Reflection: The end of 8 years at GitLab

I was going to write and publish this post earlier, but the last couple of weeks have been trying to enjoy (the rest of) my vacation and submitting job applications.

It’s also been a bit weird. I’ve never worked anywhere else longer than 2 years (mostly because of the jobs being contracts), so it’s sad to be let go after 8 years as part of the 14% when I was (so I was told by a previous manager) part of the top 10% of performers. I’ve been such a big advocate of the company for so long, and really enjoyed the work, and the people I worked with. They will be missed.

Though, more on that later. To start, let’s cover what’s happened since last time.

Contribution graph from Dec 2023 to Dec 2024 (the highest number of contributions)

The last 2 months: Moving release posts to docs

As I wrote my last reflection post only two months ago, there’s not a long list of projects that I’ve done. The main project that I worked on is program managing the moving release posts to docs initiative.

Aside from program managing the move and transition, I did a bunch of the work necessary in the originating www-gitlab-com repository, including adding a bunch of the redirects, disabling/removing scheduled pipelines, and deleting no longer needed files. I also got our in-app list of features merged for 19.0 so that it would be included in the monthly release. Of course, to make sure they didn’t show up on .com as soon as the code made it to production, I also had add a small improvement to only display what’s new on or after the release date.

I also ended up creating a “Release Notes Writer” Duo AI agent and flow, which drafts release notes for any given issue/epic/work item, adds it to the description, and creates an MR to add it to the release notes page. It also checks for possible discrepancies between the title, description, and labels.

Overall, it was a lot of work with all the details and figuring out dependencies as we went along, but we made it happen.

How to get yourself laid off

If you read my last reflection post, then you know that I had some trepidation with my manager leaving and reporting to an executive directly. It wasn’t just about reporting to an executive though. It was also the fact that my manager wasn’t getting backfilled, and that I didn’t know what the expectations would be.

With a title like Strategy & Operations, you get asked to do basically anything, because the nature of the role is to “fill in a gap” (typically temporarily, where finding a new owner is often part of the exit criteria). It wasn’t the actual work, but the fact that I was being asked (as I perceived it) to do Principal/Senior Manager or even Distinguished/Director level work. (By the way, this is not the program management work I described above, but other work.)

So, I clearly laid out to the executive why I thought it was higher level work, and mentioned that I believe I could work at the Principal level. Whether he decided not to have a role at all, that it would be Director+, or that I wouldn’t be able to work at the Principal level, I don’t know, and will likely never know.

Was that the smartest move, writing myself out of a job? Maybe not, but I thought it was the right thing for the company. So, while many were surprised, I was not.

Normally I’d hoped for a chance to move into another role, but most of the jobs are US-only now. I was told I could apply like anyone else, but across all departments, only 15 (of over 130) allow Canadian applicants, none of which are jobs that are within the realm of my experience or skill set. So, I guess that’s that.

Thank you for your support

Before I continue, I want to thank everyone who has shown their support, whether that’s as small of a gesture as an emoji reaction or as impactful as a job referral. I’ve been floored by the amount.

Since many were personal messages, I won’t share them, but thank you to everyone who commented on one of my posts, connected (over 100 invites), or messaged me (over 50 on LinkedIn alone).

Thanks to the 2 people who sent me screenshots of the thread from Slack with replies to my brief goodbye message. Because our accounts are deactivated shortly after the call where we’re told about our termination, all I wrote was:

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write more 😭 it’s been an incredible eight years. Please add me if we’re not already connected. https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiasng/

The speed at which the number of emoji reactions and thread messages went up as soon as I posted it made me exclaim to my partner. I believe it ended up being 84 replies, and the latest screenshot I got of emojis showed over 330 hearts:

I had a little more time to write a post on LinkedIn, which has over 575 reactions.

When I was laid off, I also didn’t have any recommendations, but now I have 12! Thanks to everyone who took the time to write one. And, if anyone I worked with wants a recommendation from me, please simply let me know.

While normally I don’t consider something like emoji reactions a “real” metric, I’d like to believe that in this case, it’s an indication of the impact I had on the company and its people.

As a bit of a loner, I never would’ve imagined the impact I could and would have at GitLab.

The end of 8 years

Over the last eight years, I’ve been astonished at how the team and company have grown. When I started, the company was around 275 people, and days before I was let go, it had grown to over 2650 people.

I was also surprised at how I grew with it:

The first and only person promoted to Senior Agent, less than 9 months after I started.
The only person (without purposefully changing jobs) to go through the Senior promotion process twice.
The third Staff Support Engineer, and the only SaaS-focused one.
One of the few who did CEO shadow twice.
Reported to a VP, and Senior Director, while at the Staff level.
Worked in the Office of the CEO, and CPO.

So much has happened, and I’ve had so many great experiences, working with such amazing people.

A short list of highlights, in no particular order (see also the 5 year list):

listing day (which was worth waking up at 5am for) with Fluffbun on Bloomberg TV, me on the Nasdaq building, and the swag box with Guu-chan photo featured in a later article
sending out 110 postcards to other team members
getting 2 featured bug fixes (in 15.0)
stuffing and sending over 100 cards and Support stickers
working on my own OKRs
Acting Chief of Staff to CTO
Summits: Cape Town, New Orleans, virtual, Las Vegas
Support Driven x3, and Leadership Summit talking about how a Chief of Staff role would work in support
participating in every ‘Pajamas migration day’
defining what a “Staff Support Engineer” looks like
RIP Group Managed Accounts, long live Enterprise Users
cutting the number of deletion requests by more than 75% with a UI text update
Vancouver meetups: one which involved way too much sushi
cutting pipeline times by more than half, more than once! (handbook, and www-gitlab-com, because 40 minutes every commit, ugh, 15 is so much more reasonable)
got over 225 MRs merged into the main project, over 50 of which are not documentation, including Ruby, Rails, Vue, JavaScript
pairing (coffee chats after leaving the team) with every Support Team member, over 200
being the featured profile on BuiltIn’s best places to work for years

There are a lot of reasons people stay at a company, but I believe a large part of job satisfaction is from the company culture and most importantly, the people who internalize that culture and put it into practice (see TeamOps and the values page (mirror)).

More people, more stories

In my past reflection posts, I’ve mentioned and thanked a lot of people. Obviously, I’m still very thankful to those people. However, instead of rehashing the same things, I thought I’d write (probably) new content with some snippets and moments shared with various people.

I apologize if you’re reading this, we interacted at GitLab, and you’re not mentioned. These are just some of many, many moments. Many people were great to work with where I don’t have a specific story to share. There are also quite a lot that was shared privately that I didn’t want to put here without permission. If you have a story to share with me and I didn’t mention it below, please reach out, I’d love to hear from you.

Since the list got quite long, I’ve roughly divided it by the department/division people were in at the time (though some in the “wrong” place if they’re part of a group), with events roughly in chronological order (based on my poor memory). You’ll also have to forgive my inconsistent sentence structure.

Support

Discovering Lyle Kozloff was less than an hour by car during my interview. Also, coworking together just the two of us because no one else was in Vancouver! And, of course, the most impactful thing anyone has said to me at work is still “we trust you”.
Working with DeAndre Harris to automate giving Gold.
Getting pulled into a photo during an excursion by Cindy Pallares.
Having people like Andrew Winata and Alex Strachan tell me they’d been wanting to meet me at my first Summit.
Tom Cooney is taller than I think any of us expected.
Getting my green hat from Lee Matos. Really made me feel like I was part of the team. Also, Support bingo.
Jerome Uy and I working on updating the Support Portal, because my goodness that thing was just a list of links on a white page.
Vancouver Support house: organized by Blair Lunceford, with Diana Stanley, Lewis Brown, Cody West, Sara Ahbabou (why don’t I have any photos of this?!)
Sending Tristan Williams a card from the Support Driven conference, because I had never had a “work spouse” before.
Thiago Presa helping us with Maven questions, when we had no idea what that even was.
My only (we were the only ones weren’t we?!) fellow Senior Support Agent, Caleb Williamson.
Seeing Cleveland Bledsoe Jr. post about his first 30-days and being surprised because it felt more like he’d been there 3 months. Also, watching his toddler (who must no longer be a toddler!) bounce around on the couch.
Coworking in Utrecht with Abubakar Siddiq Ango (having to deal with an incident is still a valid excuse for being late), Ronald van Zon, Yorick Peterse, and others.
Harish Ramachandran and I working on a MR involving db changes.
First Support Driven with Amanda Rueda, and attending a vendor dinner at Q. Also, that first iteration of L&R.
I’m pretty sure it was Tom Atkins who promised me a shirt if I ever paired with everyone in support. I feel like I at least deserve a sticker or postcard. 😉
Watching Will Chandler‘s cat walking down the stairs as soon as he starts talking on a pairing session. (An oft repeated story!) Also, still amazed at the jq skills.
Talking with Shaun McCann about how to get a non-male hired in APAC.
Realizing what time it is for Wei-Meng Lee for us to chat in my morning.
Discovering that Ronnie Alfaro and I have many common interests including furikake, tea, and classical mythology. Also, the Bánh mì book recommendation which I bought for my partner.
Anton Smith surpassing me in pairings. Also, good job being the first to get to 2 years!
Getting left out of team socials because they were based on SSGs, and then getting invited by Emily Chang to the guess-the-desk one. ❤
Davin Walker looking at building a better SWIR.
Listening to Lis Vinueza talk about how difficult it can be to get a visa.
Swapping academia stories with Jason Young.
Utterly failing at trying to practice my minuscule knowledge of Spanish with Alejandro Guerrero de Alba, Mario Mora, and Gerardo.
Seeing Catalin Irimie get promoted in under a year, and being surprised he wasn’t already a Senior.
Running to Izzy Fee when my manager was out and I was afraid I might get fired.
Caleb Cooper had such a fluffy cute cat, much of the time the camera was pointed at the cat instead of him.
Plushie sharing with Brie Carranza.
Łukasz Korbasiewicz (and others) telling me my blog posts helped him decide to work at the company.
Support Driven with Greg Myers, Sam Bernal-Damasco, and Arihant Godha.
Getting Greg Myers to read his own quote during my presentation.
Elif Munn and family visiting for lunch.
That time Brad Sevy needed help with a US Fed ticket relating to auth is probably the only time I ever saw someone use the sharing a specific portion of their screen (instead of the specific window).
Seeing Aric Buerer boomerang.
Miss the hummingbird and weather station updates from Duncan Harris. Also, mechanizer… will it ever go away?
Jason Colyer‘s ducks. Also, automating mailgun and other tickets.
Predicting that Jessie Lee would go far during onboarding, then seeing the promotion to Staff.
Making half-hearted attempts at practicing French with Julie Martin.
Seeing Keven Hughes get promoted to Senior, proving that you can get promoted doing L&R work! (I hope that example promo doc I wrote helped.)
Trying to get Gerardo Gutierrez off a 4+ hours long emergency call, and being open to feedback during debrief.
Hearing Mau Yacksmith call Gerardo, “Gerry” for the first time.
One of my most frequent office hour attendees was Bruno Freitas, who always asked questions, and was clearly interested in the answers.
Asmaa Hassan with Bruno, Joseph Joshua, and Olivier Saint-Dizier reaching out (separately) about taking over one of my counterpart roles (5 was definitely too many).
Having discussions about how to take care of long hair with Rotanak Srey.
Swapping stories with Ket Slaats, which we need to stop being able to do.
Watching Ryan Castro in one of his short films.
Justin Farmiloe volunteering to lead the new Runner pod.
Watching us re-hire Greg Long and Iris Blackburn.
Support Driven with Keelan Lang and making the trek to vegetarian dim sum.
Alvin Gounder complaining that he didn’t think they’d need 3 people (pulling in Chantal Lawrence and Jio Castillo) to cover most of my Auth counterpart work. Also, “we can’t hear you!”
Seeing Filip Aleksic, who was not one of the docs counterparts, coordinate a big docs epic.
Discovering a fellow puzzler in Jane Gianoutsos. Also, the amount of time spent with ICs on promo docs.
Kaitlyn Chappell dubbing me the “knower of many things”. It stayed in my Slack profile forever after!
The best support team.

Engineering

Coffee chat with DJ Mountney, the first with another islander.
In showing me a happy/angry reversible fox, Douwe Maan got me hooked on TeeTurtle stuff starting with a happy/angry reversible octo-fox.
Also, Robert Speicher and Douwe visiting the island.
Back when everyone’s birthdays were in a single calendar, the most common birth date was mine and Bob Van Landuyt along with 3(!) others.
Jason Plum often reminding us there are no stupid questions, just asking others to share their knowledge.
I was certain that James Lopez and Liam McAndrew got tired of me pinging them about import bugs.
Was a bit nervous about sharing a room at Summit, but Filipa Lacerda was such a great roommate.
Clement Ho giving an accessibility talk, and watching people trying to navigate the site blindfolded.
Getting to know Michael Kozono on the shuttle.
Practicing my rusty French with Philippe Lafoucrière, Olivier Gonzalez, Philippe Charrière, and Fabien Catteau at the airport when our flight was delayed.
Paul Slaughter helping me with my first code MR during which I managed to stump him because it ended up involving backend Rails “magic”. Also, bingo! “Distinguished Bingo Engineer” is a title I’m still proud of.
Manoj for sending me my first, and my latest postcards!
Having Ross Fuhrman help maintain and promote #postcrossing.
I’m not sure I ever would’ve gotten my chatops test instance working without Cameron McFarland‘s help.
Dave Smith trusting me to write status updates.
Talking with Mek Stittri and James Ramsey about the importance of labels at the hotel bar in New Orleans.
Chatting with Jacob Vosmaer about name pronunciation.
Ash McKenzie making GDK so much better.
Pairing for the first time with Drew Blessing after him leaving support.
Trying to figure out if Craig Miskell or Anton is the southernmost team member.
Meeting Lukas Eipert and Martin Brümmer at the Berlin meetup.
Randomly discovering that Jerome Ng reads my blog, and mentioned my choosing not to go into management again post on a handbook MR.
Joining an incident and having Marin Jankovski say he was relieved that I was the CMOC that day.
Michelle Gill telling us about how if you searched online for “Okta SCIM example”, you’d find my demo video.
That time when Stan Hu pulled me into a SAML-related incident. You know you’re an expert when! Also, that time I stumped him for the second time.
Sanad Liaquat adding the “customer” label to bug prioritization.
Saving a customer’s day, Peter Hegman merging my backend MR with only one review (!) on a Friday afternoon. Also, that time you helped merge my follow-up MR to fix broken master.
Adil Farrukh never complaining about me tagging him on issues.
Auth dev team making me feel like one of them: Drew, Adil, Aboobacker MK, Bogdan Denkovych, Eduardo Sanz-Garcia, Imre Farkas, Smriti Garg, including former members Peter, Serena Fang, Jessie Young
Slack chats with Jason Zhang (did we ever end up in a video chat together?!).
I spent way more time than I expected to trying to help Gosia Ksionek with the mentorship program one time, so I have no idea how you found the time to keep running it.
Having Andrew Fontaine ask me to review a promo doc.
Getting pulled in by Jarka Košanová for a S1 account takeover security incident.
Brunch with Lyle, Jerome, and Cheryl Li.
Sean McGivern encouraging me to apply for Acting CoS. Plus Matt Nohr and Sam Beckham for also reviewing MRs and being a sounding board during that time.
6 years later, Eric Johnson remembered interviewing me during my hiring process!
Christie Lenneville doing my other “interview” for Acting CoS.
Getting a second 1:1 meeting with Ashley Kramer. I still don’t know how anyone manages 2 exec level roles at once.
Sabrina Farmer and I chatting outside the breakfast room at Summit because we’d both gone at the “normal” time.
Getting stopped in the hall by Matt Smiley.
Chad Woolley giving me the low-down on the handbook prior to the full-time DRI.
Out of nowhere, Florian Forster added hugolint to the handbook, which is still doing its job.
Crystal Poole and I trying to figure out who was responsible for program managing the Engineering side of Project Panda.
When Darby Frey and I discovered some of the people we were training had never seen the command line.
Jörg Heilig asking me to be the new VP Head of Support’s onboarding buddy.
Working with Mayra Cabrera to get Platform Engineering to actually show up in the list of R&D groups.
Rémy Coutable helping me with the most complex Mermaid chart I’ve ever created.

Technical Writing

The best swag picture is still the one of Axil Pipinellis on a couch surrounded by everything he has.
Mike Lewis agreeing to have me as the first Support counterpart for TW.
Chatting with Evan Read and Russell Dickenson about the differences between Canada and Australia.
Co-guesting on a Write the Docs podcast episode with Amy Qualls. And, WTD.
And, Amy pointing out that the Support team submits the most number of docs MRs of any team.
Marcel Amirault, I, and many others yelling into the Slack channel that the ‘tanuki is not a Japanese fox’ countless times into chat during IPO.
Writing conference proposals with Mike Jang and Marcel (separately).
Susan Tacker inviting me to be part of the Technical Writing interviewing team.
That moment I realized the connection between Marcin Sedlak-Jakubowski and Paulina Sędłak-Jakubowska.
Seeing Sarah German hired as the first Technical Writing Engineer.
Being “easy to work with” according to Suzanne Selhorn while working on big projects.
Watching Pearl Latteier taking the whole ‘creating an entirely new section of the docs site in 3 weeks’ in stride.

Product

Job van der Voort “best release ever” emoji lives on!
I don’t even remember what Victor Wu posted, but I clearly remember thinking “that’s what leading by example looks like when it comes to the values”.
It was Jeremy Watson who posted a follow-up to a DMed question in a public channel that got me doing it too.
Sarrah Vesselov and Taurie Davis inviting me to work on the first VPAT, and Jeremy Elder for letting me drop in on the latest one.
Walking around Berlin learning about why Sunjung Park decided to move there.
Eli Kastelein agreeing to an in-person coffee chat, and playing with his adorable kitten!
Being asked to participate in studies and review mockups by Daniel Mora.
Amelia Bauerly asking me for web accessibility advice!
You’re still the best Hannah Sutor. Regardless of whether we could stick to it, 10% milestone weight for support issues was HUGE in my mind.
Tim Rizzi posting a graph about container registry and pinging me, giving me a quantitative measure to work I had been doing. It’s often so hard to measure impact.
The annual monthly kickoff where David DeSanto would have Christmas lights in his beard.
Jackie Porter and Melissa Ushakov separately nominating me for the same bonus. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t coordinated.
It took over 5 years for Kai Armstrong and I to end up in a Zoom meeting together.
Justin Farris with the biggest hat.
Somehow Dan Mizzi-Harris noticed my MR on getting Duo for personal accounts.
Sampath Ranasinghe‘s patience while I kept pinging him for feedback on things.

Security and IT

Working with Heather Simpson on so many security comms sendouts.
Dominic Couture and I walking through an account takeover security issue. The most memorable pairing session ever.
Coworking at the WeWork where Jenny Wong could see us out her apartment window.
Hanging out with Marisa Carlson during Summit, and randomly helping to carry stuff.
Steve Ladgrove specifically asking me for my opinion about a bag of crisps (chips for the North Americans), which he brought to Summit.
Getting pulled into a vendor project, by Barbara Roncato, trying to integrate the Handbook into HelpLab, which turned out to be much more about using the API than anything related to the handbook.
Charlie Ablett creating a scavenger hunt I could participate in.

Marketing

Jake Sorensen created the Canada tanuki.
Getting the cutest postcard (Kirby!) from Fatima Khalid.
Running the Write the Docs Writing Day session virtually with Ray Paik and the TW team.
Organizing Summit unconference had me working and coordinating with so many people, including Kate Demarest, Amanda Shen, Emily Plotkin, Liam McNally, Lynde Meiers, Andrew Torres, and more.
Destiny Reyes and I trying to answer all the Summit questions in Slack.
The institutional knowledge of so much of www-gitlab-com from Lauren Barker.
Nominating Michael Friedrich for all the great collaboration and work for the handbook projects, with him calling it a “career highlight”!
Lee Tickett added colour to the markdownlint log output. Such a small detail, but so nice. Also, banging out a new “notable contribution” page in just days, amazing.
All the technical handbook reviewers, whom I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much done without: Lee, Michael, Darby, Raimund Hook, Jaime Martinez, Marc Saleiko.

Sales

John Woods trying to explain the difference between a SA and TAM. Also, telling me a big customer wanted me to be an Assigned SE before that existed.
Mad libs during company calls hosted by David Astor.
Michael Leopard and I having to Zoom during Summit (felt weird to not be doing it in person!) to chat about .com imports. Also, lunch on the island.
Not managing to see Brooke Williamson at Summit until 10 minutes before having to get on the airport shuttle.
SeanJohn Hoyle has the snazziest shoe collection.
Being called a rockstar by Mike Lindsay.
Francis Potter and I having time to have lunch at the airport, because of course us islanders had a 4 hour layover. Also, seeing you move to the island and returning after everything.
Missing my connecting flight home, Jamie Reid followed me to the airline counter to make sure they covered a hotel, and would’ve otherwise put me up for the night.
Seeing all the TMRG leads over the years: Kyla Gradin, Madeline Hennessy, Samantha, Gosia, Winnie Chan, Sara Cuesta
Discovering that Pam Corpus lives 10 minutes from me.
Seeing my mentee Tess Dutton getting promoted to Senior.

People group

Explaining to Trevor Knudsen that whether I should be hired as an agent or engineer depended on whether they wanted me to “hit the ground running”.
Nadia Vatalidis tweeting the week of my 1 year anniversary that the company had grown 112%.
Talking to Cassiana Gudgenov about living in Canada, and so many other things.
Samantha Lee inviting me to be part of a Women’s TMRG subcommittee.
The relief when Tre Ely agreed to take over the handbook projects.
When AJ Romaniello talked about a project that might let us have the team map back internally.
Joanna Michniewicz calling me one of the coolest people at the company.

Legal and Finance

Robin Schulman confirming that e-group members are human.
Getting pulled into a vendor project by Janel McCurrie, which turned into a lesson for IT and the vendor on how to use the API to get that sort of thing done.
Eugene McCrann nominating me for a discretionary bonus!
Bronwyn Barnett calling me superhuman.
Karen Fang still owes me a coffee. 😛

Office of the CEO

Sid Sijbrandij making robot noises. Also, getting a “good job”, “best talk track I’ve seen”. Also, also, taking a photo with the squishies.
Collaborating with James Heimbuck to trace when a pricing page change was made. And listening in on an interview for my years-later-unbeknownst-to-us-at-the-time future job.
Josh Zimmerman and I getting to sit in on a coaching session.
Watching Darren Murph co-host our IPO stream.
Listening to Laurel Farrer talk about her thought process thinking about big strategic things.
Ian Pedowitz letting me involve myself in the cross-functional initiative MR.
Working with David Tuan on AI-related stuff that we knew nothing about.
Peeyush Anand still picked the best code name: Project Panda.
I was a little surprised at having to explain milestones to Yin Yu, but happy to help with the no-code-name project.
Onboarding two people at the same time sounds hard, but not with Renée Hendricksen and Dakota Dux. I’ll miss the book discussions, and recommendations.
Even after OCEO disbanded, Jeanne Rotenberry would message me asking about random stuff.
Stella Treas giving me “negative” feedback. Both the hardest and the best to learn from. I will always wish for a manager who can deliver feedback in such a kind and thoughtful manner. (I got lots of positive feedback too! And all the managers I’ve had give regular feedback, but the constructive ones with Stella stick out the most.)

So much of GitLab and my experience of it were the people, and it’s the people that I’ll remember the most.

Moving on

Reflecting back, I miss the days when the company was small enough to know at least everyone on my own team. When Support got to be over 50, it started becoming a struggle, and at over 100, it wasn’t really possible. (I still had at least one coffee chat or pairing session with everyone, but that’s different from knowing and working with them.) Moving to Strategy and Operations, the team I was in was 7 at first, but eventually it ended up being just me, which I’m not a fan of. With the deprecation of the CREDIT values, even if it’s a forced one, maybe it’s the right time to move on.

I thankfully recently updated my LinkedIn trying to follow my own advice on how to write a good resume (CV), so even though I was on vacation when I was laid off, and didn’t have any of my old cover letters or resumes, I could fairly quickly put a new one together.

Today’s job market also seems totally different from eight years ago. Not only have many tech companies done large layoffs just this year (over 100,000 people from just 10 companies), we’re constantly warned about scams and ghost postings. It feels like the only way to know that a job and company are real is to get a referral. So, special thanks to everyone who has referred me.

Wish me luck on finding a new adventure.