GitLab Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

In fact, we founded the company with a mission to make it so that everyone can contribute—and we know that “everyone” is a powerful word. We don't take that lightly.

“Everyone” is a promise to honor the experiences of each person, their individuality, and their voice. More importantly, it's a commitment to help them harness that individuality, to make their uniqueness essential. That goes for our users and our team members. Because when we can channel each person's experience—that is, when we can add everyone into our product—then we truly become innovators. And by prioritizing Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB), we lay the groundwork to multiply our capabilities.

To put it simply, we need the contributions of everyone in order to empower our team members, help our users change the world, and transform the industry.

GitLab's mission is to make it so that everyone can contribute. You can't reach everyone unless Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) is core to your company and how you work.

DIB has always been a core value of GitLab and reflected in the annual company goals: “Continue to build a diverse team of top talent that we retain and grow.” DIB helps us accelerate innovation, attract top talent, and deepen team member engagement.

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging has been a core value at GitLab since the organization began. Our vision in FY24 is a future where the Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging value empowers everyone to contribute.

When I started at GitLab a little over a year ago, I was encouraged by what existed around Diversity Inclusion and Belonging. We had executive leadership backing our DIB initiatives, a number of Team Member Resource Groups (TMRGs) to support our workforce and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) focused on DIB representation. We also had areas where we could make a bigger difference: working with our leaders on embedding DIB into their divisions in meaningful ways that reflect their accountability to DIB as a value. Reimagining our TMRGs to reflect our global workforce and utilizing them to both engage and retain our team members. We also looked to refocus our efforts on ensuring our workforce is representative of the community and customers we serve at every level of the organization.

People make our product go; more specifically, unique people make our product go. And we know that because we've seen it work. We've seen how individual contributors change the game, dream up new product features, and breathe life into our culture.

Giving everyone the power to contribute starts with making our group of team members as representative of everyone as possible. It starts with putting our words into action, and we're proud of who we've become and the team we've put together.

Building a diverse and inclusive workplace is one of our top priorities, and it requires effort and a dedicated effort across the company.  We're committed to that investment, and will continue to improve  year over year.

At GitLab we are building an inclusive workplace by:

Beating our aspirational representation goal of 30% senior women in leadership by 7%
Increasing our underrepresented group representation across all job grades, exceeding our CTO and CEO aspirational quarterly goals focused on URG management and senior leadership
Establishing 3 new Team Member Resource Groups (TMRGs) focused on inclusion and belonging: GitLab Caregivers, Global Voices, and Black@GitLab

For FY23 (February 2022 to January 2023), our goal was to continue building a diverse team of top talent that we retain and grow. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made in doing that.

Here are a few of the stats that indicate our current representation:

31% of our workforce is women
35% of our management staff are women
37% of global senior leadership at GitLab are women
17% of our workforce is comprised of URGs
13% of our management team is comprised of URGs
13% of our senior leadership group is comprised of URGs
0.68% of GitLab's management team identifies as non-binary
6.6 percentage point decrease in regrettable underrepresented group (URG) attrition relative to a year ago.

You can see all of our team member representation data here.

At GitLab, we’re building a culture where everyone belongs and everyone can contribute. Our ability to do that rests upon listening and using every available resource to take action that results in change. When we do that, we create a workplace where everyone feels valued, a place where team members know they’ll be accepted and want to come to work.

A big part of GitLab's engagement strategy involves collaboration across many teams and functions. Our centralized People Communications & Engagement team coordinates team member communications, engagement resources, team member listening, and maintaining leadership resources that allow managers at GitLab to lead engaged teams.

GitLab runs an annual engagement survey and supplements that annual survey with at least one additional survey that broadly gauges team member sentiment. For the past three years, we've taken part in the Great Place to Work survey to understand team member perceptions. In FY23, we achieved an 82% participation rate and an overall ‘favorable' engagement score of 81%. We scored 8% higher than our New Tech peer group, which consists of ~150 fast growing and disruptive tech companies with over 1,000 total team members each. These results show that GitLab is an industry leader from an engagement perspective.

Many of the elements that have enhanced our DIB culture have come from the insights of our team members, the expansion of our DIB staff, and the never-ending question: what can we do better? Here are a few components of GitLab's DIB value that we've put into action.

DIB helps us accelerate innovation, attract top talent, and deepen team member engagement. And we can’t make everyone a contributor if we aren’t connecting with every community. So it goes to say that DIB is an integral part of our future—not only as a people-centric practice but as a key contributor to our success in the DevSecOps industry.

So what does success look like? Of course, it includes continued improvement of our underrepresented group representation data, at the senior levels of the organization, beyond the current marks. It includes continuing to create new ways to make every team member feel comfortable to participate, empowered to excel, and open to express their authentic selves.

As we work toward achieving our mission of making it so that everyone can contribute, DIB will remain a key focus for GitLab. Over the last year we faced a number of external headwinds that impacted our global workforce in different ways. We dealt with an economic downturn, the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting war, the uncertainty of COVID, the uncertainty of political movements across the globe, and the reality that these factors weigh heavily on our team members.

With DIB as one of our core values, we’ve been able to make progress in spite of these challenges and are more committed than ever to ensuring GitLab creates a workplace and community where everyone can contribute and everyone is welcome.

GitLab Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Everyone means

Inclusion has always been at the heart of GitLab.

From our CEO

GitLab's mission is to make it so that everyone can contribute. You can't reach everyone unless Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) is core to your company and how you work.

GitLab's DIB vision

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging has been a core value at GitLab since the organization began. Our vision in FY24 is a future where the Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging value empowers everyone to contribute.

The people who make us proud

Building a workplace where everyone belongs

The future of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Our steadfast commitment to DIB

Take GitLab for a spin

GitLab Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Everyone means

Inclusion has always been at the heart of GitLab.

From our CEO

GitLab's mission is to make it so that everyone can contribute. You can't reach everyone unless Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) is core to your company and how you work.

GitLab's DIB vision

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging has been a core value at GitLab since the organization began. Our vision in FY24 is a future where the Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging value empowers everyone to contribute.

The people who make us proud

Building a workplace where everyone belongs

Team Member Resource Groups (TMRGs)

Sponsorships

Leadership Council

The future of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Our steadfast commitment to DIB

Take GitLab for a spin