The Gitlab Team Handbook

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/

by pella • 4 years ago

127 33 4 years ago

about.gitlab.com

asicsp• 4 years ago

Related discussion on one of the sections: "Gitlab Handbook's HN Page"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30003221 (3 months ago | 191 comments)

ldoughty• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing, really interesting to have open access to a company manual/guide like this...

The CEO shadow idea is fairly cool, GitLab itself is copying others with it, sort of, with their own take on it, and because of this open document I could share this with my own company, compete with justifications for the program...

Might have to look through this handbook later for more ideas to borrow!

waynesoftware• 4 years ago

(GitLab Team Member) I got a lot out of the CEO shadow program (https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/07/08/ceo-shadow-impressi...). So much in fact that it inspired me to create something similar for my role as an engineering director (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/development/sh...).

bilalararou• 4 years ago

Really intresting - will try to copy some ideas for my company.

unixhero• 4 years ago

This is extremely generous of Gitlab to share.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

They used to share the salary for every role but it’s gone private since. I’m guessing competitors were using it to put bid them.

dhaulagiri• 4 years ago

That and the salaries were low which made me and other colleagues not even want to bother applying

probably_wrong2• 4 years ago

My guess is that people didn't take kindly to their salary calculator showing how much more you could be making if you lived in SF. And for a company that claims "Hiring and working from all over the world", the list of countries from where they don't accept applicants was also not a good look.

Edit: Found a related HN thread discussing the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24893211

chrisseaton• 4 years ago

They used to have terrible location weighting. I guess based on average tech sector salaries, but there aren’t tech jobs in my area so maybe they were picking up support call centre workers or something and it was a quarter of a reasonable tech salary, even for their highest tier. And this was the UK not anywhere more unusual.

There were also suspicious tiny pockets of higher compensation areas which made me think actually they just rigged it if they had to reach higher for an individual.

Transparent doesn’t mean fair or good.

thiagocsf• 4 years ago

Location data is proprietary IP that GitLab doesn’t have the right to make publicly available. This is why it was made private.

If you’re applying for a job at GitLab, you’ll receive a password so you can calculate your salary.

Disclaimer: am gitlab employee.

aantix• 4 years ago

No, it exposed how low their salary offerings were.

If you were a top engineer, had a family, wanted to maybe travel a bit, I don't understand why you would apply with them.

Clearly they were exploiting the "cost of labor" adjustment.

Every time they approached me I thought to myself "why does any engineer take an offer from them?"

teg4n_• 4 years ago

Honestly wasn’t very difficult to outbid them based on salaries I’ve seen.

zikohh• 4 years ago

Do you know where they at least show the different roles e.g sd1 sd2 etc

Niksko• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing. I'd seen snippets of things out of GitLab, but in particular their section on remote work is a treasure trove of great ideas and practices.

elpakal• 4 years ago

I work at a big public company that isn’t a tech company but is trying to do tech things. The Engineering Productivity metrics Gitlab publishes helped us build something similar and justified some pretty large and much needed actions due to the problems the metrics exposed. Really cool they publish stuff like this.

echelon• 4 years ago

More and more I see non-tech companies doing tech things. I think the era of "tech eating the world" meaning "tech puts you out of business" is almost over. Lots of traditional companies got the memo and now have competent engineering leadership.

I'm not saying this is an end of "innovator's dilemma", just that the internet and having software engineers as a part of your org aren't it anymore.

mistrial9• 4 years ago

" Lots of traditional companies" here in California and USA got the outsourcing memo, for the last two decades. Cheerful "it's getting better" does not pay bills for people who build things. Executive management coasting and stalling for years, while on-commission intermediaries are more than happy to bring hapless workers for low, low wages.

kuharich• 4 years ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162199, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30003221

robinhood• 4 years ago

The handbook has always been there and open. I don't get why people think it's a new thing.

beepbooptheory• 4 years ago

I'm very much just a wannabe developer, not yet had a tech role anywhere, but have been coding and making stuff for a long time. One thing Gitlab is great at, besides being open stuff like this, is being extremely welcoming to oss contributors. I applied for a technical writer job there, and before I even heard back I started looking at doc issues and making MRs. Messed up a little the first time, and was immediately helped by some employees and given feedback and direction. I kept going for like a month and felt like part of the team for brief moments. Someone there even offered to video chat with me and go over some career advice. It was really nice, I got nominated that month as a contributor MVP. I was unfortunately screened out of the job at the first stage, but still very much appreciate how nice the people I was working with were.

john_cogs• 4 years ago

Hey, I’m on the Community Relations team at GitLab. Thanks for your contributions and the kind words. I would love to connect and learn more about your experience contributing to GitLab. You can reach me at jcoghlan at gitlab com.

The Gitlab Team Handbook

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