Live from SaaStr Europa 2022: Workshops with Plato, Change.Org, Gitlab and Asana

They women, they will come and they will go. When the rain washes you, clean your nose, you will know. I will know. You will know. You got a fast car and I want to ticket you anyway. Maybe we make a deal. Maybe together we can get somewhere. Any place is better. Starting from zero. Got nothing to lose. Maybe we'll make something. Me, myself, I got nothing to prove. You got a fast car? I got a plan to get us out of here. Been working at a convenience store. Manage to save just a little bit of money. Won't have to drive too far. Just cross the border and into the city. City, you and I can both get jobs. Finally see what it means to be living. See my old man's got a problem. He lives with the bottle, that's the way he did. He said his body's too old for working. He said his body's too young to look like his. My mama went off and left him. She was one of them. Up for nothing he could give. I said somebody's got to take care of him. So I quit school and that's what I did. You got a fast car, but is it fast enough so we can fly away? We gotta make a decision. Leave tonight, live and die this way. I remember we were driving, driving in your car, speed so fast, felt like I was drunk. City lights lay out before us and y' all felt nice. Wrap around my shore and I, I had a feeling that I belong. I, I had a feeling I could be. Be someone, Be someone, be someone. You got a fast car, we go cruising, entertain ourselves. You still ain't got a job, you know, working. Buy a bigger house and leave in the suburbs. You got a fast car and I got a job that pays all our bills. You stay out drinking late at the bar, see more of your friends than you do your kids. I always hope for better. I thought maybe together you and me find it. I got no plans, I ain't going nowhere. So take your fast car and keep on driving. I remember we were driving, driving in your car, speed so fast, Felt like I was drunk. City lights lay out before us. And y' all felt lights right around my shore. I, I had a feeling that I'm alone. I, I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone. You got a fast car, but is it fast enough so you can fly away? You got to make a decision. Leave tonight and live and die this way. Coming out of my cage, doing just fine. Gotta, gotta be down, want it all started out with a kiss. Did it end up like this? Only a kiss it was only a kid. Now I'm falling asleep? She's calling a cat While he's having a smoke? She's taking a drag and they're going to bed? My stomach is sick? It's all in my head? She's touching his chest now he takes off her dress now let me go. I just can't look? It's killing me and it's taking.

Control?

Jealousy turning saints into the sea? Swimming through sick lullabies? Choking on your alibis? But it's. It's just the price I pay? Destiny is calling me? Open up my eager eyes? I miss the bright side tonight. Sam. I never, I never, I never, I never. Going close the curtain? Cause all we need is candlelight? You and me? And a bottle of wine to hold you tonight? Well, we know I'm going away? And how well is I wish it weren't so? So take this wine and drink with me? Let's delay our misery? Save tonight fight the br. Break of dawn? Come tomorrow? Tomorrow I'll be gone Sa tonight fight the break of dawn? Come tomorrow, Tomorrow I'll be gone? There's a love on the flower? And it burn like me for you Tomorrow comes with one desire to take me away? It's true it ain't easy to say goodbye? Darling, please don't start to cry? Cause you know I've got to go? And Lord, I wish it wasn't so sad? Break of dark tomorrow Tomorrow I'll be dark? Safe tonight? Find the break of d.

Please welcome plato co founder and CEO queen huang huang, change.org cto elaine zhou and notion head of engineering, michael manapat.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. Hola, todos. Bonjour tous. We in Europe, right?

So.

My name is Kwong. I'm co founder, founder and CEO of plato. And as I've been talking to many engineering leaders, the world is scary out there. It is scary. We have so many, so many different stories of engineering leaders that are just having a really hard time to hire engineers and more importantly, to retain those engineers. It costs lots of money to actually retain the engineers. One third of new hires usually leave after six months. 18 months is actually the average tenure for an engineer in Silicon Valley. So 18 months. So just by the time you hire them, they actually already left. So that's a lot of things that are pretty scary out there. But the more I talk with engineering leaders, the more I get some really interesting advice. And today, I'm very, very happy and honored to have two of the best engineering leaders I know they have very interesting stories and very interesting tips to share to all of you. Michael, Elaine, do you want to introduce yourself stuff really quick?

Sure. I'm Michael, I'm the head of engineering at Notion. And for those of you who aren't familiar with it, Notion is an all in one tool for tasks, docs, wikis, things like that. But beyond just those use cases, Notion wants to be a platform for building software tools in general. So you can imagine most SaaS products are built out of the same kind of primitives. An editor, databases, workflows, automations, so we got to build that platform so so individuals, companies, developers can all customize our software tools on Notion. So I've been there for about two years. We've grown from around 40 people to around 300 over the two years, around 10 engineers to 125. I was at Stripe for about six years before Notion where I ran the machine learning practice.

Hi, my name is Elaine Zhou, I'm the cto@change.org I hope that you have heard about Change and have the users of Change either signing our petitions or contributing or creating petitions. Change.org is the world's largest petition platform for people to make changes they want to see. We have over 400 million users around the globe in 196 countries or regions. So my role is manage the product and engineering team, especially in the engineering. We have over about 70 people. We are completely owned by a nonprofit. So we have a very different approach and also its unique challenges compared to many other large big tech companies.

What is fascinating when I talk to the two of you is you have such a different company in terms of you are an ngo, you are super high growth, classic and traditional startup and the lever you have to actually retain and engage the engineers are very different. And so that was fascinating and hopefully we're going to get through all of this together. So the more I talk to engineering leaders, the more I see retention as a journey, a journey of the engineer. It's a like a product. When you try to retain your users, you have to retain them from day one, from even before they join your product or your platform. It's the same thing for engineers. You have to think about how you retain them even before they join your company, which is interesting, and then when they join your company and then even after when you actually grow them and develop them. So we're going to go through this journey to together. So the journey of an engineer and what you can do at every stage of this journey to actually retain your engineers. So let's talk about even before they join your company. So the hiring process. So this is something that actually you can start to think about retaining your engineer even before they join your company, which is interesting. So even before the interview process. Tell me a bit more about how the interviewing process and how do you scan for people who are going to stay in the long run.

Anyone wants to start, I can jump in first for us. As you can imagine, a company like Change.org is extremely mission oriented. So we put a lot of focus on highlighting our mission, the purpose, the user impact, the impact to the world in our recruiting process process from job descriptions to the first contact, from our recruiter to candidates and then throughout the entire interview process and onboarding. So we put a lot of focus then. We only want to attract people who agree with our mission obviously and a passion about come to make change the world through technology. So that's our main focus focus.

But everyone tell you that they believe in the mission. Right. So how do you do really to identify those who really believe in your mission?

So we have some advantage as being a petition platform. We have hundreds and thousands active petitions running on our platform in any given day. And many of those petition or campaigns reach success in any case day. So we can make big campaigns and bake it to New York Times, Washington Post, various meeting outlets. And we always highlight that. So in every one of those contacts, connections with the candidates, we highlight those stories. And sometimes we also switch to smaller petitions in the local basis because the local petitions, that's what were related to the candidate, easy to connect to them. So if we know a particular country or region or location the candidate is from, we will also highlight those petitions. So that's really helpful. You can see what technology can actually make the impact by the time they talk to engineers or talk to me, we would definitely kind of put a more focus on how do we utilize technology into our platform, whether or not it's AI infrastructure or just scalability, to really highlight what engineering can contribute to the mission.

Michael, how do you do to actually screen those engineers that are realigned and those who are going to stay?

Yeah. So there are three things we interview for specifically in the hiring process. Just like Elaine, we start with what you might call a mission alignment check. So as I mentioned earlier, notion is very focused on being something that allows tool builders to customize their own tools. And it's something we discussed with candidates at the beginning of the process. It's easy to check for this. People who like tool building as engineers will have done Things like, say, worked on compilers or can talk about tools they've built. Notion's in a lucky place where most engineers who join Notion have personally used it as their own tool. So that's a easy way to check, oh, these people know what we're trying to do and we're looking for. I think the second thing we check for is just a desire to build product and not just implement technology. So we have an interview question which is very ambiguous. It's how do you roughly design this product? What are all the design choices you would make? What are the underlying technical choices you would make to see how people deal with product ambiguity? And the last thing we do at the end of the process is we have what we call a crank draft and values interview to Either I or our CEO will meet with every engineer and just talk to them about notions, values, things like our emphasis on rigor or on moving quickly and look for examples in people's past to see, oh, do they behave or do they live up to the values that we have in mind for the company. That way there's no divergence in the future between our values and those of the people who join. So mission alignment, product sense and crafting values are three things we look for in the interview process.

So mission alignment is something that you share. So what's the mission?

For example, at Notion, the mission of Notion is to make tool making ubiquitous.

Okay. And you shared this with them and how do you actually try to understand if they're real aligned with. With this? Are you just having conversation? Is it a take home assignment or project they have to do or something?

Yeah, so it's not a take home assignment. It definitely is more of a feeling or a vibe. Like I mentioned earlier, when you're talking to someone about Notion's mission is to be a platform that allows toolmakers to customize or craft their own tools. People will often be able to say, oh yes, I've used Notion myself to build this tool, say my recipe book or something like that. Or they'll have some comment about how when they were at a previous job they were working on a lot of developer facing Twitter tools. So it's pretty easy to grok or to glean from these conversations. Is this someone who cares about enabling others to build their tools or is it just someone who is looking for another software job?

So if they didn't use Notion, it's a deal breaker.

It's not a. I wouldn't say it's a blocker, but like I mentioned earlier, I would say 90% of people who end up joining Notion Engineering use Notion in their personal life or in a previous job. We just had an engine engineering manager join a few days ago. Could use Notion for three or four years in his past job. So most people who join are very familiar with the tool.

90% of people you hire already use Notion before or are actively using Notion before.

Yeah.

Do you have 90% of people who did a petition before?

I would think so, but I don't. Don't quote me on it. I don't know the actual count.

So most of people also who interview@change.org actually have been using the product. Right.

Most people get all of our emails. Probably many of you do.

Good. Okay, so let's switch to the next phase. So in order to retain your best engineers, it starts before they join to make sure. So mission alignment, making sure they have the right threats. For example, they are product engineers, they have desire to build product and also how they align with your values. You mentioned with the CEO, co founder of Notion and yourself and. Or yourself, which is super interesting. So every single hire go to the CEO or yourself for the engineering team at least, which is interesting.

So I interview every candidate at the last stages.

You have also some similar value alignment type of interview.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, good. So let's go to the next stage. So let's continue in that journey. I'm a developer, I passed the interview, I'm using Notion, I'm a big fan. I'm using change.org now. What do you do to actually reinforce and making sure that they're gonna stay in the long run? It starts with the onboarding, but you also have the whole process for the first one year and hopefully after 18 months you don't leave. So what do you do in the first 18 months?

You want to go first.

So I think, I guess the word of my mind is growth in three senses. So the first is this is a bit trite to say, but company growth, revenue, users, valuation is the single best way to retain engineers in this market. So anything else that you do is not going to really help if the company isn't growing, if it's plateaued. So we obviously invest a lot in, in making sure the product is doing well. But secondary to those are two things. One is on the growth front, you want engineers to know exactly how their work impacts the company's growth. So as an example, Notion's right now working on improving our offerings for enterprise users. You know, 1000, 2000, 5000 person companies and throughout the engineering org, the work that people are doing clearly addresses or ladders up to that. So we have people working on search to improve search in large installations. We have people working on permissions to say, make a permissions model that's more granular for enterprises. So those engineering teams can see very directly how their work impacts our goal of moving up market, as it were. So it's very important that engineers can see, oh yes, I am helping to move revenue numbers or achieve product goals directly. I was at Google for a few years before Stripe and my work was light years from Google's core business and there was no way that I was actually driving revenue there. I noticed it's very important for us to have engineers who are really driving company goals. Just the second thing on growth is it's interesting to me, in contrast my time at Stripe to my time at notion, where eight years ago or 10 years ago, you were just doing work at Stripe, heads down, not really focused on personal growth as much. I find edge engineers today are a lot more conscious and deliberate and thoughtful about their careers. So even When Notion had 20 engineers, there was a desire for there to be a career ladder and level so people could see how they were growing. So we actually just introduced these a few weeks ago. But I think giving people a sense of tangible progress, how they're growing, what the future of the company looks like, that's really important for retention in a way that it wasn't in my mind eight years ago or so.

So you said three types of growth. The growth of the company, the growth of the individual, and what was the third type of growth?

So it was growth of the company in terms of revenue and users. There was how engineers directly drive that growth from their work and then individual career growth.

Okay, interesting. So in order to retain your engineers, you have to make them realize they, they're growing to help the company grow, and they are growing themselves thanks to care development. So let's talk about care development for a minute before I ask Elaine what she can, what she's doing. Also at the same journey stage of the journey, career development is something you introduced only a few weeks ago. So it's super fresh. Tell us a bit more about this process really quick. Maybe some of the head of engineering or CEO here wants to do something similar.

Yeah. So even a year and a half, a year ago on engagement surveys, probably the single thing that people wanted the most was a sense of career progression or knowing what was required of them and their role, what their expectations were and so forth. So even late 2020, we knew that There was a desire in the engineering corps to have some kind of formal leveling the ladder system. So about half a year ago we began working on that in the engineering management group. I had two of our senior engineering managers begin drafting. Just what do each of the seven levels correspond to? What are the expectations and requirements of each of those? That process of that initial drafting took maybe two or three months. And then there are rounds of iteration with rest of the engineering managers. Earlier this year we took a group of select ICs, had them review the ladder and then as part of our spring performance review cycle, we actually officially rolled out the ladder, had people do peer reviews, we had a calibration and we did love delivery a week or two ago. So it was a pretty long process. Primarily because drafting ladders and making sure they encapsulate both industry wide norms, but also capture the unique values of your company. That just takes a while to do.

Four months. It was the third process. Four months. And you did it before at Stripe, correct?

Yes, I also went through the laddering process at Stripe.

Okay, and you saw it at Google too.

When I was at Google, ladders already existed. So yeah, I was there for the rollout with the stripe. At Notion.

Let's talk about what you are doing@change.org to actually have the engineers really focus on the mission and how to react. Reinforce that over time and how you develop your engineers.

Sure, I should say that in a change slightly different. It's obviously with growth, but it's not like high growth Notion. But I cannot stress the importance of growth. Right. If you just know growth, you can't really have the end of the way. You don't have that much leverage motivate and continue to motivate a team. But we also put a lot of focus on career development the individual growth. For us, we measure growth with the user impact at the company level and revenue and user impact for career development. We try to be extremely creative, utilize a very limited resource we have as a nonprofit. So we bring into more focus on individuals desire what areas of development they want to. What can we use if we help that individual to grow? What can that person contribute at companies and make them match. So we have different kind of development needs. For example, we do coaching those more for more senior directors or senior managers for specific needs. And we identify external coach in the short term period that have very targeted areas with focus. We have mentorship. We also use PLATO as well. And those are more target mid level managers, senior ICs who want to develop leadership skills and we also putting together right now we're actually rolling out internal engineering mentorship program to utilize maximize our own staff since you know this experience and expertise and then match with more junior younger engineers to create this six month or nine month long mentorship program that would be a very tailored and personalized growth. And then we also have a lot of training programs, user training program. We do the train the trainer, meaning we send a small number of individuals, whether it's product manager engineers or engineer managers to really well created online training courses or in person trainings. And then they come back and share and those training could spread into from security to engineering, engineering management to all the way to product and design as well.

That's incredible.

So we're eliminated. We do all of this and we have to, you know, we. It's a pretty challenged market for us to compete as a nonprofit. We don't have these potential stock options. You know, in the Silicon Valley, everybody expecting stock options, equities. We don't have that in our package.

Right.

So we have to add on to other things to attract people. So create. What I'm trying to say is beyond the growth, we have to really work on engagement with our staff.

It's fascinating. You are an ngo, so obviously you don't have stocks and it's not something that compounds and get a lot of value over time for employees. So you can't use that to retain your engineers. Obviously you can, but we all can use growth of individuals, growth of employees thanks to to levels. So you can see a progression in your career or growth thanks to coaching, external mentorship with platform like PLATO for example, or internal mentorship or even trainings, all the things that you're doing, which is pretty incredible. There's definitely a culture of high growth of individuals@change.org yeah, we try very hard.

To build out the company wide growth mindset.

Right.

I mean there's plenty of research said about happiness come from mindfulness and curiosity. Curiosity require growth mindset. And that's very important. And the other thing, the last thing people want is working for purpose. So that's the mission focus for us. You got to work in all of these areas to deepen the engagement with of your staff.

Yeah. There is a topic we hear all the time in our mentorship platform is about if the levels should be public or private, if we should have the open salaries or not within the company. I know you have a different point of view on this. Can you tell the crowd what you.

Think about this so I can start? So I was at Google where levels are public. There's actually a single webpage at google 10 years ago now but going to go nstaff and see the level of every single person at the company. Stripe and Notion both have private levels so the level is known to individuals but not to the wider population. It's not publicized and I think I prefer that for two reasons. One, if you make levels public it's a trapdoor decision so you can't walk it back. There end up being secondary consequences you don't like. But second, we want the focus in the workplace to be on the content of the work. If you're having a discussion about a tech spec or a product review document or a product requirements document, let the discussion depend on the merits of the discussion and how to. We don't want people to fixate on oh this person is debating with me and she is at a higher level than I am so perhaps I'll just be quiet or see the argument too quickly. So. So we're definitely worried about these types of effects. If people are too aware of levels, there's obviously a counter argument where people want to be able to publicize their career growth and their progression. So again pass off to Elaine for the opposite view.

Yeah, so I think this is a highly debated topic. We more lean toward keep transparency. It's important to us. So we have company wide standardized levels meaning every department. We actually have entire company levels and through entire, you know, collaborate throughout the entire company. So the levels and the requirements for each level are public to all the staff and employees. Salary band is public and we actually list our salaries in our job posting. So we actually always lean to transparency. We do have the title that match the levels so effectively the level is more or less public. There might be a few variations but yeah we definitely need to.

