GitLab: Best Practices for An All Remote Company with Betsy Bula | TNN65

Allen  

Welcome, and thanks for joining us at The New Nomad podcast. Betsy Bula is joining us today from GitLab. GitLab is a unique company, I guess about 1500 employees, 65 countries always been remotely working. Andrew, a bit like us, Insured Nomads, but we are like eight or nine or 10 people. But you know, we all have the same thought of the future of work, which is remote work, making sure that we’re asynchronous and having a greater understanding. And I’ve got to tip my hat to GitLab who does a wonderful job sharing some of their best attributes in a, I wouldn’t call it light reading, because it’s 2000 pages, but it covers every detail. Andrew, I know that in the past that you’ve been somebody who’s taken advantage of the GitLab remote playbook.

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Andrew  

I have. And you know, we have such a wide variety of listeners today. And while we’re here at this moment, just thanks for being part of the audience, for joining in for sharing this for you know, for reviewing helps us out so much, I appreciate it. But you know, GitLab is one of those solutions that I think a lot of you listening might want to check out because even as a freelancer a one-man solopreneur – it’s free. And of course, as you grow, the prices are so, so worth considering. Still, the resources that they provide for remote companies, for those who are, who are building, are phenomenal. So I look forward to what Betsy is going to share with us today. And really good to have you on.

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Allen  

So Betsy, let’s bring you into the conversation. 

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Betsy  

Thank you for having me. 

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Allen  

It’s so good to have you with us. And I know that you, you’ve been evangelizing the remote work environment. Could you share a little bit with the audience a bit about how GitLab just, from the get-go, very early on felt about remote work and maybe the ethos of GitLab, all your employees and how that helps the company and people in particular?

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Betsy  

Absolutely, yeah. And thanks again, for having me, it’s awesome to be able to talk with you both. And you know, I could do this all day. So I love these conversations about remote work. So, uh, like you said you give a great intro about GitLab. We are one of the world’s largest all-remote companies and have been remote since our inception. So we’ve been fortunate to be able to really put intention and thought behind our processes and our tools and our culture and all of those things prior to a pandemic and things that have really impacted our world in the last two and a half years. And so, you know, for GitLab, our goal has always been to just share what our lessons learned are, and you know, where we’ve stumbled along the way where we’ve really kind of nailed down best practices, and also the things that we’re like continuing to iterate on in the future. Because the journey is never done, even for an all-remote company like GitLab. But you know, we really want to consolidate what our best practices are, and make sure that we’re sharing that with the world so that other people are able to embrace this, you know, future of work and really future of living. And so that can be you know, whether it’s an organization or it’s an individual, anyone can benefit from this type of knowledge. We condense all of our remote guides into a playbook every year like you mentioned. And that playbook really does act as a kind of single resource for people to get started with a blueprint. And it again can be useful, whether you are running a team of 200, or just a single person looking to uplevel their remote skills on their own. So that’s our goal, you know, to really be able to share this with the world. And each of us are very passionate about it personally because of the benefits that remote work has had on our own lives. So it’s cool to be able to do this every day as our job.

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Allen  

It’s great. So, Betsy, I’ve been a remote worker for seven years. And I’ve gotten a lot of neighbors because of the pandemic for the first time that they’re remote workers two years in, and they say to me a couple of things. First of all, they love the ability to not have to wake up in the morning, get on the interstate highway, drive into town pay to park have tax problems, right that’s it then. And then they’re very excited to be able to have you know, calls in stay in touch with people. But now about two years in it kind of like with luck, well, I want to remain a remote worker, maybe go over maybe be somewhat hybrid go in a day or two. But I really just need to see somebody in flesh and blood of things. What’s GitLab’s take on some of the different things like do you do co-working days? Do you have like meeting an annual meeting? Now that we’re coming up in any thoughts for people? Because that’s the question I’ve been getting the most is what’s next?

