31sec snip

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

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

notes

NOTE

Enabling Various Teams with AI Transparency and Privacy

Improving developer effectiveness by leveraging AI should be complemented by supporting product managers, QA teams, ops teams, and security teams. Transparency and privacy in AI can be achieved by disclosing the models being used, making the source code available, and providing information on the training methods.

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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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