 I think we're ready. We're ready, Abby. Yeah, I think we're ready now. Okay, sounds good. All right, so we can skip to the next slide. Perfect. So, career mapping. Is everybody here know what career mapping is? Yes, no, maybe a little bit. Feel free to jump in. Let's assume no. Okay, we're gonna assume no. So, career mapping. Dead silence. So, career mapping, the whole intention is to help employees understand and develop skills that need to achieve their goals and career advancement within the company, right? So, we're helping our employees feel fulfilled, encouraged, and feel like they're growing in their job. And doing so helps us internally develop their skills and knowledge so that we can achieve our future business goals. So, we're trying to align the skills and abilities of our workforce with the direction of the company. And career mapping is a great way to do that. Next slide. So, before you can really do that, you need to establish core roles within the company. So, you want to categorize or catalog the core professions within the organization. You create a list of core and secondary professions needed to grow and sustain the business. So, you're looking at where you're at today and where you need to be in the future. GitLab has done a great job of that. If you look at any of the different areas within GitLab, there's a pretty defined set of core roles and then the supporting roles that they go along with that. So, part of that is identifying the key skills, knowledge, and abilities for each profession and each level of that profession. So, you want to establish levels of advancement, junior, senior, staff, and beyond. Next one. And then, the focus should be on jobs, right? So, by identifying these professions, identifying the roles and the abilities necessary, then the focus is more on how they can contribute than on specific job titles and compensation shifts. So, you want to drive contribution-driven goals. So, what skills and abilities most impact the growth of the company? Which professions are needed at what stage? And can you go back to the slide? There you go. Work and employees contribute while growing their competency. So, you just want to make sure that it's a growth mindset, right? It's a goal-driven mindset. All right. Next slide. So, and this is just an example. Obviously, I picked the one that I'm most familiar with on the UX team. We have our junior UX designer role, which is really entry level. After that, we move on to UX designer, which is roughly two to five years' experience. And beyond that is senior UX designer and then staff. And there's actually, if you click on the UX designer image of the web page, you can go directly to that web page so you can actually read what each one entails. And each one of our departments should have something like this. If you don't, I would be surprised. But if you don't, then we definitely need to make sure that that is there. Because this is what's really going to age you in moving along and helping them build a career path within GitLab. And at this point, I think it's time for Abby to jump in. Yeah. So, I've just stopped presenting my screen so I can see things a little bit better. So, I want to talk a little bit about why we should do this at GitLab. And we actually received some feedback from the survey that we did in February of 2007. And the number one thing that came up there was if people were considered leaving if they felt there was a stagnation for their career paths. So, that's kind of a really good reason for why we should start doing this. And also, I think now that GitLab has grown to the size that it is and will continue to grow, there'll be more opportunities for people to move around, to gain skills, perhaps in other teams. And also, I think it's probably a good time to really look at this a bit more across the whole company as well. Another point, I did some research. I did a lot of reading about this as to why it's such a really important thing, which is that most employees, they want careers, not jobs. They want to feel like they have a purpose. And they know that once they're in a role, they can grow and develop their skills. There's a couple of really good articles there that you can take a look at as well to kind of support that. And also, it really does strengthen engagement. And managers play a really crucial part in developing careers in a company, because obviously usually at the one-on-ones, managers are usually the first point of call for people if they want to discuss their career goals, their growth and things like that. So this obviously is a really good topic for us to look at. So how can we do this at GitLab? Well, as Sarah and I discussed, it all starts with a conversation at the one-on-ones. And from those conversations, you can begin to map out and discuss what the person in your team wants to do. And then from that, you can create a career development plan, which I'll talk about a little bit later. And as Sarah said, we already have junior, senior, and staff levels defined for most positions at GitLab. And there is also a question in the performance reviews on talking about knowledge, skills and abilities and how you want to develop those. And also, we can link development goals to the OKRs as well. So we can start to do this. And at this point, Sarah and I were talking about how we can kind of demonstrate the conversation. So we are going to do a little role play. And I'm going to stop showing my screen so you can see us both. So we have two scenarios that we want to go through. One is a one-on-one where the individual is... Sarah, help me out. I can't remember how we describe this now. The overconfident achiever. The overconfident achiever, that's right. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have the wallflower. So the person who's probably not very forthcoming, a bit of an introvert. So Sarah will play the role of the UX lead. And I will be one of her direct reports. And we're just going to go through the conversation of how we talk about planning career development. All right. So the scene is, it's our one-on-one. We've already kind of talked about ongoing issues, anything that Abby wanted to discuss in her role or day-to-day work. And at this point, I want to broach the subject of career development and how she really wants to, or how she sees herself moving forward here at GitLab. So it begins. So Abby, I've never asked you about your career plans. No, that's kind of funny. No, we've never really talked about that. Do we have time to do that? Of course we do. There's always time. So we don't have to go over it every time we meet, but I think that is good. Yeah. Well, I think it's important that we talk about WEEZ. We can develop and grow your career here at GitLab. I mean, have you really thought about your short term and long-term career goals? Well, to be honest, I've been here for three months now. And I really feel that I want to be the UX lead. I have lots and lots of ideas and ways on how we can improve our UX design process and even run the team more efficiently. And I think I'd be great at it, really. And people tell me all the time that I'm a natural born leader and I'm just ready. I'm ready to do it. Oh, that's awesome. So I'm really glad to hear that you thought about it. And it's great that you want to be lead someday. I mean, that's a solid long-term career goal. So right now your role is UX designer. So the next step here at GitLab is senior UX designer. And have you looked at the skills and the abilities associated with that role? Yeah, but I'm already doing a lot of the things that that role describes. Basically, you're already a senior designer. Okay. So it sounds like we need to take a look at the role and see where you fit in. It's possible that you do have many or most of the skills and abilities listed. So and if that's the case, then we can start to make a case to promote you to senior designer. If we do spot some skills gaps, we can put together a plan to work towards that role and check in on it in our one-on-ones. How does that sound? Sounds okay. But I mean, how long is this going to take? There's no set time. So it's really about you and I working together to make sure that we both feel comfortable that you have sufficiently shown that you have the skills and what it takes to fill that role. So whatever's lacking, we can definitely work on that. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. I'm kind of surprised a little bit, but I guess these things take time. They do. If we're going to review it and you're going to help me, yeah, let's do it. Absolutely. So I'll stop there on that one. I've actually had conversations like this before. I don't know how many of you have. And I'd actually, Abby, I'd like to open up and kind of get some feedback from people, maybe hear from people that have had conversations like this. I actually toned it down from some of the conversations I've had with people that were very, very eager and very confident, but they were ready to move on and move up. And we have some kind of key points and key takeaways after we go through the Wallflower one, but I'm just curious, has anyone ever had this kind of conversation or this type of personality that they've had to work with or manage? Yeah, not quite as extreme as that example, but yes. There's always people whose ambitions don't quite match your perception of their abilities or level. I also had the same situations that especially juniors already thought that they are like senior or should be lead of a team. So people that like an experience of one and a half year of doing their job for me wanted to be lead. So I think sometimes it's hard to reflect for people their actual technical skills, their actual, in our area of engineering architectural skills, their social skills, and one of the biggest topics that overestimate people a lot in my opinion is simply planning skills and how to do time management and how to be pragmatic and one of the biggest values of GitLab also, which is the boring solution, which is also a lot of the time a problem with engineers that they like to build a rocket ship for just a tiny menu color change. So stuff like that happens a lot in the past. Awesome, thanks Tim and Ernst, I appreciate it. So let's go into the second one and then there's some key points that I wanted to make about these two conversations and how they're the same and how they're different. So the next one is the the wallflower. So same scenario but completely different personality. So Abby, I've never asked you about your career plans. Have you thought about it? Career plans? I'm kind of happy where I am to be honest. Okay, I'm glad that you're happy and that's good to hear. You don't need to go over this every time but I'm just curious about what your future plans are if you thought at all about your career and growth here at GitLab. Any short or long-term goals? Not really. I think I just need to find a course maybe to go on and maybe the company will pay for it. Is that how it works? Well I mean possibly you could, it depends on what the goal is. So if there is a goal that you have that means learning a new skill or beefing up an area of knowledge that you really don't have a lot of experience in, then you could take a course that might be part of it. But I think really you're doing an excellent job right now in your current role as UX designer. You have a lot of experience behind you. I just wondering if you thought at all about the next step to maybe to a senior designer? Perhaps a little bit. I really honestly feel like I have so much more to learn and I'm not really sure if I'm kind of confident enough to push myself to go forward. I'm a little bit hesitant, apprehensive about that at this point. I would say that just from my perspective, I've watched your work obviously in the issues and I've seen the way that you've been mentoring the junior designers on the team and I think that you have a really good sense of collaboration. You're very knowledgeable in UX principles and I see confidence in your abilities, your actual UX abilities and working through those problems. So maybe some of the confidence is in kind of seeing yourself as a leader. So I'd really like to take a look at the role and see what skills and abilities you already map to and kind of the areas that we feel like we need to do work on. And then we could see what's missing, create a plan. And if, hey, if you're not interested in doing that, that's not a prerequisite. You don't have to move to senior designer. There's no pressure. I just wanted you to know that that is an opportunity you have here if that's something you're interested in. Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. I'm a little bit nervous because I think with promotion or if you move up in your career, you kind of have to manage people and will be very, you know, be present and things like that. And I'm quite nervous about that. So yeah, that would be my only, my only thing. I am kind of really happy at the moment, but okay. If you think it's something that I can do in the longer term and we can have a plan for that to happen, that would be good. Yeah. I mean, no pressure. I think not everybody wants to manage people. And I think sometimes you can see management as telling people what to do or a place of authority, but I think a lot of times it is a mentorship and a teaching and it's a give and take. And I see that you have that with the junior designers. So I just wanted you to know that if that's something you wanted to develop and really work on, you can. And senior level, there is going to be more participation, expectation, and there may be times when you need to give a presentation. But that's something that you can always practice. You could always take over part of the functional group update, maybe jump in and do one section of it or sit in on meetings, other meetings and maybe present a design. But again, if that's not something you're comfortable with at the moment, not a problem. We can just keep it in mind for the future maybe. Okay. So how often would we, if we have a plan, how often would we look at it? I don't want to do it every time. Unless you feel it's necessary. But at least, you know, maybe once a month. And if that's even that's too much, and you're really kind of happy where you're at, then we can set it out even longer. It's really up to you and your comfort. Okay. Thanks. Awesome. So thanks, Abby. Whoa, role-playing. Never fun. But the whole point there was that there are going to be some people that are really overconfident. They overestimate their abilities. And there's going to be others that underestimate. Probably a lot of people will really fall in the middle. And it'll be a lot easier to have these conversations. It won't be as painful as these two. But I would, some key points would be to actively listen. Don't be quick to discount their assessment of themselves. Look for some common ground and focus on understanding their overall goals so that you can work towards that. And then control to maintain control of the conversation. Ensure that it stays on track. The focus should be on their current skill set and abilities and how to cultivate those for a career path. So if they have unrealistic expectations or assessment of themselves, I think that it's really good to start breaking those down and looking at them. And then for me, another one is adaptation. And I think that we all do this to adapt your approach differently to different personality types. People that overestimate their skill sets I think need to be given more specifics on where they do and don't meet expectations. And they may need their areas of failing or where they come up short to be pointed out more plainly, always caringly, but a little bit more defined. And those that underestimate their skill sets may need more emphasis on what they're doing right because they tend to focus on the negative. They hear that inner dialogue and it's more difficult for them to take a step back and look at themselves objectively that way. And also not everyone wants to advance. Some people are going to be really happy in their role that they have. They want to stay there. And I think that should be equally supported. So those were the key points. I just wanted to point out about those two different scenarios and how they differed. So thank you for indulging us in that bit of role play. Okay, before we move on, does anybody have any questions, anything they want to share at this point? Obviously, I have a question like always. So Sarah, thank you very much for this. The role playing was actually really helpful. But the question is, you say that not everyone wants to advance. And that's totally fair, right? But whose responsibility is to keep checking on that and not come off as too forward with that check? How would you handle that? Me personally, and it's funny because I feel like I've had a lot of really different ends of the spectrum. I've dealt with people that I would probably put in more of a narcissistic category. They just seem to be unfailingly optimistic. They think that everything they do is amazing. And it's all about them. And then I've had the complete opposite where it's difficult to even get them to really say more than yes or no in a one-on-one meeting where it's just like pulling teeth and you're trying to find things to talk about. So I think that if you have someone like that that really isn't very interested, I think it depends. It depends on one, are they doing well in their current role and do they seem happy? If so, I don't know that I would bring it up very often. I would kind of let it lie until maybe I, and this isn't very concrete, but personally I would leave it until I really get some cues that maybe they were looking to do more or maybe give it six months and maybe bring it up again. But if it's someone that I think is just really doing a great job and maybe it's a lack of confidence, it's something that they, you could see that they really want, but they're afraid of. I might be a little bit more pushy. I might bring it up a little bit more often and just say, hey, I just want you to know that I really believe in you. And I think that this is something that you could do if you want to. But I think there really is a balance of it and it can be difficult. I would love to chime in. So something at GitLab the first time I've done this that I think has worked really well on my team. We've just started it. So we have our job description, which outlines the roles and responsibilities and the levels. And effectively what I've done is for everyone, we've created a path to promotion document that just outlines what I expect to see. And then at the end of that meeting, at the end of that one-on-one, I tell them like, it's in your court, you can go as fast or as slow as you want here. And we'll check in on this every few one-on-ones and see how things are progressing. And that gives me an opportunity to very hands off, also check the document to see if things have moved or haven't moved and how long and then determine if I want to bring that up or not bring that up. And it's been working really well. And also as I pair and work with the team, when we do something, I say, oh, make sure you put this on your path to promotion doc. So it becomes very clear and actionable. Oh, yeah, this is a great thing that makes perfect sense there and kind of just gives the opportunity to start working towards it and everybody's working at their own pace and that works. That's been working really well. So just wanting to share that more and that might help as well on your team. That's awesome, Leigh. I have a similar document. I'm pretty sure that Abby has links to different documents and I think someone else had one as well. So that's fantastic. I don't know if this applies to anybody here, but when I first started being the lead of the front end, there was no junior mid senior and it was just engineer. And the one thing I would say about that is that if you have to define, because in the beginning there was nowhere for anybody to move to, so they were just, and then they started wondering, okay, where are we moving? So I would just say that being much more proactive about that before questions start happening, just thinking about if you were them, where would you want to move to and if there are enough things to move to in the first place, because a lot of times that happens, especially if you're in a startup and everything's new and there's nothing really defined. Okay, I'm going to go back to the presentation just really quickly. So my next slide is what's next. So here I've just put, we've already talked about this, allocate some time at the one-on-one. I actually, when I was looking into this to try and help when you're doing the one-on-ones, when you're asking some questions about identifying competencies and skill gaps, there's some questions there. These are in the work in progress merge request already, and I will be sure to remove them from the slide deck and put a link there once we merge it. But those are really good questions to ask, of course, if there's others that you find, please go ahead and share those in the merge request also. Hayden has already asked about templates. So when I was doing my research for this training, I actually, I asked, of course, I went straight to Sarah because she volunteered, and she's actually created a template for the UX team, which I think is brilliant, because it covers, it has to get lab values in there. Please go and take a look at that. This will also be in the handbook. Similarly, Amara had a template that she was using as well, which is really great too. Courtland, unfortunately, I don't think he's on the call, but he shared with me, this isn't necessarily a career development plan, but it's like a scorecard, which is in a Google Sheet, which there's some Myers-Briggs stuff in there. But again, it's something else that somebody is using. And he's found that to be really useful. It's a shame he's not on the call, but because he could explain it in a bit more detail. And there's a link there to another template that's available. But the point I want to make with these is that this is having a template would be really great. But of course, it depends on how what the team member responds to and what works for you. But I would recommend Sarah's one. I think it's just brilliant, especially with all the values in there. Sarah, I don't know if you want to jump in and explain that a little bit before I move on. Oh, just to say that the first sheet is kind of an explanation of what each of the tabs below are. So it's just hard to do anything that's really amazing with Google Sheets. So when you first go in, that first sheet is kind of an explanation of what each section is. And then each tab as you open it up, it maps, gives you places to map actual issue links to values at GitLab and then issue links to how you're fulfilling your current role. And then the last tab is all about looking forward to another role