Tag Archives: distributed management

Episode 27: Leading with Values: Sid Sijbrandij joins Matt Mullenweg to talk about GitLab, Transparency and Growing a Distributed Company

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“Every company has a poster on the wall,” says Matt Mullenweg in the latest episode of The Distributed Podcast. Matt welcomes Sid Sijbrandij, Co-founder and CEO of GitLab, another pioneering company with Open Source origins and a long-running commitment to a completely distributed workforce.  Sid and Matt settle into a conversation about GitLab’s six values – which have been cut down from the original 13, and which are always visible in Sid’s video background – are reinforced in 20 ways at the fully-distributed company.  GitLab, now with more than 1,300 employees, updated its values over 300 times in the last calendar year. 

“They have to be reinforced,” says Sid, “and be alive in that way.”

And as for sharing just about everything publicly? “Transparency is sunlight.”

The values are part of the publicly-viewable GitLab Handbook that, with over 10,000 pages, details data both interesting and “mundane,” from compensation to how employees should interact with Hacker News. An example: “I think what’s really interesting is our engineering metrics. We pay very close to what we call the MR rate: how many merge requests did an engineer make over a month; how many did a team make over a month?” Sid shares.  “If you push on that, people start making the changes that they make smaller to kind of increase that rate.  The whole process becomes more efficient.”

Sid and Matt – an observer on GitLab’s board – get into the details: taking time off, leadership development programs, scheduling coffee chats that actually work, and much more. And they revisit predictions Sid made on Twitter in May, 2020, about the post-Pandemic future of distributed work.  Check out the full episode above, or on your favorite podcasting platform.

The full episode transcript is below.

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On the (Cool) Tools You Need for a Smooth Distributed Experience

The basic toolkit for distributed teams has stayed fairly stable in recent years — a real-time chat app, a robust video conferencing platform, and discipline-specific collaboration systems for engineers, designers, and support teams, to name a few. On his recent appearance on the Cool Tools podcast (hosted by Mark Frauenfelder and Kevin Kelly), Matt Mullenweg dives deeper into the world of distributed tools, talking about the ones that streamline and optimize his work as the CEO of a company that employs around 1,200 people across dozens of countries and multiple time zones.

Matt covers several fronts, from better webcam setups to messaging apps, and gives a special nod to P2, the WordPress theme that powers Automattic’s internal blogs:

We use actually a free theme called P2, which turns your internal blog or any blog, really, into kind of a real-time system. It sort of puts a posting box on the homepage, so anyone who’s a logged-in user can see a posting box right on the homepage. You don’t have to visit a separate admin. And then it has fully threaded comments and posts also on the homepage. And by real time, I mean if a new comment or post comes in, it’ll actually pop up on your screen without you having to reload. It’s great for asynchronous conversations. We use it instead of email actually, and it’s been definitely the thing that’s allowed us to scale to now 1,200 people.

Listen to the entire conversation on Cool Tools

Distributed FAQ: Should Companies Use Software Tools to Monitor Remote Workers?

In Distributed FAQ, Matt Mullenweg addresses some of the most common issues companies, executives, and individuals face as they consider transitioning to a distributed model.

Q. At distributed companies, managers can’t always see when — or if — employees are working. Do you recommend using monitoring software to ensure people are productive?

A. No.

I don’t advocate for using this type of software at all. Instead of monitoring progress, you should focus on outcomes. Respect the outcome and trust that your employees will do their jobs.

Culture is what you do when no one is looking — it’s something I firmly believe in, and it’s especially true in the context of trust in a distributed setting.

Even in companies that thrive on mutual trust, different communication styles and social-interaction preferences can lead to friction. Listen to Matt’s conversation with Morra Aarons-Mele about introversion and anxiety in distributed companies.

The Things You Learn about Leadership after 10 Years at a Distributed Company

For many, remote work is a recent phenomenon — a nascent practice brought about by public health concerns. By now, however, there are also quite a few companies that have used various distributed models for years, and the people who’ve been part of their journeys possess deep knowledge about what makes (and occasionally breaks) a fully distributed workforce.

Case in point: Sara Rosso, WordPress.com’s Director of Product Marketing. Sara recently celebrated her 10th anniversary at Automattic, and to mark the occasion she took to her own WordPress.com blog to share 10 leadership lessons she’s learned over the course of a decade working with and leading distributed teams.

Sara’s insights span a wide range — from ways to foster psychological safety in the absence of shared physical space, to tips on how to successfully separate work hours from personal time when they both take place in the same house (if not the same room). One of her standout lessons? Optimizing remote meetings to work for people with diverse communication styles and preferences:

Though written communication is a very strong skill needed in a remote company, there is likely a wide variance of personalities and work styles in the company. A remote company can attract both clear extroverts (like myself) and introverts who would be fine not to meet up even twice a year.

One of the ways I’ve had to learn how to lead team and project synchronous meetings is to be sensitive to all types of personalities. As Automattic has grown, it has gone from a company where I knew who had kids and where they each lived, to video calls with people whom I’d never met, never worked with, and in some cases I wasn’t even sure what country or city they’re sitting in.

As an extrovert I am especially aware I need to make space for others to contribute in a synchronous discussion. However not everyone wants to be included in that moment, especially when that means calling on someone spontaneously. Some of the advice I’d heard in the past for meetings was “call on people who haven’t spoken up” to make sure diverse voices are heard on the call. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and can definitely backfire.

To explore tools and strategies based on Sara’s deep experience at Automattic, head over to her blog to read the full post.

Illustration by Lily Padula

Distributed FAQ: How Did P2 Become Automattic’s Signature Mode of Communication?

In Distributed FAQ, Matt Mullenweg addresses some of the most common issues companies, executives, and individuals face as they consider transitioning to a distributed model.

Q. Automattic is known for using internal blogs called P2s for most work-related conversations. How and why did that happen?

A. In Automattic’s early days, we collaborated a lot directly in the code, or on IRC (Internet Relay Chat), a Slack precursor. We quickly realized that it wasn’t great for asynchronous discussions, and when we tried email instead, it didn’t allow for the transparency that is the hallmark of open source (it also brought a lot of noise with it). Finally, we ditched email and moved to an internal blogging system. P2 is the evolution of the blog for the purpose of working within and across teams. It’s organized much like a Yammer or Facebook stream, but on the back end it still operates like a blog, allowing for archiving, advanced search, and rich media embeds. 

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Why Distributed Companies Will Likely Move Away from Location-Based Compensation

Managing a remote workforce comes with obvious benefits (no pricy office space, for one), but also with some distinct complexities. With potential employees applying to a variety of positions from dozens of countries around the world, it can be a tall order to create salary ranges that are equitable, fair, and scalable. But as Matt Mullenweg recently explained in an interview with Connie Loizos at TechCrunch, getting this right is a crucial goal and an ongoing process for any distributed company that wants to hire from a geographically diverse talent pool.

Among other highlights, Matt mentioned that ethical considerations and macro-economic trends will push more and more companies in the direction of location-agnostic salaries:

“Long term,” said Mullenweg, “I think market forces and the mobility of talent will force employers to stop discriminating on the basis of geography for geographically agnostic roles.” He also said that while he isn’t aware of location or geography currently being a protected class for pay discrimination suits — at least in the U.S. — he thinks that for “moral and competitive reasons, companies will move toward globally fair compensation over time with roles that can be done from anywhere.”

Read the rest of the interview on TechCrunch

Photo via Pexels

Distributed FAQ: How Does Crisis Management Work in a Remote Context?

In Distributed FAQ, Matt Mullenweg addresses some of the most common issues companies, executives, and individuals face as they consider transitioning to a distributed model.

Q. How do you tackle crises and tough situations in a remote setting, when it’s impossible to gather all the relevant parties in one room?

A. The number-one priority is communication. Communicating often and transparently is key. At Automattic, we have a company-wide Slack #announcements channel that will link to a P2 blog post for additional context. We advocate for a framework of radical candor. 

We’re a distributed company, but we deal with the same challenges as other companies, including security breaches, hacks, downtime, fraud, and employee issues. I believe that conversations that happen in written form can be very helpful — they’re archived, so we can refer back to them, and they facilitate learning. One person can share a written summary with their interlocutor so they come to a shared understanding.

While working distributed, you can de-escalate yourself easily. You can take a break. A micro-habit you may want to introduce is to take a mindful minute and breathe.

And one final guideline we’ve adopted over the years, after seeing it defuse tough, challenging moments: assume positive intent (lovingly dubbed API) in all communications. Take the extra moment to consider how you might have misinterpreted a colleague’s words, or how they may have misread yours.

For more on communication and chaos, listen to Matt’s conversation with Automattic’s Sonal Gupta.