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Betsy  

That’s so true. And, you know, this has been something that’s been important long before the pandemic, but I think it’s just been highlighted for everybody how much they value and need the in-person interactions in their lives as well. And when you’re working remotely, so for GitLab, we very much see the value in in-person moments for things like team building and relationship building and just getting to know each other as people. We do try to not do work at a lot of these, you know, meetups or gatherings because we do want to focus that, you know, precious time on actually getting to know each other as a team. So typically, in a non-COVID time, we would have, you know, every nine months or so, our entire company get together and have a summit and we spend all that time, you know, team building and getting to know each other somewhere in the world. And then we have in between those times people who will get together at conferences, or we do have local co-working days, I am very fortunate to live in Raleigh, North Carolina, where we have a number of team members in this general vicinity. And so we often will get the, you know, Raleigh area group together and go either work at a co-working space or meet up at a coffee shop or for dinner or something like that. So we have been able to pick up some of those, you know, more localized gatherings in the last year or so, which has been just such a kind of a breath of fresh air after being separated for so long. But we do look forward to the day when we can hopefully gather as a broader team, you know, with everyone the way that we have in the past, because it is so important. And I would say you know, whether you’re part of a team that’s hybrid, or you’re fully remote, or, you know, even if you have a team that hopes to go fully back into the office, finding those moments to really focus on team building is important and will help you then work together better when you’re working remotely. So we do encourage the real intention to be put behind that and not just say, like, oh, let’s throw together a few happy hours and, or co-working days where we don’t really spend the time actually investing in getting to know one another. So the intentionality behind that is an important piece.

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Andrew  

So Betsy, when you’ve had these offsites, over the last few years, you guys started fully remote long ago, and we were fully remote pre-pandemic, it was our intent before the pandemic ever hit that we’d be a fully remote-first company. And we’ve maintained that. What are some of the number one, team-building bonding experiences you’ve seen applied within your environment? Or in others? Who say, Okay, this is one of those where people should replicate that?

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Betsy  

That’s a great question. You know, there’s some, it’s, I’ll offer kind of two, two different sides of the coin, where there are some that we’ve discovered in the past two years that are virtual, that have been really cool and special, and, you know, unique, I think, and then there’s others that we’ve seen work well and in person in the past, I love the aspect of our typical summit contribute is what we call it. Because we gather somewhere in the world, and it’s like, it’s bringing to life, that culture wherever we are, and oftentimes, it’s somewhere where we have team members who live there. And so it’s kind of cool. It’s like, they feel like they’re hosting, you know, their co-workers and allowing the whole team to get to know their country or their city. So being able to do that kind of thing and go somewhere that, you know, the team can not only immerse themselves in the culture but also get to know each other and immerse themselves in your company culture. I think that’s like the goal for any of these get-togethers. And we often will let people you know, pitch like sessions that are about skill sharing, or giving a talk about a certain topic that they’re really passionate about, that are not work-related, but like help you build a new skill or learn something from one another. That means you’re getting to know that person but without it being directly about like transactional work conversations. So I’ve always thought that was a cool feature to our contribute summit. 

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On the virtual side, one of the things that I love that has come up in the last it really started at the beginning of COVID especially during the lockdowns when lots of our team members suddenly had their children at home with them. We had this new addition to our handbook that’s about informal communication, which as a sidebar, you can Google that and find an incredible list of informal communication options that your team can try out in our guide about informal communication. But one of those is that we started doing basically, instead of just coffee chats between team members, which are, you know, 30-minute sessions, where you just chat and get to know each other. We call them juicebox chats. And so it was a moment to put team members child on the zoom with another team members child and let them get to know each other. And it gives, you know, the parents a little break, it lets the kids have some bonding time and kind of, you know, connect with someone else their age and just really like brought it brought to life that for GitLab like family and friends come first and that we understand that everybody’s in an unprecedented, for lack of a better word, situation. And so allowing people to, like be fully human and be fully themselves in a circumstance like that, I think went a long way and helped us to get to know each other as people on a deeper level than even before COVID. So I think the biggest thing is getting creative, you know, even going and getting involved in your own community. And then bringing that back to your team is another cool way to not force the typical, like, virtual Happy Hour kind of thing. Like, let people go do what matters to them, and then bring it back to your own culture.

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Allen  

I’ve got Andrew in our team, we introduced a conversation about gratitude every week, and different people could break these, and you’d be surprised what people are very happy and gracious about. But to your point, Betsy, it’s about bringing a piece of themselves that’s outside of work. And you’d have somebody like, Hey, I’m very, I’ve got great gratitude, because I just adopted a dog. And now all of a sudden, you know, you’d get these cups, these are a very great gratitude that my father has just had his 90th birthday, you just don’t know where it’s gonna go but it raises the whole meeting. But also at the end, it’s amazing how these pieces move. And I love what you were saying about, you know, having something that it doesn’t have to go right to business, right, because there’s enough we’re going to the business part of it. Which also ties into something about the GitLab culture that I was reading that I felt was really good is, there’s been a lot of debate in the remote work community of tracking tools versus, let’s just great people buy their results. And you know, if you give them objectives, let’s just look at their key results. And if they get it done, they get it done. But do we need to have big brother hanging over that? Because, you know, maybe people will not work linearly, maybe it’s a sunny afternoon, they want to take their dog for a walk, they’re going to be at 7 pm working with that person halfway around the world, I’d love your comment on how GitLab and you, in particular, suggest to people on the work environment in that context.

