Sam Goldstein of GitLab Discusses Remote Work and Engineering Culture

How to effectively communicate asynchronously

In episode 7 of Ship Happens, Sam Goldstein explains what it means to communicate with a global team in an asynchronous fashion. While 9-to-5 offices typically expect real-time responses to Slack messages, Sam explains what it means when you're constantly working with people on the other side of the world. See how GitLab prioritizes their meetings and consistently documents human workflows in order to help teams work asynchronously with one another.

Maintaining the human element while working remotely

See how and why Sam and the GitLab team put an emphasis on building stronger personal connections over video calls. Understand how remote teams can bolster morale and tighten relationships between teammates to drive more productive teams. 

When to use Zoom, Slack, Emojis, etc.

GitLab's remote handbook covers all types of communication workflows. What type of channel should be used for which types of work? GitLab is the world's largest fully-distributed team, allowing Sam to offer great tips and tricks for when to communicate in certain ways and what to expect when communicating with a global engineering team.

What do you do when S3 goes down?

Hear about Sam's on-call horror story, when nearly half the internet went out. Learn more about how teams can approach "100-year flood" scenarios and how to balance reliability with speed, improving customer experiences as well as on-call workflows.

Reading material mentioned in the show

GitLab's remote work resources: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/resources/
GitLab's remote handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook