Create:Code Review Backend Engineering Resources

Resources for the backend team members of the Create:Code Review group

This page contains engineering resources for the Create:Code Review Backend team. For day-to-day work of the team, please review the Create:Code Review BE handbook page.

Team building

Every two weeks a question/activity will be posted in the code-review-backend slack channel to enable the team to have a more relaxed interaction with each other. Currently, in the team, it is impossible to get everyone on a synchronous call and while the team days work well, they are at the create stage level. This team-building exercise is aimed more specifically at the Code Review Backend Team.

Some examples would be:

  • Ice breaker style question: What is your favourite food to cook? (maybe share photos too), What was your favourite holiday and why?
  • ‘Gif battle’: where we would have a topic, for example (cutest animal, most insane dance move) and we would each post our top GIF
  • Share a photo: where we each share a photo that we took during the week

Feedback

It can be hard to understand how you’re doing in your role, because feedback can come off as formal (annual reviews, 360 surveys, career development conversations, goal check-ins) or casual (in Slack channels, 1-1’s, MR reviews, team meetings.) We receive various kinds of feedback regularly and through different formats, so the type of feedback you’re receiving is not always clear. In order to be more intentional about the types of feedback given, here is a classification chart based on three types of feedback:

| Label | Meaning | Example | | (appreciation) | I want to thank you for doing this, and please do more of it in the future | “I did not expect that you would have created a working group, because you’ve done so, our whole team will benefit from the results.” | (coaching) | I’m trying to help you improve a behavior you are already exhibiting or change a behavior that you currently have | “The reports that you give me are very helpful, and in the future we can schedule them for the first of the month to be more consistent.” | (evaluation) | Tells you where you stand according to existing standards or expectations | “My expectation was that our decision would be transparent. Since it was not, our team has forgotten the decision, so we must be sure and meet that expectation next time.” |

Career development

    <h2>Requires the group-label argument</h2>

Career development conversations in the Create:BE team are centered around a Career Development Sheet that is based on the Engineering Career Matrix for Individual Contributors. The sheet lists the expected current level behaviors on the left, the next level behaviors on the right, and uses colored columns in between to visually represent the extent to which the individual has shown to have grown from the current level to the next. Columns to the right of a next level behavior are used to collect specific examples of that behavior, which serve as evidence of the individual’s growth.

Both the matrix and the sheet are Works in Progress; the development of the career matrix is tracked in an epic, and as the matrix evolves, the sheet will be updated to match.

Training and Development Opportunities

This is a list of commonly requested training and some additional resources:

  1. The Database maintainer process centralizes training related to being not just a maintainer, but all the resources for a reviewer as well.
  2. The Golang training template offers resources related to learning Go.
  3. The feature flag training template will help get you started in understanding how to use feature flags at GitLab, as well as monitor the performance of your work.
  4. There are 2 YouTube playlists that cover our monitoring and visualization tools. More resources are available in the handbook in terms of Grafana, Kibana, Prometheus, Sentry, and Sitespeed.io.
  5. There is a DIB training template that utilizes internal resources and LinkedIn Learning, as well as an additional DIB certification course which is offered directly from GitLab.
  6. The “transitioning to a manager” page and related training issue helps provide an idea of what management is like at GitLab.
  7. Rails performance materials (internal only) are available from a workshop that was done at GitLab.

Additional resources

Last modified December 22, 2023: Migrate all links to the engineering section (88e02786)
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