So transparency, is it helping retention or not?

I think transparency help engagement because we put a lot of focus on diversity, inclusion and equity. Right. Equitable, require transparency and try to make sure that non dominated groups, staff from non dominant backgrounds get equal treatment and rewards. So that is important for us. It's a very different approach but I'll.

Try to work in a similar goal though you agree?

I think it's both systems can work with you on the right way. I will say at notion you don't ask people what their levels were at their previous employers when we interview them. So we try to assess purely on the merits. When I was interviewing for the role of notion no one ever asked me for a resume or my level at stripe for example. So I Don't think that levels are actually as important in terms of career portability or growth as people might think.

We also running out of time. So let me just recap a little bit throughout this journey really quick. So in order to retain your engineer, so we need to focus on retaining your engineers from day one, so even before we hire them. So how do we do to actually interview on mission alignment, on values, on type of engineers that you want, how much product oriented they are, etc. And the second thing is really throughout this journey how you actually empower them to actually be better and better in the halls. So we discussed a lot about coaching, about mentorship, about training, but also about empowering them on what they are doing is actually helping on the growth of the company. For example, you mentioned the enterprise features and people don't want to leave if they are going to be aligned with the mission. And for you it's really about YouTube. It's about the mission. YouTube is about the growth of the individuals and for you it's mainly about the growth of the company and eventually the growth of their stocks. So throughout this journey there is not one thing to do. It's multiple things at every stage of their journey. So those are the main takeaways. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Sa. Sorrow comes to take me away I wish that I could stay Girl you know I've got to go and how I wish it wasn't so safe to tonight Fight the break of D Come tomorrow Tomorrow I'll be gone say fight the break of dawn Call it tomorrow I'll be gone. Tomorrow. I'll be gone. Tell me something girl are you happy in this modern world or do you need more? Is there something else you're searching for I'm falling In all the good times I find myself longing for change and in the bad times I fear myself. Tell me something boy aren't you tired trying to feel that or do you need more? Ain't it hard keeping it so hardcore I Falling in all the good times I find myself longing for change and in the back at times I fear myself I'm off the deep end Watch as I dive in I'll never leave the ground Crash through the surface where they can hurt us we're far from the shad alone now in the shadow Sh in the. Sh we're far from the shallow now. O. As I dive in I'll never leave the ground Crash through the surface where they can't hurt us we're far from the shadow now in the shadow Shadow in the shadow in the shadow shadow? We're far from the shadow now. If you, if you could return don't let it burn don't let fade I'm sure I'm not being there just your attitude it's tearing me apart it's ruining everything I swore, I swore I would be true and honey, so did you so why were you holding her hand? Is that the way we stand? Were you lying all the time? Was it just a game to you? But a man so deep you know I'm such a fool for you? You got me wrapped around your finger do you have to let it linger? Do you have to, do you have to, do you have to let it linger? Oh, I thought the world of you I thought nothing could go wrong but I was wrong I was wrong if you, if you could. Goodbye. Try not to laugh.

Please welcome Plato co founder and CPO Jean Baptiste Cogair and GitLab HR business partner Rus Tokin.

Hello, everyone can. Everyone can hear me. Okay, cool. Well, thanks a lot for being here in this morning session. I'm glad we can all meet up in Europe here. I'm based in San Francisco, so always happy to come back here in Europe in Barcelona. So we're here to tell you a little bit more about the secrets to hire top engineers. My name is jb. I'm one of the founders of plato. We are the mentorship platform, platform for engineering and product leaders. We are powered by a community of curated engineering and product leaders who dedicate their time for all of our mentees. And companies like Salesforce, GitLab and others like Headspace use PLATO to help and increase EPD team performance, employee satisfaction and employee growth. And today I'm super happy to be on stage with Rose Takin from GitLab. It's quite interesting because we know each other for a few years now, but more in a vendor client relationship. And so I'm happy to share the stage in another setup. And so, yeah, welcome Bruce on stage.

Thank you. Thank you for that.

So, yeah, first tell us a little bit more about your role at GitLab and a little bit about GitLab as well. If you guys don't what GitLab does.

Yes, for sure. All right, so I am HR business partner at GitLab. I'm focused on the engineering organization. We have more than 550 team members and my goal, the goal of my role is to hire, develop and retain top engineering talent. Some stats about GitLab here. So in total we have more than 1630 team members in 68 countries. GitLab has been remote since day one and a bit more about our product. So we are the DevOps platform that helps organizations maximize results for their software development. So with the GitLab platform team, all teams in your organization can plan, build, deploy and secure your software applications. So that's what GitLab does. I think over the years we've been sharing more information than organizations typically do. So we have an open, transparent handbook, company handbook, which is visible to everyone. And I think the last nice fact is that we went public in October 2021.

Cool. And just quickly about this, the fact that the company went public in terms of hiring, is this something that you've seen being a difference maker today?

I think internally, so to our internal process and strategies, it didn't change a lot. We do, I think as a public company, it's really important to have very high predictability and great forecasting. So that is something we focus on more. I think externally it did a lot of things for our brand, for our employer brand as well. So we did, or we do see a higher influx in candidates or applications.

And if you haven't checked like all of the resources that GitLab has online, it is crazy good. We use them all the time, so just check them out. All right, so let's dive into it. We're going to talk about hiring top engineers for working directly with the engineering team at GitLab. I can tell you that they're top of the top. So we, I hope you're going to learn some stuff. We're going to talk about sourcing, diversity, attractivity, et cetera, et cetera. But let's start a little bit about context. So for a few years, and even I see it myself at plato, hiring engineers has been very difficult. The market is tricky. It feels that there's less engineers that like the world needs. So what's your take on it as like being, you know, deep down into it and what's goodslab take on it as well?

