The UBC iSchool reached out to me recently asking me to talk about my path from getting my library degree to ending up working in a tech company. Below is the script for my portion of the talk, along with a transcription of the questions I answered. Continue reading “UBC iSchool Career Talk Series: Journey from LibTech to Tech”
Author: Cynthia Ng
Choosing not to go into management (again)
Often, to move up and get a higher pay, you have to become a manager, but not everyone is suited to become a manager, and sometimes given the preference, it’s not what someone wants to do.
Thankfully at GitLab, in every engineering team including Support, we have two tracks: technical (individual contributor), and management.
Continue reading “Choosing not to go into management (again)”
Prioritization in Support: Tickets, Slack, issues, and more
I mentioned in my GitLab reflection that prioritization has been quite different working in Support compared to other previous work I’ve done. In most of my previous work, I’ve had to take “desk shifts” but those are discreet where you’re focused on providing customer service during that period of time and you can focus on other things the rest of the time.
In Support, we have to constantly balance all the different work that we have, especially in helping to ensure that tickets are responded to within the Service Level Agreement (SLA).
It doesn’t always happen, but I ultimately try to reach inbox 0 (with read-only items possibly left), and GitLab to-do 0 by the end of the every week. People often ask me how I manage to do that, so hopefully this provides a bit of insight. Continue reading “Prioritization in Support: Tickets, Slack, issues, and more”
Reflection Part 2: My second year at GitLab and on becoming Senior again
This reflection is a direct continuation of part 1 of my time at GitLab so far. If you haven’t, please read the first part before beginning this one. Continue reading “Reflection Part 2: My second year at GitLab and on becoming Senior again”
Reflection Part 1: My first year at GitLab and becoming Senior
About a year ago, I wrote a reflection on Summit and Contribute, our all staff events, and later that year, wrote a series of posts on the GitLab values and culture from my own perspective. There is a lot that I mention in the blog post series and I’ll try not to repeat myself (too much), but I realize I never wrote a general reflection at year 1, so I’ve decided to write about both years now but split into 2 parts. Continue reading “Reflection Part 1: My first year at GitLab and becoming Senior”