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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

#231

Post by semiquaver »

crote wrote: post #41

This feels like a massive own goal. GitHub is publicly destroying itself in a desperate attempt to realize Microsoft's AI dreams, and as its main competitor your response is... to do the same? Rather than going for a "Humans first, robot assistants welcome" approach which promises to deliver things like stability, reliability, trustworthiness, and human connections, they decide to go all-out on firing the humans and…

They’re even repeating the debunked excuses GitHub has been making for their own failure!

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

#232

Post by crote »

noitpmeder wrote: post #179
bmarnane wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your product is used bya cross-section of society, then having a cross-section of society build it should lead to a better product no?

If a qualification for the role is "appreciation for certain less represented cultures/ideas/..." then sure. Otherwise, for a backend c++ engineer the benefits are significantly less obvious, to the point it's really hard to make a case for why DEI concerns should trump traditional evaluation metrics for skill. The goal should be to hire the best team for the use case, regardless of gender/race/culture/background.

Appreciation isn't always enough, lived experience provides a lot of value as well.

See all the Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names/Addresses/Birthdays/Phone Numbers/Time Zones/etc, for example. Do you want a backend engineer who designs a 64-character ascii text field for legal name and have everyone nod in agreement, or would you rather have one who knows that it isn't going to work for their cousin "Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso"?

> it's really hard to make a case for why DEI concerns should trump traditional evaluation metrics for skill

It doesn't. The goal of DEI has always been to attract a diversity of perspectives, all else being equal. Nobody ever proposed choosing a woefully unqualified diverse candidate over an obviously-qualified Generic White Guy. The only people who would oppose that would be the unqualified Generic White Guy who just happens to be the nephew of the CEO's golf buddy.

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

#233

Post by andy_ppp »

dgellow wrote: post #215
semiquaver wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitLab was never going to be the ones to take the mantle GitHub left on the ground. They’re a “clone” company and have very few original ideas of their own.

GitHub was already pretty much perfected years ago IMHO. I’m not convinced we need that many original ideas here

To build good software you need to think for yourself rather than aimlessly making a pastiche, derivative work never produces good art.

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

#234

Post by phillipcarter »

herpdyderp wrote: post #78
Steeeve wrote: post #43

Wow gitlab. Right when everyone was looking to see if you could lead with all the fails at github, you basically said "We're going to throw our source at ChatGPT and see what happens"

Right? I was seriously considering migrating everything in our company from GitHub to GitLab. Now I'm seriously considering self hosting our git instead.

Using Tangled for my stuff now, it's alpha, but it's a bit fun to host your own Knot and Spindle servers but still connect to a full social graph.

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

#235

Post by vlod »

x0x0 wrote: post #162
Animats wrote: 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…

Speed-Quality-Price.

Let's pick: Speed-Quality

Errrh... Let's forget about: Price

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

#236

Post by tjpnz »

Animats wrote: 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.

SQOMCO?

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

#237

Post by blindriver »

Animats wrote: 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.

I don't understand why companies are abandoning DEI so quickly and so decisively. What happens if/when a Democrat president is elected that mandates DEI and ESG all over again, are they going to add them back into their core values as swiftly as they abandoned them?

At least companies like Coinbase made principled stances against forced DEI and employee activism earlier than everyone else. Doing it now seems weird because if it does become mandated again, they're going to look so phony.

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

#238

Post by vkou »

andy_ppp wrote: post #233
dgellow wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub was already pretty much perfected years ago IMHO. I’m not convinced we need that many original ideas here

To build good software you need to think for yourself rather than aimlessly making a pastiche, derivative work never produces good art.

To build good software you need to take the time to make your existing features work well, and improve or prune the ones that don't. In other words, it is craftsmanship.

The American corporation and its values are anathema to craftsmanship. You can ******* a **** all you want, it's never going to turn into gold, but your hands will be covered in crud.

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

#239

Post by threecheese »

junberl wrote: post #207
georgemcbay wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression Tell this to the people enjoying unearned privilege under DEI policies.

I keep seeing this term “earned” ITT; what does this mean to you? Did you earn something which you were denied when a less-experienced other person got a job? We all have two brain cells and understand there’s a tradeoff being made here, and it sucks being on the other side of that, but i struggle to see what privilege you believe you have or should have.

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

#240

Post by Miner49er »

looneysquash wrote: post #59

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?

Yeah doesn't make sense.

My guess is they are doing this to prep for an acquisition. Probably by an AI company or Datadog or similar.

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