Create Stage

Hello

We’re the Create Stage and we are a group of teams within the Dev Sub Department. We’re comprised of five areas within the GitLab product.

Mission

What do we do?

The Create Stage supports software development teams accelerate their delivery and reduce cycle times, by improving efficiency and collaboration. Our stage provides tools that support the beginning of the DevOps Life Cycle.

Whom do we serve?

We build tools for:

• Software Developers
• DevOps Engineers
• Development Team leads
• Product Managers
• Product Designers

How do we serve them?

The Product Vision Handbook Page provides specific examples for how we serve each type of GitLab user.

Vision

The following areas have been defined as our direction for the year:

• Fast, reliable, and easily managed Git storage
• Binary file workflows
• Delightful code review
• Better collaboration in OSS and within large organizations across many teams
• Unifying our editing experiences
• Better integrations

Professional Development

Each team member is encouraged to take positive steps towards improving their skills and knowledge.

Growing your skillset will lead to more insightful contributions to the GitLab Product. As your expertise grows, your impact on the product and the company also grows. Here at GitLab, it is important to us to invest in the Professional Development of our team members.

If there is an area you are interested in learning more about, please reach out to your manager so they can provide an environment that will allow you to grow in your areas of preference. Some recommended resources are below:

Engineering Managers

• Recommended Books
• Training Materials

Individual Contributors

• Professional Development
• Recommended Books
• Training Materials
• Transitioning from an Individual Contributor to a Manager
• Skip-level Meetings
• Iteration

How we work

Each team work in the manner that best meets the needs of their product and their team.

• Create Engineering Managers
• Remote Development Team
• Code Review Team
• Source Code Team Backend, Frontend

Templates

We use templates in order to make our processes more transparent and efficient. Documenting practices once and reusing them often provides guidance and support throughout the stage.

How we work across teams

The Create Stage teams work together and play together. We are fortunate to be able to rely on each other to support and complement our features. Some examples of Cross Team Collaboration:

• The Source Code and Gitaly Teams often collaborate together on issues
• Gitaly Team Members have mentored Source Code team members on the Go Programming language

Every quarter we participate in a cross team bonding activity, Create Team Day.

How we live our values

Engineering Managers live our values every day.

Read More about how Engineering Managers live GitLab Values

How we measure Results

• OKRs
• Dashboards
• Issue Boards
• Monitoring

How we measure Iteration

• Logs
• MR Rate

How we track productivity

In an effort to drive further clarity and align expectations on what is expected for each role, the Create stage has expanded on Engineering performance indicators such as the MR Rate (above 12 per month) and will further specify expectations for each seniority level.

Why?

During talent assessments, Engineering Managers take a holistic approach to evaluate team members’ performance. They consider a diverse set of interconnected metrics across our ecosystem, ensuring fair assessment against the expectations for each Job Grade. These metrics include:

• Merge requests merged
• Code reviews conducted
• Maintainer and interviewer status
• Number of interviews participated in
• Mentoring activities
• Merge Request Impact
• Multiple Others

This comprehensive approach allows for a well-rounded evaluation of an engineer’s contributions and growth. For more details, refer to our Talent Assessments page.

We believe it’s important to communicate expectations clearly and transparently so we can all know what is expected and what to expect. This section looks to add clarity to this topic and promote higher awareness among the entire Create stage.

What metrics do we focus?

The goal of any team performance metric is to contribute partially to the understanding of a reality. This is because each metric might be imperfect on its own but alongside others can offer a more complete picture and better insights into the contributions given by the team and/or individual.

Currently we’re setting clear monthly expectations for the following metrics:

• Merge Request Rate:
  • When applied to a group: The numerator is the number of merge requests merged into a set of projects (see notes below). The denominator is the number of people in the group.
  • When applied to an individual: It’s the number of merge requests merged into a set of projects (see notes below).
• Reviews Rate:
  • When applied to a group: The numerator is the number of code reviews given to merge requests that merged into a set of projects (see notes below) in a given period (usually a month). The denominator is the number of people in the group.
  • When applied to an individual: It’s the number of code reviews given to merge requests that merged into a set of projects (see notes below) in a given period (usually a month).

Dashboards

• Merge Request Rate: tableau dashboard
• Reviews Rate: tableau dashboard

Note: If you don’t have access to Tableau, reach out to your direct manager to either provide you with a screenshot for the desired period or if applicable they can open an access request to provide you with permanent access.

Notes:

1. These metrics include all MRs affecting the product. The specific projects included in the dataset are listed in this seed file. Please refer to this section for instructions on how to update this list.
2. We will iterate on this process over time by expanding our metric set and refining them to ensure alignment with team contributions and evolving role expectations. Any changes will be clearly communicated to all team members.

Baseline targets for each job grade

In the table below, we outline the baseline numbers for each of the metric related to the Seniority level:

How were the targets calculated?

By analysing the existing teams’ metrics and collaborating with all Engineering Managers in the stage, targets were defined to accurately reflect the expectations set during a normal calibration session for talent assessments at the Performing level of each role.

These targets were set having adherence to our CREDIT values in mind and are both ambitious and realistic.

What do the targets mean?

We expect team members to be on or above target for at least 6 out of the 12 months of a given year.

For Individual Contributors, these targets can provide a health status signal in alignment with expectations for the role and seniority they’re in.

For Engineering Managers, these targets can provide a signal to review team processes, planning, or individual cases to better support their team members.

For any teams that have specific contexts that justify a deviation, that extra context should be documented in their handbook team page as much as possible.

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Create Stage: Talent Assessments

This page documents relevant information to help our team members have a clear picture on how we conduct Talent Assessments following company-wide guidance.

Create Stage: Tech Leads

The objective of this page is to provide a clear documentation of the responsibilities and attributes associated with the role of a tech lead within the Create Stage.

Create:Code Creation Group

The Create:Code Creation Group is responsible for all product categories that fall under the Code Creation group of the Create stage.

Create:Code Review Group

The Create:Code Review Group is responsible for all product categories that fall under the Code Review group of the Create stage.

Create:Editor Extensions Group

The Create:Editor Extensions Group is responsible for all product categories that fall under the Editor Extensions group of the Create stage.

Create:Remote Development Group

The Remote Development Group is part of the Create Stage. We focus on two categories: Workspace and the Web IDE.

Create:Source Code teams

The Create:Source Code teams are responsible for both the backend and frontend aspects of the product categories that fall under the Source Code group of the Create stage.

Engineering Managers

Meet the Engineering Managers

Image	Name	Title	Team	LinkedIn
	Darva Satcher	Director of Engineering	Create Stage	LinkedIn
	Adebayo Adesanya	Fullstack Engineering Manager	Remote Development	LinkedIn
	André Luís	Senior Engineering Manager	Code Review & Source Code	LinkedIn
	François Rosé	Fullstack Engineering Manager	Code Review	LinkedIn
	Matt Nohr	Backend Engineering Manager	Code Creation	LinkedIn
	Mavryck Richardson	Fullstack Engineering Manager	Editor Extensions	LinkedIn

Engineers

Who we are

Create

Create:Code Creation

Name	Role
Matt Nohr	Backend Engineering Manager, Create:Code Creation
Allen Cook	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Backend Engineer	Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Jan Provaznik	Staff Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Leaminn Ma	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Missy Davies	Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Pam Artiaga	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Shola Quadri	Associate Backend Engineer
Tian Gao	Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Vitali Tatarintev	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation

Create:Code Review Backend

Name	Role
François Rosé	Engineering Manager, Create:Code Review
Sincheol (David) Kim	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Review
Gary Holtz	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Review
Kinshuk Singh	Backend Engineer, Create:Code Review
Marc Shaw	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Review
Patrick Bajao	Staff Backend Engineer, Create:Code Review

Create:Code Review Frontend

Name	Role
André Luís	Senior Engineering Manager, Create:Source Code, Create:Code Review
Jacques Erasmus	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Chaoyue Zhao	Frontend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Paulina Sedlak-Jakubowska	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Source Code

Create:Editor Extensions

Name	Role
Kisha Mavryck Richardson	Engineering Manager
Andrei Zubov	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Anna Springfield	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Code Creation
Bohdan Parkhomchuk	Backend Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Dylan Bernardi	Associate Backend Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Elwyn Benson	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Erran Carey	Staff Fullstack Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Jean-Gabriel Doyon	Backend Engineer
John Slaughter	Staff Backend Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Juhee Lee	Fullstack Engineer
Karl Jamoralin	Backend Engineer
Laura Ionel	Senior Backend Engineer
Michael Angelo Rivera	Fullstack Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Olena HK.	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Tomas Vik	Staff Fullstack Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions
Tristan Read	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Editor Extensions

Create:Remote Development

Name	Role
Adebayo Adesanya	Engineering Manager
Ashvin Sharma	Backend Engineer
Chad Woolley	Staff Backend Engineer, Create:Remote Development
Cindy Halim	Fullstack Engineer, Create:Remote Development
Daniyal Arshad	Backend Engineer
Enrique Alcántara	Staff Frontend Engineer, Create:Remote Development
Joseph Fletcher	Associate Frontend Engineer
Paul Slaughter	Staff Fullstack Engineer, Create:Remote Development
Safwan Ahmed	Backend Engineer, Create:Remote Development
Vishal Tak	Staff Backend Engineer, Create:Remote Development
Zhaochen Li	Backend Engineer, Create:Remote Development

Create:Source Code Backend

Name	Role
Devi Poosarla	Engineering Manager, Create:Source Code Backend
Emma Park	Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code Backend
Fred Reinink	Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code Backend
Gavin Hinfey	Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Hunter Stewart	Senior Backend Engineer,Create:Source Code Backend
Jerry Seto	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Javiera Tapia	Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Joe Woodward	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Kerri Miller	Staff Backend Engineer, Create:Code Review
Pranav Jain	Associate Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Olaoluwa Oluro	Senior Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code
Vasilii Iakliushin	Staff Backend Engineer, Create:Source Code, Systems:Gitaly API

Create:Source Code Frontend

Name	Role
André Luís	Senior Engineering Manager, Create:Source Code, Create:Code Review
Phil Hughes	Staff Fullstack Engineer, Create:Code Review
Stanislav Lashmanov	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Code Review
Thomas Randolph	Senior Frontend Engineer, Create:Code Review

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