 I've just found the mornings are, I'm so much better at it. I'm so much more productive. I'm in the zone. Whereas if I'm in the office, I'm generally kind of pulled into meetings or people want to ask me things, which is fine, but it's the concept of flow. And if that gets interrupted, it's very hard to get back into it. Whereas I can be quite clear, you know, my calendar or in Slack and have that asynchronous kind of flow going. Welcome all. Thank you so much for joining us. During these interesting times, we want to share some of our best practices that the GitLab team has pulled together from years of working as an all remote company. Each week on Universal Remote, we'll uncover some of the tips, tricks and insights gleaned from within GitLab and with our partners and other really awesome and interesting people around the world. We know that there's a lot of great content out there, so we want to make sure ours is as digestible, actionable, and as fun as possible. So with that, let's dive right in. Today, joining me is Bethan. Bethan, introduce yourself, tell the folks what you do, and maybe shed a little light on being suddenly remote or new to remote. Yeah, sure. So hi, I'm Bethan Vinson. I'm the Marketing Director at Natsales. We're a product development consultancy based in York in England, hence my British accent, which I always feel painfully aware of when I'm on calls with anyone else who doesn't have one, which is always a strange thing. So yeah, marketing is kind of my whole jam, my whole stack, what I do day in, day out. And I have been remote since March the 16th, which is the day the British government told us all to stop going to work unless you're an essential worker and to work from home wherever possible. And interestingly enough, that was the day my company, we were doing our first all remote test. So we we scrapped the test and said, this is it for now on, which was quite an interesting transition. So we just have to jump straight into it. I've worked before, sorry, I've worked before on correlated teams. So I've had experience of working with people who are remote, but never been remote myself. This is super fascinating. As head of remote at GitLab, I work with over 1,200 people that have always been remote. So remote is very second nature. So whenever I get to speak to someone who is new to this, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. It's like a science experiment. I want to dig into their brain and figure out what all is going on. How many people at your company? How big are we talking? So we're a 60 person company. We had plans to expand, which hopefully is still going to happen. But now we're going to kind of introduce the remote elements. So we've actually onboarded people during this period, which again, has been very interesting. Fascinating. Yeah. Remote onboarding has been a topic that's been very popular. How do you do this? Especially when companies were set up to do it in the office. And what I've recommended is try to offload as much of the human burden to documentation. GitLab onwards people with a GitLab issue with over 200 checkboxes, lots to read. We also pair people with an onboarding buddy. So we can dive into that a bit if you want, but I do want to dial back a few months and mention that you joined us at GitLab Commit San Francisco in January, which turns out was one of the world's last events before we hit this great pause. So I'm glad you were able to join us. Could you just give the audience an overview of what you covered there? Yeah, so I covered a slightly, I guess, more unusual topic, which was using GitLab to run marketing teams and in particular scrum agile marketing teams. Because that's actually what I ended up doing in my previous role, where essentially the development team were using GitLab and marketing was kind of looking over the fence thinking, oh, that looks pretty good. We could do with some of that. And at the time, we were trying to be more agile as a team. And in our tech, there's a huge stack of tools available, but none are very geared towards actually running an agile process. And our other kind of, I guess, challenge was that we wanted to contribute to our product and development team. So we actually wanted to change things on the front of the site. We wanted to commit code. And the only way to do that was to use GitLab and to kind of embrace it and have every team using the same tool. So the talk was really about how we transitioned to that from a team who'd never used Git before didn't understand the concept of version control because we were actually even using kind of that feature set, but also taking a lot of disparate documentation. It's interesting you mentioned the importance of having a lot of documentation in marketing, you end up with stuff on Google Drive stuff on Slack stuff in people's inboxes on their computer. And if you need a file very quickly, which often again, in marketing, you know, journalists will call you up and say, okay, I need some assets for a thing. Do you have them? If you can't get them to them very quickly, because you don't know where they are, you're a bit stumped, basically. So speed and agility really was key and centralizing all of those resources as well. Yeah, that's fascinating. Good timing for that. It actually fits really well with this week's theme of the webcast, which is maximizing the tools that we have, rather than adding more tools in a crazy time. As I've been consulting with companies and advising people, one of the things I've said is, before you add a new tool into already a crazy situation where everyone is being transitioned from one workplace to another, take a hard look at what you use and figure out if there are new ways and different ways to use what you already have. A good example of that at GitLab is we have G Suite. And most people will use Google Docs as like a scratchpad maybe, but we take it one step further and we append a Google Doc to every calendar invite so that there's a long lasting agenda attached to every single calendar invite. So this didn't require us to spend money on a new tool or teach people how to use a new tool. It was just using an existing tool slightly differently to make our organization more remote fluent to give us a greater bias towards asynchronous communication. So I'm curious if you have any favorite tools, maybe before COVID and now that you're in it, that helped you kind of keep your head wrapped around documentation, but also stay connected with friends and family and coworkers. Yeah, so I guess you kind of got the work side of the question and I guess it's kind of cheesy to say GitLab isn't it, but really kind of I think what you're saying about using new tooling and if we've added, if we had added a new process into that, I just think it would have been overload for everyone. So I keep all my kind of, I guess might run marketing sprints. So I keep all of that information within my previous tool set. I'm not trying to move around and just make sure we can kind of continue with that. And again, I really love the Google Docs idea. I'm definitely going to steal that and pretend it's my idea. But, you know, Google Docs we're leaving on very heavily just to kind of, as you say, like a scratch pad. But I think also it's important to sometimes tidy up that information as well and make sure you have almost a permanent record somewhere that is like the canonical source of information. Because I don't know if you find, if you have more, because I do a lot of content writing and I do a lot of writing for the website and things like that. And I end up with different versions of things. And I never know which version necessarily is the one final underscore final one A underscore one B. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're kind of in GitLab, you'll have very clear like WIP, working progress on issues, you can really see what stage work is at. And I was actually, this is really tangential, but I was doing some interviews with our customers and our kind of people we want to talk to within our industry today and talking about their biggest challenges at the moment. And it is understanding what stage work is at. So something that might be in process, it might be happening. But is it blocked because of something else? If you don't understand kind of exactly what's happening, you just, you don't have a full kind of overview on what's going on and what needs to happen next to unblock people to, to produce the next thing to push on that work. So that was kind of the work side of things. On the personal side of things, again, I'm going to be really cheesy and say zoom. Because this is, this is really sad, but I'm really into D&D. And I have been playing remote D&D with friends via zoom, but we also use a platform called role 20, which if you play D&D, we have like maps where we normally move our characters around and everyone has their own character that they painted. Yes, we're very cool. We've been using role 20 to kind of you have to work out how far you can move and things like that. But I think just playing games online, not necessarily like computer games, but actual games has been really fun. So at work, we're doing a quiz this Friday again via zoom, but to try and just keep the kind of, I don't know, spirit alive of collaboration and talking to each other and having fun. Yeah, that's fascinating. One of the things that I've told people is that this forced isolation is actually made humanity as a whole way more innovative and actually connecting and building community. And we may have just taken that for granted before, but I've actually seen people set up cameras and they're playing settlers with Catan across six continents, you know, which is an amazing game at last one or two hours. It's a fascinating game, but you're seeing this rebirth of board games and puzzles like puzzles are sold out everywhere because you have two teams that buy the same puzzle and then they'll just zoom in on each other and see who can complete the puzzle the quickest, just fascinating ways. I'm really proud of humanity for adapting the way that we have. I just want to dial back and mention one thing about GitLab as I'm having this having these conversations with folks. It is it's it's quite clear that in an office setting, what often times happen when a work project for a work project is some parts of it start in Slack, some parts of it happen in email, and then you just