Tag: career growth

Tracking your work (for performance reviews and promotions)

People have often asked me about how I manage to put together summaries of my work (blog posts, performance reviews, promotion documents, etc.) in a relatively quick way, and the only answer I have to that is “I track my work.”

I’ve tracked my work for many years, well before working at GitLab, though what I’ve been using in recent years is the most comprehensive method I’ve used. I’ve had a lot of people ask me about it, so I knew it was time to write a blog post to share. Continue reading “Tracking your work (for performance reviews and promotions)”

Summary and Thoughts on Being/Becoming a Staff Support Engineer

I recently organized an AMA on Being and Becoming a Staff Support Engineer. This was meant to be similar to last year’s Being/Becoming a Senior Support Engineer. Normally, I would have actually waited longer to do it, since I only got promoted in February and I feel like I haven’t been working at the Staff level very long. However, at the end of May, our other Staff Support Engineer, Will Chandler was transferring to the development team. So, I decided before he transferred would be a good time to have the AMA. Additionally, I invited Drew Blessing, our first Staff Support Engineer (who had transferred to development a couple years ago) to also join the group of people answering questions.

This is not just a summary of the answers from that AMA session though. I’ve tried to put the answers and thoughts together with the previous video that I recorded with Lyle Kozloff while I was still working on becoming Staff, and some additional insights. Continue reading “Summary and Thoughts on Being/Becoming a Staff Support Engineer”

Summary and Thoughts on Being/Becoming a Senior Support Engineer at GitLab

Ever since becoming a Senior Support team member at GitLab, I’ve had various conversations about becoming and being a Senior level team member; even more so after I became a Senior Support Engineer (SSE). A couple of recent conversations made me realize that a lot of team members have questions and we should have a way to share the answers, so I organized “Ask Us Anything” (AUA) sessions on Being and Becoming a Senior Support Engineer. Continue reading “Summary and Thoughts on Being/Becoming a Senior Support Engineer at GitLab”

UBC iSchool Career Talk Series: Journey from LibTech to Tech

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”

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)”