GitLab Employee Reviews about "handbook"

Pros

Aside from being able to work fully remotely, GitLab holds true to their values and continues to apply them to every decision made. Everything is open and documented in the Handbook which makes workflows much more efficient. No matter your position, your opinions are valued just as much as the next person's. GitLab has a very clear vision and they make sure that steps are taken and documented to get there. They also CARE about their employees!! Compensation is reviewed on a yearly basis to ensure you're getting a fair salary compared to the market, vacation is unlimited, with a no ask no tell policy, and everyone is extremely supportive.

Cons

Haven't run into any thus far.

Pros

- The company was fully remote before the pandemic, with years of experience managing itself in a distributed way - The handbook is a powerful home grown productivity tool - The product is the best in its class - Stock options are generously awarded and have high potential for life-changing wealth for those who have joined pre IPO

Cons

- As the company grows, being a-sync has become less possible for those who are not ICs and there are more synchronous meetings that are required to attend - Current People Ops (HR) leadership could be stronger and more visibly engaged - In order to make specialized hires, not every new employee upholds or is interested in learning the CREDIT values and this is creating tension and confusion - Having a great product allows the company to be lazy in Sales/Marketing practices at times, yet still hit most numbers - Ongoing conflict between the iterative startup approach and need for more mature operational excellence can make it difficult to set/follow/understand mid-range strategy and plans - Communication silos are becoming a bigger challenge as the company goes 2+ years without gathering together in person (due to the pandemic)

Pros

On the cultivation of values and an intelligent atmosphere, sort of a rising tide lifts all boats situation. I've learned a lot in a short while from peers and the massive handbook that records many scenarios for future teaching. Benefits are terrific, work/life balance is more than lip service, and people are happy to help. Interesting, cutting edge.

Cons

One could get lost in the bog of slack channels, issues, DMs and other communication tools. There at once seems to be a right way to present ideas and send messages, and yet there still seems to be a divide in what's sanctioned and what's practiced. People will happily teach you things, but the culture of self-learning sometimes makes it a last resort. Transparency and everyone can contribute should have boundaries.

Pros

For most companies, values are just buzz words with very little meaning or relevance. This is not true at GitLab. The pros of working at GitLab almost all tie directly back to the values that GitLab takes very seriously: Collaboration: people here are kind, there are all sorts of resources and helpful tips to welcome newcomers and collaborate with the greatest community in the kindest way. Folks share their opinions, say thanks, and give feedback. For challenging collaborative problems, GitLab provides a variety of resources to educate folks on how to navigate the tough bits. Results: one of the sub values of "results" is "Measure results not hours" - and it shows. People are not tracking how often you're "active" on slack, how many meetings you make, how many things you say in meetings. Being handbook and async first in an all remote company means that the value of your contributions speaks volumes more than how you "appear". Efficiency: people for the most part write things down. This is the core of being handbook first. And let me tell you: I can't imagine working any other way. It's a lot of information to parse out. But imagine working somewhere where your coworkers don't interrupt you every 15 minutes to ask the same question someone else asked. Or where you don't feel bad having to interrupt your coworkers with the same thing. You can literally Google internal company processes and get an answer. Not sure how to write a good code review? Google "GitLab code review process" and you'll find the handbook page. Want to know how to submit an expense report? Type "expense reporting GitLab" in your navigation bar and you've got the answer. It's amazing, and I think it's extremely understated as a benefit here. It gets overshadowed by being all remote. But if you're an information-savvy knowledge worker, this is the way you must demand to get work done. Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging: this is where asynchronous communication comes in. And there's explicit instructions about having uncomfortable conversations. The company explicitly talks about what this value means, instead of being an overarching idea that's too broad to be useful. I've never believed a company ever cared about this value until I interviewed at GitLab. The interviewing process is as equitable as it can be (there is still a power differential, of course. And human systems are imperfect, and I have many privileges so I can't necessarily evaluate this objectively). But again, you can google all the hiring details and know what to expect. You can see the statistics in terms of hiring length, hiring metrics, etc. There are some confidential pieces of information here, of course, but the transparency builds to this diversity value. Iteration: this value can be challenging, but it can also be freeing. I feel empowered to make small, reversible changes all the time. To pitch ideas, deliver on promises, and come back later to clean things up. I'm never blocked because I'm waiting for approval three levels up. Transparency: this is another value that lends to the handbook first pro. Other pros: Remote work is awesome. It's clear how you add value to the company. The company is clearly growing, and the opportunity is there. The brand name is super cool - I am so proud and excited to have it on my resume. People are welcoming, excited, and always thinking of cool new ideas Lots of opportunity to work on new projects, but also a healthy focus on making sure existing solutions are appropriately leveraged and maintained. All levels of management are very accessible. The compensation is transparent, and more than fair.

