have to declare the project and get permission to ensure it doesn't conflict with GitLab. I don't recall us ever denying permission. I can't find the handbook link right now.
- mr_puzzled 7y ago
  I am interested in working at Gitlab as a software engineer and will be applying approximately 6 months from now. Do you have specific suggestions on how I can improve my chances of landing a position? I had the following in mind : - Start contributing non-trivial patches to the community edition - showcase my skills through side projects which will be rails webapps - brush up on my CS fundamentals for the interview From the outside, the bar seems quite high, I remember coming across a tweet mentioning 20,000 applications over the past few months. Any other suggestions on how I can improve my chances? And how long does the hiring process take from my application to accepted/rejected? Thanks.
  - sytse 7y ago
    I think contributing to GitLab itself would send the strongest signal of the three things mentioned. Please note that this isn't required, we hire a lot of people who never contributed to GitLab before getting hired. I've asked our recruiters to comment as well.
  - spestorich 7y ago
    I am one of the recruiting managers here at GitLab. I would agree with @sytse that contributing to GitLab would be the strongest signal. While we do keep the bar quite high from a technical perspective, we also do so as it relates to our values. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/ With us going through this current hyper-growth phase we have to make sure that everyone who comes into GitLab aligns with these. For Engineering hires in the month of June we averaged ~65 days to move someone all the way through the interview process. I am more than willing to set up some time to chat with you 1:1 if you have any more questions.

sandGorgon 7y ago

could you talk about your development model (people management). For example Basecamp recently wrote about its 6-week sprint mechanism. What did you guys end up with ? im assuming you optimized it for your remote working style. Do you do daily standup video calls ? what works and what doesnt ?

sytse 7y ago
We do month long sprints, GitLab ships on the 22nd https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/21/why-gitlab-uses-a-monthly-release-cycle/ https://about.gitlab.com/2018/11/21/why-gitlab-uses-a-monthl... We do a daily company call and group conversation https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ You can find more details on what works for us on https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/tips/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/tips/

jeena 7y ago

I was in the team where we decided what to use to serve git repos + to do peer reviews for a big German car manufacturer. We decided on GitLab because it had a normal fork-workflow but was open source and we wanted to divert some of the money into one of the open source projects. Now we have around 600 users in that project. Most of the things work great but we have the problem that we want to use Jenkins instead of the build in CI/CD solution but the only way to trigger MR jobs from GitLab forks in Jenkins is this non maintained plugin which has been in alpha since we started two years ago https://github.com/Argelbargel/gitlab-branch-source-plugin https://github.com/Argelbargel/gitlab-branch-source-plugin So I wonder, what is the reason behind not investing into integrations with other CI systems like Jenkins which are hugely popular and used by so many people?

sytse 7y ago
We are investing continually to have integrations with tools such as Jenkins, GitHub, and JIRA. I'm not sure why https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/jenkins.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/jenkins.html apparently doesn't support forks and our CI people to comment here.
emilycook 7y ago
In the meantime before someone from CI jumps in, here's the issue that has some more information relevant to your question: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/58301 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/58301
Aeolun 7y ago
Why would you want to use Jenkins? Genuinely curious. Jenkins has been nothing short of the devil for me.
- jeena 7y ago
  Mostly historical reasons.
jl-gitlab 7y ago
Hey there, PM for CI/CD here. Can you point me to an issue in either GitLab or the Jenkins Plugin repo that has more info specifically on what you're looking to do that isn't possible today? Or share specifically what you need here so I can make one? That other project seems to have a few different features and I'm not sure which use cases exactly are important for you. In any case, we definitely want to make sure you have the right functionalities you need.

sunaurus 7y ago

Are you guys planning on ever removing the "location factor" from your compensation calculations? That's the only thing that's preventing me from applying - apparently I'm only worth 0.4x as much as a "SF Benchmark" developer to you guys right now, because I choose to live in a cheaper part of the world.

emilycook 7y ago
The best response to this that I can give is a link to our blog post about this, where we break down why we pay local rates:https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ So disclaimer, I work for GitLab. But the draw to working here isn't the possibility of making an SF salary, it's to work remotely for the same salary as working for a local company. I don't really care if I'm making less than a colleague in SF, because the benefit of working remotely while not taking a pay cut is already worth it. It's not for everyone though, so if you don't see working from home as a big enough benefit then that's valid.
- napoleond 7y ago
  Your local adjustments aren't competitive, though. I live in a low cost of living area, but I could easily make at least 50% more than what your salary calculator shows at any of a number of local companies. And, in practice, I work remotely for a Silicon Valley company and make even more than that (while still saving them money relative to SV rates).
  - emilycook 7y ago
    That's fair, I had the same experience coming from a lower COL area, and when I was interviewing I was able to negotiate for a higher salary and they adjusted. If GitLab wants you badly enough then they'll do what every company does and try and make themselves competitive. You just have less leverage to negotiate in general because you're competing with international talent vs local talent.
- jedberg 7y ago

robocat 7y ago

How do you protect your copyright assignments in the face of an employee paying someone else to do their work?

froskur 7y ago

The backend engineer position lists ruby experience as a Strict Requirement. The linked explanation makes sense when trying for fast growth. However, the text is about 3 years old now so my question is: Do you expect this policy to change in the near future?

sytse 7y ago
I don't. We had a few hires new to Ruby and I think it took them much longer to get up to speed and more of them never got up to full speed.

evanslify 7y ago

I've interviewed with GitLab when I first changed my career into software engineering, a few years ago. It was a bad call in my opinion since I'm not as good as I thought back then. However, is it a good idea to apply again since that was a long while ago and I've accumulated a considerable amount of experience compared to what I was? And can you do your own independent security research when you're working for GitLab? What's GitLab's stance of this situation? It'll be nice if you can post your/a recruiter's email ID here - I'd like to send over a couple more questions.

gitlab-security 7y ago
Thank you for your post and questions. We would welcome you to apply for a role at GitLab that looks interesting to you. Our guideline for security researchers is that if you are a GitLab employee, you would not be eligible for a bounty award through our public bug bounty program. Other than that, independent security research is fine, as long as it does not call out our customers in a negative manner. Here is our hiring page: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/ https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/faq/