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Betsy  

That is such an important aspect, I think of, you know, really any remote team, but it just it’s like, when it comes down to it, it’s a level of like respect for each other. And a level of trust that you have across your team when you’re able to get to that point. So it’s so something worth striving for, even though it’s kind of a break from tradition of how we track productivity, I guess, is the best way to put it. But if you think about it, productivity being tracked by somebody sitting in a chair all day was never an accurate measure. You have as a human being different peaks of your day where you’re more productive, or you’re better at certain types of work, or you prefer to take a call or you know, whatever it may be. And really enabling people to learn that about themselves and then make those decisions and shape their day in a way that works best for them is not only going to be good for them, but it actually means they’re going to produce better work when they are working. So that’s what I mean, there’s so many I could go on about this topic for a long time, because there’s so many reasons why it’s healthier for both the employer and the employee to track results and not when and how those results are getting achieved. 

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Betsy  

Now the only time we do recommend tracking hours spent is if you feel like someone’s overworking and you are running into like a risk of burnout or you could, you know need to kind of combat some of these mental health challenges that can come up for any type of team. So that’s really the only time we should be focusing on when someone is actually sitting in their desks desk chair. And you mentioned a nonlinear workday. I think that’s such an important aspect of you know, how our culture kind of ticks because we have this again, mutual respect that I may be working right now at you know, 3 pm my time but my coworker who either might be in my timezone might be across the world could be doing any number of things and that shouldn’t matter because we have this basis of you know, mutual trust, asynchronous work, documentation that I can still get my work done and pass it off to them. And that they’ll respond in their own time. And then you know, that frees you up with this autonomy in your day that you can do things like go take your dog for a walk, you could go, you know, if you’re on a trip, go travel for the day and do something cool, and then come back. And, you know, login. Later in your day, when you are, yeah, having some quiet time and you’re ready to focus on work. So it gives you just that freedom and flexibility to really build your life in the way that you want it and not just like shoving life in these pockets around the workday. I’ve seen this firsthand, especially in the last few months, I’m, I mentioned this to you all before, before we started recording, but I’m expecting my first child in a month, basically. And being able to have that ability to work in nonlinear workday throughout this pregnancy. And I know it’ll be even more so when I’m a parent has been huge and allowed me to, like, still pursue my career while I’m, you know, going through this huge life transition. So it impacts people in different ways. But it’s crucial for overall, you know, happiness and the employee experience in general.

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Allen  

And you also think attraction and retention, right? People want to work for companies that make it. And the other thing that’s I always felt was fair or unfair. And I’ll use this in an underwriter context, there used to be underwriters that you go to, to get quotes, and they would get it done in two hours, perfect. And then there would be the other less skilled underwriter that might be five hours might be perfect or imperfect. And my point was, is, do I really care if you know that the person who took two hours did it now is three hours of extra time, I’ve got my key result in hand. And there should be somewhat of a psychic reward for doing a job well, and doing it expeditiously to in there are just more people, some people are more efficient than others. Also on that, so I’m happy you’re about as passionate as I am. How about you, Andrew?

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Andrew  

Yeah, it’s so good. The trust factor, if you care about your people, and you want them to be mentally balanced, you’ve got to be able to extend the grace to say, yeah, go to your kids ballgame. Take your kid to the ER, your partner, your friend that needs you, right, then take them to the doctor’s office, go check on your neighbor in the middle of the day if you need to, or whatever’s or if take a nap if you need to. So these things are just so vital. But when the pendulum swings the other way, and people are saying let’s install software so that we can see if they’re checking Facebook. Well, are we also watching to see if they’re actually emailing somebody at one in the morning? Right and saying well done, versus checking Facebook at one in the afternoon saying, hey, you know, what’s up? You know, no, we don’t need to be big brother, police. Let’s be trusting and, you know, the KPIs the initiative shown, that dedication to someone’s well-being is so much more valuable. So I’m trying to learn to sing your song because you said some great phrases there that just resonated with me. And I know you’ve got so much more to share. And that’s why we’re so honored that you’re here with us today, because you guys are a beacon and a guide for so many in how to do this.

