The all-remote marketing team is responsible for the creation, curation, and continued iteration of GitLab's guide to all-remote, a deep library of guides that covers every facet of how GitLab functions as a remote team.
This page is the single source of truth for all-remote positioning, evangelism, approvals, vision, and strategy.
The mission of GitLab’s All-Remote Marketing team is to champion the company’s all-remote culture and initiatives.
This involves close collaboration with corporate marketing (PR, corporate events), people group (employment branding) and Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging .
The All-Remote Flywheel is focused on continually evolving and refining GitLab's all-remote environment (e.g. tooling, approach to meetings, collaboration, and communication, total rewards/compensation) in order to drive stronger brand awareness, marketing potential, and thought leadership. If our organizational design principles continue to stay ahead of the curve, we're able to lead marketing conversations on all-remote and the future of work. This also drives happier, more efficient team members, and impacts elements such as time-to-hire and team member retention.
Strong all-remote marketing may bolster industry trust in the GitLab brand and product due to the halo effect. E.g., If The Remote Playbook inspires a firm's remote transition blueprint, said firm is likely to show favoritism to GitLab's product offerings and services.
GitLab is an influencer and educator in remote work. It serves the community by creating valuable content that furthers the proliferation and ubiquity of remote-first and all-remote organizations, while enhancing the operations of colocated and hybid-remote companies by sharing implementable remote-first practices.
We believe that the remote principles relied on by GitLab are applicable even to colocated companies, and educating on pillars such as asynchronous workflows and informal communication can benefit all organizations.
Anyone can be a remote evangelist! Help yourself to these materials for your presentations, blogs, and consultations.
We're often asked to share how GitLab thrives as an all-remote team. Here are the foundational resources you can share to start the conversation:
In scenarios where you need a quick link to vocalize, tweet, email, or otherwise share, we have established a memorable redirect: http://allremote.info/ ("All Remote Dot Info")
GitLab's overview video on its all-remote culture can be viewed here.
You may be asked to give a presentation on how GitLab works as an all-remote team, including requests that are specific to your role (sales, engineering, finance, people, etc.).
In these instances, you're welcome to use this Google Slides presentation, Thriving as a Remote Team: A foundational toolkit. (This link is only viewable by GitLab team members.) A suggested script following this presentation is available for your use.
For a video of GitLab's Head of Remote walking through this presentation to a group of founders, click here. This presentation will serve as a guide to narrating the slides and connecting GitLab's approach to remote with the current reality of your audience.
Usage guidelines:
For a glimpse at how GitLab's all-remote team speaks about remote through presentations, watch the embedded video above or visit the GitLab Unfiltered (YouTube) links below. These presentations were shared at GitLab Connect EMEA in March 2021.
GitLab is unique in that every single team member is remote. All-remote is the common thread that we all share, regardless of what department we serve. This means that each GitLab team member is uniquely equipped to share best practices with other leaders and companies.
The requests may be varied, from small firms looking to unwind their office strategy and go all-remote, to multi-nationals which are looking to implement remote-first best practices to account for more of their team working outside of the office (or in different offices).
It is useful to empathize with those you speak with. GitLab is a very advanced remote work environment, making it all the more important for team members to understand alternative baselines and speak to other realities, all while forecasting what's possible if an organization invests in remote-first principles today.
Below are the most common questions asked by suddenly or newly-remote companies, linked to relevant handbook pages that you can study prior to presenting. These shed light on their challenges, and will help you proactively speak to common needs, misconceptions, and struggles.
Regardless of the nuance in the request, here are the foundational areas that should be covered. Be sure to describe how GitLab implements these tactics using low-context communication, leaning on examples and detail such that a non-GitLab company can envision how such a tactic could be useful in their own organization.
In case you as a subject matter expert are invited to write an Unfiltered blog post or create other written content, please feel free to make a copy of the "Going remote in __" blog post template and tailor based on your audience.
If you're looking for examples of the GitLab team describing our experience with remote work, have a listen at the podcasts below.
Mention in panels and consultations that GitLab's expertise in managing a remote team can be digested as a free course on Coursera.
The course, titled "How to Manage a Remote Team," provides a holistic, in-depth analysis of remote team structures, phases of adaptation, and best practices for managers, leaders, and human resources professionals. It is being offered free of charge, with an optional paid certificate available.
Anyone in the world (yes, this includes those who are not employed by GitLab) may take the GitLab All-Remote Certification to improve their remote fluency.
This is the issue to get everything you need in order to evangelize remote work on your social media accounts. It includes:
Learn more in GitLab's Handbook-First Documentation guide about how GitLab (the company) uses GitLab (the product) to build and maintain its handbook, as well as tools and tips for other companies who wish to start their own.
GitLab's growing library of remote guides is designed to be bolstered by new pages. Below is an overview of the process for adding a new guide.
Proposal: [NEW ALL-REMOTE GUIDE] as the subjectmktg-status::triage@dmurph to evaluate and provide feedbackSee below for an A/B comparison of how an inward-facing GitLab handbook page is written vs. an external-facing all-remote guide is written.
GitLab's Brand and Digital Design team are building out images and illustrations to visualize all-remote.
The Google Drive repository is here, which is home to all-remote photography, presentation decks, animations, banners, illustrations, iconography, e-books, social graphics, and more. (Note: The Google Drive folder is private to those within the GitLab organization.)
Any GitLab team member is welcome to offer 1:1 advice or consultations on remote work. If you're asked to give a broader presentation or webinar to a group, private or public, please create a new issue in Corporate Marketing per the instructions in How To Contribute with details of the request.
An example of these details in an issue can be found here.
Please be sure to wait for approval before you confirm, if possible. Review this guidance on speaking about GitLab before your engagement, and ask the Corporate Communications team if you have questions. (This document is only viewable by GitLab team members.)
Once you have done this, please tag @jessicareeder in a comment with a note that includes Seeking Approval.
The all-remote team will be available to help direct if you feel unprepared, or pair the creator of the issue with someone else on the GitLab team if there's opportunity to add another layer of expertise (e.g. a DevOps expert, an HR expert, a Finance expert) depending on the company that's requesting.
GitLab's Remote Work Report sheds light on the current reality of remote work during a critical time in its global adoption. As leaders and team members grapple with going remote, this report provides insights on what matters to those who adopt this way of working, charting a path for building culture around autonomy and flexibility.
For example, 86% of respondents believe remote work is the future and 62% of respondents said that they would consider leaving a co-located company for a remote role. Contrary to popular belief, we found that most remote workers aren't digital nomads, and 52% are actually likely to travel less than their office working counterparts.
GitLab is a very transparent company. As such, our AMAs, webinars, and other conversations with team members and other companies are uploaded to a dedicated Remote Work playlist on the GitLab Unfiltered YouTube channel.
Universal Remote is GitLab's weekly web show focused on helping teams transition to a fully remote world. The running playlist of episodes can be found on GitLab's YouTube channel.
Culture categoryremote-workThis parent epic houses all corporate marketing campaigns, projects, child epics, and issues related to all-remote initiatives.
The audience we aim to reach with our all-remote initiatives is both internal and external to GitLab. It closely aligns with our employment branding audience, and expands to cover key segments in the investor and business communities.
Managing your team
Communication
Iteration
Transparency
As detailed in GitLab’s public CMO OKRs, GitLab’s All-Remote Marketing team seeks to elevate the profile of GitLab in the media and investor circles, positioning it as a pioneer of remote work. It will spread the story of GitLab’s global remote employees, remote work processes, transparent culture and the movement to remote work that GitLab has created. It also seeks to position GitLab as an innovator in the eyes of investors, a vital part of GitLab’s public ambition to become a public company.
A growing cross-section of audiences — DevOps and remote — is enabling GitLab to nurture interactions which begin on the topic of remote work. While not every individual who engages with GitLab's remote leadership materials will be interested in learning more about project management, collaboration, and/or software development through GitLab (the product), the all-remote team is iterating on a nurture strategy to properly serve those who are.
The primary nurture tool is PathFactory, which is owned by colleagues within Marketing Operations and which we use to create interactive content experiences that provide value for our audience.
An example of how this looks can be seen with our Remote Playbook. From the All-Remote landing page, visitors can navigate to the Remote Playbook. It's presented in PathFactory along with other useful resources that may be relevant to the viewer.
As of February 2022, our secondary nurture tool is Marketo. Visitors are also encouraged to sign up for emails to receive more remote-work best practices. They then receive a series of emails with useful information over the course of several weeks. When the email series concludes, visitors have an opportunity to sign up for a product trial.
If you'd like to share one of our PathFactory tracks with your audience, we have two all-purpose options available:
Whenever a GitLab team member conducts a talk, session, or presentation on remote work, we can direct audiences to either the main track or a cloned one (for bigger events). This allows us to understand what our audiences are engaging with, and connect our leads to the main funnel.
The DRI (directly responsible individual) for all-remote nurture strategy is the All-Remote Campaign Manager.
