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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

#161
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are two ways to do diversity - the first is to put a brutal skill filter and take everyone that passes it no matter their skin color, body weight, religion or politics. The other is to reduce people to their demographics and push for (in)visible quotas. One of them leads to crappy results.

The meritocratic delusion is that you would be in the "have" pile, rather than sitting in the back of the bus with the rest of the "have nots".

Of course, its statistically most likely that any individual would belong to the much larger latter group but stats like that only apply to other people, right?

Worse, its a zero step thinkers solution. Step zero is a merit based system, step one is for the people with motels on Boardwalk and Park Place to ensure they can never lose again by rigging the system to ignore merit in favor of capital.

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

#162
post #17

Their old CREDIT values: Collaboration, Results for Customers, Efficiency, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, Iteration, and Transparency. New values: Speed with Quality, Ownership Mindset, Customer Outcomes. In other words, work harder, not smarter, and no more DEI.

"Speed with Quality"

Having been in some of these values meetings, I really imagine it went like this: someone wanted speed, and someone else wanted quality. Sorry, I mean Speed and Quality. Many people said there is a tradeoff between those two things, and only one thing can be first.

Some brilliant businessman: "I know, we'll combine them. We want Speed _and_ Quality." Thus, "Speed with Quality." Tada!

Values are a tradeoff: only one thing can be first. Trying to duck that is stupid.

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

#163
post #71
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the thing - you can have it as a lived value, or you can have HR run programs. Very few places have/had both. Given the choice, I'd pick door #1. (Saying this as a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, lest there's confusion)

HR run programs are costly and applied to either mandated trainings or things the org has issues with.

DEI isn't mandatory, so an org heavily invested in DEI training probably had serious issues in the first place (whether they end up on the other side at the end of the trainings being another question)

That's different from putting it as a core value though. Most companies have some kind of "make more money with less resources" stated value, and I don't think we see it as an issue ?

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

#164
This is quite an aggressively optimistic vision for the future of the software industry to tuck into a "workforce reduction" announcement:

> The agentic era multiplies demand for software. 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.

Also notable that the workforce reduction they describe doesn't appear to target engineers - they're "nearly doubling the number of independent teams" in R&D and "removing up to three layers of management in some functions".

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

#165
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing - you can have it as a lived value, or you can have HR run programs. Very few places have/had both. Given the choice, I'd pick door #1. (Saying this as a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, lest there's confusion)

Lived values need to be discussed sometimes…

[dead]

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

#166
post #57
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.

Agreed - 75% of the front line managers I’ve had are pure managers without any domain/company/industry knowledge

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

#167
Makes sense! I’ve worked with teams where the main bottleneck wasn’t technical complexity or even the company itself; it was a people problem.

Things like long discussions over formatting that should just be enforced by linters, pushing non-idiomatic patterns despite official docs and tooling recommending otherwise, or turning simple problems into meetings scheduled “for next week”, "in two weeks", "let's have a meeting and invite everyone" instead of just fixing the issue and opening a PR. Which sometimes takes 10 minutes!

At some point it starts to feel like responsiveness and initiative are treated as threats rather than strengths. Autonomy and ownership matter a lot more than people realize. Wonder how that'll look like!

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

#169
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to make a case for DEI being “one of the industry’s greatest strengths”. It’s not obvious to me.

How well would the tech industry do if they fired all the autistic people for "not being team players"? How many dev teams are there without at least one furry, trans person, or socially awkward geek?

If you're not a team player I'd expect you to be on the chopping block regardless of underlying race, mental, culture, ...

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

companies using paid github are in same spot. Tho I'd imagine many already moved over

Unless you pay for enterprise then you are on the Enterprise Cloud Instance: https://us.githubstatus.com/posts/dashboard

I've never actually seen that status page before, and I'm not clear what it's measuring. My company pays for Enterprise Cloud, and we see all the same downtime as what gets posted to https://www.githubstatus.com/
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