Cons

There is a lot of information out there. It can be very challenging to parse through and find signal versus noise, especially as a newcomer. Being remote is great, but sometimes you miss the in-person relationships and collaboration style. The company is moving at a fast pace. They talk a lot about work/life balance, and they clearly take steps to enforce it. But I personally find myself being highly engaged and thoughtful about work outside of working hours because of all the activity going on. It's exciting, but it can be hard to turn off when your "office" is just inside your laptop, and the company is abuzz with activity at all hours of the day. This is a personal problem, not necessarily a systemic one. But I think many people share this. The onboarding process itself is very structured and easy to follow, with plenty of information. But I have spoken with many colleagues who feel like they were thrown into the deep end early on. I think a start up at this phase has a lot of that - the company needs to move quickly, and employees need to be ready for that. Be ready to feel a little lost for the first few months with information overload and a fast pace of work. I think most folks adjust, and GitLab has plenty of resources and systems to help. But it can be a lot, for sure. Because everything is handbook first, everyone is empowered to make decisions, etc., there are plenty of conflicting information sources out there. I think this is true of any company. The challenge at GitLab is that having all the documentation public means that any person in the company might stumble upon two conflicting pieces of information - rather than a different company where those conflicting points of view are siloed to teams. In that specific case, being siloed can actually be useful for individuals.

Pros

Semi-transparent company with Animal Farm-esque ways of interpreting the Employee Handbook.

Cons

100% Remote culture leads to * zero meaningful career advancement opportunities. * productive work being overlooked in favor of assembly line metrics.

Pros

The team at GitLab is genuinely the most talented group I've ever worked with. More importantly though, they're kind, thoughtful, and invested in making the company better. I genuinely enjoyed working with the people at GitLab, and met a lot of people I still consider friends after leaving. As far as the job itself, I learned a ton and was never bored. There are a lot of great internal resources and in-house tools that are really helpful in being able to solve problems. And just to be clear, customers bring some really interesting problems. It was really cool to see all the different ways people used (and broke) their installations. Working at GitLab was basically a neverending crash course in how to manage and maintain software, and I mean that in the best way possible. The benefits were probably the best of any company I've worked at. Health insurance was incredibly good, and they covered the majority of my family's costs. They allow people to expense training materials and are pretty liberal with what they will pay for - I've worked at places that have a similar policy but will then fight you on every little thing, and that was never the case at GitLab. Same with their unlimited PTO policy. They trust people to behave like adults, and I can't understand how nice that is. GitLab's dedication to process and operations is also a big selling point. I've worked in so many places where no one bothered to document anything, and the fact that GitLab spends so much time and energy on this is great. Their handbook is one of the most thoroughly impressive documents I've ever seen, and for the most part, its actual contents are extremely fair and thoughtful.

Cons

One major con that I noticed toward the end of my time at GitLab is that it's starting to feel like a big company, which wasn't the case when I started there. It was awesome to see such rapid growth, but in my opinion, they scaled the product and operations without quite getting things like communication right. There were a few instances of really big decisions being made behind closed doors, then being met with a lot of pushback when they were announced. It felt to me like these decisions were made non-transparently because leadership knew they would be unpopular, but it's also likely I don't have the full context. Running a company is hard, and so is communication, and to be clear, GitLab's leadership did things the right way more often than not. There are just a few specific instances that left a really bad taste in my mouth, so that's why I mention it. The biggest problem that I have is pay discrepancy via the "location factor." I live in an area with a decent factor, and I felt I was paid fairly for my work - but my coworkers in Latin America, for example, work just as hard as I did for about half as much money in some cases. My main gripe here is that pay difference is explicitly not based on cost of living, but "market rate." This might have made sense when remote-first work wasn't the norm, but it turns out there is a whole "market" of companies for me to choose from that don't penalize people for living in the wrong place. So even ignoring my moral judgment on this, it doesn't make sense anymore from a hiring perspective. I won't get into the effects this has on diversity and inclusion, but there's an obvious impact here as well.

Pros

What is there not to love? Awesome Product- Check Full transparency- Check Great Salary- Check Supportive and collaborative culture that genuinely cares- Check AMAZING BENEFITS- Double Check But seriously, GitLab is so progressive from its 100 percent remote workforce, to it's fully transparent handbook, and its everyone can contribute culture. You really feel like you belong and deserve to be here.

Cons

I'll tell you when I find one!