CEO

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Intro

This page details processes specific to Sid, CEO of GitLab. The page is intended to be helpful, feel free to deviate from it and update this page if you think it makes sense. If there are things that might seem pretentious or overbearing please raise them so we can remove or adapt them. Many items on this page are a guidelines for our Executive Assistants (EAs)

Favorite places

Flaws

Transparency and directness are part of our values and I want to live them by sharing the flaws I know I have. I'm fully responsible for improving the things below, listing them is no excuse. They are listed here for two reasons. The first one is so that people know it is not them but my fault. The second one is so I can improve, I hope that listing them lets people know I appreciate when people speak up about them.

  1. I look serious all the time, it is OK to say 'maybe you can smile more.'
  2. I love debating, it is OK to say 'please stop debating and start collaborating' or 'we should have a dialectic instead of a debate.'
  3. My English pronunciation, choice of words, and grammar are not great. I'm taking lessons but I welcome corrections when we're having a 1:1 conversation and/or when it might confuse people.
  4. When in a rush I will jump to conclusions, it is OK to ask 'can we take more time to discuss this.'
  5. I sometimes make reports feel like I'm scolding them, as in being angry for a perceived fault. It is OK to say, I don't mind you making that point but your tone doesn't make me feel respected.
  6. In my feedback I sometimes sound more like I'm giving an order instead of offering a suggestion, even when I mean the latter. It is OK to say 'that sounds like an order, I would have appreciated it more in the form of a suggestion.'
  7. I sometimes fail to distinguish which of the three levels of performance I'm talking about. It is OK to ask 'is that a commitment, an aspiration, or a possibility?'.
  8. I come across as negative since I focus on what can be improved. It is OK to ask 'what recent improvements are you happy about'?

If you speak up about them I should thank you for it, it is OK to say 'this was on your list of flaws so I kinda expected a thank you'. I'm sure I have more flaws that affect my professional life. Feel free to send a merge request to add them or communicate them anonymously to our Chief Culture Officer so she can send a merge request.

Not a flaw but something to know about me, I have strong opinions weakly held. Or as someone said, I come in hot but am open to new evidence.

Communication

Thanks to Mårten Mickos for the inspiration for this section. All good ideas are his, all bad ones are mine.

I am a visual person much more than auditory, and I am a top-down person much more than bottom-up. This means that I love written communication: issues, email, Google Docs, and chat. Feel free to send me as many emails and chat messages as you like, and about whatever topics you like.

If you have a great new idea or suggestion for me, I appreciate if you can convey it in a picture or in written words, because I learn by seeing more than I learn by hearing. I don't mind if you send me or point me to plans that are in draft mode or not ready. I am happy if I can give useful feedback early. It doesn’t have to be perfect and polished when presented to me.

In written communication, I appreciate the top-down approach. Set the subject header to something descriptive. Start the email by telling me what the email is about. Only then go into details. Don't mix separate topics in the same email, it is perfectly fine to send two emails at almost the same time. Try to have a concrete proposal so I can just reply with OK if that is possible.

I get many email on which I am only cc'd on, I would very much appreciate if you started emails intended specifically for me with "Sid," or some other salutation that makes it clear that the message is for me.

I have accounts on LinkedIn and Facebook. I will not send invites to team members on those networks since as the CEO I don't want to impose myself on anyone. But I would love to connect and I will happily accept your LinkedIn and Facebook friend request. You can also find me on Twitter as @sytses, I won't request to follow private twitter accounts, I assume I'm welcome to follow public twitter accounts, if not please let me know.

Please chat me the subject line of emails

I get a lot of email and I'm frequently not on top of it. I appreciate if you sent me a chat message if I need to respond to something. Please quote the subject line of the email in your chat message.

Meeting request requirements

For scheduling a video call or meeting with me or other execs, please see the EA handbook page

Sending email

If someone else in the company wants to have me send an email they should email me and cc my EA with:

  1. Instruction: "Please email this, please bcc: me on the outgoing email, forward any responses, and cc: me on an further emails."
  2. Recipient name
  3. Recipient email
  4. Email subject
  5. Email body

When receiving such an email my EA should stage a draft email to the recipient and a draft answer 'done'.

Hiring process

Sales meetings

Some general guidelines of what travel is appropriate, these guidelines are not fixed, feel free to ask for exceptions:

  1. Check my availability with the EA, reschedule with the EA, cancel with the EA, not me.
  2. I'll take any meeting via video conference or in our boardroom.
  3. I'll take a meeting in the Bay Area as long as it is not an SMB organization.
  4. I'll take a meeting outside the Bay Area but in the US with large or strategic organizations
  5. I'll take a meeting outside the US with strategic organizations.

Consider the following to increase efficiency:

Conferences

When at conferences I want to achieve results for the company and be efficient with my time. Please ask sales and/or marketing to set up meetings for me in advance. I don't mind doing booth duty, presenting, or any other way I can contribute. I do mind unscheduled time randomly wandering the hallways, I've found this to be ineffective.

Each year I want to attend the Open Source Leadership Summit (OSLS) organized by the Linux Foundation. Please ensure:

  1. We submit at least one talk.
  2. We book the on-site hotel on the day it opens up.
  3. We let the sales team know we would love to set up meetings and schedule these with my EA at least a week before the conference
  4. There is same timezone EA coverage during the conference.

House

If you are a GitLab team member you can use our house in Utrecht, the Netherlands for free with up to 5 guests. You can find more information on AirBnB. When it is not reserved on the AirBnB calendar you can reserve it, message Karen Sijbrandij in the #valley chat channel to do so. Our host Justus will check you in and out and will take care of the cleaning. Enjoy your stay!

Three levels of performance

There are three levels of performance:

  1. Commitment: what we promise to our stakeholders.
  2. Aspiration: want to get to 70% of this, these are our OKRs
  3. Possibility: what are intrigued by, inspired by, and what I talk about

I'm driven by what is possible, the aspiration, what can be. What is possible is more than what we are satisfied with or what we promised to our stakeholders. We can be above what we promised and below what is possible and still have done a good job, we can win without doing everything we aspired to do, or everything that is possible. It is unlikely that we win without doing what we promised. I have to be clear in distinguishing these level when I discuss a goal with my reports.

How do we keep shipping

One of the hardest things in business is not to slow down as the organization grows. An applicant asked how we manage to do this and these are the factors that come to mind:

  1. Don't ever slow down because it is very hard to recover from that. As soon as you stop shipping (for a big refactor, a security initiative, etc.) it is very hard to get back op to the old speed. The organization has accepted a slower rate and there are always enough reasons to go slower. You have to do the refactors and other things during the course of business, never slow down.
  2. Everyone in the business wants to do the right thing for the existing users and customers. The problem is that people already using you prefer stability in scope over change in scope. You need to optimize for the people not using your product yet because it is missing features.
  3. Separate execution from goal-setting. At GitLab, product decides what to ship and engineering is responsible for shipping it. Both report in to the CEO. If you have a head of product that also runs engineering, they are more likely to slow down because it will make engineers' tasks easier.
  4. Separate decision making from giving input. As detailed in our handbook we leave the decision to the person doing the work or their manager, this prevents the need for exponentially more coordination as we grow.
  5. We iterate so that we keep learning quickly and reduce the risk of decisions.
  6. We have functional teams that make us efficient but as mentioned in that text we promote organic cross-functional collaboration by giving people stable natural counterparts.

Evolution of the handbook

As we the company grows my use of the handbook is changing.

  1. Until 20 people I mostly did things myself.
  2. From then on I focussed on documenting things in the handbook.
  3. Then I asked people to document things.
  4. Now we documented to document it.
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