The following incentives are available for GitLab team-members. Also see our separate page on benefits available to GitLab team-members.
IACV Target Dinner Evangelism Reward
Since reaching our IACV targets is a team effort that integrates everything from making a great product to providing top notch customer support and everything in between, we reward all GitLab team-members (not just the Sales team) for every month that we reach our IACV Targets. The incentive is 100 USD to each team member for the purpose of evangelizing the GitLab story. You may use the incentive at a restaurant of your choice. Enjoy!
Every Monday the Sr. Manager of Sales Operations posts the progress of Incremental Annual Contract Value (IACV) bookings against plan in the wins channel.
At the end of each month, Sr. Manager of Sales Operations announces on the Company call the preliminary achievement of Incremental Annual Contract Value (IACV) as a percentage of plan and whether or not the sales evangelism dinner has been earned. Sales Ops also announces the next month's target for IACV, along with QTD forecast.
To claim the incentive, please submit your receipt through Expensify or include on your contractor invoice as a reimbursable expense.
Indicate on your receipt and in the comment section in Expensify "GitLab evangelism" and the names of the other participants.
You should spend the incentive on eating out, and can be reimbursed up to the maximum of 100 USD.
Use the incentive in the month following the announcement. So for example, if we reach our target in March, use your incentive in April.
If you cannot, or decide not to, use the incentive in the expected month, you can carry it over to the next month by notifying Accounts Payable before the 22nd of the month (release day!). You can only carry over one month in this way.
Discretionary Bonuses
Discretionary Bonuses per Employee
The number of discretionary bonuses given divided by the total number of team members, in a given period as defined. The discretionary bonuses per employee target is > 0.1.
Discretionary bonuses are measured in BambooHR, as are the number of team members, in a given period as defined.
Discretionary Bonuses for Individuals
Every now and then, individual GitLab team-members really shine as they live our values. We especially like to celebrate the special moments that exemplify the behavior we want to see in all GitLab team-members.
We recognize this through the #thanks channel, and sometimes also through a discretionary bonus.
We are fixing this amount at $1,000 thoughtfully and purposefully. We want the focus to be on the value and the behavior, not on the perceived monetary impact to GitLab. This is about recognition.
A general guideline is that 1 in 10 employees might receive a discretionary bonus each month. This can vary greatly as we don't give out bonuses just to hit a quota, nor would we hold one back because a certain number had already been awarded.
There is no limit to the frequency with which someone can receive a bonus. If someone deserves a bonus a day after being nominated for one we should do a second one.
Process for Recommending a Team Member for a Bonus in BambooHR
Any GitLab team-member
Write a few sentences describing how the GitLab team-member has demonstrated a specific GitLab value in their work.
Email or Slack that sentence to the GitLab team-member's manager, suggesting a discretionary bonus, and set-up a 15 minute Zoom meeting to discuss your proposal.
Remember that the manager may or may not agree and has full discretion (with approval of their manager) on whether that person gets a bonus. Don't forget that you can also use the #thanks channel to recognize people, as well.
Manager Process
Login to BambooHR.
Select the team member you would like to give the discretionary bonus to.
In the top right hand corner, click Request a Change.
Select Bonus.
Enter in all applicable fields in the form, select Discretionary Bonus for the type, and then submit.
In the Bonus comments field in the request in BambooHR, include a 1-sentence justification that details how the GitLab team-member demonstrated one or more of our values in this specific instance.
Submit the bonus request to your manager for approval.
Once approved, you must copy and paste the justification into the GitLab Company Call agenda and recognize the GitLab team-member on the company call. Remember, a discretionary bonus is for recognition so make sure to take this final step. The Company Call agenda is the public record of how people are living up to the GitLab values every day.
Approval Process:
The Manager's Manager receives an alert from BambooHR and can approve or deny.
The request is then sent to the People Ops Admins for approval by the HRBP of the group and to confirm that there is justification comment in the Bamboo record.
Once approved, the request is sent to the People Ops Analyst to process the bonus in the applicable payroll and notify the manager via email.
Approve the request within BambooHR and ensure the date and amount transferred properly to the BambooHR profile.
Email template: Your request for {team member}'s bonus has been approved! Please notify {team member} {If the team member is a contractor: to add an additional {amount} {currency} to their next invoice} and announce on the company call outlining the reasons for the bonus. If you have any questions, please let the Compensation team know.
Notify Payroll of the bonus by updating the proper payroll google sheet based on entity.
United States: "Payroll Changes", Contractors: "Non-US contractor bonus changes", Everyone else: "Monthly payroll changes for non-US international team members".
Per the email from People Ops Analyst, the manager will notify the team member of the bonus and announce on the company call. The manager announces the “who” and “why” of the bonus. The team agenda item should include the 1-sentence justification of the bonus.
