Tag: organizational culture

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”

Documentation is important in every organization: Writing down all the things

I’ve worked in many types of organizations though mostly in public and non-profit, and it seems particularly in smaller organizations, or in organizations where they’re not building products, documentation is not always seen as necessary. I once asked a manager to attend the Write the Docs conference and they didn’t think it was relevant to my job. Granted, writing documentation was not part of my job description, but I didn’t quite understand how they couldn’t see its importance. Documentation is not just about product documentation. Continue reading “Documentation is important in every organization: Writing down all the things”

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”

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”

Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Transparency

This is the sixth value covered in a series of blog posts on what we can learn in implementing values that are the same or similar to GitLab’s CREDIT values. For background and links to the other posts, please check out the overview post. Continue reading “Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Transparency”

Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Iteration

This is the fifth value covered in a series of blog posts on what we can learn in implementing values that are the same or similar to GitLab’s CREDIT values. For background and links to the other posts, please check out the overview post. Continue reading “Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Iteration”

Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Diversity & inclusion

This is the fourth value covered in a series of blog posts on what we can learn in implementing values that are the same or similar to GitLab’s CREDIT values. For background and links to the other posts, please check out the overview post. Continue reading “Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Diversity & inclusion”

Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Efficiency

This is the third value covered in a series of blog posts on what we can learn in implementing values that are the same or similar to GitLab’s CREDIT values. For background and links to the other posts, please check out the overview post. Continue reading “Implementing Values: Learning from GitLab: Efficiency”