[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":790},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/attributes-of-successful-development-teams":3,"navigation-en-us":33,"banner-en-us":433,"footer-en-us":443,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Rebecca Dodd":685,"blog-related-posts-en-us-attributes-of-successful-development-teams":699,"assessment-promotions-en-us":740,"next-steps-en-us":780},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":22,"isFeatured":12,"meta":23,"navigation":24,"path":25,"publishedDate":20,"seo":26,"stem":30,"tagSlugs":31,"__hash__":32},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/attributes-of-successful-development-teams.yml","Attributes Of Successful Development Teams",[7],"rebecca-dodd",null,"culture",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"attributes-of-successful-development-teams",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9},"9 Attributes of successful development teams","What makes a good development team? Here's what we think.",[18],"Rebecca Dodd","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749671496/Blog/Hero%20Images/attributes-successful-dev-teams.jpg","2017-05-23","\n\nNot all development teams work the same way, but there are some values, processes and attitudes that all successful teams share.\n\n\u003C!-- more -->\n\n## 1. They automate everything\n\nThere’s no substitute for the work of the human brain, but by automating some of the more time-consuming (and sometimes tedious) aspects of a developer’s job, you not only free up time that could be spent on other, more creative tasks, but you ensure that your software development process is easily repeatable, and consistent every release cycle. “We have a big release every month,” says GitLab Platform Backend Lead, [Douwe Maan](/company/team/#DouweM), “but we have numerous patch releases. We have tons of scripts in our release tools repository that automate that so that we don’t miss little bits and so that it’s identical and reproducible every time.” Automation also means doing things like leveraging [continuous integration](/solutions/continuous-integration/) to run scripts, so a portion of your code review is taken over, offloading work that would otherwise be done manually.\n\n## 2. They’re meticulous about documentation\n\n“Documentation of processes and guidelines is a way of kind of scripting or automating your team’s behavior,” explains Douwe. Because we’re a distributed team, it’s important that if a question comes up often, that there’s somewhere people can find what they need without having to wait for team members in other time zones to come online and answer a question – this saves time not just for the person with the question, but for others who are spared answering the same questions over and over. “If people on my team have a certain question or things that are blocking them repeatedly, that probably means it’s something we should either document better or invent a process around,” says Douwe.\n\n“As a consequence of that, for example, we have the process around getting merge requests and issues into a patch release when it’s a regression or security issue and so on. At one point we had so few people that we could just say, ‘Hey that needs to go into the patch release,’ but of course as the team grows, that doesn’t scale anymore, because you’d have 20 people asking one person. To address that we invented the process around labels, where we use labels and milestones very heavily in GitLab to signal to people what has to happen with an issue.”\n\n## 3. They use collaboration tools\n\nHaving space for comments, questions or suggestions at each stage of the cycle is critical for fostering collaboration and making sure that everyone can follow the latest progress of a project. “For us, the single source of truth is always the [issue](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issue_board.html). Tools like labels, milestones, assigning to people, these all make sure that the right person knows when it’s their turn to do something, and the handoff happens through issue comments,” explains Douwe. This is another area in which we’ve had to become disciplined about documenting the latest update on an issue, because as a distributed team we can’t just walk over to a colleague’s desk to check something. “We don’t have the problem where after two days people will be like, ‘Hmm, what did we decide again?’” says Douwe. Discussion takes place right in the same environment where we’re working – whether it’s a comment on an issue or a merge request or an inline question on the code itself – so it’s easy for everyone to see the context for it and to refer back to it later.\n\n## 4. They use integrated platforms\n\nHaving all your software development tools in one environment reduces context-switching, tiresome maintenance when APIs change, and administrative complexity. It also makes the development process smoother, as an integrated tool often offers shortcuts within the UI that would not exist if you were using two separate products.