The Engineering Staff meeting happens weekly on alternating time slots: one that is afternoon / early evening in EMEA and morning in AMER, and another that is afternoon in AMER and morning in APAC.
Anyone at GitLab is welcome to attend and contribute to the agenda. The agenda is internal only, please search in Google Drive for 'Engineering Staff Meeting'. Typical attendees are
The quarterly Engineering offsite provides a forum for longer-form discussion among the CTO's direct reports. The goals from the first offsite were:
The Enginering offsite happens after the quarter's corresponding E-group offsite.
It runs Tuesday to Thursday inclusive in EMEA and AMER, which is Wednesday to Friday inclusive in APAC. It does not start on the Monday because that is reserved for the All-directs zoom call following the E-group offsite. The dates below are the dates in AMER timezones for previous and upcoming offsites.
We try to set the meeting times with the maximum overlap between the timezones of all the attendees. However, because we need to accommodate people in widely differing timezones, sometimes that isn't possible.
In that case, we put items in the best fit for a given person's timezone when they're most relevant. For instance, if a People Business Partner is in EMEA, the People items will happen at the start of the day's sessions.
The specific agenda for each offsite depends on active projects. Typical items include:
In general, we prefer to have more items than we can fit into the agenda, and then push some items out, rather than have too little.
The acting of Chief of Staff to the CTO role is an opportunity for anyone in Engineering with an interest in leadership and upper management to get exposure. The acting role is there to make the rest of CTO Staff (CTO's direct reports) more effective. For more information check out the job family for this acting position.
Similar to our CEO Shadow Program, this role is a temporary assignment which is rotated. The rotation time commitment is 3 months full time, with 5-10% time commitment on either end of the 3 month time period. The structure will look like:
Examples of "key meetings" are: OKR kickoff, OKR retrospective, key reviews, etc.
Besides this, it’s important to consider the following:
You are eligible to apply for this rotation if you have been with GitLab for at least 3 months. Candidates will be selected based on:
In keeping with our DIB value, we do extra work to make certain that members of underrepresented groups are aware of the opportunity, feel welcome to apply, and have equal opportunity to serve a term.
If you’re interested in the rotation for acting Chief of Staff to the CTO you can register via this Application form. Responses will be collected by the People Business Partner and CTO. Once the window for application closes the CTO, CTO Staff and People Business Partner will calibrate on selecting a candidate to start the rotation.
The registration form opens the second week of each quarter of the fiscal year and remains open for 3 weeks (I.E. The registration form for FY'23 Q1 applicants will open the second week of Q4 FY'22 - November 2021). Candidates will be selected by CTO Staff in the second month of the quarter, so that they have enough time to ensure backup for their role.
The selection process involves coffee chats with the CTO and a VP of one of the Engineering departments.
Candidates who are not selected for the upcoming rotation, but are eligible, will be given priority if they apply to the next quarter’s rotation.
| Quarter | Acting CoS |
|---|---|
| FY23 Q1 | Sean McGivern |
| FY23 Q2 | Matt Nohr |
