TMRG - GitLab Women

An overview of our remote TMRG GitLab Women

Mission

The mission of the GitLab Women TMRG is to cultivate an inclusive environment that supports and encourages those who identify as women to advance their skills and leadership potential through connection, mentorship, collaboration and discussion. This group shall serve as a forum for women to find their voice and be heard within the GitLab community. Through networking, socializing, and professional development, we hope to attract and retain women into GitLab’s positions. This group is open to all members of the GitLab community.

Click through to meet some of the women working at GitLab!

Pillars

This TMRG is focused on 4 key areas of impact. We call them our pillars. Review the table below to read about the purpose of each pillar and results the TMRG has achieve for each.

Pillar	Purpose	Example Results
Awareness and Education	Increase awareness of the experience of TMRG memebers at GitLab and educate allies.
Professional Development	Increase access to opportunity for career and professional growth of TMRG members	Women at GitLab Mentorship Program
Recruiting and Retention	Increase the successful recruitment and retention of women at GitLab	Participate in candidate TMRG calls by joining the #candidate_tmrg-call Slack channel
Business Influence	Start and contribute to discusses that influence GitLab the business.	Surface burnout data to People Leadership

Leads

Executive Sponsors

Robin Schulman - Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary

How to Join

Please sign up here to be added to the Women TMRG Google Group. This will ensure you’re added to upcoming TMRG calendar events. It might take up to 24 hours before the calendar events appear on your calendar. If there is an event happening within 24 hours of you joining the Google Group, please post in the #women Slack channel to be added manually.
Join the #women Slack channel for conversation, announcements, and connecting with other TMRG members. Please introduce yourself in the channel when you join!

Member Involvement

This section is meant to outline how team members in the Women TMRG can contribute to key initiatives each quarter. We encourage team members to contribute in any way they feel comfortable and have capacity - from meeting attendance to leading initiatives and anywhere in between!

Attend the Monthly TMRG Planning Meeting

This meeting is hosted 1x per month on Wednesdays at 2:30pm UTC and 11pm UTC. Allies are always encouraged to attend any TMRG meeting. The call structure includes:

25 minutes for full group discussion of agenda topics
20 minutes small breakout groups for social discussion

We’d like to add a 3rd session of our month meeting to accommodate team members in APAC timezones. If you are interested please reach out in the #women Slack channel.

Call hosts will prepare our meeting agenda using the following structure:

Part 1: Quick Updates from TMRG leads: Leads will add updates to be shared and discussed sync/async. This will focus on the key priorities for that month and quarter
Part 2: Discussion projects and ideas related to our TMRG pillars: Awareness & Education, Professional Development, Recruiting & Retention, and Business Influence
Part 3: Social Breakout Groups: Depending on group size and time remaining, we’ll break out into discussion groups. Conversation topics can vary. Some ideas include motherhood, remote work and work life balance, sustainability, dating and friendships

This meeting is hosted 1x per month on Wednesdays at 3pm UTC and Thursdays at 12am UTC for 45 minutes. The call is dedicated to social connection for TMRG members and there is no agenda. Session attendees will break out into small groups based on current interests.

Use the TMRG Issue Board to Create or Contribute to a TMRG key initiative

We use our GitLab issue board to coordinate and prioritize projects on a quarterly basis. Contribute to the issue board by:

Open a new issue to propose an idea or project using the key-initiative-proposal issue template (please note that you don’t have to be available to lead the project - opening a topic for discussion is great!)
Apply labels as necessary to track the TMRG focus areas. The labels are: Awareness & Education, Diversity - Inclusion and belonging, Recruiting & Retention, and Outreach & Business Development
Contribute to an open issue that is assigned to a quarterly milestone. These milestones outline the current focus projects of the TMRG
Attend or notify others of upcoming events using the Events - Womens TMRG label and consider using the event-or-conference-fyi issue template. Assign event issues to the relevant milestone based on event date.

Participate in a Candidate TMRG Call

The hiring process at GitLab includes an optional step where candidates can request to meet with a TMRG team member. As a TMRG member, you can volunteer to speak with candidates to answer questions and share your experience at GitLab.

Join the #candidate_tmrg-call Slack channel to participate.

Career Development Resources

Women at GitLab looking for career development resources can use this list to explore both opportunities available to the entire GitLab team for career development and helpful resources that have been shared in the #women Slack channel

If you have a resource you’d like to include, please open a merge request and contribute to this page!

Resource	Description
Women at GitLab Mentorship Program	FY22 Q2-Q3 program opportunity for mentorship at GitLab
WISE: Women in Sales Everywhere Memberships	In calendar year 2022, GitLab has allocated 15 licenses for women in the Sales organization to acceses memberships with WISE including mentorship, events, and training. Reach out to TMRG leads if you are interested in a membership
GitLab Internship for Learning	If your manager has coverage, you can spend a percentage of your time working (through an ‘internship’) with another team
Growth and Development benefit	This benefit is available for GitLab team members and can be used to cover professional development costs associated with external resources
CEO Shadow Program	The goal of the CEO Shadow Program is to give current and future directors and senior leaders at GitLab an overview of all aspects of the company
Women in the Workplace Study Webinar	A webinar from Lean In discussing the unique impact that COVID-19 has had on women of different races and ethnicities, working mothers, women in senior leadership and women with disabilities
The Harvard Gazette - Women less inclined to self-promote than men, even for a job	Study finds female workers’ deep discomfort over touting skills, experience adds to gender gap in promotions, pay
Stanford Continuing Studies Department	Standford offers many continuing education programs in multiple diciplines including leadership, writing, and professional/personal development

Book Suggestions

The following are books suggested by GitLab team members in the #women Slack channel. Please open an merge request to add books to this page, and consider including a short review of the book from your perspective!

Book Title and Author	Optional Book Review
WolfPack by Abby Wambach
Radical Candor by Kim Scott
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
The Memo by Minda Harts
Burnout - The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski
Invisible Women - Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Past Events

Talking Confidently about your Accomplishments - Live Speaker Series with Michelle Carrizosa

2022 Women’s History Month Celebrate - Interview with Christie Lenneville, VP of UX

Literature Parties

In the following 2 sessions, team members read Good Bones & Hope is the Thing With Feathers.

TMRG Member-Led Sessions

Additional Resources

Women TMRG logo

Download the GitLab Women TMRG logo here.

Activate your Agile Career