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Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

gitlab.com

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Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#11

Post by type0 »

sytse wrote: post #7
bluehatbrit wrote: post #3

The title seems misleading, the article specifically states this does not effect any current employees, presumably as they have none in China and Russia. > As such we feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time--especially because it affects zero current employees

Correct, this block would be for two functions (Site Reliability Engineer and Support) and we currently have no people in that role in China and Russia. Please note that we're still discussing this change. We work out in the open so you can see us working on it. I hope that people appreciate the difference between that and what you would see in a non-transparent company (probably nothing, they would just not open up…

I appreciate that Gitlab discusses this in open, the only real disappointment that it's so one sided.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#14

Post by elliekelly »

capableweb wrote: post #2

See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... for more discussions. Here's one from sytses (CEO/co-founder) > @cciresi this is a request from a customer considering using GitLab.com. @mmcb has more context on the why. We should probably add that to the MR. Probably the US government or something like that?

I'm not sure I've ever 180'd on a compliance practice as quickly as I have with GitLab's compliance policy repo transparency. When I first stumbled across it during the telemetry situation last week I thought they were nuts. Absolutely nuts. But reading through this thread and the one posted last week it seems like an incredibly effective approach. People from all areas of the company, not just legal/compliance are giving input and asking the right questions. And, just as important, they're not asking the wrong questions.

It's a bit of a chicken/egg situation - is there a strong culture of compliance because of the transparency or does the strong culture of compliance make transparency a non-issue? Whatever their secret sauce I think Wall Street could use some.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#15

Post by dredmorbius »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #3

The title seems misleading, the article specifically states this does not effect any current employees, presumably as they have none in China and Russia. > As such we feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time--especially because it affects zero current employees

It affects no employess (per clarification in this thread) presently in affected roles.

It could affect present employees who are in other roles, located in China or Russia, from moving to a covered role, whilst continuing to reside in China or Russia.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#16

Post by dredmorbius »

zwayhowder wrote: post #6
bluehatbrit wrote: post #3

The title seems misleading, the article specifically states this does not effect any current employees, presumably as they have none in China and Russia. > As such we feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time--especially because it affects zero current employees

It does block them from moving to that country. So if a current employee was planning to move to either country soon they'd be prevented from doing that. I've danced this dance at a previous company when we had an employee working from a country of interest for an extended period of time. They were air-gapped from our systems and it worked because they submitted everything by pull requests (the original way, sending…

Or into affected roles.

So, someone in, say, QA or documentation, looking to head into SRE or Support, would be unable to if they presently reside in China or Russia.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#17

Post by dredmorbius »

archie2 wrote: post #13

Do they already block Australia, because of the backdoor laws passed a while back?

I suspect this is driven more by surveillance or sabotage risks posed by employee access rather than jurisdictional risks.

Australian law is likely to have little impact on what an SRE or support engineer might be able to do. Australia having an established practice of recruiting and placing enterprise surveillance moles would.

China and Russia have some history with this latter. Though one might say similarly of the US and Israel, as two examples.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#18

Post by trhway »

capableweb wrote: post #2

See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... for more discussions. Here's one from sytses (CEO/co-founder) > @cciresi this is a request from a customer considering using GitLab.com. @mmcb has more context on the why. We should probably add that to the MR. Probably the US government or something like that?

>Probably the US government or something like that?

The requirement to block some class of people off from some customers is nothing new, and back at Sun there was separate Sun Federal which was dedicated for such clean business.

GitLab's approach (and i think it is just a start of the trend in the industry, time to get rid of the accent :) while theatrically good isn't practically efficient. A Chinese or Russian residing here with some family back at the Motherland is susceptible to the same pressure in the loving, yet firm hands of the Motherland as if s/he were residing there her-/himself. So the next absolutely logical and necessary step for GitLab on this path is to block all Russians and Chinese who has at least some family back there. Giving that there may be other ties too and the hassle to verify (to which degree of relationship?), simply blocking all those nationals would the natural and practically efficient way.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#19

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

I'm shocked (in a positive way) about the amount of transparency Gitlab provides.

Even as a reader, it almost feels as if someone misconfigured the ACLs or I'm reading leaked internal documents, not an intentional decision to make this open. Some of the discussions seem highly sensitive, and yet it seems to work for them.

Thank you, Gitlab, for being so open! I've learned a lot about compliance from just reading this thread. For anyone curious, here's some background on the mentioned boycott laws: https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oac

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#20

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #17
archie2 wrote: post #13

Do they already block Australia, because of the backdoor laws passed a while back?

I suspect this is driven more by surveillance or sabotage risks posed by employee access rather than jurisdictional risks. Australian law is likely to have little impact on what an SRE or support engineer might be able to do. Australia having an established practice of recruiting and placing enterprise surveillance moles would. China and Russia have some history with this latter. Though one might say similarly of the…

[deleted]
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