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GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

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Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#51

Post by madamelic »

tdb7893 wrote: post #39
IshKebab wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm firmly not in Trump's anti-DEI camp but I have seen what can happen when you make it one of your core values. You can end up with a lot of people talking about it a lot, lots of meetings and initiatives rather than doing actual work. And usually those don't go anywhere because the people doing it don't have any power to actually change things. It's unlikely that a company like Gitlab really needs anything changin…

Places I've worked that actually seem to have inclusion as a core value are great places to work and seem to have high functioning teams. My impression mostly though is more that it was never really a value for management but they wasted a bunch of time talking about it. In general any mismatch between stated values and actual values has been awful to deal with and is a red flag for places to work.

> Places I've worked that actually seem to have inclusion as a core value

I am not sure if you had implied it but that would align with my experience as well: places that tout diversity were the worst places to work (as someone who is seen as 'diverse') while the ones that treated everyone the same and had the expectation everyone pulls their weight.

I absolutely despise people treating me differently because of who / what I am rather than doing good work. I will take mildly inappropriate good-nature jokes over head pats every day of the week.

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#52

Post by bigbuppo »

IshKebab wrote: post #29
7e wrote: post #19

I tried a self-hosted GitLab on a 64 core beast of a machine with Optane drives. Completely empty of content, there were multi-second delays everywhere. Horrified at what must lurk beneath the façade, I switched to Forgejo, Crow CI and YouTrack and couldn’t be happier.

> Horrified at what must lurk beneath the façade It's Ruby, which is pretty horrific but still I think there was probably something not quite right in your setup because it isn't normally that slow.

While there are a lot of little knobs that can tweak performance, it shouldn't be slow out of the box, yet it is the number one complaint about GitLab.

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#53

Post by MeetingsBrowser »

Someone should gather all the creatively worded layoff announcements and put them into a museum.

Aside, none of these announcements even attempt to make sense.

GitLab's TAM is exploding, demand is through the roof, LLM tooling is making each IC more productive, and to capatalize on this moment GitLab is

... "transparently restructuring" by asking employees to quit so they don't have to lay off as many...

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#54

Post by trhway »

>Software has been the force multiplier behind nearly every business transformation of the last two decades. The constraint was the cost and time of producing and managing it. That constraint is collapsing. As the cost of producing software collapses, demand for it will expand. Last year, the developer platform market used to be measured in tens of dollars per user per month, this year it is hundreds/user/month and headed to thousands. Not only is the value of software for builders increasing, but we believe there will be more software and builders than ever, and we will serve an increasing volume of both.

almost like a copy of my post :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47982975

We've seen these tech waves several times - C and COBOL instead os ASM, CAD/4GL, template generation, Visual Basic and the likes (good old Delphi), Java (which allowed to a lot of mid-inept people to write compilable non-immediately-crashing programs), spread of python, and now AI. Every time we have an expansion of the industry, and every time glorious promises which get delivered on modestly. The point here is that they get delivered on.

And with AI i suppose it will be similar, though much better than before. In those previous waves human brain was the limit. This time we throw that limit away from the start - nobody will be able to comprehend the sheer amount of AI-generated code. Yes, that approach will hit some limit down the road of course too...

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#55

Post by bob001 »

Havoc wrote: post #37

>removing up to three layers of management in some functions so leaders are closer to the work. I wish them the best of luck with that plan. Middle management is where the institutional knowledge sits on how to actually get shit done despite challenges & broken processes/systems. It's an even worse plan than eliminating juniors.

Middle management is also why there’s so many broken processes and challenges in the first place.

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#56

Post by retinaros »

Havoc wrote: post #37

>removing up to three layers of management in some functions so leaders are closer to the work. I wish them the best of luck with that plan. Middle management is where the institutional knowledge sits on how to actually get shit done despite challenges & broken processes/systems. It's an even worse plan than eliminating juniors.

Not really. Middle management is there to be in meetings all day long with nothing produced but identifying low performers.

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#57

Post by lpribis »

Havoc wrote: post #37

>removing up to three layers of management in some functions so leaders are closer to the work. I wish them the best of luck with that plan. Middle management is where the institutional knowledge sits on how to actually get shit done despite challenges & broken processes/systems. It's an even worse plan than eliminating juniors.

> Middle management is where the institutional knowledge sits on how to actually get shit done despite challenges & broken processes/systems.

Really? In my experience it's the rank-and-file employees who have this knowledge of how to get on with it without ceremony and politics. And the broken processes and politics are created BY the middle managers.

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#58

Post by notTooFarGone »

Havoc wrote: post #37

>removing up to three layers of management in some functions so leaders are closer to the work. I wish them the best of luck with that plan. Middle management is where the institutional knowledge sits on how to actually get shit done despite challenges & broken processes/systems. It's an even worse plan than eliminating juniors.

Middle managment is also where most of your negative feedback is lost. I think moving fast in general needs tighter feedback loops and this is simply not possible in large organizations.

Re: GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

#59

Post by looneysquash »

It's not clear to me from that post how they will be spending the money they'll save by firing 60% of our R&D team.

Could someone explain it?

If you have a lot of new stuff to build, and if you're not currently losing money, why start a new initiative with a layoff?

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