How I got a job at GitLab!
Hey everyone! 👋
I spoke about my interview experience at GitLab in one of my blog posts.
This blog is about my 1 year-long journey from Jan 2020. How I set it as my goal, how I prepared for it, what actions I took to make this a reality.
And this journey also made me realize that the set of actions and thought processes, can be applied to any big hairy audacious goal!
Hope you would like it!
Let’s get started then!
So the story goes like when I made my first contribution around November 2019 and for that, I was sent a GitLab branded mug by the community manager, Raymond Paik. I got excited!
And then it was around Jan 2020, I was standing outside a cycle repair shop where the person was helping me fix my bicycle, I tweeted about making 50 contributions (MRs) to GitLab product. I can’t find the tweet for some reason 😓 but I commented about it on one of the issues on GitLab. Here’s the screenshot of it 👇
I commented about my goal in other issues as well, to get help and one of the Engineering Managers at GitLab reached out to me on Twitter.
Clement Ho, was a Frontend Engineering Manager at GitLab. He offered me his help to get started with my goal. We then got on a Zoom call and discussed my aspiration. This was, as you can see in the screenshot below, around
Jan 14, 2020.
And then I started scouting for issues and contributing to them. Earlier before, I had no idea if I would be able to complete the goal at all. I was worried somewhat. Also, I had made it public 😂, so there was this added validation from Twitter.
But, nonetheless, I remembered Clement’s suggestions and I started working and aligning with GitLab values of Iteration and Collaboration and it started doing wonders for me!
And I hit the first milestone, suddenly, the goal of 50 MRs started to feel small 😅 and I could believe that I can do more, and right I did!
In around Feb 2020, I got to know about the upcoming GitLab hackathon.
I followed the same values and boy I won the hackathon! ❤
Along with this, one of my MRs was featured in GitLab’s release post ❤️
I continued my streak, head down, contributing and then I completed
100 MRs in April! Twice my yearly goal, in 4 months! 😃
I got motivated, super motivated! I started to enjoy doing contributions. I allocated 1 hour daily in my calendar to contribute, after office work hours. Now, I was not concerned about my end goal of getting a job at GitLab, I enjoyed doing my thing, contributions, and breaking my own milestones,
one MR at a time!.
Contributing/Checking suggestions on open MRs, finding new issues to work on, I was addicted to contributing to GitLab. I loved the code, loved to work with the people who helped me review the MR, resolved my queries, provided me with whatever help I needed. And then…..
I won the second GitLab hackathon which was organized in May 2020. This was the second in a row! ❤️
I was head down, again, contributing every day and then I completed
200 MRs by August, 4 months after the 100 MR mark.
Again! The entire credit goes to the values that I tried to internalize in myself.
Time passed by and I participated in the third GitLab hackathon and I won the third hackathon as well. Third in a row!
In between these contributions and hackathons, I also got a mention in one of the OPS group calls at GitLab. ❤️ 😄
And then I got featured in GitLab community Keynote too! 😍
And then the biggest milestone as a community contributor. I got nominated to join the amazing and awesome GitLab Core Team. Around the world, there were 10 people in the GitLab core team, I joined as the 11th member!
My happiness knew no bounds that day. I was on cloud nine! I was so happy.
And then on Nov 30, I got the first email about starting the interview process!
And after a month of interview rounds, I finally, got the offer from GitLab. I am starting on Feb 15th, 2021. I wrote about the process and my experience in a separate blog post.
Lots of gratitude to the wonderful people:
- Clement Ho — I am in-debt to Clement. He is the first one to help with how to scout for issues, use labels, and search for backend work. He took time to get on a Zoom call and explain the entire process. Forever in-debt for all his help. 🙏
- Peter Leitzen — Peter helped me with a lot of my MRs, be it with reviews, merging them, suggesting a better way to solve something. He also helped me during hackathons. If it was not for him, I would not have been able to win those. I don't have anything but a lot of gratitude for Peter! 🙏
- Manoj MJ — Manoj helped me scout some complex issues, and helped to break them down into smaller issues #iteration! He helped me with answers to a lot of queries about contributions, and GitLab as a company in general! He also referred me to the backend role internally. Gratitude for all the time he put.🙏
- Ray Paik — Ray helped me to stay motivated, by sending a lot of GitLab branded swag ❤️. He sent me a lot of T-shirts, a bag, lots of stickers, hoodies, a jacket, pajamas, socks, a BlueTooth speaker, a laptop sleeve, okay! the list is endless 😃
It all kept me celebrate my small wins! I kept going because of him!
I thank him from the bottom of my heart. 🙏 - Arihant Godha — I connected with him on LinkedIN and spoke to him about my goal initially on a voice call. He has been with GitLab
for over 4.5 years now. He guided me about a lot of processess and how can I approach the contributions goal. Deep gratitude for all his time! 🙏
There are many others who have helped me in this journey. I have nothing for them but deep gratitude for all their help. 🙏
Key learnings from this journey:
Well, I learned a great deal about ruby and ruby on rails. I learned about writing better unit tests for the code I write. I applied those learnings at work at BrowserStack in one of the assignments that I had for refactoring Rspecs.
Other than that, I realized that it is very important to enjoy the process and journey to reach your goal. If you dread the journey or the process, you may fail or quit before even reaching your full potential.
This applies everywhere,
→ Learning a new musical instrument? Enjoy the short lessons and practice sessions.
→ Want to get fit and get ripped? Enjoy workouts at the gym.
→ Learning to write? Enjoy writing short blogs and celebrate even if you have just one reader.
Whatever you do, enjoy the journey, the destination will come to you, you don’t have to move anywhere!
Enjoy and celebrate small wins, pat yourself on the back. 😄
Other than that, I will keep building and progressing in public. By public I mean, using Twitter to announce a goal, keep working on it, keep posting updates about the progress. As in this case, there were posts about wins at GitLab Hackathons, and my MR milestones. This works for me. I tend to push myself when I follow this process. 😄
Be consistent, work on something with conviction and persistence and the results will get to you on their own!
So, that’s about it folks, hope you enjoyed reading it.
And this is how I am going to approach my other BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious goals)! 😃
I picked up the word BHAG from GitLab’s handbook about the company’s strategy page. I liked that word.😄
So, that’s all folks! Hope you liked what you just read!
Cheers 🍻
Peace ☮️
