Remote Org Lessons Learned from GitLab’s CEO

Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab, joined us for the final session of Founder Lab.

Lots of people are talking about remote work these days. Few have built Billion dollar remote companies. Sid has — GitLab is one of the 3 largest all-remote companies in the world — in a league of their own with InVision and WordPress.

I spent 30 mins picking his brain on building remote orgs and growing a startup into something massive (GitLab is valued at over $1 Billion today).

Here’s what I learned:

🤝 Do the right things that you’d do at traditional company.

“Going all-remote or going public force you to do the things you should have already been doing.”

Proper documentation, organized meetings, and clear communication. Remote teams fall apart without them. Are traditional teams who hold unnecessary meetings or neglect proper documentation doing themselves any favors?

💬 Make Informal communication top of mind.

“I’m not sure there’s a better resource than our handbook for this…”

https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/informal-communication/

All new GitLab employees have 10 “coffee chats” with folks they will be working with — just like a new employee would do at a high quality traditional org (notice a pattern?).

📖 Maintain a company handbook.

“The biggest benefit has been recruiting. People often find the handbook and say we are doing things better than the company they’re currently at.”

When Nick from Eariously asked Sid what efforts resulted in outsized impact, the GitLab Company Handbook was “the obvious one”.

Sid and his team maintain a public company handbook for the rest of the world to see how GitLab believes a remote org should run: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/

I’m starting one of these at Turtle.

🎯Focus on results.

“We focus on outputs, not inputs”

In the traditional work world, people can look like they’re working hard without delivering results. In a remote org, it’s a lot harder to look busy or attend more meetings just for show. Output is all GitLab measures.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the software that helps remote dev teams at perform better at Turtle, and “focus on outputs” will become a regular part of my brain cycle arsenal when designing. Making outputs easier to track help anyone doing or managing high quality work.

📚Read “High Output Management” by Andrew S. Grove.

“It’s just super practical.”

I’m only a few chapters in and loving it. Content is practical and insightful. I learned not to log team issues that we can’t do anything about. Why? they just add anxiety instead of getting results. Obvious enough — but when’s the last time your team logged an issue that you really can’t do anything about?

https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884

✊ Define values early.

“Our culture is defined by our values. ”

Something like “culture fit” can be incredibly subjective. Is someone really a bad fit or do they just look different than you? Defining values helps your org make logical, consistent decisions.

GitLab’s values: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/

There’s a lot more to learn. You can find GitLab’s handbook here and watch our full session with Sid below: