It is the lifelong process of managing learning, work, leisure and transitions in order to move toward a personally determined and evolving preferred future.
Team Member Owned
Manager Facilitated
GitLab Supported
70-20-10 Rule for Development
Additional Questions to Think About
Review the total rewards handbook for details on how to use the GitLab Growth and Development benefit for GitLab team members.
If your manager has coverage, you can spend a percentage of your time working (through an 'internship') with another team.
This could be for any reason: maybe you want to broaden your skills or maybe you've done that work before and find it interesting.
If your team has someone working part-time on it, it's on the manager of that team to ensure that the person has the support and training they need, so they don't get stuck. Maybe that's a buddy system, or maybe it's just encouragement to use existing Slack channels - whatever works for the individuals involved.
What percentage of time should be allocated? Well, 10% time and 20% time are reasonably common. As long as you and your manager have the capacity the decision is theirs and yours.
What about the team losing a person for X% of the time? How are they supposed to get work done? Each manager needs to manage the capacity of their team appropriately. If all of the team are 'at work' (no one is on PTO, or parental leave, or off sick), and the team still can't afford X% of one person's time - that team might be over capacity.
Can I join a team where I have no experience or skills in that area? That's up to the managers involved. It may be that the first step is to spend some time without producing anything in particular - in which case, it's possible that the Growth and Development Benefit may be a better fit (or it might not.)
How long does an internship of this nature last? This will vary from team to team, but typically 6 weeks to 3 months depending on the goals for your internship.
This sounds great but how do I initiate this process? First step is to discuss this with your manager at your next 1:1. Come prepared with your proposal highlighting what skills you want to learn/enhance and the amount of time you think you will need. Remember, this should be of benefit to you and GitLab. You and your manager will need to collaborate on how you both can make this happen which may also involve discussing it further with the manager of the team you may be looking to transfer to. All discussions will be done transparently with you. Be mindful though that the business needs may mean a move can't happen immediately.
How do I find a mentor? On the team page, you can see who is willing to be a mentor by looking at the associated expertise on their entry.
Does completing an internship guarantee me a role on the team? Completing an internship through this program does not guarantee an internal transfer. For example, there may not be enough allocated headcount in the time-frame in which you complete your internship.
If at the end of your internship, you are interested in transferring teams please follow the guidelines in Internal Department Transfers.
Please create a new issue in the Training project, choose the internship_for_learning template, and fill out the placeholders.
No internship for learning should be approved without both managers having a conversation and agreeing upong the percentage of time the team member will spending on the internship. Also, the team members manager may has discretion not to approve the internship for learning if there are team member performance issues.
Once you've agreed upon the internship goals, both managers should inform their respective groups' People Business Partner.
We recommend that, at any given time, each team is handling only one intern. This is to allow for an efficient and focused mentorship without impacting the capacity of the team. You can, of course, adjust this depending on the size of the team but please consider the impact of mentoring when scheduling internships.
During our Career Development workshops at Contribute, May 2019 we took team members through tips to creating a clear growth (aka development) plan. Below are the resources from that session:
There are various internal opportunities to expand a team member's exposure to multiple parts of the organization. These include:
Career development is a key factor in team member engagement and role satisfaction. As part of the FY'20 GitLab annual engagement survey results it was clear that team members want to have meaningful conversations with their managers on an annual basis or even more frequently. Starting in FY'22 we will be tracking career development conversations via BambooHR.
This process is just an acknowledgement by the team member that they have had career conversations. Aligned with the Performance/Potential matrix cadence, formal career conversations will ideally happen twice per year:
The bi-annual cadence is not required, but recommended. Some team members may prefer annual career conversations, other team members may prefer more informal check-ins quarterly. This is a personal decision that should be made between team member and manager. The minimal recommended cadence for career development conversations is annnually, the most frequency recommended cadence is quarterly.
Please note that while managers can facilitate career development conversations with team members and help guide growth plans by using our internal resources, managers cannot complete the acknowledgement process for team members. The team member is responsible for the acknowledgement in BambooHR.
Starting FY'22 (exact date is TBD) team members will receive a notice via BambooHR to acknowledge that a career conversation has occurred. By signing the acknowledgement you are confirming that you have indeed had a career development conversation during the specified time period (Q2 or Q4 respectively).
We have started this process at GitLab by defining Junior, Senior and Staff advancement levels. Career Mapping helps GitLab team-members to understand and develop the skills they need to achieve their goals, giving them clear criteria. Mapping helps managers and leaders internally develop the skills and knowledge they need to achieve future business goals. The key to this is to identify the key skills, knowledge, and abilities needed to master each level. Another essential tool is a career development plan, here are some examples:
Managers should discuss career development at least once a month at the 1:1 and then support their team members with creating a plan to help them achieve their career goals. If you would to know more about this please checkout the career mapping course video
As is highlighted in our Leadership section, GitLab team members should not feel pressure to climb the proverbial ladder. We recognize that not everyone wants to advance or move to a new level, and that is supported. Developing one's skills and promotion at the company are not mutually exclusive.
It is perfectly acceptable to seek out learning and development opportunities — to sharpen one's understanding of a coding language to better understand a function, etc. — yet not strive for promotion beyond your current role. Some team members are happier and more productive without managing a team, for example.
As detailed in GitLab's Definition of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging , we recognize that unique characteristics and experiences form how we as individuals approach challenges and solve problems. They also shape how we view success in our individual careers and lives. Not everyone views promotion as a measure of success, and team members will not be thought less of or penalized for holding this view.
As part of GitLab's Transparency value, team members are encouraged to be open and honest with their manager. You are encouraged to learn and develop your skills without pressure to in turn seek promotion. If you feel you are not being supported in this way, please visit the Need Help? portion of the People Group Handbook.
Managers should support their direct reports with career and professional development goals. Managers can help direct reports by implementing the following into their 1-1, team meetings, and async communications.
Effective FY21, each member of the E-Group will have a performance conversation with their direct manager, the CEO, at the beginning of the new fiscal year. These conversations will assess alignment to each of our credit values, performance and personal development.
The E-Group will follow a similar process to our GitLab team member process with the additional requirement of a self review.
Performance Factors
Compensation Reviews
When conducting compensation reviews for the E-Group, GitLab will review two items:
Epics are a great way to transparently and efficiently track your work and map learning back to your results.
Here are some ways you can use Epics when organizing your career development work. Here are two examples from the Learning and Development team: Example 1, Example 2
Below is a short video from the L&D team reviewing how and why you might choose to use epics for career development tracking:
