4 ms·

The "What it's like" posts are really cool. Especially enjoyed this account[1] from a content writer who shadowed the CEO during a half-day meeting with a major

by quartz 4y ago

The "What it's like" posts are really cool. Especially enjoyed this account[1] from a content writer who shadowed the CEO during a half-day meeting with a major investor and got to see the impact of their work in a context they never expected: > Next we met with Vinod, Bruce, and investment partners Brian Byun and Sven Strohband for a company brief and brainstorm session. Sid began with an update on the financials, and detailed our massive growth and expansion both in terms of people and product. There were no slides presented. Instead, Sid used our website as a visual aid. Nearly every question or discussion point was first addressed with a Google search to pull up the appropriate GitLab web page to reference. [...] > I’ve been working at GitLab for two and a half years as a content writer on our marketing team and at times have been extremely frustrated with our marketing website—the content on it, how it’s organized, what we’re presenting, etc. It doesn’t look or operate in a way I’m familiar with so my instinct was to not trust it. But nothing we do at GitLab is “normal,” and witnessing our CEO use the website as a single source of public truth to inform our investors is just one example of what it means to be a transparent company. [1] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/04/08/khosla-ventures-gitlab-meeting/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/04/08/khosla-ventures-git...

Swizec 4y ago
And if the CEO needed to use Google to find every page, maybe the navigation needs some work
- reidjs 4y ago
  Disagree, it makes sense for the nav on gitlab to be code/repo focused. It makes sense for these articles to be more easily found through Google IMO
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  I don’t think that necessarily follows.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  Be index-able should be a motto of every website on the net.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  Hm not precisely. Users are not seeking to navigate to them sequentially. But they are seeking to find what they want, a morsel at a time.
- aasasd 4y ago
  If you know what you want, text search is much faster than leafing through a list of items. It's what every touch-typist discovers in the first months with their newfound power, especially if they have decent software available—like Spotlight or Alfred.
  - atonse 4y ago
    Whenever spotlight's index gets corrupted (about once every couple weeks), my productivity probably goes down 30%. Because I find it faster to switch by just spotlight + app name, in many cases even faster than command + tab, because it's kind of an O(1) switch, vs an O(n) switch to cycle through many open apps.
    - aasasd 4y ago
      A more important factor in the app-switching use-case, imo, is that Spotlight or Alfred require just static unchanging input, so you can bash it out without second thought, and usually without looking at the displayed result (after learning the necessary text to trigger the app selection). When cmd-tabbing, you have to look at which app is under the highlight ‘cursor’ and where is the one you want, then position the cursor on the desired app—this all keeps visual recognition engaged and requires conscious choice at many steps. This is also the reason why both mouse-clicking and touch-tapping are slow compared to keyboard typing: you likewise need to look at what is where on the screen, then aim with the mouse or the thumb, instead of just jerking the fingers to keys that are in muscle memory.
      - atonse 4y ago
        You’re absolutely right about not even having to look. When my spotlight index gets corrupted and I command space, type “safari” or “tower” or “iterm” and then hit enter without thinking, it doesn’t find the app but then opens safari with a google search for whatever app. It is always jarring cuz I’m not paying attention to what matched, and instead it opens safari instead of the app window I expected. To make things worse, I tried switching back to Alfred but it it seems to just piggyback off spotlight for finding apps. Otherwise I would switch back to Alfred if it just had a “my index doesn’t get corrupted like spotlight” as a feature.
- spiddy 4y ago
  From the investor's perspective starting from Google is a lot better, and I bet this was done deliberately. It provides him the insight he doesn't need the CEO to find the articles.
evansmidwa 4y ago
so true

by quartz 4y ago

Swizec 4y ago

And if the CEO needed to use Google to find every page, maybe the navigation needs some work

reidjs 4y ago
Disagree, it makes sense for the nav on gitlab to be code/repo focused. It makes sense for these articles to be more easily found through Google IMO
germinalphrase 4y ago
I don’t think that necessarily follows.
gonzo41 4y ago
Be index-able should be a motto of every website on the net.
hackernewds 4y ago
Hm not precisely. Users are not seeking to navigate to them sequentially. But they are seeking to find what they want, a morsel at a time.
aasasd 4y ago
If you know what you want, text search is much faster than leafing through a list of items. It's what every touch-typist discovers in the first months with their newfound power, especially if they have decent software available—like Spotlight or Alfred.
- atonse 4y ago
  Whenever spotlight's index gets corrupted (about once every couple weeks), my productivity probably goes down 30%. Because I find it faster to switch by just spotlight + app name, in many cases even faster than command + tab, because it's kind of an O(1) switch, vs an O(n) switch to cycle through many open apps.
  - aasasd 4y ago
    A more important factor in the app-switching use-case, imo, is that Spotlight or Alfred require just static unchanging input, so you can bash it out without second thought, and usually without looking at the displayed result (after learning the necessary text to trigger the app selection). When cmd-tabbing, you have to look at which app is under the highlight ‘cursor’ and where is the one you want, then position the cursor on the desired app—this all keeps visual recognition engaged and requires conscious choice at many steps. This is also the reason why both mouse-clicking and touch-tapping are slow compared to keyboard typing: you likewise need to look at what is where on the screen, then aim with the mouse or the thumb, instead of just jerking the fingers to keys that are in muscle memory.
    - atonse 4y ago
      You’re absolutely right about not even having to look. When my spotlight index gets corrupted and I command space, type “safari” or “tower” or “iterm” and then hit enter without thinking, it doesn’t find the app but then opens safari with a google search for whatever app. It is always jarring cuz I’m not paying attention to what matched, and instead it opens safari instead of the app window I expected. To make things worse, I tried switching back to Alfred but it it seems to just piggyback off spotlight for finding apps. Otherwise I would switch back to Alfred if it just had a “my index doesn’t get corrupted like spotlight” as a feature.
spiddy 4y ago
From the investor's perspective starting from Google is a lot better, and I bet this was done deliberately. It provides him the insight he doesn't need the CEO to find the articles.

evansmidwa 4y ago

so true