[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":791},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/how-to-keep-remote-teams-engaged":3,"navigation-en-us":33,"banner-en-us":433,"footer-en-us":443,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Emily von Hoffmann":685,"blog-related-posts-en-us-how-to-keep-remote-teams-engaged":700,"assessment-promotions-en-us":741,"next-steps-en-us":781},{"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/how-to-keep-remote-teams-engaged.yml","How To Keep Remote Teams Engaged",[7],"emily-von-hoffmann",null,"culture",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-to-keep-remote-teams-engaged",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9},"How to keep remote (volunteer) teams engaged","Our Director of Strategic Partnerships chats about remote engagement challenges at a charity that encourages kids to get interested in space, finding interesting parallels with open source projects.",[18],"Emily von Hoffmann","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749670694/Blog/Hero%20Images/how-to-keep-remote-teams-engaged-cover.jpg","2016-12-21","\n\nWe love hearing when people outside of GitLab read our [Handbook](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/) – it's totally public, after all, and it's pretty comprehensive (or a behemoth, depending on your frame of mind). It was even more exciting to hear from James Telfer, of [UK Students for the Exploration and Development of Space](http://ukseds.org/) (UKSEDS) that he read the handbook and had further questions that we'd left unanswered. In particular – what to do when you have neither carrot nor stick when managing remote volunteers?\n\n\u003C!--more-->\n\nUKSEDS, a student-run charity that operates around the UK, offering career advice and skills support to students interested in the space industry, borrowed a lot from our handbook when making their constitution.\n\nThe internal engagement problem grew after UKSEDS experienced a growth surge and a structural change earlier this year. Specifically, James said:\n\n> _Project teams are interacting okay with their direct managers but interaction with the wider organization is little to none. While this doesn't directly impact work, we're concerned about the longer-term impact on volunteer enjoyment and retention, both of which are really important to us._\n\nEliran Mesika, our Director of Strategic Partnerships, agreed to jump on the phone with James to learn more about UKSEDS' particular case and the challenges they faced.\n\nHere are some highlights:\n\n- Having individual responsibilities somewhere public (even internally) is a useful accountability tool, and helps direct team members to the correct person when they have a question.\n- Functional group updates presented to the whole company make teams talk more, which results in more organic collaboration.\n- Keeping communication on a specific topic within the right issue is essential for keeping everyone on the same page – especially when working asynchronously.\n\nRead on for Eliran's tips.\n\n**James:** Our work involves hosting skills workshops and conducting outreach, which means traveling to schools and science fairs to tell kids that space is great and they should get involved. We recently restructured by creating a small executive group that meets every week, and allowing volunteer teams to grow larger and meet less frequently. We found that destroyed our ability to connect with the teams and we've started losing people; we've got quite a high attrition rate, which is normal for a charity. But I wondered how you approached this problem? Some of those things like the random Hangouts and the 1:1 chats work great as long as you can pay people for their work time. But with volunteers it's a different problem entirely.\n\n\n**Eliran:** I'm actually working with Drupal, and I think your problem is more similar to an open source project, or an open source community behind a project. There is a major difference between volunteers and people who are being paid. Once you're paying someone, you have their attention. Perhaps learning what open source projects do to engage their contributors may be helpful in your case. For now, I can share a bit about what we're doing to keep people engaged and connected to the mission.\n\nWe're an open core product, and since its inception the whole behavior and culture of the company has also been open. This extends to everything the company does: from the very technical details of a new feature that is being repaired or created, all the way to our high priorities and strategy, and the actual procedures the company follows, is documented and publicly shared. It is shared within the whole company, and is available all the time.\n\n**James:** How does that culture extend to individual responsibilities?\n\n\n**Eliran:**\nExpectations and responsibilities are also public. I handle strategic partnerships, and it's pretty much just me doing this, but I can look at what anyone on our whole team is working on, without even having to ask them directly. On our team page, we have everyone's job description linked, along with any specific responsibilities. So if you have frontend developers, maybe one is responsible for the website, and others are responsible for a particular set of features of the community edition, for example. You can understand at a glance who the right person is for what you're interested in, and you can go into any repo and see what they're working on. For the most part when we're talking about procedures, we have the Handbook which describes everything about the administration and culture of the company. It goes into detail even about how to write a shared document that you work on. It also talks about what we do on a regular basis.\n\n**James:** Can you elaborate a bit on those routine things, like the daily calls?\n\n\n**Eliran:** Our daily calls have worked really well for us. They're optional, but we usually get maybe two-thirds of the company joining each day. We have functional updates, where we've divided teams into the various days of the week, and they give an update on what they've completed over the past few weeks, which gives the whole company insight into what the marketing team is doing, what the CI team is doing, and what they're working on next. It really connects you with the whole scope, rather than just seeing your team's goals and your individual goals in a vacuum.\n\n**James:** So that's using what other people are doing to remind an individual person or team that the greater company exists – it's not so much that they'd be interested in the technical details, but it reminds them they're part of something bigger? Is that the key there?\n\n\n**Eliran:** Yeah I think it's very important to give people insight into what other teams are doing, because it's remote. That's really key. Otherwise, it seems like when people are working remotely it's very easy to feel isolated. Having those functional updates forces you out of isolation and connects you with the bigger goal. And on a personal level, it connects you with other people's work. As you said, even if you're not a technical person, you'll still get a high-level understanding of the product or what the objective was. That's great for creating a more cohesive environment, and it's remained the same since I joined.\n\n>It's very important to give people insight into what other teams are doing – having functional updates forces you out of isolation and connects you with the bigger goal\n\nWe also have a second part of the call where people share what they did last weekend. So once a week you have an opportunity to talk about your personal life, we rotate so everyone shares their experiences. I think that's a very powerful tool to connect on a social level, even if you're not talking with people on a regular basis. Typically you're working with a team of 5-10 people, and you'll be part of a group that's maybe 30 people. So at best you'll know 30 people, and you won't talk to them on a regular basis. You know the regular few people that you talk to, and I think that's very narrow if you're part of a bigger group. But the way that we do these individual stories helps make everyone feel closer.\n\n**James**: I can see one definite scope for improvement for us, because we haven't been very good at pulling the teams together. They're sort of sandboxed at the moment.\n\n\n**Eliran;** I think you'll notice that once teams start talking about what they're doing, obviously all teams have touch points that they've been speaking with others about, but you'll have more organic collaboration. Just by talking about what they're thinking about doing, or trying to do. That's the best case scenario. At the most basic level, you'll get people to be aware of what's going on.\n\nWe also have a second type of meeting, which is an open meeting focused on a certain department or area. We have a kick-off meeting for a product, or for example we have a monthly release cycle, and anyone can come to those meetings to learn more about what's going on. Our marketing team also has those meetings for example, to talk about new efforts and past performance.\n\n**James:** How else do people reach out to work together?\n\n\n**Eliran:** We use Slack for communication, and I'm not sure how that would work in an environment like yours, without volunteers dedicating a certain amount of time every day. But we have channels for everything, and the whole team is distributed across channels. We have #whats-happening-at-gitlab, which is the channel Emily used to ask \"Hey is there anyone relevant who'd like to help James and talk about remote work at his organization?\" We also have a #questions channel, where anyone can ask anything from the most sophisticated to the stupidest. They just throw their question to the channel and people try to help them or steer them in the right direction for who to talk to. Another channel that's really important is the #thanks channel, and I feel that's an important part to offer gratitude to someone for helping you, and also receive that when you've helped someone. Because of the remote environment it's very powerful. Because GitLab's culture is built on asynchronous work – people in different time zones – you're not on Slack all the time because others will pick up your question whenever they become available.\n\nOne other thing that's working well is centralizing a process for working asynchronously. So, we try to make all the work and communication and discussion on GitLab by using issues. Someone will create an issue with a particular task or mission, and then the whole communication is available there. So people have access to information or decisions or a process on a specific area. Even if you're not involved, you can comment and say, \"Hey I'd like to suggest a, b, c.\" So by virtue of being in different time zones, we were forced to use asynchronous methods of work, and issues work very well for that. Having the discussion tools integrated into that, and using it to keep everything in one work space dedicated to a specific topic, is great for remote teams. If you can't always set a time for everyone to sit down together, using issues is crucial to making work happen.\n\n**James:** We do use Slack, because, as you may recall as a student you may as well be in different time zones, waking up at 9 am one day and 1 pm the next. Are there decisions made on Slack, or do you tell people, \"No this is a discussion, take it to x issue\"?\n\n\n**Eliran:** We may have those specific discussions on Slack, but for the most part, maybe 95% of the decisions are happening within the issue. But we don't discourage people from talking, so there could be times when you have to talk to someone or a group of people, because there's only so much you can do over text. So you may make a decision over Hangout, but that is communicated back through the issue. Someone will go back and say \"I had a discussion with Mark, and we decided the best way to move forward is x.\" That way everyone has the opportunity to get the takeaways from that meeting and give input. So some decisions happen away from the issues. But it's important to reinforce that we try to keep communication on a specific topic within an issue. We really push that, and it's part of the culture at GitLab. As you keep growing, the sooner you adopt changes in a working culture, the better it is for people to learn them later on.\n\n\nRead more about [how we stay connected as a remote company](/blog/how-we-stay-connected-as-a-remote-company/).\n\n_Tweet us [@GitLab](https://twitter.com/gitlab) and check out our [job openings](/jobs/)._\n\n\u003C!-- cover image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-coffee-meeting-team-7096/ -->\n\n\u003C!-- cover image license: CC0: https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/ 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Hoffmann",{"template":690},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":692},{"headshot":693,"ctfId":694},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749659488/Blog/Author%20Headshots/gitlab-logo-extra-whitespace.png","evhoffmann",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/emily-von-hoffmann",{},"en-us/blog/authors/emily-von-hoffmann","zBEVnM69VnbjDNRxhqMvtqH47MYHt1wraGaN6nBYmAU",[701,714,728],{"content":702,"config":712},{"title":703,"description":704,"authors":705,"heroImage":707,"date":708,"body":709,"category":9,"tags":710},"Developer 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.",[706],"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",[540,550,711],"inside GitLab",{"slug":713,"featured":24,"template":13},"developer-relations-at-gitlab-what-weve-learned-since-our-start",{"content":715,"config":726},{"title":716,"description":717,"authors":718,"heroImage":720,"date":721,"body":722,"category":9,"tags":723},"Visualizing 11 years of GitLab contributions","Check out this animated video, which beautifully visualizes every contribution since our start.",[719],"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",[255,724,725],"contributors","features",{"slug":727,"featured":12,"template":13},"everyone-who-has-contributed",{"content":729,"config":739},{"title":730,"description":731,"authors":732,"heroImage":734,"date":735,"body":736,"category":9,"tags":737},"The many routes to a tech career","GitLab team members of different ages and backgrounds share their entry into this industry.",[733],"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",[738,711],"careers",{"slug":740,"featured":12,"template":13},"the-many-routes-to-a-tech-career",{"promotions":742},[743,757,769],{"id":744,"categories":745,"header":747,"text":748,"button":749,"image":754},"ai-modernization",[746],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":750,"config":751},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":752,"dataGaName":753,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":755},{"src":756},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":758,"categories":759,"header":761,"text":748,"button":762,"image":766},"devops-modernization",[760,553],"product","Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":763,"config":764},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":765,"dataGaName":753,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":767},{"src":768},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":770,"categories":771,"header":773,"text":748,"button":774,"image":778},"security-modernization",[772],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":775,"config":776},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":777,"dataGaName":753,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":779},{"src":780},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":782,"blurb":783,"button":784,"secondaryButton":789},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":785,"config":786},"Get your free trial",{"href":787,"dataGaName":44,"dataGaLocation":788},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":489,"config":790},{"href":48,"dataGaName":49,"dataGaLocation":788},1772652069542]