growing an open company

Growing an Open CompanyGitLabJob - @jobvo

@jobvo - jobvandervoort.com

GitLab is where you bring your ideas to productionSingle platform for modern developers. Code review, CI, CD, monitoring in one package.


>250,000organizationsNASA, IBM, Redhat, CERN, SONY, Uber, EA, Alibaba, Airbnb, etc..


A short history of GitLab


Open SourceStarted in 2011 by Dmitriy, who didn't have running water


"I want to work on GitLab full time"— Dmitriy, still without running water


2014: Founding of GitLab BV5 engineers, 1 sales


2015

Y Combinator


2015

seed + A roundKhosla Ventures; Ashton Kutcher; Michael Dell

~6M


2016

B RoundAugust capital; Khosla Ventures

~20M@jobvo - jobvandervoort.com

~160 employees

about.gitlab.com/team


What's special?


zerooffices


Everythingopen(except private information)


Remote-only


Everyone works from homeor a coworking space


We can hire the best people.


Everything open?


GitLab comes in two flavors


Community Editiongitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ceMIT Expat license


Enterprise Editiongitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-eeProprietary


Everything in building GitLab happens on public repositories on GitLab.com..


..even the development of GitLab Enterprise Editiongitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee


Our proprietary software is publicly readable.


You can see what it is, what it does,


And as a customer, you can even contribute!


But that's not all that is open..


All our repositories, issue trackers, CI/CD, internal tools, are all public and open source on GitLab.com.


All our 'internal' documentation, our methods, HR policies, processes, function definitions are all open source.@jobvo - jobvandervoort.com

about.gitlab.com/handbookgitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com


This means that we've eliminated the difference between external and internal contributor.


Everyone can contribute.


Half-way summary

—Everyone is at home working in their pyjamas—Everything is open—GitLab allows GitLab to build GitLab


How do we actually get things done?


People should be able to work whenever, wherever they want and can..


but still be productive and collaborative


Rule #1Work asynchronously


Working asynchronously means writing everything down.


"Who will document this?""Who will create an issue?"


Use tech to your advantage, for instance using chatops:/gitlab-ce issue new Awesome new button@jobvo - jobvandervoort.com

Make everyone able to contribute. Not just engineers.Everyone at GitLab can create a merge request and commit changes.@jobvo - jobvandervoort.com

Rule 1.1Keep a single source of truth


Rule 2Set clear expectations and give independence


Build iteratively and avoid 'walls of text'Keep product specs simple.about.gitlab.com/handbook/product


Rule 3Over communicate and make opportunities to bond frequently


Daily team call—5 minutes going over agenda—25 minutes sharing what you did for fun last week


Summits


Travel to meet colleagues


Rule 4Build something great.


Almost everything we build in GitLab has been driven by people being excited about it.


about.gitlab.comGitLab.com is has unlimited free private, public repos, free CI, unlimited free collaborators and is awesome.


Questions?Job van der Voort@jobvo


growing an open company

Technology