Yeah, so great question. I think we've seen typically to your point that hiring qualified engineering candidates fast is a challenge. Right. So typically in roles where we see a high degree or high level of technical expertise or a certain, a high level of experience, let's say leadership roles, these are hard to hire for, roles where we have a bit more time as well as we require less technical or specific experience and we have more ability to develop, internally, we see it easier. So I would say support engineering is a bit easier for us to hire compared to, to for example, security Leadership and you're remote.

So that sounds like also you open up your market quite a bit.

Yes, exactly. I think we have team members in 68 countries, so that's a big advantage for us. So we can hire in most of those countries and that really helps us to diversify our candidates and talent pool.

And then very timely question. You know, we're all aware of like the economic downturn that has been around for a few weeks now. How from what we know today and from GitLab's perspective, you know, what's the change? What do you see happening?

Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think the situation is evolving constantly. So it's really hard to predict the future, I would say. But right now I don't think we see an impact yet on those like high qualified, highly qualified and then also fast to hire engineers. I think the ask is so big that even like layoffs we've seen in the news aren't still not able to fill a gap we're seeing. So for now we don't see any big change, but we'll see what the future holds. Yeah.

So let's start about the first step of the hiring process, which is basically forecasting. So, you know, how do you plan your headcounts? What's the process at GitLab?

Yeah, so we try to link our sales goals to our hiring goals. Right. So if we have a certain sales goal that requires certain support roles or engineering roles, it requires a certain product roadmap, feature roadmap. And then based on that we work with ratios. So for one product manager, we have one product designer, for example. So this is sort of how we forecast and plan. It's a very tight process or it's a very well planned out process. And it's a collaboration between like finance, sales and then like all the hiring teams, engineering, etc. Because you also have to plan throughout the whole year, you're not going to hire Everybody else on January 1st.

Right.

So this is sort of how we do that.

Just looking at like sales numbers, product roadmap and then from there kind of forecasting and which leads to the second aspect of it, which is basically sourcing, which is what we're all waiting here because that's one of the most difficult part of the job. So how do you try to find those potential future candidates? So what's your process? What kind of some of the techniques that you've been using to source candidates?

Yeah, so first we start with a very clear written out job description.

Right.

So what Type of competencies are we looking for? What are some of the hard requirements and what are the nice to haves? Then our talent acquisition team together with like sourcing team maps out like what does the candidate market look like? Definitely specific. If we need to hire in specific regions, for example, because there's an on call rotation or something that we have like hard requirements on, they map out like, hey, what is the talent pool that is available also in current roles? Of course, not like everybody's open to hire, but everybody who has a role that matches with what we're looking for. And then we will determine like, hey, hey, is it a feasible search, right. Or do we need to sort of broaden our regions? Do we need to broaden our skills, skill sets we're looking for? And I think then from that moment we start sourcing. So we always try to combine like an outbound, so a sourcing direct messages approach with like inbound where we have a lot of people like applying via our career page. And then of course we also have like talent pools in our, in our application tracking system. And then we, we try to create a very diverse type of funnel. So our candidate pool to be very diverse. And then we go through our assessment process hoping to find the right candidates in a, in the time we set for it.

There's a lot of iteration between what the team needs, what and what the job market actually is. And then you also work on your employer branding as well, right? Yes, I know it's quite out there for GitLab.

Yeah. So I think what's great for us is that we are a Software or a DevOps platform. Right. So a lot of engineers either know us or have worked with us or have worked with a competitor, which is also fine. But we have some awareness or our company brand and our employer brand are very closely aligned. Same as our company strategy and our internal people strategy are very aligned. So indeed employer branding, our career page, etc. Is definitely a big channel where we get a lot of candidates from.

So yeah, no, but I think it's an interesting advice because it feels like, oh yeah, you're GitLab, you're big and you're working with engineers already because your core product is for developers. But I think even for other companies it's a good advice to start investing in your company branding and employee branding right from the start with content and events or whatever is possible. Because this kind of a long tail gain. I think so. And then you've also experimented with like internships and some other programs internally, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So in terms of, to tap into the events and starting early, definitely, I think building your brand and employee brand early, it takes some time. Right. So to really take some time to build that up. Then from events we do like hackathons. We have a very big contributor community. And then in terms of internships, typically, I think until 2020 we were very focused on hiring like senior level or above engineers because remote working was pretty new and we really needed manage like our candidates to be like a manager of one or have self leadership, which we typically saw more with more senior team members. It's very hard if it's your first engineering job to really teach yourself all the things all the time. So we did want to change that. So in 2020 we ran an internship pilot which was really successful. So this year we're revamping and we're hiring like more. So we're trying to really hire more. It's either like first engineering job or, or like career switchers. So we want to open up to anyone.

It feels like the industry is going that way as well. Like building your own pool of candidates and like nurturing your candidates to become those senior leaders. I mean we're working directly with lots of companies through PLATO and like it's been like a common themes with all the leaders we've been working with to like build those apprenticeship program, those internship program internally and like hire from boot camps and like build resources internally to help them grow. So this is awesome to see as well how the industry is evolving. So the second piece that we wanted to discuss is also diversity and the general topic of DE and I. And so how do you tie all of your hiring activities and goals into to your DNI strategy?

Yeah. So at GitLab we call it diversity, inclusion and belonging. I know it's in the market, it's mostly diversity, equity and inclusion. So for us it's one of our core values. So diversity, inclusion and belonging is in all that we do in all our programs. We look at that from like an internal metrics perspective, etc. To give an example, like there's diversity. I just mentioned like that top of funnel, whenever we are looking for candidates, we try to make them as diverse as possible and then go through our recruitment funnel. So that's really how like we look at diversity. Also because we have team members in 68 countries, like our global diversity is really big. So we do have an opportunity to maintain that. Right. And to look at that first from an inclusion perspective, I want to say that we want to make sure. That all voices are being heard and everybody can contribute, which is also our mission and vision of the company. So we rely a lot on documentation our handbook, which is published online. Everybody can contribute to that handbook as well. So that's the inclusion piece. And then the belonging piece is really like. We want to make sure that everybody can. Can show up as their true selves. So we always try to take diverse perspectives into account. And we have more than 100,000 companies working with GitLab. So we want to make sure that our internal team members are a reflection of all of those companies or in the diversity of those companies.

