[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":795},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/gitlab-mental-health-awareness-week-recap":3,"navigation-en-us":39,"banner-en-us":439,"footer-en-us":449,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Samantha Lee":691,"blog-related-posts-en-us-gitlab-mental-health-awareness-week-recap":705,"assessment-promotions-en-us":746,"next-steps-en-us":785},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":26,"isFeatured":12,"meta":27,"navigation":28,"path":29,"publishedDate":20,"seo":30,"stem":34,"tagSlugs":35,"__hash__":38},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/gitlab-mental-health-awareness-week-recap.yml","Gitlab Mental Health Awareness Week Recap",[7],"samantha-lee",null,"unfiltered",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"gitlab-mental-health-awareness-week-recap",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"GitLab Mental Health Awareness Week Recap","A recap of the Learning and Development Mental Health Awareness week",[18],"Samantha Lee","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749664102/Blog/Hero%20Images/gitlab-values-cover.png","2020-12-21","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\n\nAs an [all-remote](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/guide/#why-remote) company, the GitLab team is distributed across the globe. Our team is used to working online, scheduling Zoom social hours, and using asynchronous communication strategies.\n\nEven with all these work from home skills in our back pockets, 2020 has been a challenge. Over the year, we've adapted to new work environments, taken on new roles within our families and communities, and found new and creative ways to connect from a distance. It's been chaotic and it has taken a toll on our mental health.\n\nOver the last few months, the [Learning and Development (L&D) team at GitLab](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/\n) heard team members express feelings of burnout. Personally, in [coffee chats](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/informal-communication/#coffee-chats) and slack conversations, I heard team members speak of feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. The combination of maintaining a regular work schedule, caring for family, and finding time to relax and recharge, all while living through a global pandemic, is taking its toll.\n\nI could relate. I was feeling this overwhelm, too.\n\nIn response to these conversations, the L&D team launched an asynchronous [internal learning campaign](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/learning-initiatives/#internal-learning-campaigns) for the GitLab team with the goal of increasing awareness of, and access to, existing [mental health](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/mental-health/\n) resources at GitLab. This was a new [learning initiative](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/learning-initiatives/#learning-initiatives-introduction) for the team, leveraging GitLab issues, Slack reminders, polls, and a [learning speaker series](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/learning-initiatives/#learning-speaker-series-overview) to engage and educate team members.\n\nTake a few minutes to read the rest of this post to learn about the intentions behind the initiative, major takeaways, and what we're doing moving forward to continue the conversation.\n\n## Why participate asynchronously?\n\n[Asynchronous communication](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/asynchronous/) gives team members the opportunity to work [efficiently](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#efficiency), [collaborate](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#collaboration), and put [friends and family first](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#family-and-friends-first-work-second).\n\nWhen it comes to engaging learning content, applying asynchronous strategies can be challenging. Many learners are used to learning in collaborative, co-located groups or calls. The GitLab L&D team is always exploring and experimenting with new ways to make asynchronous learning just as engaging as synchronous learning. With this campaign, we used [GitLab issues](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/people-group/learning-development/challenges/-/boards), Slack, the [Polly app](https://www.polly.ai/), and Zoom to deliver information and host discussion.\n\nThis awareness campaign needed to be designed with as many asynchronous elements as possible to\n\n1. Make content accessible and consumable for all team members, regardless of their time zone or location\n1. Avoid creating additional overwhelm for participants related to attending synchronous calls, and instead let team members review content on their own time\n1. Document content for future self-paced learning paths\n\nIn addition to making this awareness campaign asynchronous, all participation was optional. Discussing mental health and [burnout](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/preventing-burnout/) can be challenging and uncomfortable. We wanted to allow space to discuss burnout only when team members felt comfortable and ready.\n\n\n## So, how'd it go!\n\nA few great wins from the week:\n\nFirst, we collaboratively stood up our [mental health tool stack](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/mental-health/#mental-health-tool-stack) as part of our [day 2 issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/people-group/learning-development/challenges/-/issues/35). Team members were asked to open an MR and contribute tools they use to manage burnout. Together we collected 12 resources. If you have one to add, please [contribute!](https://about.gitlab.com/community/contribute/)\n\nSecond, we created, tested, and documented a new learning initiative, [internal learning campaigns!](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/learning-initiatives/#internal-learning-campaigns). The L&D team is exploring new ways to deliver bite-sized learning, and this is one we will try again in the future.\n\nAnd finally, we hosted a fantastic [live speaker series with John Fitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDvpoouM-us&feature=emb_logo), author of the book [Time Off](https://www.timeoffbook.com/). Team members asked questions about how to take meaningful time off, how to return from PTO, and how managers can encourage team members to take time off. Approximately 100 team members attended synchronously, and many watched the recorded replay.\n\nA little more about John - he's the co-author of the international bestseller [Time Off: A Practical Guide to Building Your Rest Ethic and Finding Success Without the Stress](https://www.timeoffbook.com/), a book that expands our value of time off, and how our rest and leisure are as important as our work. John is a recovering workaholic who wrote this book for a former version of himself. He cares deeply about the future of work and is optimistic that everyone has the opportunity to join the creative class in the near future. John is now building tools for helping people and teams design their rest ethic and manage their time off more effectively. He would love to hear from you if you are passionate about intentional time off.\n\nWatch the replay of our live speaker series below!\n\n\u003Ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/BDvpoouM-us\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen>\u003C/iframe>\n\n\n## What didn't go so well?\n\nOne of the goals for the week was to increase the number of team members who answered 'Yes' to the following question: 'I know where and how to access resources to manage my mental health at GitLab'. Based on the Polly polls we shared in our #what's-happening-at-GitLab Slack channel, we saw a 3% increase in the number of team members who answered 'Yes', increasing from 73% to 76%\n\nHere are some screenshots of the poll data:\n\nOur initial poll data, collecting information _before_ the awareness week:\n\n\n![Alt text for your image](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/pre-poll-results.jpg){: .shadow}\n\n\nAnd our final poll data, collecting information _after_ the awareness week:\n\n![Alt text for your image](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/post-poll-results.jpg){: .shadow}\n\n\nWhile this shows a slight increase, it's not enough, and the L&D team recognizes we need to do more as a company to communicate this information more widely and empower team members to use the available resources. A few issues we noticed with this data collection:\n\n1. We aren't sure if the people who took the first poll also took the second poll since the poll is anonymous\n1. We also aren't sure if the people who took either poll particiapted in any or all of the awareness week content. Since participation was completion optional, we didn't track who decided to get involved\n1. Fewer people responded to the final poll than the initial poll\n\n\n## Now what?\n\nThe role of Learning & Development at GitLab has evolved during Covid-19 to include more support for mental health and wellbeing of our team members. Looking  after team members wellness is no longer a passing priority. The increasing pace of monumental change and stress indicates otherwise. The pandemic is a marathon, not a sprint, and our role as learning leaders is equipping our team members with a set of tools to build resilience, manage through change, and take care of their mental health.\n\nThis internal awareness campaign was just the start of a series of learning opportunities the L&D team is creating for team members to explore their mental health and learn strategies for managing burnout. We're working on [new mental health and burnout management inititiaves](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/people-group/learning-development/-/epics/24) for 2021 to continue this conversation beyond this awareness campaign.\n\nWe're also working on creating a self-paced learning path through this awareness campaign content, so that team members who missed the content, future team members, and our wider community can review the material. Follow the updates from our new GitLab Learn platform to find out when this learning path will be available.\n\nIn the meantime, we encourage you to check out the content from the week shared via GitLab issues!\n\n\n| Issue Link | Content |\n|",[23,24,25],"collaboration","inside GitLab","remote work","yml",{},true,"/en-us/blog/gitlab-mental-health-awareness-week-recap",{"title":15,"description":16,"ogTitle":15,"ogDescription":16,"noIndex":12,"ogImage":19,"ogUrl":31,"ogSiteName":32,"ogType":33,"canonicalUrls":31},"https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-mental-health-awareness-week-recap","https://about.gitlab.com","article","en-us/blog/gitlab-mental-health-awareness-week-recap",[23,36,37],"inside-gitlab","remote-work","B_ujY0j6XiFKgjGHbGoOBHVIsGTg0sVXinYFvqnoSEk",{"data":40},{"logo":41,"freeTrial":46,"sales":51,"login":56,"items":61,"search":369,"minimal":400,"duo":419,"pricingDeployment":429},{"config":42},{"href":43,"dataGaName":44,"dataGaLocation":45},"/","gitlab 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Shadow Takeaways from Jacie","Recap of my experience in the CEO Shadow Program.",[711],"Jacie Bandur","2021-05-18","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\nHi! I’m Jacie Bandur. I completed GitLab’s CEO Shadow program from 2021-04-26 through 2021-05-07. It was a really enlightening experience. I generally work in Learning and Development and consider myself a lifelong learner. I can’t even explain how much I learned in such a short about of time. I learned a lot about the business. I learned a lot about the product. But learned even more about the importance of iteration in everything we do.\n\n### Qualifications to Participate\n\nI wanted to start this off with touching on qualifications to participate in the program.\n\nI am the type of person that has gone through most of my life thinking I’m not qualified for things. I’m not qualified for that job, that promotion, that program. The list goes on and on.\n\nWhen I saw the [CEO Shadow program](/blog/ceo-shadow-impressions-takeaways/) kick off in 2019, I really wanted to participate. I was a little intimidated. Who wouldn’t be, spending 2 weeks with the CEO of any company? But time passed and all the sudden it was 2021 and I had not taken any steps to participating in the program.\n\nIf you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you that you are qualified to participate in this program, I’m not big on giving “pep talks,” but here’s me telling you - You are qualified for this program. There’s never going to be a good or perfect time to do it. Tell your manager you want to do the CEO Shadow program. Stop waiting. Sign up today.\n\nNote: Take a look at the [eligibility](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/shadow/#eligibility) section of the CEO Shadow page for more information on signing up.\n\n### Pre-Program Tips\n\nThere are many things recommended for shadows to do pre-program outlined on the CEO Shadow handbook page. As I was going through the program there were things that I thought helped me (or would have helped me).\n\nHere are my top 6 recommendations:\n\n1. Make sure your team knows you will be unavailable for 2 weeks. This isn’t a program that can or should be done alongside your normal day to day work. I found catching up from the 2 weeks away kind of difficult because I was trying to keep up on what was going on and I had a bunch of half done things.\n1. Talk with people who have done the shadow program - schedule at least 3 coffee chats with CEO Shadow Alumni.\n1. Have food that is easy to eat quickly. Sid’s meetings are back to back most days, so you will have small amounts of time to eat throughout the day. Sid does eat during calls, which you are welcome to do, too, but if you are taking notes, it is difficult to eat. And this will make you realize why speedy meetings are so important!\n1. Listen to the [Executive Leadership LinkedIn Learning course](https://www.linkedin.com/learning/executive-leadership/).\n1. Be prepared to ask questions. When doing the program virtually, there isn’t a ton of time for asking questions, so when one would come up, I would add it to a note on my computer and ask if there was ever time with just the shadows and Sid.\n1. Take at least 1 day off after the program. Take even a couple of days off if you can! This is recommended on the handbook page, but I can’t stress this enough.\n\n\n### Takeaways\n\n**Group Conversations**\n\nI’ve been at GitLab for almost 4 years. When I joined, I made it a point to attend as many GC’s as I could. I had gotten out of the habit of attending Group Conversations. After attending them again for 2 weeks, I realized how important they are to understand better what is going on across the business. Everything in the organization is so intertwined. It’s helpful to understand what other teams are working on and succeeding in.\n\n**Feedback**\n\nWe should all be giving and receiving feedback often. We have a whole [handbook page on giving and receiving feedback](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/guidance-on-feedback/). Read the handbook page and watch the videos, as well. Practice giving feedback. I recommend using the [1-1 agenda](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/1-1/suggested-agenda-format/) Sid uses, because Feedback is an essential piece of that agenda, and it makes feedback more of a routine thing.\n\n**Biggest Takeaway**\n\nWe have an incredible team here at GitLab, from Engineering to Product to Sales to People and all the groups in between. There are so many great ideas. I observed the constant reinforcement by Sid to start with something small and build on it. You can ALWAYS make something more complex. It’s hard to go back to something more simple when you start with something complex.\n\nA couple of quotes that I heard from Sid during the program that reinforced this point:\n\n- “Every complex system evolves from a simple system that worked.”\n- “It’s very clear what is the simple solution. We can always make it more complicated as we go on.”\n\nI know they are very similar, but they happened in different meetings on different days, so the point was reinforced repeatedly.\n\nDuring the program, I reflected on the projects that I’am working on. How many of them am I trying to do too much on before releasing. Probably all of them. When I’m working on projects in the future, I will break them down into smaller, more doable chunks. Iteration is hard - it’s a skill to be practicing constantly.\n\n\n### Overall\n\nOverall, the program was really insightful and impactful. If you haven’t participated in it yet, I cannot encourage you enough to do so!\n",{"slug":715,"featured":12,"template":13},"ceo-shadow-recap",{"content":717,"config":729},{"title":718,"description":719,"authors":720,"heroImage":722,"date":723,"body":724,"category":9,"tags":725},"Why I love contributing to GitLab","Making small meaningful changes is what it's all about.",[721],"Austin Regnery","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679501/Blog/Hero%20Images/new-feature.png","2021-05-11","It was mid-morning on a Tuesday in February, and I had 10 minutes in between meetings. So I decided to try and solve a pain point of mine.\nYou see, I had to memorize this HTML snippet to create a collapsible section in GitLab Issue descriptions and comments, but I kept forgetting it. Was it `summary` or `section`? I could never remember.\n```html\n\u003Cdetails>\n\u003Csummary>Insert Title\u003C/summary>\nHidden content\n\u003C/details>\n```\nEven though it is not vanilla Markdown, GitLab knows how to interpret some HTML. I used this formatting trick fairly often since full-page screenshots can occupy a lot of screen space, which leads to excessive scrolling.\nSo I decided to poke around our codebase to see how the other Markdown shortcuts worked. To my surprise, it was pretty straightforward. Each shortcut had a simple text input that mapped to each button. This implementation was simple to replicate since I just needed to copy/paste and replace a few words.\n![Image of Vue and Haml files with editor shortcuts](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/vue-haml.png){: .shadow}\nThe Vue and Haml files with the new shortcut\n\nI started a branch and began hacking away at the code. Now, I would never call myself a Software Engineer, but I like to try and make things from time to time. I was able to add a new shortcut to the toolbar to insert this code snippet for me in less than 10 minutes. No more memorizing! Making contributions like this is what makes working at GitLab so special.\nNow, it wasn't ready for production, but I at least had something that worked. I shared it with my UX colleagues in Slack, and it started to gain traction with several up-votes and few constructive comments on how to make it better.\nWith the functionality flushed out, a few other designers helped me get a better icon added to our SVG library. Using clear iconography is critical for communicating information more clearly.\n| Initial Icon | Final Icon |\n| - | - |\n| ![SVG of chevron right icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/chevron-right.svg) | ![SVG of details block icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/details-block.svg) |\n\nThe last thing to do was resolve my failing tests, and I had several teammates help me do that.\n![Gif of the shortcut being used](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/demo.gif)\n\nToday [this change](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/54938) merged! Now I solved a pain point for me and others. It took a few months to go from idea to production, but the effort was super low. I'd say the return on my initial investment, 10 minutes, is super high.\n> Having a direct impact on a product was never an option for me before joining GitLab.\n\n![Image of participants in the Merge Request](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/participants.png)\n\n\nThank you to everyone that helped me deploy this\n",[726,727,728],"UX","product","AWS",{"slug":730,"featured":12,"template":13},"why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab",{"content":732,"config":744},{"title":733,"description":734,"authors":735,"heroImage":737,"date":723,"body":738,"category":9,"tags":739},"Placebo Lines on the Pipeline Graph","Have you noticed the connecting lines missing on your pipelines lately? Here's why",[736],"Sam Beckham","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679507/Blog/Hero%20Images/ci-cd.png","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\nHave you ever pressed the close door button on the elevator, in the hope that you'll save a few precious seconds?\nOr got frustrated at the person stood next to you at the cross-walk, neglecting to press the button?\nWell, maybe they know something you don't, or perhaps you know this already.\nMany buttons in our society lie to us.\n[David McRaney](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/) dubbed these, \"Placebo buttons\" and they're everywhere.\nThose elevator doors won't close any faster and the cross-walk button has no effect on the lights.\nThe only lights they control are the lights on the buttons themselves.\nThey give you the feedback you crave, but that's all they're doing.\n\nThese placebos aren't constrained to the physical world, they're prevalent in [UI design](/blog/the-evolution-of-ux-at-gitlab/) too.\nFrom literal placebo buttons like [YouTube's downvote](https://www.quora.com/Does-downvoting-a-comment-on-YouTube-even-do-anything), to more subtle effects like Instagram always [pretending to work](https://www.fastcompany.com/1669788/the-3-white-lies-behind-instagrams-lightning-speed), or progress bars that have a [fixed animation](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/).\nThey're everywhere if you know where to look.\n\nAt GitLab, we created a placebo of our own in one of our core features; the pipeline graph.\n\nThose of you who have used our pipeline graph, will be familiar with its appearance.\nThere's a series of jobs, grouped by stages, connected by a series of lines depicting the relationships between the jobs.\nBut these lines might be lying to you.\nThese lines are indiscriminately drawn between each job in a stage, regardless of their relationship.\nThese lines are placebos.\n\n![The old pipeline rendering with lines connecting every job in a stage](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_old-graph.png)\n\nThis wasn't a problem to begin with.\nA basic pipeline has several jobs across a handful of stages.\nJobs in each stage would run parallel to each other, but each stage would run sequentially.\nIn the image shown above, all the jobs in the test stage would trigger at the same time. Once those jobs had finished, all the jobs in the build stage would trigger.\nWe used rudimentary CSS to draw lines connecting each job in one stage to each job in the next.\nThese lines weren't calculated based on their connections, but still reflected the story they were telling.\n\nSince the introduction of `needs` relationships in [v12.2](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/47063), pipelines got a bit more complicated.\nNow you could configure a job in a later stage to trigger as soon as a job in an earlier stage completed.\nLooking at our old example, we could set the API deployment to run as soon as our spec tests passed.\nThis skips the remaining tests and the entire build stage, turning our lines into pretty little liars.\n\nWe had many internal discussions about these lines, and how to show the relationships between jobs.\nThere's the [`needs` visualization](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/directed_acyclic_graph/#needs-visualization), which does an excellent job of displaying these relationships, but the main pipeline graph was still inaccurate.\nFor the past few months, we've been [refactoring the pipeline graph](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/276949), giving it a new lease of life and fixing some of its issues along the way.\nOne of those issues were the faked lines.\nIn the new version, we can accurately draw lines between jobs.\nLines that actually depict the relationships jobs have with each other.\nNow the lines no-longer lie!\n\n![The newer pipeline graph showing the correct needs links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_new-graph.png)\n\nThe above image shows an unreleased version of the pipeline graph.\nYou can see the lines drawn between the jobs to show that the `deploy:API` job can start as soon as the `rspec` job is successful.\nSomething the old lines (shown earlier in this post) would have been unable to depict.\n\nOne unfortunate downside of this is that these lines can be quite expensive to calculate.\nThey're actual DOM nodes, drawn deliberately and placed precisely.\nOn smaller graphs this isn't a problem, but some of our initial tests have found pipelines with a potential 8000+ job connections.\nThat kind of calculation would grind the browser to a halt, and nobody wants that.\n\nAt GitLab, we believe in boring solutions.\nWe make the simple change that sets us on the path towards where we want to be.\nShip it, get feedback, and iterate.\nSo that's what we did.\nIn the first phase of this rollout, we shipped the new pipeline graph with no lines connecting the jobs.\nWe don't have to worry about the expensive calculations, and we still get to roll out the refactored pipeline graph.\n\n![The current (v13.11) pipeline graph showing no links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_current-graph.png)\n\nWe know some of you will miss them, but fear not.\nBoring solutions are just technical debt if you don't iterate on them.\nSo the [improved lines are coming](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/4509) in a future release, along with several other improvements to the pipeline graph.\nWe're already starting to roll out the new [Job Dependencies](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/298973) view which shows the jobs in a (much closer to) execution order.\nStay tuned for more updates, and watch [Sarah Groff Hennigh Palermo's talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2EKqKjB7OQ) for the technical side of this effort and a deeper dive into some of the decisions we made.\n",[740,741,742,743],"CI","frontend","agile","design",{"slug":745,"featured":12,"template":13},"placebo-lines-on-the-pipeline-graph",{"promotions":747},[748,762,773],{"id":749,"categories":750,"header":752,"text":753,"button":754,"image":759},"ai-modernization",[751],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":755,"config":756},"Get your AI maturity 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