GitLab's DevRel Career Ladder  ## Metadata - Author: [[Dev Rel]] - Full Title: GitLab's DevRel Career Ladder - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #devrel - #career - #gitlab Author: John Coghlan Source: YouTube – *GitLab’s DevRel Career Ladder* Reference: [Video Transcript](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s) date created: 2025-08-23 22:04 --- # Title: GitLab’s DevRel Career Ladder – Clarity, Retention, and Inclusive Growth ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-belonging-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary: John Coghlan explains GitLab’s **Developer Relations (DevRel) career ladder**, emphasizing how clarity of roles, responsibilities, and requirements boosts retention, prevents burnout, and empowers individuals to align their careers with personal goals. Drawing parallels to sports transfers and the Great Resignation, he argues that organizations must focus equally on **recruiting and retaining their own players**. Career ladders with inclusive language and transparent expectations unlock autonomy, mastery, and purpose for DevRel teams while creating organizational resilience. --- ## 📖 Main Content: Coghlan situates the talk in the context of 2021’s labor shortages and the Great Resignation, noting parallels between sports transfer flexibility and the mobility of tech talent. GitLab’s response: a **clear DevRel career ladder** that provides: - Roadmaps for progression (overview, levels, specialties, requirements, performance indicators). - Tools to combat burnout by clarifying responsibilities and empowering “no.” - Inclusive frameworks that open doors for candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. - Transparent, public career paths that support horizontal as well as vertical mobility. This approach builds high-performing teams by aligning career clarity with Daniel Pink’s drivers: **autonomy, mastery, and purpose**. ### 🗒️ Notes - [00:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=10) Pandemic impact: vaccines, Delta variant setbacks, inflation, labor shortages, great resignation. - [04:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=260) Sports analogy: transfer portals empower athletes → DevRel analogy: team members need retention focus. - [08:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=493) Career ladders = clarity, deliverables, ownership, burnout prevention. - [12:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=734) Career development conversations: align with achievements; career ladders define overview, levels, mission. - [16:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=965) Org maturity matters: large orgs → principal roles, startups → junior/associate roles. - [19:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=1171) Clarity in responsibilities = prevents overwhelm, empowers “no.” - [23:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=1385) Advancing requires leadership, domain knowledge, and measurable performance indicators. - [26:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=1581) Inclusive ladders: avoid strict requirements at junior levels; open doors to diverse, non-traditional candidates. - [29:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&t=1740) Call to action: career ladders must be **collaboratively designed, dynamic, and transparent**. --- ## 📖 References: - Pink, Daniel. *Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.* - GitLab Handbook: [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/) --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Original: *“Without clear responsibilities, DevRel people can’t say no, leading to burnout.”* Paraphrase: Lack of defined boundaries in DevRel makes it difficult to decline tasks, often resulting in exhaustion. 2. Original: *“A good career ladder aligns requirements with each level, ensuring success.”* Paraphrase: By matching expectations to skill levels, career ladders set people up for sustainable growth. --- ## 📰 Newsletter: 🚀 **DevRel Career Growth at GitLab** Building high-performing teams means more than hiring star players—it’s about retaining them. GitLab’s DevRel career ladder provides clarity on roles, responsibilities, and progression, helping prevent burnout and empowering individuals to chart their own paths. With inclusive language and room for non-traditional backgrounds, it ensures autonomy, mastery, and purpose align with career growth. 👉 Watch John Coghlan’s full talk: [GitLab DevRel Career Ladder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s). --- ## ✅ Action Items: - Advocate for **clear DevRel and OSS contributor ladders** in WordPress to prevent burnout. - Explore integrating GitLab’s approach with **FAIR dashboards** for tracking contributor growth. - Design ladders with **inclusive entry points**, ensuring accessibility for non-traditional contributors. - Propose **transparent contributor paths** to leadership (GoDaddy + WPCC) as part of OSPO evolution. --- ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: Transparent ladders reduce burnout and turnover in DevRel. - H2: Inclusive ladders attract more diverse contributors to OSS. - H3: Public ladders increase cross-team mobility and collaboration. ### 📊 Methodology: - Survey DevRel/OSS contributors on clarity vs. burnout. - Compare retention metrics before and after ladder implementation. - Case studies of GitLab vs. OSS projects without ladders. ### ❓ Questions: - How transferable is GitLab’s DevRel model to WordPress contributors? - Should OSS projects adopt horizontal career paths explicitly? - What metrics best track “retention through clarity”? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Longitudinal studies on ladder-driven contributor retention. - Experiment with AI-driven personalized career mapping. ### 💡 Implications: - Policy: OSS needs formal ladders to sustain contributors. - Practice: Leaders must co-create ladders with teams. - Knowledge: Links career ladders to diversity and retention. --- ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - Visual: ✅ Slides, analogies, sports comparisons. Could add infographics. - Aural: ✅ Presentation style supports auditory learners. Podcast follow-ups would help. - Verbal: ✅ Strong narrative and analogies. - Physical: ❌ No interactive tasks; add role-mapping workshops. - Logical: ✅ Step-by-step breakdown of ladders, requirements, metrics. - Social: ✅ Encourages team co-creation of ladders. - Solitary: ✅ Clear prompts for self-reflection in career development. - Naturalistic: ❌ No references to nature; could add sustainability metaphors. --- ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - Screen Reader: ❌ Transcript lacks semantic headings. - Alt-text: ❌ Slides not described. - Improve: Provide structured transcript with alt-text for visuals. --- ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - Cultural Relevance: ❌ US-centric sports analogy; add global metaphors. - Inclusive Language: ✅ Mostly inclusive; careful with “junior/senior” framing. - Neurodiversity: ❌ Dense passages; chunk text more clearly. - Representation: ✅ Encourages non-traditional backgrounds. - Psychological Safety: ✅ Invites team collaboration, feedback, transparency. --- ## ✅ Logical Validity: - Sound reasoning: Clear link between ladders → clarity → retention. - Causal reasoning: Burnout framed as lack of boundaries. Strong evidence. - Fallacies: Slight **Hasty Generalization**—assumes all DevRel roles benefit equally. - Tone: Practical, supportive, authoritative with light humor. --- ## 🔍 DARVO Analysis: - Deny: ❌ No denial of critique. - Attack: ❌ None—tone is constructive. - Re - Document Tags: [[devrel]] - Summary: GitLab's DevRel career ladder, as explained by John Coghlan, focuses on the need for managers, leaders, and organizations to recruit and retain their own team members in the highly competitive tech industry. He emphasizes the importance of building high-performing teams by providing autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and suggests that a well-defined career ladder can help achieve this. A career ladder should include clear descriptions, responsibilities, requirements, performance indicators, and pathways for both people management and individual contributor roles. It provides transparency, clarity, and ownership for team members to understand what is required for growth and advancement in the organization. Overall, a career ladder can empower individuals in their career development and help drive high performance. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dlm--AA6s&ab_channel=DevRel [Music] so 2021 has been like a pretty interesting year in some ways it feels like we're still living in 2020 but you know in some ways things are obviously a lot better we had the vaccines bringing us hope at the beginning of the year and then you know slow kind of roll out in the delta variant felt like a big setback and kind of delayed us getting into the new normal now you know the past few months have been dominated by these discussions around inflation supply chain bottlenecks and labor shortages and it's becoming clear that mass and virtual events aren't the only things that have kind of changed in the post-coping world on labor shortages in particular most much of the conversation has been focused on the impacts on the retail and hospitality sectors but the impacts of the tight labor market have extended into every industry including tech i'm sure many of you who are probably like me extremely online types i've been seeing a lot more of those some personal news tweets uh as people announce their you know kind of goings and and new beginnings um in the in this kind of crazy job market that we're in and you know it's just just another example of how the challenge of recruiting and retaining talent and tech has never been harder i mean just listening to the kind of discussion that was happening um right before the orbit video people are talking about you know how expensive things are and uh the difficulty in finding senior level developer relations folks and i think that applies across many different job types technology companies have been super resilient during the pandemic driven both by their ability to kind of adjust to the changes in the world like working from home um but also the growing importance of technology and everyday life as more of our lives moved online i mean we've all been attending virtual conferences for a few years now like millions of kids did online school for an extended period of time um lots of us were ordering groceries on you know different delivery services you know so i think technology has really become even more prevalent in in people's lives as a result of all this change that's been happening and you know the kind of success of technology companies coupled with this need for every company to become a software company um has created more demand than ever for this limited pool of people with these similar technical skill sets and so there's literally more opportunities than ever before for technical people to go out and find work and if you couple that with inflation driving wages higher the end result is that more people are changing jobs the shift is so prevalent that it's even got a name the great resignation i'm not sure if anyone you know else is uh you know a fan of kind of the news like i am but um you'll find countless articles online uh about this phenomenon that's happening across every industry including tech and so you know i'll start by kind of talking about what managers leaders and organizations can do um but there's going to be lots of lessons for individuals in here as well before i go on i want to introduce myself i'm john coughlin i've been involved in developer evangelism for more than five years i've been in a leadership role at gitlab for just over a year and i managed our developer evangelism team the team consists of developer evangelists and program managers and collectively we engage with the gitlab community through content creation community engagement and community programs like our gitlab heroes program which recognizes our most active community members as we go through the talk you know gitlab our mission is that everyone can contribute and so i'd love for people to give feedback ask questions you know you can google some of the stuff that i'm talking about it's it's all publicly available in the gitlab handbook um and if you find any you know typos or things that you want to change in the handbook you can even you know open up a merge request and submit your changes and just tag me at john coughlin one word in uh comment on the merge request and i'll be happy to check it out and um you can start contributing to the gitlab you know job families that we'll be talking about today and some of the process around building those so to get started i'm gonna just kind of rely on a sports analogy i apologize but i'm a big college sports fan and in recent years there's been changes in the collegiate rule book that have really empowered players and here's a picture of my alma mater penn state so one of the big changes for players is the creation of this thing called a transfer portal and student athletes can enter this portal and they're allowed to talk to coaches from other schools and learn about the opportunities that exist outside their own campus another big change for student athletes has been the creation of a one-time transfer exception so previously students when they switch schools would have to sit out a full year of their kind of you know playing eligibility before they could play their sport again with this exception student athletes who switch schools can take the field or court for their new teams once they're enrolled and these changes have created more transparency flexibility and choice than ever before for players the result is that coaches now need to worry not just about recruiting new players for their teams but they also need to focus on recruiting their own players so the past coaches would have been you know primarily focused on star players and bringing in new recruits um but now they need to make sure that everyone on the team is getting attention and happy in order to kind of continue to build their programs and their culture and this means you know more work for those coaches but it's clearly in that positive for the players and all this is very you know reminiscent about what we're seeing play out in tech you know there's more flexibility more transparency and more opportunity and people are or you know kind of team members are finding that that you know they can go out and really explore this job market and find great new opportunities elsewhere and it's really kind of shifting where the leverage is um and so this brings us back to that question i was asking earlier like what can managers leaders and organizations do right now so we need to be recruiting our own players in addition to building up our teams and pipelines so recruiting is more competitive than ever our team members have all this opportunity in front of them and the importance of both recruiting but also retaining our teams has never been higher so we can ensure that we have happy high performing teams if we constantly have churn and people coming and going we're never going to reach that kind of you know high performing level that you need to get to after you go through your kind of norming storming levels and so you know when i think about building high performing teams i always go back to a lesson i learned when i was reading daniel pink's book drive i don't know why i can't remember why i read this book because it's really a book about management and i probably read it like five or six years ago way before i became a manager but regardless the lessons from that book have really stuck with me i probably read it because i didn't like my manager at the time i was like maybe i can give this person some pointers from the book um but yeah in that book the author outlines three aspects of work that drive high performance and their autonomy mastery and purpose and so you know based on some research that the author did there's evidence that by providing each of these kind of motivators to your teams you can drive higher performance than any extrinsic motivators like higher pay or bigger titles or kind of more responsibility and so you know i often think about how can i provide this for my team like how can i give them these elements of autonomy mastery and purpose and there are a lot of different kind of ways to approach that but clearly this talk is about the devrel career ladder so um we're gonna focus on that because i think there's a lot in having a clear career ladder for your team um that you can unlock to kind of drive each of these different elements so for people that haven't been you know kind of listening to the other talks today because i know there's been a lot of great talks um you know on this topic a career letter shows the progression for a specific role through a number of different levels and provides a map for people to follow to achieve higher levels of responsibility and mastery in their chosen career path and it does this by providing clarity around each role in each level within that role and so a well-defined career ladder will include an overview detailed responsibilities and requirements for each level performance indicators or expected results for each level and it will show you how to progress out of your kind of job family or or the career path that you're on into higher level roles or even horizontal moves as well so the best career paths take all these elements and provide options for people looking at both kind of people management and individual contributor paths um and so you need to be able to kind of have those those dual paths uh for people who have different kind of passions and different personalities um and you also you know show these lateral moves that you can make for people who are maybe interested in exploring different career paths and i know um in some of the talks that i've seen throughout the day a lot of people talk about you know movement from devrel into product management or product you know technical roles into devrel um and so you know having those explicitly written out in your kind of career ladder um you know gives people a clear sense of where where they can logically move in your organization and it gives people giving that kind of clear definition then allows people to you know have more autonomy over the decisions that they make around the work that they're doing and who they're spending time with and and can help them um have more success success in achieving those goals there's a number of reasons a number of other reasons that career ladders are so important um the transparency shows people what's required to grow in an organization and so for people who are you know motivated high performers and who want to advance in their career it's essential that you give them this roadmap for success by providing clarity of like these requirements and kind of responsibilities at each level people know what they can kind of aspire to they know what type of work they need to focus on the performance indicators really allow people um to you know have a metric that they can measure their success by and so for you know people who are data-driven results-oriented people they want to know okay am i you know am i doing a good job or not and if you don't have performance indicators it can be really difficult and you know i know a lot of talks also touched on this topic of burnout um and without having a clear sense of like these are the deliverables for my role these are the results that i'm supposed to deliver it can you know be hard to say no to things and that's you know one of the reasons people often wind up feeling really burnt out and you know like this last piece is the you know the key right which is you know it gives people ownership of their careers so they can clearly understand the requirements they know they expect expectations and what they need to achieve to progress and this empowers them they can you know align their development with their career goals and it also allows them to advocate for themselves when they feel like they're ready to take the next step in their career i think like some of the best career development conversations i've had with my team are when people bring you know the results that they're delivering the wins that they've had and say look i want you to see all this great stuff that i've done and this is why you know i think i'm ready for the next level and um you know oftentimes you know those kind of conversations lead to you know people getting the results that they want which is you know promotion and more opportunity um so now we understand like kind of this fundamentals of uh what makes a career ladder you know what makes a good career ladder let's let's dive into the elements like the the kind of details so every good career ladder is going to start with an overview of the role and so i often joke that if you put a bunch of devrel people in a room a conversation inevitably lands on one of three topics hey john i don't think you're slide advanced uh okay [Music] yeah the slides are kind of like loosely associated with the talk but um okay but you have a cityscape that's the slide you want yeah okay yeah that's fine um yeah so i opened joke that if you put a bunch of debra people in a room that the conversation is going to land on one of three topics what metrics should we measure which org are we supposed to report into and what should our job title be and so for the last one i get led we use developer evangelist but that was just like through process of elimination because we already had advocates and people with relations in their titles um but everything that we're going to talk about today applies to these roles broadly um and every good career ladder is going to start with like an overview of this developer advocate or developer evangelist role um the overview sets the stage and it can add a lot of like nuance and kind of um you know be a place to like give some flavor some contacts maybe like a little bit of storytelling about the role the team's mission and those types of things um so make sure you take that opportunity to speak about your organization's mission how your team fits in maybe if your team has a specific mission mention it there talk about the structure of the team you know where they report into you know and i think all this kind of touches on that purpose element and so when you have in your kind of overview like this is the organization's kind of you know our company's mission and this is how we contribute to that people can see like does this align with the sense of purpose that i have for my career um and then they'll also you know may be able to make that decision around where they fit um you know like on the team and so you know this the overview you know it seems kind of simplistic but i think it's really you know an important element and sets its own for the rest of this you know kind of career ladder that can and the rest can be you know somewhat more um or somewhat less kind of creative and more um you know detailed and specific and so i think you know take advantage of the of the overview to give yourself um you know the to provide that color about your team and where they fit into the broader organization the next step is to kind of have you know your levels and any specialties that you may want to include so for gitlab our developer evangelist job family we have multiple levels so it starts with your developer evangelist then senior then staff then manager and then we also have a program manager role um you know doing some research for this you know there's definitely organizations out there that have principal devrel roles i didn't find any organizations that have like higher level like devrel fellows or something to that effect um but would love to hear about it if if anybody is aware or is one of those kind of levels themselves um but yeah the the teams that tend to have like that principle level role um seem to be parts of like really big organizations and so depending on your team's maturity that's probably something you you know if you're very mature a large organization that's probably something to consider um you know you may also want to have junior or associate developer um relations roles so you need to kind of think about what the needs are for your organization and who you're looking to you know bring in and then you can assign those levels accordingly and then you know once you have the levels laid out you also need to think about what type of specialties that you need so a gitlab we're hiring for a community engagement specialty and this is because we're a super community focused company a ton of our kind of announcements and communications you know our team is being asked to give input on you know all of our kind of announcements communications blog posts and so just given the volume of kind of things that we're being pulled into um because we have such a good understanding and empathy for our community members um we needed to bring someone to really focus on that stuff and that way the other developer evangelists on our team can focus on more of the traditional kind of demoral activities like conference talks and blog posts and workshops and those types of things but yeah the specialties for your organization should align with kind of the work that your team will be doing so um you know maybe that's aligning with specific products that your organization offers um i've seen you know a lot of companies do stuff around integrations there could be specific audiences that you want to target um and then there's also companies that segment their develop functions by region which is another really cool option to consider it's not something that we've done at gitlab yet but i could see that being something that we you know explore in the future um and yeah i think you know the kind of general rule of thumb is that the larger your organization and the broader your product surface area the more specialization that your team will have so if you're a smaller org or a startup you probably won't need to worry about that but if your organization is growing you know that may be something that you need to look at so yeah now once you've laid out these levels and specialties the next step is to create a set of responsibilities for each so the responsibilities clearly define the expectations for the role and so in devrel this could you know arguably be like more important than any other job in tech and you know as i touched on earlier um the reason is that you know the breadth of things that people are asking devrel teams to do um and the unique kind of skill set that devrel people have means that we can do a lot of things but that can often be really overwhelming so like just imagine you're kind of monday like you're writing a blog working on a tech talk communicating like with your meetup community about an upcoming event and maybe answering some sec questions on stack overflow on like and that's just monday um but you know that can get super overwhelming when you think about that over like a five-day week and then over a month and over a year like and that's why i think you know burnout becomes such a popular topic in this industry but if you have this you know clearly defined set of responsibilities then that makes it much easier for people to say no and so you know there was a talk in 2018 that james governor did at this event and it was entitled sympathy for the devil it's one of the best talk titles i've heard and all the slides are like rolling stone so i'm such a great talk um but in that talk like there was a slide highlighting the importance of people in denver all to say no which is so real and so important but without that framework you know where you can go back to your you know kind of you know responsibilities and say actually this is not my job um it can be really hard to say no and especially people in deveral tend to be these outgoing kind of people-pleaser type of people that love to help others and when you combine that with a unclear set of responsibilities you can wind up in a really weird place um and so making sure that you have that clarity about your role is so important and gives you that kind of confidence that you need to say no and not feel you know like not be losing sleep over it um so yeah to just you know to kind of wrap that up you know and that's like the autonomy element um that i mentioned earlier like when people know what the expectations are they can take control of their backlog their calendar and their career and it makes them feel a lot more empowered and gives them a lot more flexibility to kind of decide what the right things to be working on so requirements are like the next piece in the career ladder puzzle um you can think of responsibilities as like the stuff the team members will own but the requirements are the skills that you need to achieve those things and so depending on the responsibilities that you outline for your team requirements could be things like technical proficiency communication skills values alignment experience levels you know maybe you need people with a certain kind of reach or or following on online um or you know experiencing community community leadership roles um and so you know kind of whatever those requirements are you know just keep in mind that you know while i i think requirements can sometimes you know exclude good people from good positions but you know it's also important for people to be set up for success and so you want to make sure that um you know you're clear about these requirements and that way you know a person who's taking on the work at a certain level has the skill sets and the experience that they need to be successful um so yeah when you're defining these requirements just keep in mind what's necessary for a person to succeed at each level and then align those requirements accordingly so i'm you know a lot of work more senior team members are going to be expected to help support the junior team members so mentorship and leadership skills might become important as a person kind of climbs up their ladder the ability to connect you know either with a broader audience or higher level you know more technical audiences or both may also be required as people advance in their careers more senior people may also need you know greater kind of domain knowledge or really you know specific languages that they're familiar with or or um you know content creation skills that maybe a more junior person