in the company. And another thing I want to say is that we're talking here about moving up within your given place, so in the UX team. But I do have somebody on my team that's really interested in product and understanding what it is to be a product manager and those kinds of things. So that's also something to encourage. It's not just about staying and moving up within one area of the company. It could be anywhere within the company. Yeah. And I think a good time to discuss and create a career development plan. One good opportunity to do that is during or just after the performance review discussions. You can obviously plan a bit more for the future with the person once you've discussed what they can improve on and what they've done really well and also what they want to do in terms of their careers at GitLab. And the people operations team, we're very much behind this. We really want to assist with the process of doing the mapping for all the different roles. We know we still have some work to do. And I know Brittany's on this call as well because I know she's very keen to get involved in this. So I will certainly be checking in, as I always do with each of you, to find out about careers and things like that in addition to what we normally talk about. So I hope that is helpful. And are there any questions? Yeah, I think there's some in the dock, Abby, if you want to take a look at the dock. Okay, next. Levels in UX. You talk to years, but is it about experience? Is the years guideline written anywhere? That's an interesting question. I'm jumping to the page. Sorry, I didn't mean to jump in on you. Sorry. It refers to the slide where you showed the role levels. And I'm familiar with the naming of the levels and the fact that we describe the levels. And sometimes I've had people ask me, so what does that mean? If five years, am I a senior? It's like, well, it's not about the years. It's about are you matching the experience and the abilities and the skills of this level? But people like the abstraction and the simplicity of a number sometimes. And you provided one in that slide. So I'm wondering if you use that at all? What's the use of the number there? So if you click on the link from that UX designer, the screenshot, and you go in, there are no year limits like that, the entry level, two to five, six plus. That's not really listed out there. However, when we list jobs, if you go to an actual job listing for UX designer, junior, senior, and not average level, that's a terrible way to say it. But junior, UX, senior. Those do have years for people that are coming in from outside the company. I don't necessarily treat that as a, it has to be within this range because there are plenty of people that excel and there are others that it takes just a longer amount of time for them really to build up the skill sets. And a lot of times it can be that they're amazing designers, but they're lacking in soft skills or they're lacking in some other area. So I see that as kind of just a general guideline, but not something to be strictly followed. Right. So I would agree with that. But you're saying that when we post jobs, we do include it as a guideline? Yes. That's interesting. In that case, we might want to clarify it. I thought we did. It actually stands as no. That's a job description. When you go to the UX designer, for example, we don't actually put it in the senior levels and things like that. Just. No, when we advertise a job, we do. Hold on. I'm just double checking to make sure I, maybe I was saying correct. Yeah. So in this one here, I'll just send you a quick link. So it, for instance, for mine, it lists a minimum of three plus years experience. So we do in the job descriptions or in the job that we put out, but not here. And this is not something that I would sit and say, well, do you have two to five years experience? I was just kind of putting this down as a basic guideline for levels, but can just as easily be taken out. It's not necessary. So it's a really good question. Ernst, I'm going to turn my mic off and let you move. Mark had the next point on start conversation. Yeah. So in what I, I guess just what I've always done is, is how to start that conversation. I know you went through a couple of examples in your role play, but to me it's about create your own reality. What do you really want to do? And Sarah kind of mentioned this a little bit, but you know, some people are in current functions or jobs or whatever and want to move into a different area. And so how can we help them do that? Regardless of its, you know, more senior position in their current function or like I said, a totally different functional area. So to me, it's about starting that conversation with, you know, create your own reality. What do you want to do? You wave a magic wand or do you end up? And so that's, I think that's kind of all I was saying there. I love it. That's awesome. Okay. And then the next one was mine again. So there was a point in a slide, I think it was the seventh slide, linking OKRs to career development goals. So I recall doing that very specifically the first quarter that we were using OKRs and I was the interim support lead because OKRs at the time went down to the individual level and it was easy to have a goal at the team level of providing better support for customers and then trickle that down to individuals. If you as an individual are better, have these additional skills, then the team will be better. So we made that connection. Now we have OKRs that I think are better, clearer in terms of not going all the way down to the individual level. It's going to be much easier to track OKRs and work towards them as a team. But it makes it more difficult to link OKRs to career development. So I was wondering if the way you do this now is by essentially in one-on-ones set individual goals that tie to both career development and OKRs. That's how I would imagine doing it. I'm just wondering if that's in fact the way you do it. That's the way I do it. My template that Abby shared still actually has I think the second tab in is has the OKRs and while they're not individual goals, since it's a team goal, everybody is pitching in and helping. So it gives them an opportunity to say, hey, I worked on this issue, which maps to this OKR. So I don't know if that's right or wrong, but it felt like something that made sense in terms of making sure everybody on the team felt that they were contributing and working towards a goal together. And that also does show how they're working towards whatever goals they may have, whether it's to just be an awesome UX designer or whether it's to move into other areas, et cetera. Yeah, and if I can just add, because I added the point, for us in the People Ops team as well, there's certain things that we can, for our OKRs, there's certain projects and things that we can work on. And they're great development opportunities because there's things that some of us haven't done before and we're jumping in and just developing ourselves that way. So that was my mindset with linking them to OKRs as well. It's just another way of people stretching their skill sets a little bit. Stan, I think you had the next point. Yeah, I think I noticed on the role play, we mentioned that with the over eager person, going from junior to lead, you're as implicit. And I've done this before, there's an easy way to assume that just moving them up to a kind of management position is a natural progression. But in many cases, it's not. And I'm wondering, how do we juggle that other than just focus on the next step for that? I think if someone wants to be lead and they're in that, maybe they're a junior or they're, I definitely want to map how where their skills are. So if we're mapping their skills and they just, they're at junior, but they just blow away that UX, like they've got everything, then it's like, OK, well, man, you're already doing that. Well, let's look at the next step. So what a senior doing that you are already fulfilling, and maybe they blow that one away. I think that it does make sense to at least look at it in that fashion, in terms of evaluating your skillset. To me, anyway, if that makes sense. Yeah, so I'm just reading your comment about where management versus technical track start. That's something I didn't mention, which was the fact that I think, certainly in my background, people who move up in technical roles, they kind of get people added to them when they become more senior. And I think not everyone wants to be a manager. They just want to be a really strong technical specialist or whatever. So I think that's a really interesting point that we should be conscious of that, and then perhaps have a career track separated out for people who want to go into management or people who want to stay on the technical side. I've got the next one there for ready to move on about just managing expectations in the absence of an open position that a candidate could move into. I've got my own ideas on it. Of course, we could give them a title change. Could be go from a sales development rep to a senior sales development rep, pay increase. But any ideas on what others do? This one typically comes up. A lot of folks want to get into enterprise software sales and they start out as a sales development rep. And that's a tough role. They're going to be in that role doing outbound prospecting for a year to 18 months. And there's a high burnout factor. So we obviously don't want to lose people who have learned our trade and our domain. But by the same token, there's not always an open slot for them to move into sales. And if there is an open slot, maybe we want someone with 10 years of experience. And of course, they don't really have any. So that's just one example of where someone in a junior role is really keen to move up. But there just may not be a slot. So what are some of the things that people have done to manage that expectation? So Hayden, just one thought there. I don't know if it's directly applicable to sales given the unique nature of the role and the different types of sales roles. But I think one thing is, to your point of keeping them motivated and engaged is giving them stretch goals or stretch projects that you can get them involved in or have them take the lead on. I think sometimes projects that are outside of their comfort zone or something that typically they would not be involved in or take the lead on. But it's an opportunity for them to push their boundaries and also for you to assess their capabilities to take on that additional responsibility. So as there are new initiatives or strategic areas that the team needs to focus on and you may not have the capacity within the other parts of the team to plug that person in to give them that opportunity to stretch themselves. Yeah, that's a good one, Joe. Thank you. One thing I did think of was maybe making them a mentor to new hires, giving them a little bit of motivation, a bit of a senior kind of a leadership role within their particular group. It's just one thing I thought of. Yeah, that's a good idea, Hayden. I've added that to the doc. I think we're out of time now, but I just want to say thank you very much to everyone for jumping on the call. Apologies for the start. I'm not sure what happened, but thanks very much for Sarah as well for being an absolute star and helping me put together something a little bit different with the role play. And I will reach out to you all again for the next session. Thanks very much, everyone. Thank you.