Dec 31, 2020
GitLab Security Assurance Engineer reviews
5.0
100% would recommend to a friend
Bill Staples
Not enough data to show CEO approval
100% positive business outlook
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Reviews by job title
2 reviews
5.0
Dec 21, 2020
Recommend
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Pros
Transparency - It's a value that is lived out in a very unique fashion at GitLab with things such as their compensation calculator (you can look up the range for your and others' positions within the company) and the openness of discussions that take place on a daily basis in Slack and GitLab Issues. While it is rare for people to always agree on an approach or change occurring, the openness in which people can share their feelings is a breath of fresh air compared to the backroom and private chats that people normally resort to to discuss their grievances. Flexibility - Being all remote is something that more and more company's are moving to or at least a hybrid model but the difference with GitLab is that they are taking it a step further with remote locations AND remote time arrangements. With a company spread out around the world it's inevitable that it's daytime for someone and nighttime for another so there is no expectation of people working the typical hours of their own time zone. It's not uncommon to get messages in various channels throughout the day letting you know that someone is stepping out for a few hours or working a different than usual schedule for a while and the expectation is rarely that you'll be able to immediately get a response on something from a specific person via chat, so everyone builds their work and there days around themselves making for better documentation and greater work/life balance. People - The people of GitLab are phenomenal. While I haven't worked with everyone and everyone certainly has different backgrounds and approaches to work, people are open to collaboration and even being remote are genuinely caring about each others' lives. Remote - Similar (but different) to flexibility, the all remote arrangement of GitLab makes for very cool work arrangements. Want to work from your local coffee shops each day? Great. Want to beat the holiday travel rush home and work there for a week on either side of the holiday to avoid crazy plane tickets? Great. Want to be a digital nomad and hop around country to country in a new place every other week? Awesome. GitLab encourages and enables people to find what works for them and provides the resources to be successful (they'll even buy you a portable monitor so you can travel with it if that's your thing). Startup - GitLab is still a startup and while there are companies that are younger and smaller, GitLab is scaling well and is still a startup with how they approach work and through their transparency is doing a good job of avoiding the usual shift from startup to successful business that pushes all the people that made it a great place to work, out. It's also cool to work on a product that feels like it'll change things for a lot of companies, and to watch that happen.
Cons
Not many but things that can be a challenge: Lack of availability - since you can't count on people to be online at the same time as you, especially starting out it can be difficult to adjust to a world where you just push everything as far as you can and then set it down compared to a typical environment where you'd have a desk to walk over to or a person to IM that was on the same hours as you and you could message them for an answer so you could keep going on something. As a whole the asynchronous work style is awesome but takes a little adjusting to at first. Easy to be always on - With full time remote it becomes very important to set boundaries between work and life but also, with people spread around the world it's inevitable that you'll have some early morning or late night meetings that pop up that you need to attend. While it is rare and often avoided via recording meetings and sharing a collaborative notes doc, there are times when flexing your schedule for some late nights or early mornings is the simplest way to handle a problem and can lead to burnout if you let those type situations trickle over into never truly turning off from work. Change - being a startup things are constantly changing and it can be difficult at times to keep up with all the changes and there are adjustments that seem to happen on a far more frequent basis than other more established companies. While not necessarily always a con, there is the potential that some of the things you may hold most dear about the company upon hire quickly adjust to something else and that may be difficult to handle for some. That being said, the core foundations of GitLab don't seem to be changing and this is a risk at any company, it's just more realized at GitLab due to the size/current nature of the company.