sort of have these ad hoc meetings to pull people together to essentially act as band gate band aids and bridge the communication gaps instead of actually addressing the root problem, which is there's actually no formulaic documented way to converse about work and to converse about informal communication and remote forces you to be very prescriptive and articulate about both of those and turns out every company even co-located companies should do that. It's just that remote forces you to do it much earlier and much more intentionally. And so a lot of companies are kind of grappling with that of why isn't our communication and our process working remotely. And it's like, well, it didn't actually work that well in an office. You just have the luxury of being able to have ad hoc meetings to bridge some of that. And one other tool that I have found very interesting in working, especially with team leaders and HR leaders, there's this question on how do we build empathy? How do people know each other? And I actually have a GitLab read me something that I created so I can hand over to someone and it gives you a very clear overview of what it's like to work with me and what I hope to have in a work relationship. But there's a cool tool called Kona from Psych Insights that actually is a Slack plugin that asks people some of these questions about themselves whenever they enter a remote team. And then if you have a meeting with this person, it says, oh, these five people from Slack are going to be in this meeting. Here's an overview of what their preferences are. If they're having a red, green, yellow type of day, that kind of thing. And so it just it gives people the opportunity to kind of type in how their day is going or how they prefer to be worked with and then shared out as a global team. So I think that's going to be pretty amazing to see technology bring empathy back to the workplace. So I'm interested to see how that how that plays out. Definitely. And I think one of the things for me is being working from home and being almost forced remote has made me reassess what is best for my work day and what works best for me. So again, I said I do a lot of writing. I've just found the mornings are I'm so much better at it. I'm so much more productive. I'm in the zone. Whereas if I'm in the office, I'm generally kind of pulled into meetings or people to ask me things which is fine, but it's the concept of flow. And if that gets interrupted, it's very hard to get back into it. Whereas I can be quite clear, you know, my calendar or in Slack and have that asynchronous kind of flow going that mornings are protected. But I will answer your question in time for you to get an answer that you you require. Yeah, I actually do want you to give an overview of what your morning routine is and how you're working to prevent overload and burnout. But one thing that I heard in that is remote actually enables you to have more focus time than you normally would. And I think I've what I've heard from a lot of people that have become suddenly remote is this is the most suboptimal time ever to be remote. This isn't a clear indication of what remote work is. This is crisis induced work from home with social isolation with potentially your kids at home. You're doubling as a home school teacher, the most suboptimal environment ever. And even despite that, a lot of people four to six weeks in are saying, I'm actually reaping some benefits from this. I'm I have more time to rest, more time to focus. I definitely don't miss the commute. So even though there's a lot of other chaos, it's actually pretty good. And my response is, well, wait until the world gets back to normal. You're really going to see the benefits of it. But the focus time for me is a really big deal. And I feel like promoters, once they have a taste of that, it's really hard to give it back. How has that struck you? How do you work to prevent burnout? And has it been easier in a remote setting as compared to being collocated? Yeah, definitely. So as I said, I can be more protective over my time. And I think also because the hot because everyone's in it together, there's a lot more understanding of, you know, I think there's sometimes this thing on slack where someone messages you and you feel that pressure to get back to them immediately, you know, within like 10 seconds. And this is, I think, forced everyone to understand the power of async communication and actually adhere to it and not not panic about it. And again, document things better as well which is helping everyone, I think in terms of kind of preventing burnout. So I did have a very nice commute to work in the past, which does does surprise people. I walked into work, I live in York, which is a beautiful medieval city. So I used to have a 30 minute walk into work walk home and that that was important. But what I've done essentially is I've made sure to keep that routine that I had before. So I'm not reinventing the wheel. I'm not adding new processes. So I normally go for a walk in the morning. I've actually lived near a bit of countryside, which is quite nice. And I've got this weird like obsession with medieval prehistoric history. So that I know for a fact, because it's on a map of my area, there's some Roman ruins near my house. But I've been going to try and find them because I don't know if there's anything there to see. But I've just been wondering about the scrub line being like, is there a Roman pot I can see. So yeah, doing that and also keeping on top of things like exercise. I think that is so important to just get out in the fresh air if you can. I'm very lucky. I think I have a garden which in UK is not a given for everyone, especially if you live in a city. So I've just been trying to enjoy what I have and be very kind of grateful for things. And then obviously being being British, a good cup of tea in the morning, good cup of coffee sets you up very well for the day ahead. And then you have a 3pm tea break with a biscuit, if you're lucky. So this is fascinating. I actually worked with a team based in the UK a couple of years ago. And I went over to visit their office and this knit afternoon break tea cookie thing is very real, very real. Like it just started happening. I just saw like collectively everyone just kind of rose up and just started going about this thing. And I'm thinking, what what is happening? But I dig it like, Hey, let's take breaks. Let's take a siesta. Americans could stand to learn a thing or two from that. So I'm curious. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Did you have anything to add there? No, I was just going to say, I think it's something that you definitely can still replicate in the kind of remote environment. So even if you just have 15 minutes with a colleague in that kind of I find 3pm is generally when I'm on bit of a dip, my lunch brush is gone. So taking that 50 minutes just to be like, Oh, hey, how are you doing? Like, do you want to just have a quick catch up? It works very nicely with kind of people's routines and energy levels and you get a biscuit, which is always good. Always good. It's true. A lot of this can be replicated virtually. It just takes a little bit of initiative for someone to throw out a zoom link and say having everyone that wants to join. Let's do it. Treat it just like an actual kind of break room or what you would have in an office to do something like that. So I'm curious about workspace. You weren't always work from home. You weren't always remote. So if you've been thrust into it, you may or may not have the ideal workspace. I've seen the full spectrum of that. So would it be possible to kind of give us an overview or explain what your home office looks like and maybe a peek around if your camera. Yeah, sure. So I'm very lucky that my partner and I both have so we have a bedroom and then we have two other bedrooms. We get an office each. So I think I would have killed him by now if we'd have to have shared because he's on a lot of calls. I'm on a lot of calls. But so this is kind of the space I will show you. So this is kind of where I sit. So I have a laptop and then I kind of have iMac. So I'm dual screening a lot, which is good because I end up doing a bit of kind of design review work. The bigger screen works for me a lot. And then I've got I don't know if you can see a nice view over some green and then I can watch my car as well. Watch my car. I won't be using for months. And so back here. I don't know if you can see that's my cushion. Look at that. The Tanuki representing amazing. Yes. I'm on brand. That's the guitar. I'm never going to learn to play even though I kind of promised myself. So this this chair is I don't have the greatest chair at the moment. And it's quite hard to get deliveries of chairs. I don't know what it's like anywhere else. But everyone's ordered chairs on Amazon. So you can't get one at the moment. So that's kind of just something I go and sit in when my back hurts from another one. And then I've kind of this this is so shameful. I did think I probably should have tidied this up. But you want to see the real the brawl. Yes. Authentic and genuine. Yeah. So that's that's my unicorn over there. Got to have a unicorn and then just books. Yeah. Lots of books. So I like to take a bit of time to kind of read and relax in the evening. So I go and sit in the chair and just make sure I've got some down time. I love that. I appreciate the authenticity. Again Lab we have a saying about meetings that meetings are about the work not the background. And we say that to reduce people's anxiety about what their background looks like. We're not trying to replicate a sterile boardroom. We're peering into each other's homes. And so you may have kids running around or a cat jumping on your head or books or chairs whatever it may be. I actually think this massively humanizes the work experience. And so one thing that I've noticed is that people that are working from home now once they kind of get things stabilized they're like you know what it's it's actually kind of nice to talk to someone kind of on their home turf and take a peek inside their actual life. And it reminds you that we're humans first and colleagues second. And it's it creates a kind of let you let your guard down a bit. And you know what speaking of guard little birdie told me that you have some interesting studies in the past. And I'm just curious if you have any moments or snippets from history. I've been told to ask you about history. Yeah. So I yeah I studied medieval history at York University which is why I live in York now because it was so beautiful. I didn't want to leave. And I actually studied in particular the black death period which obviously was a huge pandemic. Massive repercussions. Sadly it was a lot more. There was a lot more fatality than we have today. In some places up to 60 percent of the population died. So I'm very thankful obviously we're not replicating that but it's an interesting period because obviously it was extremely horrible for the people who live through it and I don't want to down play the human suffering element. But it didn't change things as much as people would think life still went on. People still carried on. Society didn't completely break down even though there was all of this change this destruction people dying. And even though kind of I think psychologically from the records you can see it was a harrowing time actually in the kind of period after the economy boomed in some ways. Because I think people just they almost kind of wanted to get back to work and there was some interesting economic things happening. But the biggest comforting thing about that period for me was that what came after wasn't completely different than what was before the Black Death. All that happened was that the trends which were already occurring in society in the economy they were just being accelerated by this massive event. They weren't being completely upturned. So the world you found after the Black Death it still very much resembled the world before there were just some things that were kind of pushed on a bit further than maybe they have been if things hadn't happened. So that gives me a bit of comfort that I don't think the world I think the world is going to change but it's not going to be fundamentally different. And actually some of the things the good things that are happening before are probably going to be accelerated by what's happening at the moment. I agree with that. I've heard that once this gets somewhat back to normal we're going to see the biggest uniform embrace of gratitude and being grateful for things that we may not have in the past. I know for me I'm an avid traveler. I can't wait to get crammed in the back of an airplane in a middle seat. But the seat in front of me reclined directly into my face like let's just go somewhere. Doesn't even matter where we're going. And actually we were talking about this off air about what comes next. What is the future? Six to 12 months from now. What have we learned? How has humanity taken this opportunity to kind of reshape and rebuild and be introspective about who we are as a culture and how work and life intersect. And so that's a teaser for those viewing. We're going to try to grab some more time and talk about that. What does come next based on what we've seen and what we're forecasting? I do want to ask you one last question. I was on a webcast earlier this week with Lars from 21st Century HR and he closed with a really awesome question and I wanted to pay it forward. And that is what is one good thing that you've seen, heard, felt or experienced this week or this month? Good news is a bit harder to find now but nevertheless it's still happening. We just have to dig for it. So I just wanted to give you that opportunity to surface something good. Yeah, I think again I'm going to relate it back to York and just kind of where I live. But the pollution levels have massively dropped in the city. And I even anecdotally can see the wildlife outside my window. There are so many more birds that there's I've even seen loads of foxes about which has been fun. And when I kind of go on my walks, it just seems that you know the phrase nature is healing. I think that it is to some extent and that's just it gives me a lot of hope actually which is maybe a bit sad but just seeing all the kind of like in York we have loads of geese and they lay loads of eggs this time of year and you've got all the little gozzlings walking about and they're so cute. So that brings me a lot of joy. Yeah, it's like nature is taking back over. It's pretty wild. I think some scientists estimated that this would take years or decades but a week and a half works. They're pretty happy to have their waters and their land back. But you're right. We're seeing some of that as well. And it is pretty awesome to kind of pause and look up and recognize really how beautiful the world is that we live in and to see that kind of thing. Nature breathing a bit is pretty awesome. Well, I hope to do more of this. I want to connect with you again and talk about what comes next. Thank you so much, Beth, and for joining us and help keep this weekly GitLab webcast going. And for those watching next week, we're going to have an interview with a newly remote manager and how they're staying connected with their teams. And if you have questions in the meantime, tweet us at GitLab. You can follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. And we'll try to work those questions into the next episode. We can't wait to talk more soon. And until then, stay cozy, be excellent to one another. Aloha and Mahalo.