\n\nDouwe explains: “For a long time GitLab CI used to be a separately deployed web application: the UIs were not integrated in any way and they felt like separate products, as if they were not even made by the same company. At one point we decided to integrate it, and literally within one or two weeks we started seeing new possibilities of interlinking these applications. We’d think, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if we added a button to the latest status of this page?’ which previously is something we never would have thought about, because we really thought of the two as separate products that need to talk over an established channel, instead of just putting a link in everywhere where it would useful to have a link to CI. So with a built-in solution, the integration you get is not just tighter, it’s integrated in ways which other, separate products being developed by siloed development teams would never think of. We’re not just approaching it as an issue tracker, a code review tool or a CI tool, we’re seeing it as a development environment.”\n\n## 5. They version control everything\n\nUsing [version control](/topics/version-control/) for source code is widely accepted as a good idea, but it’s useful for a number of other purposes too. Take documentation, for example: if you use a wiki, there is no concept of a merge request. “There’s no way of suggesting an improvement without immediately making it,” says Douwe, “so what that means is that in a lot of places that use a wiki, changing it is kind of scary.” This creates a feeling that suggesting updates or improvements is for senior team members only, and discourages participation and collaboration on the documentation. \"Using source control here means that even the most junior person who’s like, ‘Hmm, I spotted a typo here,’ or ‘Hey, this wasn’t super clear, let’s do it like this,’ won’t be hesitant to bring up that suggestion.\" Having time to write a merge request that clearly outlines the advantages of what they're proposing makes it less intimidating to suggest a change. \"It really makes the documentation, similar to the source code, an open source and living document that everyone can contribute to.\" The same principle applies to things like your CI/CD configuration, tests, and infrastructure code.\n\nImproved collaboration and learning opportunities aren’t the only benefits of using version control for things beyond your source code: the ability to roll back in the event of something breaking, and to pinpoint where a bug was introduced are advantages both in that it’s easier to fix something, but also in that team members feel freer to experiment without the fear of causing irreparable damage if something breaks.\n\n## 6. They make it easy for everyone to contribute\n\nBy opening up your development platform, other team members can discover, contribute to and learn from other team members’ work. “If you hide your CI configuration in an area that can only be accessed by the masters of the project, that means that very few developers on the team and especially very few developers on other teams will ever see that config,” says Douwe. “You really shouldn’t see your code as just a product of your team, you should also see it as a resource for everyone else in the company. If you ask a developer how they learned to code, most of them will not mention university or this book that they read, most of them will mention ‘code I read that was written by people who have more experience than me.’ So by giving them access to as much code as you can, that will actually make them better coders than if you have them work in a silo.”\n\n> If you ask a developer how they learned to code, most of them will not mention university or this book that they read, most of them will mention \"code I read that was written by people who have more experience than me.\"\n\nThis isn’t just about less experienced developers learning from more experienced developers. Sometimes a fresh perspective from someone who isn’t as close to a project can spark solutions that aren’t apparent when you’ve been deep inside the code for a week. “Like if someone reads code and they ask a question like ‘Hey, what’s the reasoning behind this? I just found your code and I was wondering…’ it enables a conversation.” Douwe explains. “It helps us avoid [Not Invented Here syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here).” Someone from another team might have already done work you require on a previous project of theirs – why not use it on your team? “It’s working together to make all of our code better, because if we use a shared library – even if it’s just a company internal one, like innersourcing – if one person improves it or fixes a bug or increases the functionality of that application, that’s work by one person that will immediately affect all the different teams.”\n\n## 7. They spend time on side projects\n\n“We don’t have explicit [20 percent time](https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2006/05/googles-20-percent-time-in-action.html),” says Douwe, “but at GitLab, as we are working on improving the same platform we use to do all our work, our job is to make our own job easier. Which means that even if something is not scheduled for this release, if it’s something that you think you can get done in couple hours, and it would save you more than a couple hours in the future, just do it.”\n\nSometimes going through the formal process for approving time to work on a new feature just isn’t necessary. “Unless you have something urgent you should be working on, it really helps to ask developers to feel responsible for the product, and also own the product in the sense that they can also suggest new features, and even spearhead the development of them without going through product management for example,” says Douwe.\n\n## 8. They make code review collaborative\n\nHaving your work reviewed can feel like a personal judgement on whether you’re good enough or not. When code review is about “This is wrong, change it to this,” it can be really demotivating. Douwe explains: “A much better way, even if it seems like something is obviously wrong, would be to ask, ‘What do you think about changing to this/Did you consider X, Y, Z/I suggest changing it to this, if you think that makes sense.’ The communication there really helps and it also means that people don’t feel review is the time where they as person are being told if their work is good enough, if they are good enough, it’s really just talking about the actual code, the implementation, the best way to solve a problem.” Everyone on a team is free to review each other’s code or to ask for a review, so it becomes about just improving the merge request instead of passing a judgement about that person’s work. “If review feels like something that’s just done by the higher-up people and it’s a time when your code is deemed perfect or not, it might feel kind of scary to review someone’s code, especially if that someone is more experienced than you or has more experience in this area of the application. What really helps with collaboration is having everyone feel free to question each other’s code or question, ‘Is this the best way to go about this?’ without saying ‘This is wrong.’”\n\n## 9. They’re allowed to be creative\n\nProblem solving is what developers do. So if a customer has a request for some feature that they would find useful, it can be helpful to ask the team to solve the problem the customer is experiencing, rather than presenting them with a spec which might not be the optimal solution. “In a lot of cases developers are aware of solutions either that already exist within the codebase or that exist in other people’s codebases because of innersourcing, or they might even have just read about this cool, open source tool, which a product manager might not be aware of,” says Douwe. “So allowing developers to be really critical of the proposal and having product managers not be too rigid in their specs also gives you better code and makes for happier developers.” This can also help you to build features that don’t just address one particular customer’s problem and fix it the way they would like, but rather work on solutions that can be useful to everyone.\n\nTo learn more about what makes development teams successful today, watch our webcast, \"[Managing the DevOps Culture Shift](http://get.gitlab.com/managing-devops-culture-shift/)\" on demand.\n","yml",{},true,"/en-us/blog/attributes-of-successful-development-teams",{"title":15,"description":16,"ogTitle":15,"ogDescription":16,"noIndex":12,"ogImage":19,"ogUrl":27,"ogSiteName":28,"ogType":29,"canonicalUrls":27},"https://about.gitlab.com/blog/attributes-of-successful-development-teams","https://about.gitlab.com","article","en-us/blog/attributes-of-successful-development-teams",[],"EhW3Cqo8Iv0Kd-GIkfREeDQvCbzMFB0dQVIV1FVa2T0",{"data":34},{"logo":35,"freeTrial":40,"sales":45,"login":50,"items":55,"search":363,"minimal":394,"duo":413,"pricingDeployment":423},{"config":36},{"href":37,"dataGaName":38,"dataGaLocation":39},"/","gitlab logo","header",{"text":41,"config":42},"Get free trial",{"href":43,"dataGaName":44,"dataGaLocation":39},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_source=about.gitlab.com&glm_content=default-saas-trial/","free 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Relations at GitLab: What we've learned since our start","DevRel is key to success for many tech companies. Find out how GitLab's DevRel program has evolved to stay aligned with the industry and our customers.",[705],"John Coghlan","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749672008/Blog/Hero%20Images/AdobeStock_204527293.jpg","2024-03-13","Earlier this year, a tweet (are they still called that?) by [Kelsey Hightower](https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower) sparked discussion on social media and internally at GitLab.\n\n![Kelsey Hightower tweet](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749678041/Blog/Content%20Images/Screenshot_2024-03-08_at_8.19.09_AM.png)\n\nAt first, Kelsey's response might seem a bit flippant, but there’s an underlying truth to it: Developer Relations (short: DevRel) – and other business functions – must meet the needs of the business and your customers. However, what your stakeholders and customers need will be different in the future. Therefore, to be successful, you have to iterate to stay aligned with them.\n\nReflecting back on my five years working in Developer Relations (formerly known as Community Relations) at GitLab, our team has continuously evolved to stay aligned with the needs of our customers, our community, and the business. GitLab CEO and founder Sid Sijbrandij explains how North Star Metrics evolve in his blog post on goal-setting for startups: [Artificially constraining your company to one goal creates velocity and creativity](https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2023-06-05-artificially-constrain-one-goal-to-create-creativity-velocity/). He details the shift from attention to active users to revenue to profit. The evolution of DevRel at GitLab in many ways maps to that same journey.\n\n![What is DevRel - image 2](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749678041/Blog/Content%20Images/image1.png)\n\n## Early DevRel at GitLab\n\nWhen I joined GitLab in 2018, our team was largely made up of Community Advocates, an Evangelist Program Manager (me), a Code Contributor program manager, and a director. The Community Advocates were tasked with monitoring and engaging with GitLab community members across various online channels but primarily [Hacker News](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relations/developer-evangelism/hacker-news/) and Twitter. Answering questions and creating issues based on comments served to increase awareness and attention for GitLab. In addition, users learned that their questions would be answered and feedback was being heard and, frequently, acted on.\n\nAt the same time, the Code Contributor program and Evangelist program were driving growth and interest in GitLab by helping our contributors navigate the contribution process, organizing events and meetups to connect our community, and deepening our relationship with our community champions, also known as [GitLab Heroes](https://contributors.gitlab.com/docs/previous-heroes).\n\nFor companies in early stages, this is how DevRel often looks. The key tactics in this phase are:\n- use low-cost tools (blogs and social media) to drive attention\n- capitalize on people’s interest to deepen relationships and create advocates and champions\n- smooth the pathways to contribute or discover content\n\n> **Tip:** Direct engagement with your community through social media and online forums drives awareness, builds trust, and increases the quality and volume of feedback on your product.\n\n## Expanding DevRel's reach\n\nNext, we ramped up programs like GitLab for Open Source and GitLab for Education. These programs helped attract to our platform key open source projects and many large academic institutions, both with large numbers of engaged users. More users meant more feedback to help us improve the product and more contributors.\n\nAs attention grew and the breadth and depth of our platform increased, we needed to better enable our customers to leverage the capabilities of GitLab’s DevSecOps Platform. This stage roughly maps to the revenue North Star Metric. To drive greater awareness and adoption, the Community Relations team underwent a critical change.\n\n> **Tip:** When looking to grow your active users, engage with partners who can bring their community to your product or platform. This strategy is often overlooked but can be a big boost to awareness and growth, setting you up for success.\n\n## Deepening the DevRel bench\n\nAs our next move, we formed a team of technical experts, known as Developer Evangelists. This team engaged in more traditional DevRel practices, those that might come to mind when asking yourself “What is DevRel?”. Internally, we referred to this team’s role as the three Cs:\n- Content creation - creating blog posts, technical talks, demos, and other content to enable our customers\n- Community engagement - engaging online and at events with our customers and community\n- Consulting - serving as internal advocates for and experts on the wider GitLab community\n\nHaving technical experts who could connect directly with customers and escalate that feedback internally helped improve the feedback loop between users and product teams. This team also deeply understood GitLab users, which improved the company's ability to enable our customers and community through content.\n\n> **Tip:** Early in your company journey, executives, product managers, and engineers play a vital role in engaging with community. As the number of users grows, you’ll need technical experts on your team who can directly engage with users and ensure customer feedback reaches key stakeholders (executives and product owners).\n\n## Continuously evolving DevRel at GitLab\n\nOver the past year, the team has evolved again.\n\n- A new vice president joined our team and has helped us become more strategic and better aligned cross-functionally.\n\n- A Contributor Success team was established to better engage and align with our customers around contributions to GitLab. Evolving from a one-person function to a full-fledged team of engineers with deep experience in open source (including multiple past contributors to GitLab), this team continuously improves the contribution experience and engages directly with customers who wish to contribute.\n\n- We updated our team name and many of our team members’ job titles to align with industry standards.\n\n- And we’ve all ramped up quite a bit on AI, perhaps you’ve heard of [GitLab Duo](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-duo/)?\n\nAs GitLab continues to mature as a public company, the team will continue to evolve. Through these changes, we will stay focused on increasing the efficiency and impact of our efforts for our customers, our product, and our team.\n\n## Gaining - and maintaining - executive buy-in\n\nExecutive buy-in is essential for DevRel. Look at the companies with the largest, most engaged communities and you will find that those companies also have the most active, engaged, and often highly respected founders and CEOs. This is certainly true with GitLab.\n\nGitLab’s engagement with our community began before we were even a company when Dmitriy Zaporozhets (DZ) started the open source GitLab project with [this commit](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/commit/9ba1224867665844b117fa037e1465bb706b3685). The engagement continued when Sid [launched GitLab on Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278).\n\nThe importance of community in GitLab’s success cannot be overstated, and while we’ve grown to heights that few companies reach, contributions from our customers and community remain central in [our strategy](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/strategy/#dual-flywheels). Because of this, team members, from the highest levels of GitLab and throughout our organization, remain in active communication with our customers via issues and social forums, working hard at all times to help them succeed. Transparency is key here. Documenting our DevRel strategies in the [public GitLab handbook](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relations/) enables everyone to contribute.\n\n> **Tip:** Executive support is critical when building a community.\n\n## So what is DevRel?\n\nI want to go back to the initial question that sparked this blog: What is DevRel?\n\nI’ll leave you with a quote from Emilio Salvador, vice president of Developer Relations at GitLab, which was recently merged to [our handbook page](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relations):\n\n\u003Ci>\"Developer Relations (short: DevRel) operates at the intersection of technology, community, and advocacy, serving as the voice and ears of GitLab in the wider tech world. Their core mission revolves around nurturing and sustaining a vibrant, engaged community of developers, contributors, and users. This involves a multifaceted approach that includes creating educational content, organizing events and workshops, developing programs, and providing platforms for knowledge exchange and collaboration. The team not only focuses on promoting GitLab’s features and capabilities but also actively listens to and incorporates feedback from the community to inform product development and improvements.\"\u003C/i>\n\nThat’s what it is today, but if the history of DevRel at GitLab is any indication, I expect that we’ll continue to iterate going forward.\n\n> [Join our Discord community](https://discord.gg/gitlab) to continue the conversation.\n",[540,550,710],"inside GitLab",{"slug":712,"featured":24,"template":13},"developer-relations-at-gitlab-what-weve-learned-since-our-start",{"content":714,"config":725},{"title":715,"description":716,"authors":717,"heroImage":719,"date":720,"body":721,"category":9,"tags":722},"Visualizing 11 years of GitLab contributions","Check out this animated video, which beautifully visualizes every contribution since our start.",[718],"Darwin Sanoy","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749682555/Blog/Hero%20Images/gitlabeveryonecontributesdna.png","2022-12-19","\n\nGitLab’s mission is to make it so that **[everyone can contribute](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/mission/#mission)**. While I have been experiencing this mission for three years, I wondered if there was a way to visualize the effect of having everyone contribute over GitLab's history. It turns out there is. An open source project known as [Gource](https://gource.io/) can create an animated visualization of the commit history of a repository. I ran it against the GitLab repository and it visualizes 11 years of busy developers contributing over 300,000 commits to GitLab - covered in just under 10 minutes of video. Each node in the visualization is a file and the count of various file types is shown on the left.\n\nA big thank you to absolutely everyone who has made contributions to GitLab over the years. Hopefully this visualization helps you have a greater sense of this community.\n\nGitLab has recently published the management principles that help enable the \"everyone can contribute\" mission within GitLab. This new people management framework is called [TeamOps](/teamops/). Everyone can learn and become certified in TeamOps through GitLab’s learning portal.\n\nAs another mile marker of the power of the everyone can contribute mission, GitLab also just celebrated one year as [a public company](/blog/one-third-of-what-we-learned-about-ipos-in-taking-gitlab-public/)!\n\nI hope you enjoy Gource’s video visualization, which is filled with the glow of light - seems very appropriate for the many global cultural festivals at this time of year that use light and fireworks to celebrate their communities!\n\n\u003Cfigure class=\"video_container\">\n\u003Ciframe width=\"1870\" height=\"937\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/QxLzyJDljpg\" title=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen>\u003C/iframe>\n\u003C/figure>\n\n\nIf you'd like to become a contributor, check out our [contribution guide](/community/contribute/).\n",[255,723,724],"contributors","features",{"slug":726,"featured":12,"template":13},"everyone-who-has-contributed",{"content":728,"config":738},{"title":729,"description":730,"authors":731,"heroImage":733,"date":734,"body":735,"category":9,"tags":736},"The many routes to a tech career","GitLab team members of different ages and backgrounds share their entry into this industry.",[732],"Heather Simpson","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749667236/Blog/Hero%20Images/Learn-at-GL.jpg","2022-10-04","\nThe path to a career in technology isn’t always straight, particularly today. World and economic uncertainty, a lingering pandemic, a shift to remote work, and a need to do something that *matters* – all of these factors have caused sweeping changes in the broader workforce, in individual careers, and in the labor-shortage-plagued technology industry.\n\n## Tech career: Overview and insights\n\nEver wondered how to get into the tech world? To help try to make sense of it all, we asked three GitLab team members how they made their way into technology, and why they stay. Each has a different story to tell.\n\n### [Mark Loveless](https://gitlab.com/mloveless), Staff Security Engineer\n\nFollow Mark on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/simplenomad)\n\nI’ve been working since the age of 16 at various jobs, eventually gaining my first real tech job in 1990 as customer support at a call center. I had always had an interest in security and moved into more of a true security role in the mid-1990s, followed by my first security research job in 1999. For many in the security field, security research was fairly brand-new territory, so those of us who had been working for quite a while found ourselves reporting to individuals our own age or younger. Later on in my career this more or less became the norm, as my peers were almost always younger than me.\n\nI did, on occasion, run into prejudices involving my age, with the main two being as follows:\n- I was often overlooked for exploring new technologies as it was assumed I would not “get it.”\n\n- It was assumed that there was something wrong with me for not being in management. I love learning new things and am constantly exploring new technology. I’ve never had the desire to go into management as I preferred the independent contributor (IC) role.\n\nTo stay active and “keep up on the latest” whether it be the newest apps or what some weird meme means, well, Google is your friend. I try to stay active on at least some social media sites. I have friends and family who are much younger than me that I interact with a lot, and I ask a lot of questions. All of these steps have helped me substantially.\n\nIt is nice that when some new bit of tech comes out, I now have family and friends asking me what it's all about, and they certainly start asking if it is considered “safe” technology because they know my background. I’m fortunate that here at GitLab what knowledge I have is appreciated, no one assumes I can or cannot do something because of my age or because of preconceived ideas about what I might know at this point in my career.\n\n### [Juliet Wanjohi](https://gitlab.com/jwanjohi), Senior Security Engineer\n\nFollow Juliet on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/jay_wanjohi)\n\nI started in tech by undertaking a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. I had an interest in software engineering before I decided to specialize in another area of interest: security. My goal was to blend my knowledge and skills in the two fields, and create a niche for myself as a security software engineer. I got the wonderful opportunity to be a part of the GitLab [Engineering Internship program](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/working-groups/engineering-internship/) and progressed on to become a full-time security engineer on the [Security Automation](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/security/security-engineering/automation/) team in 2020.\n\nIt was both exciting and overwhelming to join such a distinguished, mature team while still being very green in the security field. I was among the youngest members of the team, which definitely drew out my imposter syndrome. Despite this, GitLab offered a welcoming environment where I felt comfortable and encouraged to bring my ideas forward, and contribute as any other team member would. About a year later, I was promoted to senior security engineer, highlighting the fact that number of years of experience does not necessarily translate to seniority; you also don’t have to be of a certain age to work at a certain level of a role. It all comes down to your skills, and a willingness to further your passion and be better at what you do.\n\nIn previous junior roles I had experienced negative effects of stereotypical thinking and unconscious bias, where my contributions were not valued because of my age. I was often overlooked when it came to opportunities to lead presentations or own projects. This made me feel like I had to work harder and put more pressure to prove myself “worthy.” Such occurrences should not discourage anyone who’s young and new to tech, but instead push you to confidently contribute your ideas, and look for ways to expand your reach by making the most of the networking and learning opportunities available to you.\n\nIt’s important to research and evaluate the culture of a company before joining it. Take a look at the initiatives the company carries out to increase awareness against these biases and the efforts to support those who are new to the field (whether they be due to age or career path). I feel lucky to be a part of GitLab, as there are [dedicated resources for team member career, growth, and development](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/career-development/#resources-for-team-members), including a newly created [Early Career Professionals Team Member Discussion Group](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/inclusion/tmdg-gitlab-early-career/). The group helps those that are early career professionals in the team by supporting their growth and increasing awareness in the organization around the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis.\n\n### [Pj Metz](https://gitlab.com/PjMetz), Education Evangelist\n\nFollow Pj on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/metzinaround)\n\nI made a transition into tech at 35 years old. I didn’t feel 35 when I started though because I had only just started learning about tech through coding a year before I started at GitLab. Instead, I felt 19 – brand-new and lost in a world in which I had no experience.