The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 45 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Sid Sijbrandij: GitLab strictly bans presentations during internal company meetings
“At GitLab, you're not allowed to present in meetings.”
Sid Sijbrandij: DIY DevOps with custom tool integrations is dead
“That DIY DevOps is dead. Like the area of selecting 10 best in class solutions for DevOps and then having custom integrations between them that you maintain that is no longer working. It's both not leading to a good outcome and it's way too much effort.”
Sid Sijbrandij: Remote work scales better as a company grows larger
“In fact, remote works better the bigger you are. Like, if you're seven people, it's probably better to be in a room together, if that's practical. If you're 1500 people, what's the advantage? You can't be in the same room anymore. You can hardly be in the same…”
Sijbrandij: Releasing incomplete software with low shame enables community product flywheels
“In a very small iteration, so sometimes the stuff we release, we have a low level of shame about them. They're not complete, and we know it, but it allows people from the community to come in and contribute to it, and by contributing to it, they make it accept…”
Sijbrandij: Public Roadmaps Net Positive Because Building Customer Needs Trumps Secrecy
“But all in all, it's been a very positive thing for us because the most important thing about your roadmap is not that it's a secret, but that it's correct that you're making the stuff that customers want.”
Sijbrandij: Operating an all-remote company is easier than managing a hybrid workplace
“I think being all remote is a lot easier than being hybrid. Where part of your people are co-located and part are not.”
GitLab focused its growth teams on input metrics rather than top-line ARR
“So when I joined at GateLab, I talk with our CEO, we have a, we have ARR, not ARR, ARR growth as our North Star metric for the company, which is fine. But for me as a growth leader, right? Or for any other teams, I need to break that down into inputs exactly a…”
Sid Sijbrandij: Laziness is often a symptom of perfectionism, not underperformance
“I think laziness is almost a shortcut. That's too easy. Like what's going on in their life. And that might not be an excuse to do it, but. I think most of the times when I'm lazy, it's because I have two of a high bar for the output and the end result, and I p…”
Sid Sijbrandij tested Series B investors with mock board strategy discussions
“And what I did, for example, in our B round, I kind of had Calling it a mock board meeting is too far, but I went through our strategy and kind of waited for them to kind of wait it. We discussed and asked them to add value and then what you get back, how that…”
Sid Sijbrandij: Software shipping should fix deadlines and reduce feature scope
“We always say that time is fixed, and then the scope is variable, so great, if you have a hard time meeting the deadline, just cut down the scope, do less, and I think that's been very great, so just stick to your deadlines.”
Sijbrandij: Majority of GitLab revenue comes from self-hosted deployments
“The majority of our revenue is still coming from self-hosted.”
Sijbrandij: Companies suffer more from internal strategy secrecy than competitor awareness
“Yeah, I think a lot of companies are kind of hesitant to articulate and disseminate their strategy to make it public or to even share it within the company. And there's benefits from your competitors not knowing your strategy, but I've seen a lot more companie…”
Sijbrandij: GitLab pays remote employees location-based rates, not uniform global salaries
“We pay people differently. We have a blog post about it, why we pay people local rates.”
Sid Sijbrandij: Open-source projects should monetize when paying buyers request features
“So if the people asking for features are people that can pay for them, it's probably good to start monetizing.”
Williamson: GitLab's overall product strategy document was only two to three pages
“The one I did at GitLab for the whole product was probably a couple pages. Two, two, maybe three. It wasn't that long.”
Williamson: Clear writing is mandatory for success at all-remote GitLab
“GitLab's all remote. You're dead in the water if you can't write clearly at GitLab, so it was testing all those things at once.”
Williamson: Deep target user perspective builds cross-functional trust for PMs
“If you really understand them, then you're going to tee up the right work, which is going to drive results. Ultimately you want to drive results, but how do you get there? I think the building block is having a ton of. Perspective on the target user and what t…”
Sid Sijbrandij: GitLab limits live board meeting presentations to two minutes
“Now at GitLab, we've taken that to a bit of an extreme where we send video clips of us presenting the slide deck up front, and we do, if we do presentations, it's like two minutes.”
Sid Sijbrandij: Matrix organizational structures make executive life difficult
“You can structure your company according to functions, and then cross-functional things will be hard. You can structure your company across projects, and then career development will be hard. Or you can have a matrix organization, and then your whole life will…”
Sid Sijbrandij: Time zones are the biggest obstacle to remote work
“The hardest thing about remote is time zones, and to overcome time zones, you need to work asynchronously, but that's very, very hard.”
Sid Sijbrandij: Synchronous communication is best for urgent, broad group projects
“If something is really important and has to happen really fast, and it includes a wide group where you don't, where not everyone has the context, I think synchronous communication is better.”
Sid Sijbrandij: GitLab lists over 17 transparency exceptions, including salaries and M&A
“Because we're transparent by default, we have the longest list of things that aren't transparent. So if you Google GitLab communication, you'll find a long list. I think it's over 17 items of things that aren't transparent, and that includes salaries, that inc…”
Sijbrandij: Ban the word 'obviously' to encourage open debate and clarification
“We should never use the word obviously. Because it discourages people from challenging what you just said or asking for clarification.”
Sijbrandij: Competitors try to front-run GitLab releases using its public roadmap
“Sometimes our competitors know that we're going to release something and they try to kind of front run us by day or so.”
GitLab measures employee performance by output rather than hours worked
“There is accountability for results at GitLab. Very much so. Like, results is our number one value, and we said, like, we measure your results, not your hours, so you're absolutely on the hook for producing.”
GitLab receives over 190 monthly improvements from its open-source community
“Every month we have over a 190 improvements that come from the wider community.”
Sijbrandij: GitLab has evolved to have ten times the scope of GitHub
“GitLab started off as a being inspired by GitHub, and it's now evolved into a product that has a scope that is 10 times the scope that GitHub has.”
Sijbrandij: Operational transparency is a highly effective recruiting tool for aligned talent
“So transparency started as a value because it was really, really important to keep in touch with the community. Later on, we realized it's also a great way to recruit people who are aligned with what you do.”
Williamson: SendGrid and GitLab required opportunity canvases and Amazon-style strategy docs
“There are two that we used at SendGrid and GitLab that I think were essential. One was a one pager called an opportunity canvas, which asked PMs to outline sort of the concept they wanted to build. And the other one, it's like a two to six pager. I think Kevin…”
Williamson: GitLab recorded and internally published all product review meetings
“At GitLab, we recorded all of them, and we posted them, and anybody who wanted to watch them could. So we were very transparent about all these meetings. You could see them all as an internal employee.”
Williamson: PMs must track executive-relevant KPIs to prove business impact
“And then from there, you're trying to prove business impact. So make sure you have a KPI that leadership cares about, that maps to the work that you report on regularly and openly and honestly.”
Williamson: SendGrid and GitLab used dual-track agile for product management
“PMs always have two tracks going. At least that's how we ran it in Sengri and GitLab. There's a validation track where you're doing your homework on the things you want to pump into engineering, and then you have a build track.”
GitLab publicly open-sources all growth experiment results and hypotheses
“At GitLab, we have everything open source. We have a handbook. So it's open and public. And actually people look at our experiments and it's categorized by like, is this activation acquisition? And you can click in to see what's the hypothesis, what we tested,…”
Sid Sijbrandij: All GitLab executive group members reside in the US
“If I look at the e-group at GitLab, my reports, and all of them are located in the US.”
Sid Sijbrandij: CEO shadows attend 80% of my meetings and rate me
“I have CEO shadows who attend like 80% of my meetings and they rate me for every single meeting and I see those ratings.”
Sid Sijbrandij: GitLab board meetings include a 45-minute closed session
“Those of us are one and a half hours open session, and then about 45 minutes closed session. So you, it's not five minutes you should do a closed session. You should do it for 45 minutes and then about 30 should be with the CEO and then 15 without the CEO to e…”
Sid Sijbrandij: GitLab maintains a public employee handbook of over 2,000 pages
“We have a strong written culture and it shows in our handbook of over 2000 pages where we detail how we work.”
Sijbrandij: GitLab's co-founder lacked running water when he launched the project
“When he started GitLab, he didn't have running water in his house, and he didn't have great collaboration software, and he picked the thing that wouldn't cost any money to make, because he was a developer, he could make this himself.”
GitLab Scaled Remote Team to Over 762 People Across 55 Countries
“Sid has scaled the team to over 762 team members across 55 countries, a fully remote team”
GitLab hosts company-wide gatherings every nine months alongside daily non-work breakout calls
“So at GitLab, we have a lot of different mechanisms in which we allow people to learn together, know each other outside of it like a transactional work setting. Examples are the coffee chats, travel stipends. We have a nine-monthly get-together, but also every…”
GitLab maintains monthly releases and rarely has project delays over six months
“So we have very few kind of canceled projects, and if something runs late, the worst thing at GitHub is if you miss a release. We have a monthly release, and then instead of one month, it takes two months, and that tends to happen, but we don't have things tha…”
Sijbrandij: GitLab's public employee handbook is over 3,000 pages long
“We have a handbook. It's public and creative comments. So lots of people are copying from it and being inspired by it, but it's over 3000 pages and it contains many of the things you would normally not find documented at other companies.”
Sijbrandij: GitLab will grow from 400 to 1,000 employees this year
“GitLab is now 650 people. We're growing this year from 402,000 people.”