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

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

>> 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'!

writing things down is not the problem... failing to read the things they write down is the problem.

they probably don't have time to read, because they are too busy always writing. they can't find what they need to read in the sea of endless wasteful and pointless drivel that never should have been written down in the first place.

you're all idiots.

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 CoL adjustment is -40%, and I live in the United States!). They explicitly state on their hiring page that they prefer people from cheaper areas. [0] [1]

On top of that, just from their headcount, it sounds like they have way too many people. 160 for a technical company like this is hard to manage when the employees are local; it's even harder to manage when employees are remote. Again, for remote work, you need mature, highly-skilled staff with a strong history of successful self-direction. You're not going to get that when you're chopping their salaries in half based on their location. Bad local wages is a major reason to work remotely in the first place.

[0] https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/ ; use the calculator at the bottom of the page

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c... ; gems include "you are required to notify us when you move and we may adjust your compensation up or down" and "[a]ll things being equal we will hire people in lower cost markets vs. higher cost markets."

Obviously, Gitlab don't have the secret for best uptime.