A lot of the conclusions they're drawing in this post about the "agentic era" seem quite misguided and some don't really seem to make sense. I have no doubt GitLab has too many employees and can benefit from being a more focused company, but it's tiring reading these layoff posts so chock full of buzzwords. I guess they're desperately hoping if they prognosticate about AI enough it will placate the investors.
petetnt2026-05-12 06:48
ENGLISH (원문)
With it’s current AI setup GitLab still couldn’t make anything that could be called great in UX so I can’t wait to see what they can do by eliminating the remaining human factor. Can’t personally wait seeing tickets like these [0] open for months with bots telling you that everything will be alright. [0] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work_items/588806
Animats2026-05-12 06:53
ENGLISH (원문)
Their old CREDIT values: Collaboration, Results for Customers, Efficiency, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, Iteration, and Transparency. New values: Speed with Quality, Ownership Mindset, Customer Outcomes. In other words, work harder, not smarter, and no more DEI.
IshKebab2026-05-12 07:05
ENGLISH (원문)
I'm firmly not in Trump's anti-DEI camp but I have seen what can happen when you make it one of your core values. You can end up with a lot of people talking about it a lot, lots of meetings and initiatives rather than doing actual work. And usually those don't go anywhere because the people doing it don't have any power to actually change things. It's unlikely that a company like Gitlab really needs anything changing anyway. It doesn't make sense for it to be 40% of their values, especially if they're losing money (or very close to it).
jrochkind12026-05-12 07:07
ENGLISH (원문)
Also no more Transparency.
usernametaken292026-05-12 07:10
ENGLISH (원문)
GitLab never ceases to amaze me in terms of just how bad their product roadmap is. Practical things like CI improvements are put off over UI rebranding on unicorn colours. Yet, good tooling is exactly why people used to pay for GitLab. For better or worse maybe this finally can change and we can get more customer oriented roadmaps again
Havoc2026-05-12 07:11
ENGLISH (원문)
>removing up to three layers of management in some functions so leaders are closer to the work. I wish them the best of luck with that plan. Middle management is where the institutional knowledge sits on how to actually get shit done despite challenges & broken processes/systems. It's an even worse plan than eliminating juniors.
Steeeve2026-05-12 07:13
ENGLISH (원문)
Wow gitlab. Right when everyone was looking to see if you could lead with all the fails at github, you basically said "We're going to throw our source at ChatGPT and see what happens"
Trasmatta2026-05-12 07:14
ENGLISH (원문)
> Ownership Mindset Every company I've worked at hammers the "ownership" idea and I hate it so much. It's how they drive a culture where employees are expected to invest themselves into "owning" a problem space that can be taken from them at any moment. It's how they trick you into doing extra work that's not in your job description. Unless you're ACTUALLY an owner, don't be fooled by an "ownership" value.
whimblepop2026-05-12 07:15
ENGLISH (원문)
GitLab's old values are for now still listed in their handbook: > GitLab’s six core values are Collaboration, Results for Customers, Efficiency, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, Iteration, and Transparency, and together they spell the CREDIT we give each other by assuming good intent. We react to them with values emoji and they are made actionable below. Since those terms don't speak for themselves individually, it's worth seeing what they're supposed to mean to get a sense of what GitLab is forsaking now. Each section is actually pretty lengthy, so you should go look and skim for yourself. Here's the page: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/ And here's an archive from yesterday, for when that changes: https://web.archive.org/web/20260510150031/https://handbook....
bob0012026-05-12 07:18
ENGLISH (원문)
Middle management is also why there’s so many broken processes and challenges in the first place.
retinaros2026-05-12 07:18
ENGLISH (원문)
Not really. Middle management is there to be in meetings all day long with nothing produced but identifying low performers.
lpribis2026-05-12 07:18
ENGLISH (원문)
> Middle management is where the institutional knowledge sits on how to actually get shit done despite challenges & broken processes/systems. Really? In my experience it's the rank-and-file employees who have this knowledge of how to get on with it without ceremony and politics. And the broken processes and politics are created BY the middle managers.
notTooFarGone2026-05-12 07:18
ENGLISH (원문)
Middle managment is also where most of your negative feedback is lost. I think moving fast in general needs tighter feedback loops and this is simply not possible in large organizations.
SilverElfin2026-05-12 07:19
ENGLISH (원문)
Glad to see DEI going away. But it shouldn’t have ever been adopted at workplaces to begin with. At least not in the form of hiring and promotion quotas, often kept secret.
2ndorderthought2026-05-12 07:19
ENGLISH (원문)
Basically "screw any part about employees working together do what I say fast". What a shame. I love the AI bros who think utopia is coming, 4 day work weeks, etc. more like "get screwed, work more, for less, in worse environments".
torben-friis2026-05-12 07:24
ENGLISH (원문)
Lots of interesting information here: >The agentic era affords GitLab the largest opportunity in our history as a company, and we're making the structural and strategic decisions to meet it >Operationally, we grew into a shape that was right for the last era and isn't right for this one To meet their largest opportunity ever, they believe they need less resources. I'm not sure I understand how that follows. >We're rewiring internal processes with AI agents, automating the reviews, approvals, and handoffs to speed us up Is this also in the list of "we create code twice as fast and the bottleneck is review so YOLO no bottleneck?". I've yet to see a convincing justification for this. If anything, if you're going full throttle all the more reason to watch the steering wheel, no? That said, 8 layers of management is a lot of management, and every line of the message seems like leadership truly believes they are sinking in bureaucracy. Let's see how unneeded those 3 layers they're cutting were.
Banditoz2026-05-12 07:25
ENGLISH (원문)
Small aside, if they're dropping their transparency company value does that mean that issue won't be visible anymore? Is that the future for Gitlab?
ai_fry_ur_brain2026-05-12 07:26
ENGLISH (원문)
Let these people keep betting their companies, futures and net competency on text autocomplete. The future is bright for me and everyone else that isn't falling for it.
herpdyderp2026-05-12 07:27
ENGLISH (원문)
Right? I was seriously considering migrating everything in our company from GitHub to GitLab. Now I'm seriously considering self hosting our git instead.
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