Pros
GitLab understands the importance of building a healthy company as well as an incredible product and community. One of the challenges with some of the best products out there is they are so focused on the product they are building that they neglect the culture and health of the company. Not so with GitLab. It is balanced, transparent, healthy, and free from office politics. It is run by a CEO who wants to be a CEO, and who puts his energy into continually improving his ability to be an effective CEO.
Other pros:
- Talented software developers, ux designers, product managers, marketers, people ops, finance, accounting, solutions architects (SEs), customer support, account managers, and sales professionals. No weak links at the company.
- The company and product are improved by open source contributors.
- Frugal, practical, and operationally mature. Run like an adult company.
- People like working with one another, and are genuinely thrilled to see one another during the company summit held once every 9 months.
- Flexible remote-only work culture. Everything important has a url, decisions get written down, and everyone works well asynchronously.
- GitLab listens to its customers, and ships new features for them on the 22nd of every month.
- The product was the highest rated leader in Forrester's CI Wave.
- Listens to and values feedback from developers, IT ops practitioners, and IT leaders.
Cons
- There is always a lot of work to do given the company's rapid growth, so life-work balance can be challenging.
- Typical startup challenges: lots of competing priorities and everyone needs to wear a lot of hats.
