2d ago

People working at GitLab, how is the company doing at the moment?

I saw a position I could be interested in at GitLab (security engineer).

I've had a look at Glassdoor, feedback seems to be mixed lately, especially with the new CEO.

Also it seems like there aren't yearly meetup events anymore. I don't usually care about those per se, but it's still an indicator that a company is cutting costs.

For what it's worth, the stock is also on a downward trend. I'm also currently at a private company so I'm not sure how being in a publicly traded company impacts the work environment.

The main concern is obviously how good the company is doing following Microsoft investments in GitHub.

Some comparisons between the two like these ones don't seem to really show a clear winner: https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/devops-platforms/compare/product/github-vs-gitlab-2088161663

I had a quick look at some threads like this one ( https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1i6os5n/its_2025_can_someone_explain_simply_why_some/ ), both GitLab and GitHub seem to still be good options.

GitLab used to be the only one you could self host, but that's not the case anymore, GitHub Enterprise can be self hosted.

GitLab used to also have better CI/CD, but GitHub actions now seem similar.

The likelihood of any GitLab employee seeing this post is quite low, but still: How is GitLab as an employer at the moment? Is the future looking good or rather grim?

14 comments

GitLab employee here. I want to preface the below with the fact that I believe in our product and think we have a lot of highly skilled engineers. But the leadership failure occurring is wrecking the company.
Since sytse left and Bill became CEO a year ago:
Our stock has gone down by nearly half
he micro managed the CPO into leaving
he's micro managing everything possible
he's obsessed over generating AI buzz with mediocre actual product. Real product issues requested by paying customers take low priority
he's brought in an army of New Relic yes men who don't have the experience or skills to do the job
he micro managed the CTO into taking a leave of absence
the VP of AI Engineering went into cardiac arrest (sounds like it was the stress)
in an all hands, he went into a rant on how he gives his life for the company (and we don't), chastising us for rating him poorly in the company survey
he's broken down into tears in 2 all hands
he brags openly on how he's pressured people into working a 50+ work week
there's a reorg basically every month. Nobody knows what their priorities are
he threatened to cancel Christmas holidays for employees unless release goals were made
Also, the async work culture is dying rapidly. 3 years ago I would have 2-3 essential meetings per week. Now it's 2-3 per day, mostly repetitive.
I think it's possible to course correct and keep our product and company productivity really strong, but not with current leadership. Morale is in the dumps.
Some teams are more insulated from this than others and are still very strong.
- Yikes. I knew a former gitlab CTO. I wonder if it is the same person.
- Are you hoping to wait him out?
- That's pretty damning. If you feel comfortable, I'd be interested to hear what the micro managing looks like in practice
- Wow, thank you so much, that's very informative!
  Sorry to hear about this, hopefully the micromanaging will stop at some point.
GitLab used to be the only one you could self host, but that's not the case anymore, GitHub Enterprise can be self hosted.
There's also forgejo and gitea now. I think these are much more popular in the selfhosting community than gh enterprise
- Indeed, but for enterprise solutions GitLab and GitHub are still the most used (sometimes Bitbucket for Atlassian shops who want to save on pricing)
Don't work there but I work at a company that they once tried and got very close to buying. All I can say is that GitLab is the last company I expect to ever jump in the RTO trend.
- Thank you for your comment, indeed they seem very remote-focused, that's nice to see.
Those who do probably have NDAs.
- NDAs usually don't cover general appreciation about the company, otherwise places like Glassdoor or levels.fyi would always get sued
  
  Looking forward for infosec.pub to get sued
- I don't think it's common that employment has an NDA that says that you can't talk about the company in general.
  You generally can't share insider info, I guess if things aren't going well that might count?
  Some bonus packages and WFR packages also have disparagement clauses.
I don't work there but I have found the site to be unusable

14 comments