Career development is the lifelong process of managing learning, work, leisure and transitions to move toward a personally determined and evolving preferred future.
Watch and listen below to this 18 minute career development discussion with Eric Johnson, CTO at GitLab
Watch this live speaker series where we talk to Leah Weiss of Skylyte about the connection between wellbeing, purpose, and our career growth.
Review the responsibilities of career development broken down by team member, manager, and the company:
| Role | Responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Team Member Owned | <ol><li>Take charge of your own development and career</li><li>Close the skill gap for current and future positions</li><li>Seize development and stretch opportunities</li><li>Remember there are no promises or guarantees of a promotion</li></ol> |
| Manager Facilitated | <ol><li>Take time with team members to discuss their career aspirations</li><li>Listen and provide feedback, ideas and contacts</li><li>Make choices to support their development</li></ol> |
| GitLab Supported | <ol><li>Communicate future direction and skills requirements</li><li>Provide information and tools when applicable</li><li>Communicate internal opportunities</li></ol> |
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.
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.
Career development involves the process of choosing a career and building a career path that will accelerate professional growth. 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.
Team member examples of career development:
Career mobility involves both lateral (promotions) and horizontal (transfers) movement along a career path. This mobility most often involves applying actions taken and skills developed as leverage for a new role. Career mobility requires action and reflection after the learning is complete to demonstrate gained skills and transfer them to a new role or responsibility set.
We use the career mobility issue template to guide team members when they transfer or are promoted to a new role within the organization.
Team member examples of career mobility:
Review the total rewards handbook for details on how to use the GitLab Growth and Development benefit for GitLab team members.
Some external resources that might be qualified for expenseing under this benefit include:
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:
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 upon the percentage of time the team member will be spending on the internship. Also, the team member's manager 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.
In August 2021 we held a Career Development Skill of the Month. All items are linked in the FY22 Skill of the Month GitLab Learn Channel. All of the Async AMA Issues can be found in the Career Development Interviews 2021 Epic. More will be added to this section as we go through the weeks of the month.
Topic: Career Development for GitLab Team Members
Topic: Individual Growth Plan
Topic: Having Career Conversations with Your Manager
Topic: Having Career Conversations with Your Team Members
During a live speaker sereies hosed in March 2022, Lavinia Mehedintu spoke to the GitLab team about self-authorship in career development. In the session, Lavinia speaks about
This is a great live speaker series that get's into the 'why' of career development, specifically on an all remote team. You can watch the recording on the GitLab unfiltered YouTube channel using this direct link or watch the recording directly below:
Resources in this section are created for GitLab team members to organize and plan for their career development. Embrace your own self-authorship while using these tools to make them fit your specific career development goals.
The Individual Growth Plan (IGP) is a great way to take initiative of your career growth.
If you aren't sure where to start or are having trouble filling out your IGP, we recommend watching the How to Develop your Career Plan course on LinkedIn Learning.
Steps:
The video below is an interivew with a GitLab team member who has used the Individual Growth Plan in their career development.
The video below is a recording of the Live Learning that took place in August 2021 as part of our Career Development Skill of the Month.
Some people may call it a "brag sheet". Some call it a CREDIT Tracker. Either way, it's a great place to put all of your accomplishments and positive feedback. We encourage you to utizlize the Accomplishment tracker in conjunction with the IGP and GitLab Epics.
Steps:
It also can be very helpful to capture feedback from team members. For example, you might want to preserve feedback from slack since these messages are only retained for 90 days. The easiest way to do this is to save screenshots to a separate directory on your Google drive.
Consider making a copy of this Google sheet template to track the current status and long term goals you've set for both your personal and professional growth.
Epics are a great way to transparently and efficiently track your work and map learning back to your results.
Here are two examples of using Epics to organize career development work 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:
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
The video below is a recording of the Live Learning that took place in August 2021 as part of our Career Development Skill of the Month.
The video below is a recording of the Live Learning that took place in August 2021 as part of our Career Development Skill of the Month.
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.
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.
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.
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:
