[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":795},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/high-efficiency-innovation":3,"navigation-en-us":39,"banner-en-us":439,"footer-en-us":449,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Jay Newman":691,"blog-related-posts-en-us-high-efficiency-innovation":705,"assessment-promotions-en-us":745,"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":35,"tagSlugs":36,"__hash__":38},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/high-efficiency-innovation.yml","High Efficiency Innovation",[7],"jay-newman",null,"culture",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"high-efficiency-innovation",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"High-efficiency innovation: 3 lessons to learn from GitLab's culture of rapid execution","Guest author Jay Newman recently shadowed our CEO to discover how we move so quickly.",[18],"Jay Newman","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749680169/Blog/Hero%20Images/high-efficiency-innovation.jpg","2018-03-27","\n\nAll companies have different ways of creating new products and services. Despite that, there are a few patterns that show up consistently. At [Jump](http://www.jumpassociates.com), we like to call those patterns the different \"cultures\" of innovation. One such pattern has to do with execution. Great executors (like GE and FedEx) are masters of sharp focus and efficient machine-making.\n\nMany of the Fortune 500 companies that we work with do their best innovation this way. They've built infrastructure that excels at launching products globally, coordinating thousands of employees and operating at massive scale. These companies often ask us what they can learn from what's going on in Silicon Valley. There's much to learn, of course, from the startups and entrepreneurial ecosystem here.\n\nThe important question is not \"How do they do things in Silicon Valley?\" Instead, it's \"What can I learn that would work well in my organization?\" It's always exciting to come across a startup that's doing what these big companies do best – execute at scale – and doing it in a completely different way.\n\nGitLab is one such company. They're an open source software company powering many of the world's largest corporations. They've developed a surprising – and strong – culture of innovation. They're a remote-only company. There's no physical headquarters or office space for their 200+ employees located worldwide. They proudly admit that they value \"boring solutions.\" Their [entire business strategy is available](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/strategy/) for the public and their competitors to see. They're respected for their [product](/blog/gitlab-leader-continuous-integration-forrester-wave/), their [culture](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/), and their [results](http://www.businessinsider.com/gitlab-raises-20-million-from-gv-2017-10).\n\nMany companies pride themselves on their ability to iterate quickly and answer yes/no decisions rapidly. Even they might be surprised at the scope and scale of GitLab's efficiency. GitLab drives high-efficiency innovation through a culture of rapid execution. They weave speed directly into the fabric of who they are and what they do. Do you want to learn how they do it? I recently shadowed GitLab's CEO, [Sid Sijbrandij](/company/team/#sytses), and his team for a day.\n\nHere's how they make it happen.\n\n## When the answer is clear, build for speed. Speed wins.\n\n*Why build a culture of rapid execution?*\n\nWith such a unique team culture and set of business practices, the first thing I wanted to learn from Sid was why GitLab operates the way it does. What became clear was that it's all very intentional.\n\nA few key beliefs are central to the decisions they've made:\n\n### Belief 1: The solution required to win is already super clear to everyone.\n\nThey're operating in a market called DevOps, which is about creating platforms and tools for software developers to use in their work. It's a market where both the unmet customer need and the ideal solution are clear to everyone.\n\nThey were newer to the game than some brand name and legacy competitors, so they chose to prioritize speed over invention to get to the finish line first.\n\n### Belief 2: If you don't do anything new, you can do things faster, bigger and better.\n\nThe folks at GitLab believe that it's better to be boring. They value \"boring solutions.\" It's not because boring is better in and of itself. It's because boring is efficient. It's faster. And faster can become bigger. And when you add in collaboration with a global open source community, bigger can become better.\n\nIf there's a market standard, they don't try to create something different. They get on board. As Sid says, \"It's about convention over conviction. We make sure everyone [in the open source community] is enticed to participate. If the rest of the world is doing it in some way, we should be doing it in that way.\"\n\n### Belief 3: It's OK not to make everyone happy.\n\nIt's hard for most companies – and most people – to change to what made them successful in the first place. For GitLab, making those kinds of changes is critical to achieving the growth they seek. So on a daily basis, they choose to act quickly, make mistakes quickly, and learn from those mistakes quickly.\n\nThat can lead to decisions – big and small – that might not make everyone happy.\n\nWhen they launch a completely new version of GitLab (they're on version [10.6](/releases/2018/03/22/gitlab-10-6-released/) right now), they always add some things that will frustrate some existing customers, and they often take away things that other customers love.\n\n\"There's way more people not using GitLab than that are. So we should always optimize for those future customers, not your current ones. That's why companies slow down. They start listening. Engineers want to fix the current bugs. Sales wants to keep the old deck that works for them. You start listening to your customers and what they need you to maintain or fix. The natural motion of any company is to slow down. So as CEO you need to get the company beyond that.\"\n\nSo what does high-efficiency innovation and rapid execution look like at GitLab?\n\nHere are a few examples of the pace at which they operate:\n\n1. They release a new version of GitLab every single month.\n1. Everything is in draft and subject to change. It's always under construction.\n1. They don't repeat themselves. GitLab documents how it does things in a [handbook](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/). It's 1,000 pages long. If it's in the handbook, don't repeat it.\n1. Every conference call starts on time. No wasted minutes. Sid checks 15-30 action items off the list in each of his 25-minute 1-on-1 meetings.\n1. They trust their team to multi-task appropriately. If you want to check email during a meeting, it's probably more important than the meeting is to you.\n\nThere's a final, often-overlooked value of speed: it's exciting. Workplaces that manage to pair speed with evident progress allow their teams to feel accomplished, motivated, and on the edge of their seats. It's an easy hack for maintaining employee engagement.\n\n## Don't sacrifice long-term vision for short-term speed. Be accountable for both.\n\n*What is GitLab is rapidly executing on?*\n\nMany companies who prize execution do a great job at sustaining and growing their existing products. They're often quite efficient – though they could learn something from the speed at which GitLab operates. But they're more likely to struggle with thinking far out into the future.\n\nTo paraphrase Stephen Covey, there's a big difference between efficiency and effectiveness. A jet flying 1,000 miles per hour is efficient; a jet flying 1,000 miles per hour in the right direction is effective.\n\n#### So if GitLab as an organization is a jet built for speed – where is it going?\n\nSid wants GitLab to help multiply the potential for progress that humanity can drive into the world. \"Our mission is 'Everyone can contribute.' That's a long-term vision. That's 10 years. It means changing all of our culture to read-write. Think Wikipedia. They allow everyone to contribute. Imagine if we can do that. You release a lot of progress. You 10x the progress. [Multipliers like that are] thrown around so easily in Silicon Valley that you have to be cautious. But if you look at 100,000 companies using GitLab, and really being able to get their out software faster. I'm willing to stand behind that.\"\n\nThat means that not only is GitLab thinking about efficiency and effectiveness, but it's also thinking about impact. Impact on the scale of human progress and global culture.\n\nThat's pretty big and pretty far out. So how do they make sure the pilots keep looking way out there on the horizon while flying at supersonic speeds and maneuvring around today's obstacles?\n\nFirst, you set the mission and vision. Everything starts with that mission in mind. Everyone knows it, and Sid talks about it [every chance he gets](https://blog.ycombinator.com/gitlab-distributed-startup/).\n\nNext, you draw that vision back into today's actions with cascading plans. Create a three-to-five-year strategy about how to get there. Craft a yearly plan and [product vision](/blog/gitlabs-2018-product-vision/) – one that's concrete enough that you could show screenshots of what it will look like a year from now. Define quarterly goals (GitLab's [OKRs](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/okrs/) are public), monthly targets, and smaller sprints to get you there.\n\nThird, you make each of these regular goals highly ambitious, close-in, unambiguous, and concrete. \"Setting high goals pushes people beyond their comfort zone,\" Sid told me. At Y Combinator, he says they taught GitLab that \"20 percent is the new 10 percent.\" That's 20 percent growth, every single week. It's a high number, and it forces them to make completely different types of decisions.\n\nFinally, because the short-term goals are incredibly high, you focus on iteration. [Iteration](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration) is one of GitLab's core values. They define it clearly: \"We do the smallest possible thing and get it out as quickly as possible.\" And they don't just ask developers and designers to work this way. \"We put the whole company on that diet. It made sense for the product. But for marketing, sales, etc., we've gotten them there. If you say 'Grow XYZ in the next two weeks,' you do completely different things. I don't know why that is, but you do.\"\n\n### Encode culture and values to keep the company moving faster.\n\n*How does GitLab do what they do?*\n\nIt was GitLab's strong culture and values orientation that first drew me to them as an organization. I'm often on the lookout for how leaders drive values through their organizations – from Jon Stewart on \"The Daily Show\" to the frontline teams at Starbucks and Zappos.\n\nThe best values-oriented organizations draw explicit links between their values, their competitive advantages, and their daily activities.\n\nHere's where GitLab stands out.\n\nIn just one day of shadowing GitLab's staff, the team talked about values during a product meeting, two interviews with prospective employees, an analyst call and a 1-on-1 with a teammate. The whole team is drawing causal links between what it does (its business activities) and how it does them (the values they live by).\n\n>The whole team is drawing causal links between what it does (its business activities) and how it does them (the values they live by).\n\nSo how does that work? It requires leaders choosing to identify not just the values that matter, but also how to organize around them. Sid told us \"I didn't do a very good job coding GitLab [when he and his co-founders all started back in 2011]. But I think I'm doing a good job coding GitLab the company.\"\n\nAs a remote-only company, \"coding the company\" means (1) writing things down, (2) referencing back to what's been written and (3) reinforcing it through rewards.\n\nAll of this \"GitLab the company\" code is captured in its handbook. The handbook is referenced in almost every conversation. The handbook consists of over 1,000 pages of text. It's a tool that GitLab uses to capture and detail out decisions that have already been made about all of its core business practices – marketing, sales, product, team operations, finance, and more. It's a constant practice for Sid and the team to reference the handbook in meetings, and to send people to look there first before continuing the conversation.\n\nThe values take a prime place in the handbook. There, values are defined, not just described. Words can mean different things in different contexts – and these values indicate a particular thing at GitLab. The definitions are brought to life with 5-15 concrete actions that employees often take for each of the six values. As Sid says, \"The culture got stronger because it is written down. And because it improves and is edited over time.\" And then they're reinforced every day through hiring, coaching, performance reviews and casual conversations.\n\nIt's rare that companies think about linking their values with their competitive advantage. It's rarer still that a company brings its values to life through the day-to-day work. What GitLab has unlocked with its values orientation is not just good and meaningful work. It has also opened the most important competitive advantage in its business model – speed.\n\n>It's rare that companies think about linking their values with their competitive advantage. It's rarer still that a company brings its values to life through the day-to-day work.\n\nIt says it right there in the 'Why have values' section of the handbook: \"Values are a framework for distributed decision-making; they allow you to determine what to do without asking your manager.\" By encoding values deep into everyday activities of the company, everyone on GitLab's team can make decisions faster.\n\nIn DevOps, winning is about getting there first. GitLab coded values right into its organizational design to make sure it could always be the fastest to market.\n\n## Parting thoughts: Will high-efficiency innovation work for you?\n\nAlthough they weren't thinking about large corporations, the oracles of Delphi were right. The most important maxim is to \"know thyself.\" The GitLab prescription isn't right for every company. What's most important is to build a culture of innovation that reflects your strengths and your values.\n\nGitLab is a company of executors, of coders and of people who aren't afraid to work out in the open and make mistakes. They see clear problems. Then they attack. GitLab built a method of innovation that works well for them, but it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. It won't work for everyone, but it might work for you.\n\n#### Here are the questions you should ask:\n\n1. Is the problem you're facing clear to you and your competitors?\n1. Would the people on your team prioritize efficiency over novelty if it'll get you there first?\n1. Do you know how to make trade-offs between what works for your existing customers and what might work better for future customers?\n\nIf you answered yes, pay close attention to what GitLab is doing. Their unrelentingly quick iterative process might be just what the doctor ordered to scale your innovation.\n\nIf not, the GitLab system isn't the right fit for you. You'll want to organize your innovation in a different way.\n\nAs one example, we built Jump to handle an entirely different type of [highly ambiguous problems](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucerogers/2018/01/25/innovation-leaders-dev-patnaik-co-founder-and-ceo-jump-associates/3/#42518f211238). So it makes sense that some of Jump's values (Passion, Curiosity, Enthusiasm, Intention, Acuity, Initiative and Play) look very much the opposite of GitLab's values (Collaboration, Results, Efficiency, Diversity, Iteration and Transparency).\n\nJump and GitLab are both deeply values-oriented companies with rich and collaborative cultures focused on innovation. And yet we value different things, have different org structures, hire different types of people and work on very different types of problems.\n\nSo what if you're like me and your company's approach or market situation is quite different than GitLab's? Take this as an opportunity to learn from seeing your mirror image.\n\nFirst, test parts of their approach. See what works for you and your team. Then, consider the polar opposites. Find the points where you value distinctly different things, and ask why. Learn why their method works for them, and why it wouldn't work for you. Then flip the script – what's an approach to innovation that GitLab would never do that would be a difference maker for you if you did it?\n\nEither way, take note of what GitLab is doing and how they're doing it. It's amazing, effective, growing like crazy and a great place to work. And ask yourself – should my team be innovating like that?\n\n## About the guest author\n\nJay Newman is Director of Strategy at Jump Associates, a leading strategy and innovation firm. Learn more at [jumpassociates.com](http://www.jumpassociates.com) and connect directly with Jay on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynewman1).\n\nPhoto by [Karsten Würth](https://unsplash.com/photos/ZKWgoRUYuMk?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/)\n",[23,24,25],"inside GitLab","collaboration","workflow","yml",{},true,"/en-us/blog/high-efficiency-innovation",{"title":31,"description":16,"ogTitle":31,"ogDescription":16,"noIndex":12,"ogImage":19,"ogUrl":32,"ogSiteName":33,"ogType":34,"canonicalUrls":32},"3 lessons for innovation and rapid execution from 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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.",[711],"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",[546,556,23],{"slug":717,"featured":28,"template":13},"developer-relations-at-gitlab-what-weve-learned-since-our-start",{"content":719,"config":730},{"title":720,"description":721,"authors":722,"heroImage":724,"date":725,"body":726,"category":9,"tags":727},"Visualizing 11 years of GitLab contributions","Check out this animated video, which beautifully visualizes every contribution since our start.",[723],"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",[261,728,729],"contributors","features",{"slug":731,"featured":12,"template":13},"everyone-who-has-contributed",{"content":733,"config":743},{"title":734,"description":735,"authors":736,"heroImage":738,"date":739,"body":740,"category":9,"tags":741},"The many routes to a tech career","GitLab team members of different ages and backgrounds share their entry into this industry.",[737],"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",[742,23],"careers",{"slug":744,"featured":12,"template":13},"the-many-routes-to-a-tech-career",{"promotions":746},[747,761,773],{"id":748,"categories":749,"header":751,"text":752,"button":753,"image":758},"ai-modernization",[750],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":754,"config":755},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":756,"dataGaName":757,"dataGaLocation":243},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":759},{"src":760},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":762,"categories":763,"header":765,"text":752,"button":766,"image":770},"devops-modernization",[764,559],"product","Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":767,"config":768},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":769,"dataGaName":757,"dataGaLocation":243},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":771},{"src":772},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":774,"categories":775,"header":777,"text":752,"button":778,"image":782},"security-modernization",[776],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":779,"config":780},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":781,"dataGaName":757,"dataGaLocation":243},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":783},{"src":784},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":786,"blurb":787,"button":788,"secondaryButton":793},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":789,"config":790},"Get your free trial",{"href":791,"dataGaName":50,"dataGaLocation":792},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":495,"config":794},{"href":54,"dataGaName":55,"dataGaLocation":792},1772652076083]