Discretionary Bonuses for Working Groups
Sometimes a working group strongly displays GitLab Values over a period, project or situation. For this case, we have group discretionary bonuses.
As with individuals, we recognize those who make up that group through the #thanks channel and sometimes through a group discretionary bonus.
Process for Recommending a Working Group for a Bonus in BambooHR
Any GitLab team-member
Write a 1 sentence description of how the working group has demonstrated a specific GitLab value in their work.
Email or Slack that sentence to the managers of the individuals, suggesting a discretionary bonus, and set-up a 15 minute Zoom meeting with all the managers to discuss your proposal.
Remember that the manager(s) may or may not agree and they have full discretion (with approval of their manager) on whether their reports get a bonus. Don't forget that you can also use the #thanks channel to recognize people, as well.
Manager Process
Login to BambooHR.
For each team member, select the team members you would like to give the discretionary bonus to and do the following:
In the top right hand corner, click Request a Change.
Select Discretionary Bonus.
Enter in all applicable fields in the form, and then submit.
In the Comments to Approvers field in the request in BambooHR, include a 1-sentence justification that details how the team demonstrated one or more of our values in this specific instance.
Submit the bonus requests to your manager for approval.
Once approved, you must copy and paste the 1-sentence justification into the GitLab Company Call agenda and recognize the members who make up the team on the company call. Remember, a discretionary bonus is for recognition so make sure to take this final step. The Company Call agenda is the public record of how people are living up to the GitLab values every day.
Approval Process:
The Manager's Manager receives an alert from BambooHR and can approve or deny.
The request is then sent to the People Ops Admins for final approval and to confirm that there is a 1-sentence justification comment in the Bamboo record.
Once approved, the request is sent to the People Ops Analyst to process the bonus in the applicable payroll and notify the manager via email.
Notify Payroll of the bonus.
Per the email from People Ops Analysts, the manager will notify the team member of the bonus and the nomintaor will announce it on the company call. The nominator announces the “who” and “why” of the bonus. The team agenda item should include the 1-sentence justification of the bonus.
Each quarter People Ops Analysts will request managers to nominate a team member who is not on their own team to receive the T2M award. All team members can submit nominations, but just ping your manager in the issue to upvote.
The request will be sent on the 5th of month and nominations will close at the end of the day (EST) on the 10th. The prize will be awarded on the 15th or the following business day (if on a weekend). The People Ops Analyst will tally the nominations. The decision will be finalized by a review committee made up of the Chief People Officer, CEO, CTO and the VP of Product. The executive team member of the winner will confirm the award to ensure there are no pending performance issues.
Nominations should focus on efforts and explain specific situations that represent any of our values.
The T2M award will be announced on the Company Call to recognize the team member and posted on the culture page.
The award will be an item from our GitLab Store.
Takeaway from this reward program: reward the cross-functional collaboration behavior that we want to encourage.
GitLab Anniversaries
At 10:00 UTC on Thursday of every week, PeopleOps Bot slack bot will send a shout out on the #company-announcements channel congratulating all team members who celebrates a hire date anniversary that week.
Real Examples of Real Team Members Who Received Bonuses for Doing Great Things
This document presents the case for awarding a UX team member an incentive. The UX team member is reliable, fair and respectful, consistently acting in the best interest of the company as well as the team.
Collaboration: The UX team member took on the extra duties of UX Lead and handled the interim duties seamlessly. She responded kindly to the community feedback on sidebar issue in 9.0 well. She personally helped the VP of Engineering finish the merit review process for the UX team.
The UX team member has greatly helped the UX Lead transition to her new role by assisting with meetings, transferring knowledge openly, and being available for questions whenever necessary.
Results and Efficiency: The UX team member quickly delivered screenshots for a partnership in a day or two. She did a great job with the UX team updates, providing clear and visual screenshots of what the team was working on. She helped the team deliver the UX improvements shown in those updates.
A Support team member received a bonus for:
Results & boring solutions: He managed to swap the database from PG9.2 to PG9.6 without significant downtime. It was even boring.
Sharing: His issues, guidelines, monitoring, younameit are exemplary. He keeps raising the bar and leaving a written trace to follow when he is not around.
Efficiency: He always hits the nail and does the right thing, has a great sense of priorities and can jump into production to solve a right now pain in a heartbeat.
Quirkiness: What to say? Do you want someone washing grapes or painting a wall in a call, just invite him.
A Marketing team member received a bonus for:
Transparency: The marketing team member always works in the open. In our 1:1s she is very clear on her focus and aligns priorities with team priorities. Every thing she is working on links to an issue.
Efficiency: The marketing team member is an excellent example of someone who can get multiple things done in a short amount of time. She can efficiently manage many high quality projects without getting bogged down in the details.
