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

blog.ycombinator.com

211–220 of 320 posts

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

#211
post #162
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to get more input from you to make sure the calculator reaches its goal of providing fair market compensation in your location. Can you please send me an email to let me know your city and whatever further data you are willing to share? ernst@gitlab.com

I sent you a more detailed email, but basically it is preposterous to assume a "very experienced" senior engineer in ANY part of the United States is going to be happy with making $65K.

Thanks!

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

#212
160 employees? That seems like a lot support a product that is a wrapper around another product. I know the lede is skeptical, but does anyone have any idea how those numbers break down? i.e. is there a large number of sales/support due to complex installs?

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

#213
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, it requires an active investment in over communication. Hopefully someday the tools will evolve to help reduce the need for this to be so manual. Bouncing an idea off of someone remote gets difficult. I feel bad for interrupting them and they feel annoyed at being interrupted. Culture also plays a big role in that as well.

I think what helps is to keep everybody in the team in a permanent video call during working hours. This requires suitable hardware and software (I would love to build a company producing these tools one day.), but also a considerable amount of discipline. A wordier version of my thoughts is here: https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2017/02/02/improving-remo...

That sounds like a modernized version of the guy with the lash monitoring if the slaves work constantly. Like really, there are people who find that managerial technique desirable? Wow.

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

#214

>> 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'!

I'm curious what you dislike about the UX. Personally I like the "feel" of the website generally (though it's not as polished as GitHub) and just find it to be slow, which I think they're working on improving.

Personally not a fan of the sidebar navigation. I keep getting it confused with the individual repository navigation bar on top.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If UX was fully objectively measured, wouldn't Gitlab, Github, and Bitbucket all look and feel the same?

If performance was objectively measured, wouldn't BMW, Mercedes, and Corvettes all perform the same?

Yes, performance can be objectively measured but different companies choose different metrics to optimize. The choice stems from subjective preferences. Hyundai optimizes for price and caters to the middle class, whereas Bugatti optimizes for speed and caters to whatever their market is. So subjectivity is inherent in the metrics we choose.

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

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'll be contrarian here and say that I actually hate that most remote companies make frequent on-site travel part of the job and pretend like it's a perk. Travel, including on-site visits and "group retreats", are not perks for me.

I have a family and a life where I'm at and part of the reason I like to be remote is because it allows me to be productive with minimal impact on other things (e.g., don't have to waste 2 hours in commute time each day). Places that require quarterly visits to the home office are kind of just aggregating all of that disruption into a single week. Still better than doing it every day, but not a thing to tout as a benefit.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what you dislike about the UX. Personally I like the "feel" of the website generally (though it's not as polished as GitHub) and just find it to be slow, which I think they're working on improving.

Personally not a fan of the sidebar navigation. I keep getting it confused with the individual repository navigation bar on top.

Navigation is another thing we are focusing on for the next several months (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ux/strategy/). In the next release, we are simplifying it (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26200). We plan to continue to improve upon our navigation and information architecture. If you are curious, you can follow along some conversations that are happening here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/27557.

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

#218
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 -…

The problem with remote, at least for me, is the visa. Being remote-only is nice for traveling around but the sad reality is that you will always be a non-citizen no matter where you go. Even if you really like a place, you will be working from there mostly illegally and can never fully integrate into local things that require bank accounts, IDs and friends. That was maybe the thing I disliked the most when I went completely remote, but for a year or two it's for sure awesome.

In my particular case, I want a company that is remotely open, but sponsors a visa for city/country X which could hold a tiny cheap apartment and a space to call home. But in my case these countries I want to call home are Japan and Korea and now try to find a remote company there.

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'll be contrarian here and say that I actually hate that most remote companies make frequent on-site travel part of the job and pretend like it's a perk. Travel, including on-site visits and "group retreats", are not perks for me. I have a family and a life where I'm at and part of the reason I like to be remote is because it allows me to be productive with minimal impact on other things (e.g., don't have to waste 2…

It is contrarian. As someone who has worked remotely to a significant degree for quite a while, I also find face to face get togethers (whether in an office or elsewhere) incredibly valuable.

You're welcome to your own preferences of course but, as someone on a largely remote team, I consider regular get-togethers in various forms pretty much essential.

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

#220
post #188
post #39

Given the complete backlash I'm seeing on HN it seems like transparency actually hurt you. Very sad.

We're still committed to transparency even if it means taking a few lumps now and then, it's better in the long run and it's baked into everything we do.

Kudos to the entire team, as another commenter said, please don't be discouraged by the petty comments. It takes balls to admit mistakes in public. You have earned many people's respect.
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