text stringlengths 0 1.46k |
|---|
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yeah, in Y Combinator we kind of changed our ambition. Before going to Y Combinator we wanted in five years to be a company of 50 people. During Y Combinator we changed our perspective. We want to be a company valued at at least a billion dollars, which kind of means at least 1,000 people in five ye... |
Then I was on-boarding someone and I was like "Darn, I'll have to explain this..." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Again. |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** ...again and again and again. I'd better start writing some things down... And it escalated from there. I think every significant company has a knowledge system or something resembling our handbook... But most of the time it falls into disrepair. It's not updated anymore. It's stale. So one of the m... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's interesting, because that was my next question, "How do you then sort of become handbook-first?" and that makes sense. So if you wanna initiate change, it being in the handbook doesn't mean that it is change; it's sort of initiating change, because you or others have an opportunity to iterate... |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Well, disagreements... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, sure. |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yesterday I wanted to change something in our values. We have a value in transparency, like explain why, but we also have this mode in how we operate - the directly responsible individual doesn't have to consult with everyone before making a decision. And it wasn't clear what wins. Does the DRI have... |
And then someone in the organization, Emilie Schario, said "Well, I disagree with that." We called about it, and she had some good points, so I asked her to close my suggestion and make one herself. I'll review that, and I assume it's gonna be better than mine, and we'll merge that and it's set. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** There you go. How do you think your company has been better because of this? Communication-wise. Not just helping you to onboard. That was sort of a selfish - for good reasons - initiative early on, but it's now blossomed into this highly-communicable handbook that 1) clearly states to the outside w... |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yeah. I think externally it really helps people opt into the organization. A lot of the people that ended up joining GitLab were people that saw the handbook and were like "Yeah, I'd like this way of working." I bet there's also a ton of people that see our handbook and are like "I don't like that w... |
\[44:17\] So I think that companies are gonna become more differentiated. As remote working becomes more common, you don't have to appeal to all the people in your immediate area. If you can appeal to a small group of people, but all over the world, that is enough. So you can be much more opinionated as a company. |
I think internally, it causes us to be very intentional. For example, we're very intentional about informal communication. Being remote, you have to design informal communication. It doesn't happen at the water cooler, because you don't have one. But you can still facilitate that, so we have the concept of coffee chats... |
I think intentionality is on average a good thing. Same way with our values - there's not just six words, there's a whole lot of context on what we exactly mean, and then there's 14 ways in which we reinforce those values. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What are your values? |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** So the acronym we use is CREDIT, and it stands for Collaboration, Results, Efficiency, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, and Transparency. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Iteration. |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yeah, for sure. Iteration is, I think, the value that is toughest at GitLab. It's the value everyone coming in externally says "I love iteration..." And then internally, we do it because it works really well, but we dread it, because it's so hard to have this idea about the future, and then have to ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Gotcha. How did you get there? I mean, sure, you've got these six values, but did they just develop over time? Did they naturally bubble up, like "Okay, these things seem to be common trends throughout our documentation, throughout our ways we present ourselves, the way we present new changes to our... |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** I think early on we took the material we created and what was happening and we said "Okay, what are our values?" and I think I took the lead in that. We had 13 values. Then I quizzed a few people, including myself, and no one could remember more than three of them, so they were a bit too many, and c... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** And we checked them against five dysfunctions that can happen in organizations and made sure we address those five dysfunctions... And those became our values. I'm very proud -- if you look at the bottom of the Value page, you'll see an Edit button. If you click that and then click History, you'll f... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Do you happen to know the five dysfunctions by memory? |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** No, I don't. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[48:03\] I was curious about those, because I like how you pair that up with these six core values against the -- it could be more dysfunctions, but five most common dysfunctions in organizations. That's an interesting perspective, to identify and capitalize on the opportunity to establish these va... |
