Building Remote Teams that Thrive (According to GitLab)

Last year GitLab made history when they filed for their IPO, becoming the first all-remote company to go public. In a nod to the remote work community, their prospectus stated appropriately: “address not applicable.”

The GitHub competitor, which provides software for developers to share code and collaborate on projects, has been remote since inception in 2014.  As of today, they’re a truly global organization with over 1600 employees in 65 countries. 

How does a successful company like this operate 100% remotely at-scale?  Fortunately for us, GitLab is a vocal proponent of remote work and goes out of their way to share their philosophies and tools publicly. 

Here's how the all-remote tech unicorn thinks about remote work: 

 

The Manifesto 

GitLab has a 9-point Remote Manifesto which sets their operating philosophy.  Reminiscent of the Agile Manifesto, many of the bullets do not fully discard the old ways of doing things but rather emphasizes the preferred way to do things.  Here are a few examples from the Remote Manifesto: 

  • Writing down and recording knowledge over verbal explanations

  • Written down processes over on-the-job training

  • Asynchronous communication over synchronous communication

  • Formal communication channels over informal communication channels

It doesn’t mean you’ll never have informal chats or scheduled meetings, but your goal should be to develop the skills as an organization where these are not necessary. And what do these good habits get you?  Two more points from the manifesto: 

  • Hiring and working from all over the world instead of from a central location

  • Flexible working hours over set working hours

Ultimately this means the flexibility to hire the best talent from anywhere, and for those employees to create the lifestyles that best suit them. 

 

Underlying all of this is what I consider the most important philosophy: 

  • The results of work over the hours put in

Without a bias towards judging results - as opposed to the hours & inputs of employees - none of the above would be possible. 

 

Transitioning to Remote

Obviously a ton of companies were forced into remote work with the pandemic.  As those same companies decide how they want to proceed long-term, they’d do well to read the advice GitLab has for making the transition.  

A lot of it comes down to one important factor: intentionality. A great remote culture with productive and happy employees doesn’t just happen.  It must be designed and embraced by the company leadership.  Things like: 

  • Ensuring all employees have an ergonomic and productive home-office setup

  • Ensuring the executive team is equipped with the information on building a remote-work culture. If the expertise doesn’t exist in-house, considering hiring a Head of Remote

  • Ensuring managers are doing their part to embrace transparency, build handbooks and break down silos amongst their teams


It’s also important to identify your end-goal in terms of the type of remote-work organization you want to create.  Creating the language around the different options is half the battle, and for this GitLab lays out how it sees the 10 stages of remote work - a sliding scale from complete co-location and synchronous work, to strict remote & asynchronous work.  In between are some interesting nuances, such as: 

  • #4 Remote allowed: Anyone at the company can work remotely some of the time, with very few exceptions for roles that are location-dependent

  • #7 Remote-first: The company is optimized for remote with documentation, policies, and workflows that assume 100% of the organization is distributed, even if some occasionally visit the office

  • #8 Remote only: There is no co-located work in a common office. However, the work is still biased towards one time zone. Some companies maintain "core team hours"


Where is your organization on the scale? Where are you headed?

 

In Summary 

What’s right for your organization might be different than GitLab, but it’s hard to ignore the success they’ve seen with a fully remote organization.  To check out their full manifesto, the 10 stages of remote work, and a ton more valuable info, check out their Remote Playbook here


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