Collaboration: The marketing team member worked with the VP of Scaling to update the general handbook to make it prettier. This shows she collaborates well outside of her functional group. The marketing team member has also been helping a colleague with content management.
Directness: The marketing team member gives excellent review feedback on blog posts. She is very direct and not afraid of perfection.
A Product team member received a bonus for:
Collaboration: Works together well with everyone and actively recruits opinions across the organization.
Results: Shipping consistent and meaningful improvements in issues, board, etc.
Efficiency: Actively avoids meetings and encourages async work.
Iteration: Reduces everything to its very minimal iteration, not paying with quality or usability, yet moving forward with each release.
Referral Bonuses
Chances are that if you work at GitLab, you have great friends and peers who would also be fantastic additions to our Team and who may be interested in one of the current Job Openings. To help us grow the team with exceptional people, we have referral bonuses that work as follows:
We want to encourage and support diversity and frugality on our team and in our hiring practices, so we will offer the following referral bonuses once the new team member has been with the company for 3 months.
Any great candidate that is referred and hired will earn a GitLab employee a $1,000 bonus once the new team member has been with the company for 3 months.
We will offer a $1500 referral bonus for hires from a Location factor less than 0.7.
We will offer a $2000 referral bonus for hires to teams with "underrepresented groups". An underrepresented group describes a subset of a population that holds a smaller percentage within a significant subgroup than the subset holds in the general population. The accepted definition of “underrepresented minorities” from the National Science Foundation and other major research institutions focuses on racial and ethnic groups whose representation in a profession is significantly below their representation in the general population. For the US, this includes African American/black, Hispanic American/Latino, and Native American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. While any non-majority group in the workplace is a “minority”, they are not considered to be “underrepresented” unless their race/ethnic representation in the general population is higher than their representation in the profession. People Ops Analysts will confirm the bonus amount when it is entered into BambooHR.
If the new hire is from an underrepresented group as defined above, the higher amount will be paid to the team member for the referral.
Exceptions: no bonuses for hiring people who report to you, and no bonus for the executive team (VP and above).
Job of the Week: Each week, the recruiting team will highlight a "Job of the Week" on the company call and ask for our Team of GitLab team-members to reach out to their networks and refer people they know who would be a great fit, skillset-wise and culturally.
Go to the employee who referred the new team member in BambooHR
Under the "Jobs" tab
Under the "Bonus" table, click "Add Bonus"
The bonus date is 3 months from the new team member's start date
Enter the bonus amount, dependent on above
Enter the bonus type to be a Referral Bonus
Enter a note stating that this is a future bonus (this will be changed once the bonus has been paid)
Notification to Process a Bonus
BambooHR will send an email to People Operations Analysts on the date that the referral bonus should be paid for processing through the applicable payroll system.
Notify Payroll of the bonus by updating the proper payroll google sheet based on entity.
United States: "Payroll Changes", Contractors: "Non-US contractor bonus changes", Everyone else: "Monthly payroll changes for non-US international team members".
Once the bonus has been processed, change the note in BambooHR from "future" to "paid".
Reply all to the email confirming the bonus has been processed in BambooHR and payroll.
Visiting grant
GitLab is an all-remote company with GitLab team-members all over the world (see the map on our Team page. If you want to visit other team members to get to know them, GitLab will assist with travel expenses( flights, trains, and ground transportation to and from airport) for a total up to $150 per team member for that you visit and work with. You don't need to work on the same project or team, either, so long as you discuss work for at least part of the time you're meeting. Before booking any travel using the travel grant budget please discuss your proposed travel with your manager. We encourage team members to utilize the travel grant, however in some cases i.e. a team member has performance issues related to their role the visiting grant would not be applicable.
Note that lodging, meals, and local travel while visiting are not typically covered for anyone as that wouldn't really be fair to those being visited. It may be acceptable to cover a meal, however, if the meeting is pre-announced to other people in the region to encourage as many of them to attend as possible and there are four or more GitLab team-members attending.
There are many regular meet-ups of GitLab team-members in many cities. We have a shared calendar to view the schedule. Subscribe to it, make use of the visiting grant, and join meet-ups near you (or far away!).
To claim the grant, include a line item on your expense report or invoice along with the receipt of your flights, trains, and/or transportation to and from the airport with a list of the team members you visited. The expense report may be submitted during the first month of travel or up to 3 months after your trip has concluded. That said, if it's more frugal to book and expense your travel further in advance, please do so.
GitLab Gold
Every GitLab employee can request the Gold tier for GitLab.com. In case an employee has separate private and work accounts on GitLab.com, they can request it for both. This incentive does not apply to groups owned by GitLab employees (Group-level Gold features such as epics will not be available for Gold GitLab team-member personal accounts, for instance).
In order to request this benefit please open an issue in the internal services issue tracker. Make sure to adjust @username in the issue title.
