Eric Johnson, CTO of GitLab, discusses managing remote teams, using git for everything, servant-leadership vs situational leadership, and balancing parenthood and career. They also explore the benefits of remote work, importance of taking time off, and factors in hiring and determining salaries.
GitLab embraces asynchronous work to overcome time zone challenges and tap into global talent.
GitLab values employee well-being and promotes a healthy work-life balance in a remote work environment.
GitLab offers mentorship and support through an internship program to address unique challenges faced by junior engineers in a remote work setting.
Deep dives
Embracing Asynchronous Work as a Solution to Time Zone Challenges
One of the key aspects of GitLab's remote-first approach is the use of asynchronous work to overcome the time zone challenges that come with a globally distributed team. By embracing asynchronous communication and documentation culture, GitLab allows for a diverse team spread across different time zones, enabling the company to tap into global talent and bring the benefits of remote work to people all over the world. This approach also promotes equity in earning power and the creation of middle-class opportunities in various countries.
Promoting a Healthy Work-Life Balance
GitLab actively encourages its employees to take time off and prioritize their well-being. Despite the common concern that remote workers may feel the need to overwork, GitLab recognizes the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. The company has implemented a 'no-ask time off' policy, ensuring that employees have the freedom to take vacations, mental health days, or other time off as they need it. By modeling these behaviors and valuing employee well-being, GitLab fosters a positive remote work environment.
Addressing the Challenges of Junior Engineer Success
GitLab acknowledges the unique challenges that junior engineers may face in a remote work setting. To address this, the company has designed an internship program that provides mentorship and support for early career professionals. With a focus on converting interns into full-time employees, GitLab is actively working to make remote work successful for individuals who are new to the technology field, ensuring that the benefits of remote work extend to all levels of experience.
The Importance of Growing a Remote Community
GitLab emphasizes the significance of growing their external community, as it allows passionate individuals to work full-time on what was once a hobby or passion project. By hiring from the GitLab community, the company values the opportunity to provide people with the chance to turn their passion into a profession. They focus on making it an easy experience for individuals to contribute to GitLab, both internally and externally, and prioritize maintaining a strong external community.
The Journey to Becoming a Remote Company
GitLab's transition to becoming a completely remote company was unintentional at first, with employees being spread out across Europe and collaborating remotely. They observed that having physical offices became underutilized as people preferred remote work due to efficient collaboration across different time zones. Eventually, they intentionally embraced remote work, emphasizing the importance of asynchronous work and collaboration. GitLab prioritizes written communication and documentation, allowing employees to pick up work items, make progress, and hand it over seamlessly across time zones and schedules.
I had the chance to talk to Eric Johnson, the CTO of GitLab about
How to manage remote teams: async, stand-ups, onboarding, burn out, internships, compensation, and more
How Gitlab uses git for everything from Marketing to Policy
The difference between servant-leadership and situational leadership and when to use what
A message to those who think parenthood might take away from their career
If you loved his straight-talking ReadMe about himself, you will also like this thought-provoking episode on leadership, management, and of course remote work from someone who manages a completely remote team of 560, in a company of 1300+
Sastrify
Thanks a lot to my friends at Sastrify for sponsoring this episode.
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Fastly
This episode is again kindly supported by Fastly, the biggest challenger in the CDN market and a solution I personally use.
Fastly is pushing ahead the technical boundaries and is from my personal perspective the best solution on the market. Fastly is one of the key drivers of the "edge cloud trend".
Well-known customers of Fastly are Shopify, The New York Times, Reddit, Github and many many more.
