[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":791},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/staff-level-engineering-at-gitlab":3,"navigation-en-us":35,"banner-en-us":434,"footer-en-us":444,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Charlie Ablett":686,"blog-related-posts-en-us-staff-level-engineering-at-gitlab":700,"assessment-promotions-en-us":742,"next-steps-en-us":781},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":24,"isFeatured":12,"meta":25,"navigation":26,"path":27,"publishedDate":20,"seo":28,"stem":32,"tagSlugs":33,"__hash__":34},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/staff-level-engineering-at-gitlab.yml","Staff Level Engineering At Gitlab",[7],"charlie-ablett",null,"unfiltered",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"staff-level-engineering-at-gitlab",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"What does Staff level mean at GitLab?","Get a multifaceted view of Staff level Engineering at GitLab",[18],"Charlie Ablett","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749681092/Blog/Hero%20Images/staff-engineering.jpg","2020-02-18","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\n## What does Staff level mean at GitLab?\n\nAt GitLab, [Backend Engineers](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/backend-engineer/) and [Frontend Engineers](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/development/frontend/)\nwork together with Product, Design, Quality, and Security to improve the product and address technical challenges.\nAt the [Senior](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/backend-engineer/#senior-backend-engineer) level,\nthey are expected to address the most complex challenges within their engineering team, as well as help their team members with technical blockers and process improvements.\n\nWhen considering a [career path or direction](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/careers/#roles) within GitLab,\nSenior Engineers — both Backend and Frontend — can choose either to advance on the management track to become an [Engineering Manager](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/engineering-management/),\nor on the individual contributor (technical) track to become a [Staff Backend Engineer](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/backend-engineer/#staff-backend-engineer)\nor [Staff Frontend Engineer](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/development/frontend/staff/).\nEach job description gives some idea of the responsibilities of a Staff Engineer role, but how does that look in practice?\n\nCurrent and previous Staff Backend Engineers and Engineering Managers kindly agreed to talk to me in a series of one-on-one interviews.\nAs someone considering the technical track to become a Staff Backend Engineer, I wanted to find out what exactly it entails.\nMuch of what each engineer said overlapped, but each had a unique perspective based on their team and their particular experience within GitLab as an entity.\n\n**note**: The following is based on the experience of Staff backend engineers at GitLab, but there will be future\nexplorations into the world of Staff level of Design, Technical Writing, and other positions that can be Staff.\n\nThe following sums up the perspective of each of the engineers, with my takeaway _in italics_.\n\n## What Staff Backend Engineers said\n\n[**Jacob Vosmaer**, @jacobvosmaer-gitlab](https://gitlab.com/jacobvosmaer-gitlab) (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), leverages his chronological knowledge of GitLab from when it was small enough to be understood by one person.\nThis gives him the foundation to understand the product from a systemic perspective.\nGitLab is now an [enterprise-scale](/enterprise/) complex project, and uses many third-party open-source libraries as part of its product.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer can recognize a good solution when they see one, and able to clearly explain its merits to other engineers, community members, managers or customers._\n\n[**Sean McGivern**, @smcgivern](https://gitlab.com/smcgivern) (Edinburgh, Scotland) provided some historical context - Staff used to mean a role specifically on a team, but now it's more of a multidisciplinary role.\nThe impact of Staff Engineers is predicated not purely on advanced technical skill, but their ability to collaborate across teams.\nAs a former Engineering Manager, he identified an overlap between the leadership skills and time management skills required by Staff Engineers and Engineering Managers.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer has a broad skill-set with in-depth expertise in several areas (see ['Paint Drip' people](https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip-people/1226700000696195/)*)._\n\n[**Ash McKenzie**, @ashmckenzie](https://gitlab.com/ashmckenzie) (Geelong, Australia) noted that reaching beyond his team can mean finding and identifying a niche that needs a champion, and working to improve it without oversight.\nIn Ash's case, his high-leverage work on the GitLab Development Kit (GDK) means he can help every person working on the GitLab codebase to become more efficient by removing technical blockers in the GDK itself.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer leverages their increasingly on-demand time to help others, efficiently unblock them and enable them to move forward._\n\n[**Nick Thomas**, @nick.thomas](https://gitlab.com/nick.thomas) (Shetland, Scotland) identified that one way to thrive at the Staff level was to identify systemic improvements.\nThis may involve slow, steady identification of system-level challenges, rather than solving immediate time-sensitive issues.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer is asked for technical opinions more often than at Senior level, and it allows them to have a greater technical and cultural impact._\n\n[**Andreas Brandl**, @abrandl](https://gitlab.com/abrandl) (Hamburg, Germany) noted that levels above Senior require increasing familiarity with the company, processes and culture in order to thrive.\nBecause GitLab encourages anyone in the company to [question anything](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#anyone-and-anything-can-be-questioned), it allows dynamic, iterative improvements to processes.\nStaff level engineers can demonstrate this publicly and encourage, enable and support others to do the same.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer questions anything, looks for process improvements and encourages the documentation of processes for clarity and transparency._\n\n[**Dylan Griffith**, @DylanGriffith](https://gitlab.com/DylanGriffith) (Sydney, Australia) emphasized the role of reaching out beyond your team and collaborating with others across GitLab and in the wider community.\nBy familiarising themselves with the vision of the product itself as well as its business value, this allows Staff Engineers the ability to better identify cross-team issues that may have escaped notice.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer identifies and addresses cross-team problems that may otherwise fall through the cracks and liaises with management, Product and customers to steward delivery to completion._\n\n[**Fabien Catteau**, @fcatteau](https://gitlab.com/fcatteau) (Compiègne, France) focused on knowledge management and transfer within the context of a broader technological vision, which complements the Product vision.\nSince GitLab is an enterprise-scale product, nobody can know everything - so Staff level engineers balance sharing what they know and being comfortable with asking for help.\nIt's important to understand what skills and knowledge are missing from a discussion, reaching out to who knows the missing piece, and bringing them into the conversation.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff level engineer not only focuses on constantly improving their own knowledge of the product, but enthusiastically empowers other developers to do the same._\n\n[**Rémy Coutable**, @rymai](https://gitlab.com/rymai) (Cannes, France) spoke particularly on having the courage to address problems outside your team or area of expertise.\nAs a Staff level engineer, your ability to show the values by example is amplified.\nVisibly asking for help and bringing in experts from other area of the product encourages others to do the same.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer reaches beyond immediate technical needs, independently considering the longer-term, and is always looking beyond for ways to have a broad impact._\n\n[**Grzegorz Bizon**, @grzesiek](https://gitlab.com/grzesiek) (Olsztyn, Poland) explained the difference between Senior and Staff as not much different technically,\nbut a Staff level engineer collaborates more with other team members and leverages their understanding of human nature to broaden their impact across the product.\nHe emphasised kindness as one of the most important values, and at Staff level there is greater opportunity, and responsibility, to help others.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer is kind, supporting others and helping them grow and succeed in a holistic way, not just limited to technical help._\n\n[**Rachel Nienaber**, @rnienaber](https://gitlab.com/rnienaber) (London, UK) has a unique perspective as an Engineering Manager who has helped multiple Engineers attain promotions, including one to Staff level.\nShe emphasised leveraging leadership competencies to facilitate technological discussions and either owning or delegating projects to completion.\nUsing your voice in technical discussion is like a muscle - the more you use it, the more natural the activity feels and the more confident you will become to contribute more often.\nSo she encourages all engineers to contribute in discussions, even if they aren't always 100% certain.\n\u003Cbr/>\n_A Staff Engineer dovetails technical strategy to product strategy, helping the team to be more productive while interfacing with other teams._\n\n[**Yorick Peterse**, @yorickpeterse](https://gitlab.com/yorickpeterse) 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Shadow Takeaways from Jacie","Recap of my experience in the CEO Shadow Program.",[706],"Jacie Bandur","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749664102/Blog/Hero%20Images/gitlab-values-cover.png","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":711,"featured":12,"template":13},"ceo-shadow-recap",{"content":713,"config":725},{"title":714,"description":715,"authors":716,"heroImage":718,"date":719,"body":720,"category":9,"tags":721},"Why I love contributing to GitLab","Making small meaningful changes is what it's all about.",[717],"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",[722,723,724],"UX","product","AWS",{"slug":726,"featured":12,"template":13},"why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab",{"content":728,"config":740},{"title":729,"description":730,"authors":731,"heroImage":733,"date":719,"body":734,"category":9,"tags":735},"Placebo Lines on the Pipeline Graph","Have you noticed the connecting lines missing on your pipelines lately? Here's why",[732],"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",[736,737,738,739],"CI","frontend","agile","design",{"slug":741,"featured":12,"template":13},"placebo-lines-on-the-pipeline-graph",{"promotions":743},[744,758,769],{"id":745,"categories":746,"header":748,"text":749,"button":750,"image":755},"ai-modernization",[747],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":751,"config":752},"Get your AI maturity 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