doesn't uh possess so once you have those responsibilities you know and requirements tied up um you know you can understand and make sure that they're both aligned and i think the requirements kind of fits with this mastery element and so when you provide people with this clear set of requirements that they need to advance they're empowered to align their professional development with their career goals to reach that next level and so um you know you'll find that people you know who are um you know ambitious and driven they'll see what they need to do as they get to that next level and they'll work to develop those skills accordingly and so yeah the next thing um for your career letter jobs family and you know potentially for even um each level and specialty depending on how you structure your team is the performance indicators or expected results and you know when you think about how this is different from responsibilities think of your responsibilities as what you will do and your performance indicators are how you measure what you will do so i made that joke earlier about the three topics you'll inevitably hear if you put a bunch of demoral folks together and of course now i'm bringing up you know metrics but um i'm actually not going to get too far down into it there's so many great resources out there to touch on metrics for devrel um i have a blog post out on it on my personal blog but there's also going to be a ton of great talks um throughout the rest of the event that cover metrics and so if you're looking to evaluate what type of metrics to add to your career ladder i would encourage you to like consume some of that content join the talks listen ask questions engage in the discord and use what you learned to inform and improve the performance indicators that you're using for your team and then you document those in your career ladder and you're all set so we've discussed these critical elements of the career ladder and overview levels specialties responsibilities requirements and performance indicators the next step is to put them into a cohesive and comprehensive order and this is the latter part so finally the slides are starting to make sense um but yeah when you start at the lowest level each rung on the ladder should have another rung above it and it may also make sense for there to be a rung to the side when horizontal moves are real and attractive options for a person so um you know some natural moves might be into product marketing or product management um and this grid should be publicly available to everyone in the organization so that folks in product marketing and product management who want to move into devrel also know that there's opportunities there for them um and that's something that we do really well at gitlab if you look for our marketing career ladder you can google like get that marketing career ladder and go take a look and see what all the different kind of movements and potential opportunities exist for our team so yeah just a couple other things to highlight before we kind of move on when you're crafting your career ladders make sure you use inclusive language um that's so important to make sure that everyone feels like they can see themselves in all these different roles and levels and yeah for junior levels i think you know we talked about experience as a potential requirement i would discourage you know strict experience um requirements for junior levels because i think it will open up more opportunity for people from diverse and unique backgrounds to apply um you know and particularly for devrel roles like i'm from a non-traditional background i know pj from our team um who presented earlier you know also comes from a non-traditional background i think there's a lot of great people in deveral who if you look at their cvs you'd be surprised about where they started and how they got here um and so i you know definitely want to make sure that we keep that kind of um uniqueness and and interesting kind of community that's that's building here uh by you know not having too much strict experience requirements and allowing people to get a start um and you know this can help you attract a broader pool of candidates um but it it's also just i think the right thing to do so um big plus one you know to that for me so we have the different levels the different elements to consider for each level the levels are structured into an organized progression and with lateral moves and now like what do we do with this so i think like this is like the important part and this is the call to action for all of you um so you know it's time like to get to work and so whether you have a career ladder in place or you're looking to start something new the next best step is like go talk about this with your team start a dialogue get everyone contributing and you know this shouldn't be something that falls strictly on like the team leadership or the manager of a team um everyone on the team should be able to contribute to this and have their input and kind of goals and aspirations and vision for the team accounted for in the career ladder um just like the teams results are have shared kind of ownership um and career development is something that's shared between managers and and the people that report to them like the career ladder you know i think is just the same exact thing it's something that the team and the leadership need to collaborate on um and that makes sure that you know the ladders are aligned with day-to-day realities of the role uh the future needs of the organization and the team members and and sets everyone up for success and so you know these documents like go out get started collaborate with your team on them um and then be empowered to use these in your kind of discussions around career development that you're having with your manager with the people on your team you know discuss them make changes make them dynamic documents update them as the company changes and the rules grow and make sure that you know that they're viable and valuable to the team and the business [Music] you, GitLab's DevRel Career Ladder, Dev Rel, 01h784tstty8qs8qnx5vaxz2n8.