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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

#291

Post by vonmoltke »

Perihelion wrote: post #289
vonmoltke wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we're hiring. =) Yeah, and your hiring process is rife with stupid biases like autorejecting people based on who they worked for in the past.

Could you elaborate on this? I think DO has a right to hire however they want to but I'm curious about who they're auto-rejecting/why.

Last year I had my resume submitted by a third-party recruiter for a role there. My resume was rejected out-of-hand by the hiring manager because the companies/customers I had worked for were "too enterprisey" (i.e. I had only worked for government contractors at that point). The "too enterprisey" quote came directly from the recruiter. I suppose he could have been blowing smoke up my ass, but I don't think he would have said that if he was.

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

#292

Post by cookiecaper »

dragonwriter wrote: post #233
ernstvn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suspe…

BTW, I know I've been kind of hard (fair, I think, but not gentle) on you guys in this thread, and I want you to know that I really appreciate how well you've taken it and how responsive you've been.

Don't be too impressed. They have a habit of showing up in these threads and feigning concern. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13303948

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

#293

Post by Perihelion »

vonmoltke wrote: post #291
Perihelion wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on this? I think DO has a right to hire however they want to but I'm curious about who they're auto-rejecting/why.

Last year I had my resume submitted by a third-party recruiter for a role there. My resume was rejected out-of-hand by the hiring manager because the companies/customers I had worked for were "too enterprisey" (i.e. I had only worked for government contractors at that point). The "too enterprisey" quote came directly from the recruiter. I suppose he could have been blowing smoke up my ass, but I don't think he would…

Ah, okay. Sounds like they were trying to focus on people with a specific type of experience and not blacklisting people based on a specific employer or anything.

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

#294

Post by vonmoltke »

Perihelion wrote: post #293
vonmoltke wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year I had my resume submitted by a third-party recruiter for a role there. My resume was rejected out-of-hand by the hiring manager because the companies/customers I had worked for were "too enterprisey" (i.e. I had only worked for government contractors at that point). The "too enterprisey" quote came directly from the recruiter. I suppose he could have been blowing smoke up my ass, but I don't think he would…

Ah, okay. Sounds like they were trying to focus on people with a specific type of experience and not blacklisting people based on a specific employer or anything.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply they were blacklisting specific companies.

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

#295

Post by sytse »

codazoda wrote: post #282
zenlikethat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what you dislike about the UX. Personally I like the "feel" of the website generally (though it's not as polished as GitHub) and just find it to be slow, which I think they're working on improving.

I've only spent a few minutes there, having signed up just a moment ago. What jumps out at me about the UX is that source code does not seem to be front and center like it is in Github and Bitbucket. The README is all you see on the first page of a project and I had to hunt a few seconds before I noticed the "files" link.

Thanks, I added your comment to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26834 where we're considering changing the default.

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

#296

Post by sytse »

coolsunglasses wrote: post #206
sytse wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm sorry for hear we're making your advocacy for remote work harder :(

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

#297

Post by Perihelion »

vonmoltke wrote: post #294
Perihelion wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, okay. Sounds like they were trying to focus on people with a specific type of experience and not blacklisting people based on a specific employer or anything.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply they were blacklisting specific companies.

No problem, thanks for clarifying.

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

#298

Post by Illotus »

kartickv wrote: post #255
scruple wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I believe you must be. I'm referring to where the OP said that as a remote employee I feel out of the loop on a lot of things. So, I tell my manager that I'm missing important information about the projects I'm working on because people have these infrequent, but important, impromptu meetings and those details don't exist outside of those spoken words and their heads and his response is to tell me to come to the…

You ARE asking them to modify their behavior when you say that they should use Slack/email/whatever other tool for your benefit, or that they shouldn't have an impromptu chat around the water cooler because you're not around. Since you're in the minority, you can't demand the majority change their working style for you. It's up to you to fit in to how the majority works, say by showing up in the office. Or you'll mis…

Usually the modifying of behaviour in these cases just means writing down stuff more, which is usually beneficial to everyone.

On another note, having remote employees without supporting that type of working company wide is just silly squandering of resources. Sadly that is fairly common anyways.

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

#299

Post by problems »

cookiecaper wrote: post #173
problems wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily add snapshotting using on-disk technologies like LVM or ZFS to that and achieve reliability against such an issue though, as well as being able to do a full text backup (ie: to SQL) from your replicated server at higher performance than you would on production.

They had LVM snapshots every 24 hours. They lost 6 hours of data because someone had coincidentally triggered a snapshot 6 hours prior to the deletion event. Otherwise, they would've lost several more hours of data.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that from staging data, not from an LVM snapshot?

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

#300

Post by ghaff »

nnq wrote: post #254
cookiecaper wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what specific value do you derive from these events that makes them "essential"? While I understand that a lot of people who may not have a lot going on at home may find them enjoyable, I really don't think it can be characterized as essential for accomplishing the job tasks. If face-to-face communication is "pretty much essential", what's the argument for continuing to run the company as a remote/distr…

Some people like me dislike working fully remote just as much as they do full-time in-office ... a hybrid approach is only thing that can work for me. "Constant consistent variety" is what keeps me ticking and productive. Also, just as you want to take time off from work, don't you also feel the need to take some time off from family too ? ;)

I value variety as well. I mostly work from home when I'm not traveling but I like to go into the office at least one day a week even when I don't really need to. I'm similar with traveling. There are times when it really wears me down but then I'm doing the routine day-to-day in the office/home for three weeks and I'm ready for a change.
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