So having diversity, inclusion and belonging as like a backbone of everything you're doing from like the hiring, but also how you function as a company, even in your product. You also mentioned to me what you call reverse AMAs. Can you tell us a little bit more about this?

Yeah. So this is an example of a project or a program we're running. So AMA stands for Ask Me Anything. So typically we would have that with like board members or with leaders or. And then we just have an open session where everyone can answer, like ask any questions, even if you're not on the meeting. You can add in a question to the agenda. We'll make sure it gets answered, session gets recorded. A reverse ama, however, is that we select a group. Sometimes this is an underrepresented group at GitLab. So as an example, we had one with black, black team members or we had one with Latinx team members. And then it's really company leadership asking them questions to understand their perspective on things or learnings or actions we might need to take in order to increase that sense of like, inclusion and belonging for that group. So that has been so interesting because we've had so many learnings from that because it's really hard sometimes for maybe a leader in the US to understand what it's really like to work from Kenya. Right. As an. As an engineer. So I think that has been really great. We do this quarterly and then in engineering we focus on different underrepresented groups. So, yeah, this is a program I've been facilitating for, for underrepresented groups in.

Quite interesting. It must be like a fun moment. I can only imagine.

Yeah.

But it's true what you said. Yes, it's difficult for like a leader in the U.S. as I said, to understand how other people. So like remote also. I mean, even though it feels like it's an advantage in hiring, it's also in hiring. And retention brings its own sets of Challenges, definitely.

Yeah, it does. I think you. Well, it's really very important to constantly keep like an open mind and open perspective because what might be normal for me. Oh, sorry. Being from. Being from the Netherlands, like, it could be something completely different from somebody in Australia, for example. So. Yeah, that's definitely.

Yeah, that's true. Taking note on this one. And maybe this is something we should try. So another piece with forecasting, sourcing, but then the next piece of it is kind of attracting candidates. Like, okay, it's great to source people, but how do you make sure that they actually are interesting in the position. Interesting in joining GitLab. And so culture is at the piece of this attractivity, right?

Yes, for GitLab, I think it is. So as mentioned before, GitLab has been remote from day one. I think that sets us apart. But remote, of course, is not a unique selling point, I think, in this market anymore. So our culture and the culture we build around it and how we align our company strategy and mission vision to our people strategy and culture, that has really sets us apart. So at GitLab, we have six values which spell the acronym credit. So it's collaboration, results, efficiency, diversity, inclusion and belonging. We just talked about iteration and transparency. And we really believe that our culture is also evolving, like as we're growing, right. So we've grown. We were 100 people in 2016, so we've grown so much. So our culture is constantly evolving as well. We believe it's not something st. Static or it's something you can force from the top down. It's really in our iteration value as well to iterate on this. I think what. What really attracts our.

Our.

Our talent is the fact that we don't measure worked hours, but we measure results. So results is our most important value in the hierarchy of our values. And it really allows people to have freedom and flexibility to work or to manage their work around their life rather than have to manage your life around your work.

Right.

And I think that's. Yeah, that's. That has been a key thing for us that sets us apart.

And I'm guessing all of this is super transparent in the hiring process and for like, you communicate this very soon in the process. And another piece of it is compensation and benefits.

Right.

As part of like the attractivity of GitLab.

Yeah, I think it's. It's very interesting being a global company. You have to think about, okay, how do we make sure that our business benefit, like our business mission, vision translate to people and then translate into your compensation strategy Too being a global company company. So at GitLab we call it Total Rewards and Total Rewards is like cash compensation, benefits and equity. And with this we always take a market based approach. So we review benchmarking data and then we want to offer a competitive rate, meaning offering more than the 50th percentile in terms of like everyone can contribute. Our culture for example, our benefits are very aligned to that too. So we want to make sure that our team members can manage their health, wealth and well being via our benefits. But in every country that might look different. Right. So we have a great team, total words, thank you. Who manages this and keeps a very close eye out on like hey, what's happening in the market? Right. So I thought it was so interesting. I read an article about like new benefits. I think there's a, there's a great new set of benefits that has become more important. I saw like sabbatical leave or starting with PTO or starting with a free holiday when you start your new role. And so as well like that market is constantly evolving and at GitLab we try to like iterate on these as well. Just keeping a close eye out on like what does the market market do and how can we make sure we are competitive in that market.

Yeah.

And what has also been incredible also is how transparent all of this has been, especially your compensation structure. I mean since you became public a lot of those things have disappeared from the website. But the EU used to be hyper transparent on compensation and basically how it was calculated. And I don't know if some people here in the audience have been inspired by GitLab's policies. We have, I can say that. So yeah, it's been interesting to see also how you've kind of shared all of that knowledge to the world as a company. And so maybe one of the last topics because we're soon running out of time and I know Jason is talking soon because GitLab is a rather big company I would say today and we probably have have founders here or people from smaller companies. What are some of the advice you can, you can tell us a little bit the difference for smaller companies in terms of hiring.

Yeah, yeah. So Definitely prior to GitLab I've been working at like smaller skill startups and scale ups too. And I think what is key is just to adjust your hiring strategy to this, to the phase you're in.

Right.

Are you in the phase of hyper growth or not? Like do you need to hire 50 people? Like you're 50, do you need to have another 15 in next year or not. So really trying to constantly adjust your hiring strategy based on that. So an example is like how to build out metrics. I think metrics for hiring are very important because it allows you to constantly see and monitor like, how are we doing? Right? Do we have like hard to hire roles or not? I think as a small company, you also always have to make the decision like, hey, are we going to outsource or are we going to insource? If you're going through hyper growth, it's very expensive to outsource. So it would make sense to build like a talent acquisition team if you're maybe hiring five or four people this year. I think hiring a dedicated talent acquisition specialists might be more expensive than outsourcing. So I think it's really important to per phase really look at like, what are your goals? How are these aligned to your business goals and determine like, hey, what are. What should we do and what can we do?

And constantly challenging your strategy and adapt.