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Betsy  

Well, thank you. We were glad to be and it’s you know, I think it’s always a journey. And we’ve learned so much even by new team members joining and pointing out things in the handbook that they want to add and that they’ve experienced as a remote worker. And so it’s been cool even to watch it kind of morphed over the years as more and more team members are able to contribute and people outside of GitLab contribute. So it’s not just us, but we’re glad to be able to curate it and share it with the world.

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Allen  

So Betsy, I get this question too. And so somebody’s working for a traditional company, they may put funds towards providing subsidized cafeteria food, let’s say or parking, you know, in the city, and my counter to the benefit managers and the other folks I work with is so in this new world, you can reallocate those funds to you know, having a nicer home office, better computers for the folks think about all the money you save in real estate. If you just have some you know fewer offices, etc. Could you share for our audience some of the ideas that you see there too on reallocating from the old brick and mortar world to the new remote world? 

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Betsy  

Of course, yeah, that’s a really important one, because I think it is where people sort of get tripped up of like, okay, well, what do we do about all these benefits that we’ve had in these offices and, you know, the first thing to keep in mind is that your culture should not be tied to a physical place, it should be, you know, a set of lived values, it should be the way that you treat each other in everyday interactions, and all of these things that should not be tied to your ping pong table count and things like that, which are great perks when you are in an office, but it’s just not sustainable. Really, it wasn’t ever sustainable before when people often tie their, their culture to, you know, the, the vibe and the office or whatever it may be. So I think that’s the first important thing is to kind of detach those two things in our mind. But there’s so many things. The first that comes to mind, as far as like reallocating budget is your workspace, you mentioned this, but I think it’s something that a lot of leaders are sort of missing right now, which is that, you know, two and a half years in or however for however long we are into this great remote work experiment, as they call it, it is beyond time to invest in your team’s workspaces at their home or wherever that may be, for some people home is not the best place and they want to join a co-working space. Or they want to have the right equipment to be able to set up on the go wherever that may be if it’s at a new hotel every week in a cool place that they’re traveling to or it’s a coffee shop down the street. It’s really investing in people’s, you know, environment that is best for them is an investment in that person, and therefore an investment in your company. And so just as you know, all of these organizations have traditionally had a facilities team hyper-focused on the cool like nooks in every part of the office, you want to do the same, put the same intention and the same amount of you know, money and everything else into helping your team build healthy workspaces remotely. And so, uh, you know, this is important, whether you’re hybrid or fully remote, or whatever it may be. Because I think a lot of hybrid organizations are like, well, we have the office as an option. Therefore, we don’t really need to focus on what’s happening at home. But ultimately, if you’re really going to invest in a, you know, environment where you want people to be able to work wherever is best for them, you need to be letting them take that budget and apply it to, you know, whether it again, whether it be a co-working space or their home office. So we’ve really encouraged people to try to look at the different options that there are, but not be too prescriptive with it, because you want to leave room for individuality. And the idea that, you know, someone may not even want to work in the same place every day. So I think that’s something that’s going to be really important going forward is figuring out like what that budget looks like how you take it, you know, from certain parts of the office, whether it’s offloading some real estate that you don’t need or, you know, taking a budget you use on certain in-office perks and applying it to that, whatever it may be, it’s worth the investment and the focus.

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Allen  

So I was just thinking, so people have fitness facilities at their offices. And then I’ve seen other companies what they’ve reallocated said, Well, if you want to you have your own gym, we’d like to send you a Fitbit, you know, so we can make sure or, you know, if you want to join a local health club, so I think the reallocation is relatively easy if people you know, think about it, talk to folks like yourself, look at the table, I mean,, actually, I don’t see a way you don’t save money, and get better productivity out of this remote work environment. And every study seems to indicate, you get better satisfaction, less turnover. We’ve even seen it some companies that said, we’re gonna march you all back into the office, and then they’ve had these massive amounts of people resign and go elsewhere. So maybe with that, I’ll ask the kind of a general question is, where do we go from here? Or do we just double down on this? What’s your feeling it personally or GitLabs about? Where are we going and the next few years as we pop on to COVID?

