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

blog.ycombinator.com

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

#201

Post by peterjmag »

farslan wrote: post #133
Perihelion wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I haven't seen a company that does the hybrid remote/on-site thing well. I'm sure they exist, but every time I've worked at one the people who were remote were out of the loop on almost everything. Hybrid remote/on-site requires some great discipline. If you have a watercooler chat with someone about a feature, it's easy to forget that a remote colleague wasn't there for the discussion/not document what was…

We do it here are DigitalOcean and it's just awesome. We have people in NYC HQ and remote all over the world (for example I'm working from Turkey). The key is not only over communication, also to care about your remote employees, let them feel like they're really a part of the company, bring them to the HQ, not per year, multiple times, etc.. There are many things but so far DigitalOcean is one of the best companies…

Can confirm—DigitalOcean is great at remote work. I'm consistently impressed by how well connected I feel, despite being across the ocean from our HQ in NYC. People really care and put in the effort to make it work. It also definitely helps that both "sides" are well represented—we're almost exactly 50% remote at the moment.

And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we're hiring. =)

https://www.digitalocean.com/company/careers/#current-openin...

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

#202

Post by Thrillington »

lallysingh wrote: post #140
kminehart wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty subjective obviously. I think the GitLab interface is pretty good, especially compared to GitHubs. I can't speak for BitBucket since I've only used it once, but I do remember having a hard time finding my way around it.

UX is objectively measured. I don't know why people think it's subjective.

You shouldn't make design decisions from case studies alone, but the subjective experience of each individual user is a perfectly valid measure of UX performance.

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

#203

Post by vkou »

Perihelion wrote: post #67
cookiecaper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Write everything down" is a terrible process, for two main reasons. First, no one has the discipline to write much of anything down. It's a very boring process and it's always going to be low-resolution. Your most meticulous documentation writers will get fired for failing to get their "real work" done. If you personally recognize the value of the documentation they furnish and thus refuse to fire them, all of their…

> First, no one has the discipline to write much of anything down. This is why it's baked into the company culture. It's very common for someone to ask where something is in the handbook or if an issue has been created for something. > It's a very boring process and it's always going to be low-resolution. Your most meticulous documentation writers will get fired for failing to get their "real work" done. If you perso…

> Fwiw, everyone is responsible for maintaining the handbook/our process and procedure documentation. The docs team isn't on the hook for it, nor is it the sole responsibility of engineering.

I find that in practice, with non-mission-critical activities, especially documentation, when everyone is responsible for getting it done (And making it useful), no-one is.

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

#204

Post by scrollaway »

sytse wrote: post #192
scrollaway wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It's not a puff piece boasting about their backup plans, they're talking about their remote work strategy. What's tone-deaf is the vitriol some people are spilling in this thread.

Thanks, I really appreciate that! But to be honest I don't think it's vitriol so much as that people rightly expect better from us.

Some of the reactions are understandable, but I expect most people on HN to be able to separate unrelated issues like these. Some of the comments here are absolutely unnecessarily hostile.

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

#205

Post by ernstvn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
ernstvn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to get more input from you to make sure the calculator reaches its goal of providing fair market compensation in your location. Can you please send me an email to let me know your city and whatever further data you are willing to share? ernst@gitlab.com

My local city, but the data isn't so much mine as data that the US government shares. Sacramento, CA. Mean Salary (per latest BLS data) [0] for Software Developer, Applications: $107,540; for Web Developer: $78,050 Sacramento, CA Gitlab locality pay index: 0.39+0.25=0.51 Vs. New York City, same BLS figures [1]: $108,770/$81,430 NYC Gitlab locality pay index: 1.00+0.25=1.25 Sac/NYC Salary Ratio (BLS): 0.989/0.958 Sac/…

Thanks; this is useful. I've made an issue ( https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues/23 ) to make sure we cross check BLS data with the calculator.

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

#206

Post by coolsunglasses »

sytse wrote: post #59
ridruejo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company goes through rough patches, specially one that is growing as fast as they are doing. Very few companies are as open as transparent as they are, even in the fuckups. That is really hard to do and kudos to them

Thanks. I do agree that the timing of this post is not good. The video was recorded a few weeks ago. We are eating humble pie right now and work on fixing things instead of promotion.

I have nothing but respect for your willingness to take these hits but it's not just about you.

This post is now fodder that can be used against me the next time I advocate for remote work at a company.

Edit: it took 10 minutes for two people to pipe up on Twitter, one specifically suggesting remote work made the ops failure more likely:

https://twitter.com/paul_snively/status/829850449247297536

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

#208

Post by gtaylor »

sytse wrote: post #188
Kiro wrote: post #39

Given the complete backlash I'm seeing on HN it seems like transparency actually hurt you. Very sad.

We're still committed to transparency even if it means taking a few lumps now and then, it's better in the long run and it's baked into everything we do.

I think many or even most appreciate your stance on this. Please don't get discouraged by the vocal but petty minority!

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

#209

Post by ernstvn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #193
sytse wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We indeed try to track local market wages. From https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c... "In developing the compensation formula above, we looked at the compensation of our team members which had been set in the past (without the formula), and found out that there was a statistically significant correlation between compensation and the factors that are now in the formula. We purposefully chose…

The immediate problem with the method of developing your formula that is described is that it assumed that the pay of your staff before you had a systematic formula already accurately reflected prevailing market wages in the locality of every employee. And, for US locations, BLS data is readily available publicly. While that may not have been a suitable source for a worldwide formula, it would have at least been a su…

You are right that we used compensation from before we had the systematic formula. However, we then repeated the exercise (of finding linear correlations with various COL indices) when we had a larger cohort but before the formula had been implemented systematically, and it still pointed to the use of the Rent Index instead of another index.

You're also right that we need the calculator to work worldwide, and I suspect that that may be part of the reason here that the calculator works well on that scale and then not always as well as it should on more local scales. We'll continue to explore how to get better on both scales; the challenge is always that we want to keep things as simple as possible also.

I've made two issues based on your comment here and the one where you shared specific data for Sacramento (thanks for that!):

- https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues/23 to cross check BLS data with the calculator.

- https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/organization/issues/24 to address the global vs local question.

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

#210

Post by geoelectric »

While I was at Mozilla, John O'Duinn gave a pretty great presentation about this sort of stuff.

The core message (mixed with my own takeaway) was that you have to consider all of your offices, even HQ, more like just another field office or coworking site--no location is "central" compared to others. As long as you consider accommodating remote people to be a separate task, it's a task that can be deprioritized. Ideally, anyone in your office should be able to work remotely at moment's notice with little-to-no change in procedure.

Much of his presentation was outlining concrete techniques towards making this actually doable. He still has the slide deck online.

http://oduinn.com/blog/2014/11/09/we-are-all-remoties-nov201...

In practice, of course, real life was imperfect and there's no question that you take a productivity hit over people in the same room. But if you do want a heavily location-agnostic organization as a core value, his take is a nice start.

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