Yeah, definitely.

Cool.

Thanks a lot, Rose. We're going to just go through like the three main takeaways. So first one, diversify your talent acquisition channels. We kind of talked about this earlier in our talk. Do not settle for what's available. So aim. Try to find new people, source yourself. The last one was develop an amazing culture and a brand and brands internal and public. And I think one important message in this is also align your hiring strategy strategy with your overall company strategy and brand and culture. Thanks a lot, Rose, for taking the time and sharing the stage with me. Lots of insights today, so thank you very much.

Yes.

Deep.

You know I'm such a fool for you you got me wrapped around your finger oh my. Do you have to let it linger? Do you have to? Do you have to? Do you have to let it Ling. You know I'm such a fool for you you got me wrapped around your finger do you have to let it linger? Do you have to? Do you have to? Do you have to let it linger? Moving forward using all my breath Making love to you was never second best I saw the world crashing all around your face Never really knowing it was always mesh and laced I'll stop the world and melt with you. You seen the difference and it's getting better all the time there's nothing you and I won't do. I'll stop the world and now with you. Dream of better lives the kind which never hate dropped in the state of imaginary grace I made a pilgrim to save this human race Never comprehending the race had Long gone by. I'll stop the world and meld with you. You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time. There's nothing you and I won't do. I'll stop the world and melt with you. Melt with you. I'll melt with you. I'll stop the world and melt with you. You seen the difference and it's getting better all the time. There's nothing you and I won't do. I'll stop the world and out with you. I'll stop the world and melt with you. One, two. One. Like a long lonely stream I keep running towards a dream. Moving on, moving on. Moving on. Like a branch on a tree I keep reaching to be free. Moving on, moving on. Moving on, Moving on. There's a place in the sun where there's hope for everyone. My poor restless heart got to run There's a place in the soul sun and before my life is done. Got to find me a place in the sun. Like an old dusty road I get weary from the low. Moving on, moving on, moving on. Like this tired troubled earth I've been rolling since my my birth Moving on, moving on, moving on. There's a place in the sun where there's hope for everyone and my poor restless heart got to run There's a place in the sun and before my life is done Got to find me a place in the sun. There's a place in the sun where there's hope for everyone and my poor restless heart got to run There's a place in the sun and before my life is done Got to find me a place in the sun There's a place in the sun where there's hope for everyone Got to find me a place in the sun Got to find me a place in the sun Sa. For a moment time and it seemed every last day that you would always be mine. Now you want to be free so I'm letting you fly Cuz I know in my heart never die now you will always be a part of me. I'm part of you indefinitely. Oh don't you know you can't escape me oh darling cuz you always been a baby and we'll linger on Time can erase a feeling as strong no way you'll never you going to shake me oh darling Cuz you always be my baby. Cuz you'll always be my baby. I ain't going to cry now now won't beg you to stay if you determine me I will not stand in your way but hopefully you'll be back again Cuz you know in your heart my love will never end now you never always be a part of me I'm part of you indefinitely oh, don't you know you can't escape me oh darling Cuz you've always been my baby and we'll linger on Time can erase a feeling this strong no way. You're never going to shake me. Oh, Did. It. You. Ra. Stunning 8K resolution meditation apparently in honor of the revolution. It's half off at the Gap. Deadpool. Self awareness. Loving parents, Harmless fun. The backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun. There it is again that funny feeling that funny feeling There it is again that funny feeling that funny feeling Surgeon General's pop up shop. Robert Iger's face Discounted Seagit prop Bugles take on race Female Colonel Sanders Easy answer. Civil war. The whole world at your fingertips. The ocean at your door. The live action Lion King pepsi halftime show. 20,000 years of this. Seven more. Two you go. Carpool Karaoke. Steve Aoki, Logan, Paul. The gift shop at the gun range. A mass shooting at the mall. There it is and that funny feeling that funny feeling There it is Burning that funny feeling that funny feeling Reading pornhub's turn of service Going for a drive Obeying all the traffic laws in Grand Theft Auto 5 fobic losing focus cover BL a book on getting better and deliver by drone Total disassociation fully out of your mind Googling, derealization Hating what you find an apparent summer air in early fall the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all. There it is again that funny feeling that funny feeling There it is. Hey, what can you say? We were overdue but it'll be over soon you wait. Hey, what can you say we were overdue but it'll be be over soon just wait till I hey, what can you say we were overdue but it's Sam. There is freedom within There is freedom without trying to catch a deluge in a paper cut love There's a battle ahead Many battles are lost but you never see the end of the road While you're traveling with me Hang night now don't dream it's over Hang night now when the world comes in they've come they've come to build a wall between us we know that they won't win. Now I'm towing my car There's a hole in the roof My positions are causing me suspicion but there's no proof and the paper today Tales of war and was but you turn right over to the TV page hang I now don't dream it over and I now when the world comes in then they come they come to build the wall between us Know that they won't win. Sa. Now I'm walking again to the beat of the drum and I'm counting the steps to the door of your heart Only shadows ahead barely clearing the roof get to know a feeling of liberation and restore please hey night now don't dream it's over hey now hey now when the world comes in they come they've come to build a wall between us we know that they won't wait Sam. So where of the rainbow Way up high. There's a land that I heard of once in a. Somewhere over the rainbow. Dreams that you dare to dream Will it come true?