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Betsy  

Great question. And it’s something you know, I think, does you know differ for each company but as a whole, what we’re seeing is there is a need to focus less on the where work gets done and focus more on the how. So we’ve been talking about this a lot at GitLab that how work gets done is what people are going to be able to, to really like latch on to for the future and it’s going to be you know, important whether or not you’re in an office or you’re in a co-working space or you’re at home, if you focus your team on, on really looking into, like, what are our processes and our tools and our norms and the things about our company that are still sort of operating the way that they were in 2019, that we need to re-examine and look at and make sure that we’re bringing up to speed for 2022 and beyond, and focusing on those things, instead of these arbitrary like, oh, when will we be able to all go back to the office, or when will we be able to all go on this, you know, excursion together, the where should not matter anymore. And I think people are starting to realize that, but it’s taking a little bit more time because we had really no end date for this whole, you know, COVID situation in general. And then everything else that’s happened afterwards, it’s just been really difficult to predict. But we’re at a point now where we know that this is something that’s here to stay. And so it’s time to really start putting that intentionality in an investing if companies haven’t done that already. So you know, the focusing on the where of work is a thing of the past. And that’s something that you’ll see and GitLab’s playbook really highlighted, because I think it’s going to be so important in these all these coming years, as we see, you know, different companies try to navigate different versions of hybrid, as we see, you know, a lot of people move around to different companies, because they now have more options than they did before. It’s gonna be an interesting thing to observe for all of us, I think. And, you know, from my own personal perspective, I’m thrilled to see so many of my own peers and family members and friends get to experience remote work, but I also am looking even more forward to them experiencing it in its full glory. Because I will say that the past two and a half years have not been, you know, the full experience, it’s cool that some people got to eliminate their commute, but it doesn’t give you the full, you know, broad benefits of, of the flexibility and the autonomy that we all know can come with a remote lifestyle, and whether that’s the kind of like, as I consider a lot of my life, kind of the more boring pieces of that, like I get to go run errands during the day when I need to, or, you know, spend time with my family. Or it’s the more exciting version of I get to travel wherever I want to go, whatever it looks like, I think people are going to start to experience it more fully in the coming months and years.

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Andrew  

Well, this is spot on. I’d love to hear though. This is a question we ask everybody on the show. Can you share with us an overlooked place experience, you could go even book or a person if you really feel like they’re overlooked, but that you feel like our community should know about?

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Betsy  

I love this question. And I feel like I could give you a different answer every day. But today, I want to focus more on your own, like community, I think, again, we’ve been so deprived of the ability to really invest in our own communities in the last two years. And we’ve been, even if you feel like you’ve been stuck at home, and therefore like home is kind of getting boring, and all of that the broader idea of like your own local community and getting involved in something that you care about, and giving back to the place that you live and work every day, I think is so often overlooked and just important, like for you, for the community for other people and the things that you can bring back to your team. So that’s I would encourage that, you know, I think we in the past have focused so much on these commutes and traveling for work and traveling for fun, and you just kind of leave behind all of the things that you know, involve routes in any way. And there is something to be said for some of that reinvestment in, you know, places that you consider home, wherever that may be

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Allen  

Awesome. Well really appreciate your thoughts your time where can people learn more about Betsy, GitLab and the remote playbook?

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Betsy  

Absolutely. So you can follow me on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect I’d love to continue the conversation. My Twitter is at Betsy Bula and we’ll hopefully link some of these things in the show notes. And then as far as GitLab, please follow GitLab on Twitter as well. And LinkedIn. We often are sharing, you know our latest remote assets there and there is fresh off the presses from this past month our new 2022 remote playbook so please check out all remote dot info for that. And you’ll find lots and lots of resources there. Pretty much any topic you can imagine about remote work will be somewhere linked on that page. And if it’s not, we would love for you to add to it. So we encourage everyone to contribute and look forward to continue to talk about this asynchronously.

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Allen  

Right. Well, thank you, Betsy. And also best of luck on the momentous occasion that’s going to be happening in the not too distant future. And for those of you listening to this podcast, it may actually have been just about the same time this podcast was released. So we’ll see if there are two debuts at the same time. So, Andrew, I learned a lot today, I would love you to take it away with what you learned today as we ride on out.

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Andrew  

You know, it’s often the overlooked that catches me off guard when someone shares, and what we missed that’s right underneath our nose resonated with me, the overlook that’s close by, that’s my takeaway from the things that Betsy shared that we need to look out for our neighbor for those around us that oftentimes we’re looking at the horizons rather than, than our surroundings. 

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Allen  

Well, I took away a couple of things which kind of tie together which is trust is so important when you’re in an employment and friendship relationship, assuming for lack of a better word, assuming positive intent that people want to do the job and get things done. So I really appreciate that. So to our audience out there, I hope you enjoyed our podcast today. The way our audience grows is please just tell one other person to listen to The New Nomad podcast. Give a great view. We look forward to hearing you in the future. We want people to have the confidence to work remotely and travel wherever they want. Have a great rest of the day. And thanks again for listening. We appreciate you.