\n\nAs a teacher, I was confident in my abilities in the classroom. I was, not to brag, a great English teacher. I was engaging, excited about the material, and worked hard to make it relatable and enjoyable for as many students as possible. Leaving after 11 years was not an easy choice, especially because my degrees felt suddenly useless. What other work could I possibly do with a Master’s degree in Secondary English Education?\n\nI joined GitLab as an Education Evangelist in our [Education Program](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relations/community-programs/education-program/) and was able to draw on my former knowledge base, but not completely.\n\nAlthough I don’t have to code for my role, I have to know coding, which I had only started to learn in 2020 in between grading papers and working with a marching band at my high school. I also have to know how to talk to students and educators in a variety of concentrations. Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Analysis, and other degree programs are all looking to use [GitLab for Education](/solutions/education/), and I have to find ways to make it relevant for them.\n\nThis challenge has led to some of the hardest moments of my professional life. I can navigate an unmotivated teenager in class, a parent email about their child’s low grades that blames me, an administrator suddenly showing up for an observation, a drumline member who hasn’t figured out the rhythm for the halftime show opener, or an AP student stuck on analysis of the assigned article. However, this is different. The career I entered into is full of jargon and standards that were unfamiliar to me.\n\nI had a lot to learn. What are stock options? What is Slack? How do I structure my time if there isn’t a bell ringing to let me know the beginning and end of class? What is an expense report? People expect someone my age to know these things already.\n\nI have a sticker on my laptop case that looks like the kind you’d get at a small meetup, the kind that says “HELLO, I’m...” and then there is a space to write your name. This sticker says: “Hello, I’m Still Learning.” I have this not so people can lower their expectations of me; instead, its purpose is to highlight that we should all still be learning and I’m going to be open about what I don’t know. I’m doing my best to turn my perceived shortcomings into strengths by bringing a mindset of [iteration](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration) to my work, something GitLab helped me realize was important.\n\nI’m still learning, and feel so far behind some of my colleagues, but GitLab and my team have worked hard to create a space for me to feel comfortable while I work through this career change. It helps that my manager is also a former educator, so she understands the change from education to the corporate world.\n\nShe reminds me to take time for myself after each conference or lecture. My onboarding buddy still meets with me regularly to help me work through something technical or to give advice about a project I’m working on. Every opportunity to connect with people as a person, whether through a [coffee chat or the “Donut-be-strangers” Slack bot](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/informal-communication/#coffee-chats), which matches me with another, random team member, helps me remain grounded in the humanity of my work. Every team meeting I’m in has a reminder of the importance of taking time for ourselves, and a section in the agenda to cheer each other’s accomplishments. I couldn’t ask for a better place to have my first non-teaching job.\n\n### What’s your story?\n\nHow’d you get into tech? Make any pit stops along the way, or have you always been working in this industry? Let us know in the comments field. Also, if you are considering GitLab as your next step, check out our handbook to learn more about [our culture](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/), and then take a peek at our [open roles](/jobs/all-jobs/)!\n",[737,710],"careers",{"slug":739,"featured":12,"template":13},"the-many-routes-to-a-tech-career",{"promotions":741},[742,756,768],{"id":743,"categories":744,"header":746,"text":747,"button":748,"image":753},"ai-modernization",[745],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":749,"config":750},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":751,"dataGaName":752,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":754},{"src":755},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":757,"categories":758,"header":760,"text":747,"button":761,"image":765},"devops-modernization",[759,553],"product","Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":762,"config":763},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":764,"dataGaName":752,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":766},{"src":767},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":769,"categories":770,"header":772,"text":747,"button":773,"image":777},"security-modernization",[771],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":774,"config":775},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":776,"dataGaName":752,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":778},{"src":779},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":781,"blurb":782,"button":783,"secondaryButton":788},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":784,"config":785},"Get your free trial",{"href":786,"dataGaName":44,"dataGaLocation":787},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":489,"config":789},{"href":48,"dataGaName":49,"dataGaLocation":787},1772652050535]