Please welcome asana head of revenue marketing, jessica gilmartin. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. So I am Jessica. I run revenue marketing at Asana, and I'm responsible for our global demand generation campaigns. So if you haven't heard of Asana, we are a work management platform that allows you to communicate with and collaborate around work effortlessly. So I am super excited to talk to you today about something that's worked really, really well for Asana, and we call it data storytelling. So what is data storytelling? Well, it's telling really impactful, emotional stories that connect with your customers using really powerful data. So obviously, it's a really, really hard time to do marketing right now. People are distracted, they're scared about what's happening in the world. They're looking forward to their extent, extended summer vacations. And so it's just really hard to connect with your audience in a way that they remember and that they feel connected to you from an emotional perspective. And so that's where data storytelling really helps cut through all that noise. So what does data storytelling do? Well, a few things. One is it links your product to a business challenge, so a challenge that your customers actually care about. The second is it helps you shape your narrative and your story to what's happening in the zeitgeist. So in Asana's case, we talk a lot about the present and the future of work, which is obviously something that people deeply care about and talk a lot about these days. And then finally, for those of us who care about revenue, it allows you to build a really high quality treasure trove of materials that you can use for revenue and for leads. So according to Harvard Business School, they did a whole study about data storytelling. There's a reason that it's so powerful, it's because it engages so many different parts of your brain at once. So the first is Wernicke's area, which is the area that controls your language comprehension. The second, it fires up your amygdala, which is responsible for your emotions. And the final thing is that it fires up your mirror neurons, which help you empathize with others. And so because the combination of emotional stories and powerful data allow you to fire up so many different parts of your brain, it creates this long lasting and deep emotional connection. So we have been really, really successful at Asana at doing data storytelling to drive really, really strong results for our sales team. So for the third year in a row, we have conducted a survey that we call the Anatomy of Work. So we survey 13,000 knowledge workers across seven of our top countries around the world. We create over 50 assets as part of this study. The cornerstone of it being one really comprehensive global report that we use on our website as a gated asset. We also translate these into all of our local languages. And more important than translating, we actually pull key stats from each of those countries so that we can create really tailored and nuanced reports for each of the markets that we care about. This is a five month process and it basically covers every single person on our sales and marketing team. So as you can imagine, it's a pretty big investment on our part. So what I'm going to do is share to you how we strategically think about each of these data points and how they help us move our customers through the funnel. So the first data point that we really highlight is that employees are spending 36% less time on strategy this year than they were last year. So why is this so powerful? Well, so the first is that it attracts a really broad audience. So think about every single person in this room how much you would love to spend more time on strategy and less time on execution. The second is that it relates to a very specific time frame, right? We can all remember a world last year and the year before and the year before that, where it feels like every time we've been, every year we've been spending less time on strategy. And so all of us feel this in this moment. And then finally, it just highlights this really big issue. Like, can you imagine a world where you and your team got to spend more time on strategy? And what we do is we call this the page turner, because like a great appetizer, it leaves you wanting more for the entree. Like a great cover story, it really wants you to just like turn that page to learn more. And so we have placed this particular stat as the hero stat and image on our landing page page. The reason being that we think it encourages people to ask why? Like, why am I spending less time on strategy? What can I learn about it? And so all we want people to do from this stat is to go to our site, download our gated content, give them their email so that they can continue to engage with us down the funnel. We've even made it pop with really cool animations you can see here. We've kind of illustrated this idea that people are kind of spending less time on strategy and they're spending more time down the funnel of lower level work. And so this has been incredibly successful for us in helping to download thousands and thousands and thousands of emails for people that we've been able to engage further down the funnel. The second stat, and this is actually the most powerful stat that we've been able to leverage for our materials, is that managers lose two thirds of their workday to what we call work about work. Work about work is the stuff that we all do that we hate doing, right? So it's context switching between apps, it's doing status updates, it's going to unnecessary meetings, and it's really draining. So this has been the cornerstone of all of our press efforts and it has really, really resonated. The reason being that it makes this very intangible thing that we've all felt very concrete. Like we all know we spend too much time on busy work. And what we've done is we've laid it out and we've said, this is why these are all the things that you're doing that are just wasting your time. And of course it again drives this really emotional response. Everybody knows how demoralizing it is to spend so much of your time working on stuff that isn't meaningful. So we call this the authority builder. Because what this does is it enables us to name this pain that our customers have and build this connection with them and show that we are a partner and not just a vendor, that we understand their needs and that we hopefully have a problem to have a solve for this problem. So what we've done with vistat is we've created this really deep partnership network with leading professors and experts in fields like economics and neuroscience and organizational behavior. And we've run dozens of webinars and roundtables with these experts to talk about work, about work and provide some solutions to it. These webinars have been by far our most attended and most engaged events that we've ever run. And the great thing is that they're hosted by Asana leaders. And so the credibility that these experts have is conferred upon us. Now, the final stat that we use, which is further down the funnel, is that the average worker loses almost three weeks a year to unnecessary meetings. So this stat is what we call the story conflict because it hones in on a very specific, newsworthy issue and it showcases this enormous, enormous issue. But the most important thing is that what we hope people do is say, well, what can I do about it? Right? So I know that I'm losing three weeks a year. I know it's because of this move to remote and hybrid work. Now, can you give me an answer? And so we really use this as more of our bottom of the funnel content. And what we love about this is that we have a deep, deep partnership with our sales team. And so we provide our sales team with outreach emails that they can send, highlighting this step with infographics with sales materials so that when they're having conversations with their prospects, they can say, we know you have this issue, here's the answer. And it's incredibly powerful in those later stage conversations of converting leads to opportunities. So, as I said, this has been wildly successful for Asana. 50 assets created, over 40 pieces of top tier media coverage. We just launched this last quarter. Over a third of our leads came from just this one campaign and it's early stages, but 12% of our pipeline has come from this. So it's really worked incredibly well for us. And so as you go and you think about your marketing, your sales strategies, I would love for you to think about how do you strategically use data and, and storytelling together to create an emotional, long lasting and powerful impact with your customers and really do that in three ways. So think about what stats you can use to grab attention at the very, very top of your funnel. Use really cool data visualizations, use anything that you can think of to make that one stat pop. The second is what are ways that you can build authority? Who can you partner with that can really tell this beautiful story with you? And that helps you build that credibility. So that shows that you are a partner and not just a vendor. And then finally, how do you resolve that story conflict? How do you move people from intention to action by positioning your solution as the answer to their problems? And this has been so fast. Only 10 minutes. My goodness. Well, thank you so much for your attention. I have really enjoyed speaking with you today. The Asana team is in booth 203 we would love to continue the conversation or I'll be hanging out here and would love to chat more. Thank you guys so much.

Where trouble smell like lemon drops high above the chimney tops that's where. Me somewhere over the rainbow. But over the rainbow.