10min chapter

The GitLab way: Kindness, transparency, and short toes | David DeSanto (CPO)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

notes

CHAPTER

Remote Product Management Best Practices

This chapter explores the challenges and strategies for product managers in a remote work environment, emphasizing clear requirements and effective communication. It details an in-depth interview process for assessing candidates' remote working abilities and collaboration. The importance of values like proactive communication, assuming good intent, and over-communication, as well as utilizing tools such as Slack, GitLab, and Zoom for effective teamwork, are highlighted.

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Transcript

Episode notes

David DeSanto is the chief product officer of GitLab, which is the largest remote-only company in the world. They share many of their team meetings on YouTube, and they’ve grown from being an open-source code management product competing with GitHub to a multi-product platform that covers security, compliance, continuous integration, project management, and deployment tools, many of which are infused with AI magic. In our conversation, we discuss:

• How GitLab operationalizes transparency

• The philosophy behind recording and sharing team meetings on YouTube

• Their extensive public employee handbook

• GitLab’s core value of having “short toes”

• Challenges and advice for doing remote work well

• Strategies for ensuring effective communication in a remote work environment

• GitLab’s breadth-over-depth strategy

• The company’s unique approach to AI

• The value of using humor in high-stakes conversations

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