Since implementing this strategy in 2020, we have:
We consider this to be a mature strategy as of FY23. Future iterations may include:
At times, our remote team members speak with GitLab prospects on joint media panels, interviews, webinars, etc. focused on the topic of remote work. If appropriate, the GitLab team member with the contact should consider introducing the prospect to the GitLab sales member. In order to make this connection to the GitLab seller (if it is not known to the All-Remote team member), the All-Remote team member should open an issue in the Field Marketing project and tag the correct regional Field Marketing leader.
Field Marketing will look up account ownership in SFDC (Salesforce.com) and make the connection between the GitLab seller and the All-Remote team member so they can establish next steps in connecting to the prospect. The All-Remote team member should also feel comfortable asking about account ownership in the #fieldmarketing or #sales Slack channels before opening an issue.
The team's primary home for publishing informational guides and content is the all-remote section of GitLab's handbook. This will be the preeminent home to all-remote content, positioned for consumption by media, investors, prospective customers and candidates.
GitLab is a very transparent company. As such, our remote-centric AMAs, webinars, and other conversations with team members and other companies are uploaded to a dedicated Remote Work playlist on the GitLab Unfiltered YouTube channel.
GitLab is experimenting with new mediums to share its all-remote messaging. The Universal Remote podcast is a foray into this space. (For those who prefer visuals, visit the Universal Remote YouTube playlist.)
All-remote events should elevate GitLab as a thought leader in the remote work space, create new partnerships, generate leads and generate media interest/coverage. We will consider physical events, virtual events and events that combine an in-person presence with a livestream option.
We believe that all-remote is for everyone, and that almost every company is already a remote company. This includes all company sizes, from solo enterprises to multi-nationals, and geographies. Our event strategy should reflect this, offering education, insights, and actionable advice that applies to a wide spectrum of remote companies.
Events should create an inclusive atmosphere, welcoming and beneficial to those who are not receptive to remote or are working in a company where remote is not feasible/acceptable.
We gathered the workplace design community in June 2021 for the innaugural year of REMOTE by GitLab, a half-day symposium exploring the future of workplace design, strategy, and culture. Learn more about the event, and watch the recorded sessions.
This epic outlines the workstreams associated with bringing REMOTE by GitLab to life.
We incorporate all-remote content on GitLab’s social media accounts, and are investigating a visual approach to new mediums that are aligned with culture and lifestyle stories.
We are working with employment branding to surface relevant all-remote stories from GitLab team members to talent acquisition channels and review sites, such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn and Comparably.
There are also a number of videos on GitLab's YouTube channel that relate to working here:
To contribute an idea or proposal to further GitLab's all-remote mission:
Proposal: [IDEA] as the subjectmktg-status::triage and All-Remote Team@jessicareederDue Date feature and provide context for the deadline(s).To request guidance on a panel or speaking engagement:
#all-remote_action Slack channel (for remote engagements) or #marketing Slack channel (for broader/more general engagements)In 2021, the All-Remote team began pilot testing asynchronous work: every sixth week, the team blocks our calendars and declines all non-critical meetings. 1:1 meetings are carried out asynchronously via a process detailed in the All-Remote Async Guide.
The goal of this initiative was to create dedicated space for deep work and creative brainstorming. We encouraged other teams to join us or to find other ways to implement asynchronous workflows.
The pilot test was a big success, inspiring not just GitLab team members (see Sam Beckham's blog) but even other companies: for example, Twitter adopted Focus Weeks.
It’s day 4 of Focus Week for my team where we cleared all meetings (except for a few critical) and do all work async. The feedback so far is…incredible
— Leslie Berland (@leslieberland) September 23, 2021
Productivity🔥
Zoomed-out thinking 🔥
Prioritization 🔥
Focus (duh) 🔥
Collaboration 🔥
Sanity 🔥🙏
We will continue Async Weeks as a regular process for 2022. Our challenge is to reduce synchronous meetings, not to reschedule them. If your meeting with an All-Remote team member is declined during an async week, we encourage you to:
To read more about the results of the Async Weeks pilot, see this slide from the All-Remote Group Conversation (GitLab team members only).
For a good template to roll this out for your team, see the Growth team's planning and feedback issue. If you have additional feedback on this initiative, please let us know in the #all-remote_action Slack channel. We appreciate hearing your thoughts and ideas.
Our scheduled asynchronous weeks in 2022 are:
All-Remote Team label. By applying this label, your issue or merge request will appear in our workflows. Please also tag @dmurph, @jessicareeder, and @bchurch if input, action, or unblocking is requested.remote-work label.HOR Attention label and tag @dmurph.dmurphdmurphjessicareederjessicareederbbulabbulaReturn to the Corporate Marketing Handbook.