There are a number of tools we use to plot and manage career development:
There is no rule that guides the amount of progress that should be made in a given time-period in a strict fashion. We should however strive to set targets to progress to to the next level on at least a quarterly basis.
Actions to make changes to a GitLab team-member's level can be taken during the 360 Feedback, and the data collected throughout this workflow should be useful at that time.
You must prepare to provide mentoring and guidance on focus areas for the quarter, especially in terms of how to improve and evolve in said areas. Do not hesitate to ask for help if you feel you need guidance to assess strategies for mentorship, and feel free to reach out to the other GitLab team-members who can provide said guidance. Be clear and concise in setting expectations, trying to align them with work that will take place during the quarter.
Think about the areas that are important to you and commmit to working on them over the quarter. Keep an open mind to receive feedback and guidance on these areas, and be an active participant in the process.
Career development requires that all parties involved be committed to the process and are active participants.
One implicit area to focus on explicitly is communication. Regardless of your role, whether tehnical or manager, you must be a good communicator, and thus, it is important to always improve our communication skills.
While there is no time-boxing for level progress, the company does operate on a specific cycle to make changes to a GitLab team-members level during the 360 Feedback.
Cross reference for Interning for Learning
There is a reasonable amount of interest to intern with Infrastructure so we wanted to put a brief landing section in the handbook. If you are interested in interning with Infrastructure, we would ask that you talk to your current manager and create an issue per the mentioned process. This can help us track who is helping on what and what they would like to learn. Mention the Reliability Engineering team members and managers to help us know you are interested. One note, in some cases, you may need to submit access-requests to get access to certain systems to help with work.
Don't know what to learn? Talk with us! We have a broad set of technical skills listed in the job description for SRE if you are looking for ideas on what to learn. Set up a coffee chat with a team member or one of the managers. If you're interested in learning more about SREs in general, you may wish to read Alice Goldfuss's blog post, "How to Get Into SRE." This blog post is an overview of all sorts of SRE related things, some of which may not be in use here at GitLab. However, it can be a valuable tool to learn more about SREs in general, and it links to many resources that you can use to learn more about a variety of SRE related topics.
Specific ways to work in the internship:
