Foundations Stage

About

The responsibilities of this stage are described by the Foundations product category. Foundations is made up of multiple groups, each with their own features and areas of responsibility, noted last on this page.

• I have a question. Who do I ask?

In GitLab issues, questions should start by @ mentioning the relevant Product Manager for the product category.

GitLab team members can also use #s_foundations.

How we work

• In accordance with our GitLab values.
• Transparently: nearly everything is public, we record/livestream meetings whenever possible.
• We get a chance to work on the things we want to work on.
• Everyone can contribute; no silos.
  • The goal is to have product give engineering and design the opportunity to be involved with direction and issue definition from the very beginning.

OKRs

For a list of active OKRs, check the OKR project.

Direction

The direction and strategy for Foundations is documented on https://about.gitlab.com/direction/foundations/. This page (and the category direction pages under the “Categories” header) is the single source of truth on where we’re going and why.

• Direction pages should be reviewed regularly by Product. When updating these pages, please CC the relevant group to keep your teammates informed.
• Product should make sure that their groups understand the direction and have an opportunity to contribute to it. Consider a monthly direction AMA for your group to field questions.

Career Development

Giving / receiving 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:

Engineering Managers

This section lists relevant experience areas for individual contributors interested in the management track, new engineering managers, or existing engineering managers who may be lacking opportunities. This list can be used to identify opportunities in these areas.

Trainings offered by GitLab for EMs

• Elevate Manager Training
• Crucial Conversations

Other resources

• Slack #aspiring-managers channel
• Handbook page dedicated to growing leadership skills for ICs

Staff Engineers

For an explanation on what to expect as a Staff engineer and a list of ideas for tactical initaitives, visit this page.

Team Days

Engineering management schedules Team Days every 2 quarters as a way to celebrate our wins as a team, with our counterparts, and look forward to the future. These are optional social events led primarily by the attendees in terms of activities and discussions, but scheduled and organized by engineering managers.

Sync meetings will occur in all time zones, and activities may happen throughout the day in a dedicated team day Slack channel. While optional, all team members should have an opportunity to participate for as long as they want, so capacity for all engineers should be accounted for during milestone planning.

Meetings

Although we have a bias for asynchronous communication, synchronous meetings are necessary and should adhere to our communication guidelines. Some regular meetings that take place are:

For one-off, topic specific meetings, please always consider recording these calls and sharing them (or taking notes in an internally available document.

Agenda documents and recordings can be placed in the shared Google drive (internal only) as a single source of truth.

All meetings should have an agenda prepared at least 12 hours in advance. If this is not the case, you are not obligated to attend the meeting. Consider meetings canceled if they do not have an agenda by the start time of the meeting.

Stage Reviews

The Engineering Stage Review is a monthly Engineering Manager meeting designed to evaluate team productivity, technical progress, and key metrics across the stage groups. In this meeting, we assess team productivity metrics and trends at a stage-wide level, review technical roadmap progress and align initiatives across teams, identify areas for improvement and discuss action plans, and connect related technical work across different teams.

Format:

• 50-minute monthly sessions, split into two parts:
  • Data Science Session (covering AI Framework, Custom Models, MLOps, Duo Chat)
  • AI Powered & Foundations Session (covering Duo Workflow, Global Search, Design System, Personal Productivity, Import & Integrate)
• Each team has approximately 10 minutes for review
• Metrics and updates are submitted 24 hours before the meeting for async review

Shared calendars

1. Foundations: Important Dates - Use this calendar for stage-wide reminders (OKR due dates, promotion cycles, talent assessment timelines, regular holiday preparations)
   • To add this calendar to your Google Calendar, use this calendar ID c_kvfbp2t8edtgm4rjialus0834g@group.calendar.google.com
2. Foundations Shared - Use this calendar for recurring group level reminders and meetings (Release kickoff, milestone planning, social calls)
   • To add the shared calendar to your Google Calendar, please use this link (GitLab internal).
   • To add a meeting to the shared calendar, please add the link in this document to the event.

• To add a new member to the shared calendar
  • Click “Settings and Sharing” in the kebab menu when mousing over “Foundations Shared” in your Google Calendar sidebar under “My calendars”.
  • Scroll to the “Share with specific people” section of the settings area. Click “Add people” and add the new member with “Make changes and manage sharing”.
• For a more detailed walkthrough, have a look at a quick video walkthrough

Skip Levels

Skip Levels with Michelle occur in 3 ways:

1. Each month, skip level invites will be sent to approximately 10 team members depending on availability across teams. This equates to 1 skip level approximately every 6 months, therefore invites are sent based on the last meeting date.
2. Monthly placeholder events are pre-scheduled in all regions also at that time and can be “claimed” on this calendar (internal only) by any engineer or engineering manager. If you don’t see any - they are taken, follow step 3.
3. Michelle is never too busy for a skip level. Simply schedule one. 🙂

Metrics

Development

Say/Do Ratio

When we commit to a new milestone, engineering managers apply the ~Deliverable label to all issues they are able to commit to based on capacity. This serves as a promise from engineering to product as well as a signal for the most important issues in the milestone for the team to pick up. At the end of the milestone, successfully completed issues with the ~Deliverable label are assessed against the total number of ~Deliverable issues in order to create the Say/Do Ratio (7 issues completed of 10 committed to is a 70% Say/Do result.)

The Say/Do Ratio is a metric used to:

• Provide predictability and stability when milestone planning
• Raise flags about the types of issues that are frequently disruptive
• Measure how well we are meeting our commitments to our customers

Links and resources

• Stage links
  • Discussions and issues are located at gitlab-org/manage
  • General Slack #s_foundations
  • Skip level calendar (Internal Only)

• Engineering links
  • Manage and Data Science engineering discussion are located at gitlab-org/manage/engineering-managers
  • Social channel #pikachus-social
  • Engineering Manager Slack #s_manage_data_science_ems

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