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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

#661

Post by noisy_boy »

> We’re re-organizing R&D to create roughly 60 smaller, more empowered teams with end-to-end ownership, nearly doubling the number of independent teams.

This seems to be the new emerging theme. I wonder if the idea is to let these smaller teams fight it out and those who survive, do so at the expense of others? If so, instead of meritocracy, usually politically savvy ones win. Or maybe the motivation is deliberate fragmentation allowing for easily picking and choosing for further reduction? Or maybe I'm just too cynical for my own good.

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

#662

Post by darkwater »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #30
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.

Also no more Transparency.

Which I wonder if it will end with closing up their own public Gitlab instance for their bugs/features, their open operations manual and the generally transparent culture that for example brought us the live streamed fix of the infamous "I dropped the database" situation.

Well, actually looks like the live stream was made already private, but I don't know when, I just discovered it now: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5rfvpd/live_strea...

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

#663

Post by jpadkins »

altmanaltman wrote: post #393
stx5 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think you're anything more than a 'text autocompleter'? You are justing auto completing someone's comment

If you seriously cannot tell what is the difference between a human being and a LLM and think they are both "autocompleters", you know very little about both humans and LLMs.

I cannot. Please explain the difference to me. Everything I've read about neuroscience is basically the brain is a signal prediction machine. The harness, signals and incentive (hormone) systems may be different, but predicting the future is basic building blocks of intelligence.

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

#664

Post by gritspants »

simonw wrote: post #196

https://www.google.com/search?q=gitlab+stock shows their stock price was ~$52 a year ago and is $26 today, so down 50% in 12 months. It's quite possible this is because they weren't making enough noise about their AI strategy. If investor fears are that AI makes GitLab's business less valuable, including this in their "GitLab Act 2" announcement makes a whole lot of sense: > The agentic era multiplies demand for soft…

There's no reason to tie every software companies rise and fall to AI. Several years ago they changed their enterprise licensing costs. It was such an aggressive and needless cash grab (1k/dev). The writing has been on the wall for a long time.

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

#665

Post by foobiekr »

somenameforme wrote: post #411
tux wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is a text autocomplete. This is tge best AI definition i heard and agree with 100% Thank you.

It's literally how they work. I think the magic that none of us really expected is that our languages, human and computer, are absurdly redundant. But I think it makes sense, in hindsight at least. When we say things it's usually not to add novel or unexpected information that comes out of nowhere, but to elaborate or illustrate a point that could often be summed up in 5 words. This response is perfect sample of such…

A lot of people suspected that most programs were absurdly redundant and for a very long time. The real issue is that the languages do not really allow for producing code that can be easily shared. Some of the functional languages do, but mostly in ways that are completely irrelevant and useless in practice for such a goal.

Programmers writing their fiftieth mostly identical CRUD handler may not have noticed but a lot of other people did.

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

#666

Post by jrochkind1 »

strange_quark wrote: post #412
jrochkind1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you don't like the new direction you can leave now and get the known now severance package. All in all, I think it is right to offer people voluntary severence with package when you pull the rug out from under them as far as where they thought they were working.

Unless they're going to offer offer an insane buyout, like 1+ years of pay + benefits + some accelerated vesting, nobody who doesn't already have something lined up is going to take this offer. It's much better to stay with one foot out the door and just keep cashing that paycheck and collecting your monthly vest. Especially when you know layoffs are coming, nobody expects you to do anything until they actually pull…

Ah, what you say makes sense, ok.

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

#667

Post by jrochkind1 »

darkwater wrote: post #662
jrochkind1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also no more Transparency.

Which I wonder if it will end with closing up their own public Gitlab instance for their bugs/features, their open operations manual and the generally transparent culture that for example brought us the live streamed fix of the infamous "I dropped the database" situation. Well, actually looks like the live stream was made already private, but I don't know when, I just discovered it now: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysad…

I expect the operations manual, employee handbook, internal documentation like that will be first to go.

I wouldn't necessarily expect any public gitlab instances to go.

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

#668

Post by Miner49er »

qwshGA wrote: post #617

They are losing money and they are grasping at the AI straw. All free software projects should leave GitLab immediately. Why should we support the IP thieves?

They promise to not use customer code to train models. AFAIK, that hasn't changed.

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

#669

Post by l4n »

Someone wrote: post #616
DeusExMachina wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, when most work is unproductive, like managers shuffling around and relabeling issues, you can remove those managers without affecting output.

Quite possibly while improving output. Managers that are gone will not require attention from developers.

Fully agree with this. Some companies just take the chance to modernize and remove the manager-bloatwere shit ...

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

#670

Post by rurp »

WJW wrote: post #562
itake wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about gitlab, but tech companies (Meta and Grab) tend to hack off the bottom of the management chain, instead of cutting off the top (aka as the people that created the 8 layer system). bottom level teams are merged to form larger teams.

Companies are shaped more or less like pyramids. If you want to cut a meaningful amount of people from the organization, there's just not enough of them at the top.

How does that justify keeping the people who created the mess in the first place and mass firing people who didn't?
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