Actually, I think the five dysfunctions is in your list here, so... I think it's "Absence of trust" -- this is based on your Docs, so thank you, Docs... Absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Exactly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I don't know where that came from. There's a link to that, too. Maybe that goes somewhere else. Wikipedia! |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** It's a book by Patrick Lenicioni. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** There you go. We'll put that in the show notes for everybody to listen to them too, so you can find that... That's awesome, I like that. I'm always curious how these things come about. Over time, organizations become to better document themselves. Some, as you said, they'll start these guides or the... |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yeah, and it's remarkable - there's more updates to this than fit on one page in this month that we're currently in, so that's great to see... Actually, I think now we have 14 ways in which we reinforce our values. I think we're gonna add another one, because I think we've just launched the GitLab S... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Let's fine-tune down to an execution -- I'm not sure where those might stem from from a value, but it's definitely something I value that you've shared with the world. We've put a post out there from you on Changelog.com called Family and Friends First, Work Second... And it was an explanation by yo... |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yup. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Take us back to the Slack post on Friday, April 17th, where you shared why. Give us the behind-the-scenes of that post, and what Family and Friends First, Work Second means to you. |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** What it means to us is that we understand that work isn't the most important thing in people's lives. A lot of companies make you pretend that it is, and I've always thought that was weird. Obviously, family and friends come first, and if there's something that you have to attend to, that is more im... |
We've noticed that after Covid, people were more productive than before. We've always been a remote company, so that wasn't the change; it's logical that people can deal with that. But it's strange that if people now have to take care of their kids, because the schools were closed, and still overall productivity was up... |
\[52:03\] It wasn't so much about that day, it was about the message we send... Like, "Hey, we recognize that everyone is working hard", and people should allow themselves some time off, because it's intense... And if you've worked remote before, you know you're more productive per hour, and you should use some of that... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I have a quote here from the article - one thing you said was "Over-working or maintain the status quo during a crisis is not a badge of honor. In fact, I'll be more proud if employees were taking time off to reset and refresh, or spend time adjusting to this new normal with their families." |
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't know many IPO companies that are on that trajectory... Maybe companies are changing, I don't know, but this to me doesn't seem like a public company kind of thing. It just seems like you're gonna be the opposite of what public companies do out there, because not everybody is saying that k... |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yeah. You get what you measure, and I've always found it strange that companies measure hours put in and hours worked and hours behind the desk, and kind of celebrate that internally. |
For example at GitLab you're not allowed to praise someone publicly for working outside of office hours, for that person. Or working hours, I should say, not office hours. And that's a very conscious decision. We wanna celebrate results. We're a very driven company. People work very hard, but we make it about working h... |
Last year we tripled the size of our team, and a lot of people come from companies where the competition is who can take the least time off, and we want the competition to be who can get that work done, but take the most time off. That's what we're trying to do... But not very successfully, because we see people workin... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It is a complex subject, because -- I'm reading this book called Indestructible, and it's so interesting, because the story in there is about a woman who is dealing with a crisis in their life, and she got addicted to this pedometer application. The problem wasn't the pedometer, the problem was the ... |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** Yeah, for sure. And people are like (as I was saying), "What am I gonna do with all that spare time that I have, since I can't go out?" |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "I just wanna work!" |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** \[56:05\] Well, I've found a solution. It's called City Skylines. It's a super-awesome computer game, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. But it's hard, and the interesting thing is "Why are games so much fun?" I think one attribute is that level of control. Another attribute is -- I call it transp... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** There's boundaries. |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** You know how it works, it's understandable. And it's an important lesson - what people want at work is a sense of progress (that's the most important thing), but they also wanna know clearly how it works, what the rules of the game are, and they want something where they have a high degree of contro... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Let's focus a bit on - for this last part here - maybe some hypotheticals, or actuals (we'll find out). I'm curious, given GitLab's future and what you know you're gonna do, what are the things you're most afraid of, and the things you're most excited about, about the future of GitLab? |
**Sid Sijbrandij:** I'm afraid of the company failing, and we made a nice web page about that. If you google "GitLab biggest risks", you'll find that. I'm super-excited about the impact of the product and the community around it. We're making people more productive. With GitLab you can get from having an idea to coding... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.