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GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

blog.ycombinator.com

131–140 of 320 posts

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#131
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, seems a little tone-deaf to publish a puff piece about GitLab at the moment.

Why? It's not a puff piece boasting about their backup plans, they're talking about their remote work strategy. What's tone-deaf is the vitriol some people are spilling in this thread.

Spot on

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That definitely helps. I find there are other little cultural things you miss like inside jokes/shenanigans. They're not work-related but they're related to work and can make you feel like part of the team.

God, who cares of this work jokes shit? They're never funny, it's always the boss that makes them and everyone laughs way too much. FFS, We're not friends, we don't have to be, and it's OK! I like what I do, take pride on it and everything, but at the end of the day, my private life (where I get to choose my friends) is OUTSIDE work hours. And I'm committed to close the laptop as soon as I'm done. I guess this kind o…

I'm in no way suggesting that people spend all of their time at work or have significant overlap between their work friends and after-work friends. However, it's nice to work with people and not robots. Some people can tolerate sterile work environments devoid of anything but neutrality, and some people can't. I'm not even saying you have to be friends with the people you work with, but being friendly goes a long way. You spend a large portion of your day with these people, so it's not a huge ask for someone to give a crap about them as people.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#133
post #58

160 employees remote is impressive and commendable. Zapier is fully remote as well (but half the size in employee count). I'd say "write everything down" is a great shortcut to the sorts of practices you need to cultivate. We've also noticed that over-communicating is critical but hard - it is surprising the things that are "yeah yeah, we know" to some but are "oh we're doing that?" to others. This is only natural -…

Honestly, I haven't seen a company that does the hybrid remote/on-site thing well. I'm sure they exist, but every time I've worked at one the people who were remote were out of the loop on almost everything. Hybrid remote/on-site requires some great discipline. If you have a watercooler chat with someone about a feature, it's easy to forget that a remote colleague wasn't there for the discussion/not document what was…

We do it here are DigitalOcean and it's just awesome. We have people in NYC HQ and remote all over the world (for example I'm working from Turkey). The key is not only over communication, also to care about your remote employees, let them feel like they're really a part of the company, bring them to the HQ, not per year, multiple times, etc.. There are many things but so far DigitalOcean is one of the best companies I've worked remotely (and I'm working remotely for almost 5 years for different companies).

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#134
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Write everything down" is very important for any org hitting 150 people. It's when an organization hits Dunbar's #. [0] It's even tougher when you pass it and everyone is remote. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

If your orgs are hitting 150 people, you're organizing your company incorrectly.

Can you explain more precisely what do you mean by that? Are you trying to say that companies with >150 people are somehow incorrect?

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works at our company because the only remote guy is the only one in his "domain" (iOS). He probably doesn't care about the frontend watercooler chat and anything important about the backend will be mentioned in standup.

That definitely helps. I find there are other little cultural things you miss like inside jokes/shenanigans. They're not work-related but they're related to work and can make you feel like part of the team.

Agreed, especially RE shenanigans. I'm remote most of the time, but in the office this week, and small things like telling stories at lunch make a difference.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#137
post #2

After the mess up, I don't really like seeing these posts about Gitlab. Maybe this is their problem after all.

I think the problem has more to do with their recruiting. To be a successful distributed company, you need a disciplined and highly experienced workforce (note that this does not mean a highly educated workforce, which may actually be a contraindication). GitLab offers a middling base salary for a role and applies modifiers for experience and city-based cost-of-living (both of which may modify the base downward; my C…

Wow, that is bizarre. Obviously you want to take advantage of wage differences in different markets, but why would you tell people ahead of time you're going to lowball them? Why not try to get the best you can get, and then pay whatever the actual market rate is for them?

I just checked the calculator for a major German city and I can say they won't be recruiting anybody away from the likes of Siemens. Rocket Internet maybe.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#138
post #5
post #2

After the mess up, I don't really like seeing these posts about Gitlab. Maybe this is their problem after all.

Yes, seems a little tone-deaf to publish a puff piece about GitLab at the moment.

Marketing 101. Flood negative with positive.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#139
post #134
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your orgs are hitting 150 people, you're organizing your company incorrectly.

Can you explain more precisely what do you mean by that? Are you trying to say that companies with >150 people are somehow incorrect?

He means that a company is comprised of many smaller orgs:

Development / Marketing / Support / Sales

And even then you can have smaller teams:

APAC Sales / EMEA Sales / US Sales

So no "org" should be that big.

Re: GitLab’s Secret to Managing Employees in 160 Locations: Write Everything Down

#140

>> 2:41 – GitLab values boring solutions: our product should be exceptional Exceptional products have exceptional UX. Gitlab IMHO has the worst UX of all git based products out there, I much rather take BitBucket over Gitlab. I tried using Gitlab, but no, I would much rather pay the 7$ to GH for my private repos. I sincerely hope they make an exceptional product. And 'should' better be 'must'!

This is pretty subjective obviously. I think the GitLab interface is pretty good, especially compared to GitHubs. I can't speak for BitBucket since I've only used it once, but I do remember having a hard time finding my way around it.

UX is objectively measured. I don't know why people think it's subjective.
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