An interview With Natalia Tepluhina from Gitlab and the Vue.js core team

what is up welcome back to the channel this week we have yet another exciting interview this is one of the interviews that I took at the futures Amsterdam conference about two weeks ago the ones that I announced in the last video so this is a collaboration with the few TS Amsterdam conference and the front end developer laugh love organization content developer love organization yes I need to say this correctly because these guys did me a huge favor I was able to use their studio and sound booths to do this interviews so let's get to it today's interview is with Natalia from the Fuji escort team and gait lab those are two very highly sought after jobs and we discuss on how she actually landed those especially interesting is gait lab and their hiring process they have some amazing processes to do fat people and to figure out if they fit the company I'm super interested in this Natalia is humble and kind and she goes in depth on her philosophy for life and how she is so successful at her age and all the stuff she did this one is only 20 minutes so it's pretty short but we go in depth and it's super cool so no excuses because this one is short you better finish it let's go I'll tell you what I think everything is fine my talk is finished so I'm pretty happy exactly was just going to say just you walk up stage and we grabbed you here you are so this is the question I always ask can you say your name the way it's supposed to be said this is release this is so funny because every single time I'm speaking any English speaker is just screwing my name so badly because this is Russian so I pronounce it's Natalia tip Luciana okay can it can you repeat he says what Natalia tip Luciana oh you do better than English speaker so I'm all done English well I have colleagues that are also from Ukraine and they say no it's not that yeah this is another thing right oh it depends because we have two different forms of the name like Antalya and Natalia and this is like every single time person trying to pronounce it wrongly oh no they're trying yeah so what we establish you are Ukrainian but you work at gitlab and it's remote yes it's cool so you walk with all these people from all over the world so does your culture or their culture does it have some interferences sometimes or is it actually smooth sailing or did you conquer of how complex it is and you're actually fine can you explain a bit so yeah we have employees I think all over the world 60 countries are something like this and get up really tries to make it all smooth as as as much as possible because we have nicely written rules for this but of course if you have your own culture have different cultures dealing with you you have some issues and one of the very typical issue for Eastern European cultures I think it's it comes from our education system because when you have let's say an essay your teacher will mark only bad parts of it with a red pen hmm I call it red pen syndrome okay so I'm working forget lab so I'm reviewing lots of requests we call them modulus now I know I saw you and learn when your Eastern European it's really hard to switch the pattern from this red bad thing because when I reviewing emerging West you need to notice good parts you need to praise people because they did really good job they deliver feature and then you can say okay this might be changed what do you think about the change whatever else but you're in in Ukrainian in register New York and person says I suspect this is the case if this should be changed just to write the thing and you need to deal with this but is it done and the stuff you don't mention is by default good exactly this is actually the red pen singer so like what I didn't mention is good rest but what I mentioned is well and we consider this like a really good review because I did try I actually read the code and I said ok you need to write these these things but this is very toxic if we think about it imagine you're viewed by Ukrainian and you know you'd like did some really beautiful code there but it's not noticed it's like basic this is bad this is bad this is very bad thanks bye what do my culture just doesn't fine but I'm guessing to others if you consider like American developers they usually really praise you and this is really nice from them it's a great feeling when they say oh this is a good code I really like this this is beautiful and you feel encouraged even then they say okay this part is probably not the best what do you think about your writing this and this when you're like yeah yeah completely fine it's alright if you moved to let's say New York to work at some agency and you would have your yearly review they would give you five good things and maybe one bad you would consider yourself a rock star because they didn't even say anything bad yes and I expect like I should like scold it for everything and then I say but okay we will promote you because this one little say thing was really good yeah this is I love this kind of stuff and I have this in my daily job and we noticed this all the time and you have to be so careful because you can hurt people yes exactly it so you are remote so did you choose to do that or was it kind of forced on you because you joined get lap or others - no no I did work remotely even before Geetha and I believe in remote in world cultural is future because I think we waste so much time like commuting especially in Kiev if you worked in city centre and you live outside of the city centre could be like 3-4 hours per day like half of my working day right yeah exactly so I did work remotely before but there was a difference because what I realized that we'd love to have a successful remote company you actually need a culture and you need processes you need really good defined processes to manage the company okay so what I've noticed I've done a lot of remote stuff to not personally me but we're working with people that say in Kiev that aren't there and we work with them what we do however we do meet them like twice or three times a year and we spent two weeks together and in those two weeks you almost do more than in the whole year so there is something to be said for colocation so how do you think about that so yes first of all I agree that sometimes you really need to like gather and work first of all we have the same we have an event called get lab contribute it actually will happen in March it's like every nine months I believe we gather the whole company and this is a lot of people right now right now it's one thousand and two hundred I believe not everyone is going to contribute but still we sometimes we can't fit one hotel so you're completely decentralized and you have so many people yes exactly and second part is gillip also thinks that being completely remote not contacting other developers from your team or other teams is not that productive that's why we have kind of seen it we call travel grants you can travel very have clicks and get up we'll reimburse your travel can work together with them that's great so I spoke to you quite a bit and also our mutual friend Nicola like on how you got hired there because he's a recent hire and he was like really full of it's like why do do all those things and I love it and so do you know something about the hiring process at goodlet and can you tell maybe something about it yes actually the whole pile first of all a whole hiring process is described in our handbook and our handbook is completely open to the world we're all transparent if you want you can just search for get lab handbook and this is like I think 200 pages of different like the manifest of this is good laughs yes like all the processes values like benefits whatever else like everything we do we try to keep it public sometimes we have really weird issues about this but probably we will about it a bit later and harun process is described there as well usually we have some kind of an assessment sent to people then screening interview technical and behavioral interviews and as I was hard this was really funny story because I resisted for so long to be hired you yes it was actually Philippe I probably know her she's well established you speaker as well and it was at Villa London 2018 so no recent via London but last year respond she was like why not applying to give that I was working with anger at this moment our can contribute into view so kinda like torn between two frameworks like why not apply oh my god you've had like five interviews and also I didn't feel qualified enough to join get one big famous company just apply and she was trying to convince me for like two months about this like being my referral all like just applying everything gonna be fine but I was like this is so scary I hate interview process in general I think sometimes it's really stressful and not related to your actual work like whiteboard interviews but at the end I applied and this was so fast for me I think I was the fastest hire for good luck at least I was told this it was in eight days so you did five interviews in eight days yes and every what was really nice every single interview was added with like okay you passed this stage we will like scheduled immediately I didn't I didn't need to wait I know this is not often the case because right now we have more people in the process and we need like more delays sometimes but at the moment I was hired was like really fast and the technical interview was no stress at all surprisingly wow I was it was so relaxed and nice I was live coding and when you do life colony always felt you'd probably know this when you try to do this now matters if it's just manager interviewing you or you're on stage I'm going to fail because this is a stress but it was so nice and relaxed a I've done everything from the first try I say did really well there but then what was the most challenging one I think the most challenging one was not technical it was behavioral interview because when you're working with a remote team the most important part is not hard skills because you can teach people how to code right soft skills are really important the same thing is metal like this should be soft skills because if you speak with a person and you see like they might be not a good fit probably they won't be a good fit one more thing about entry process like every single stage has decision like no yes and strong yes and the pass you need at least one strong yes so if four people said yes to you but this is not strong you're not going to pass that's great this is something you should click no it's kind of one of the darts you do or you were more specialized and then you might get a heart yes yes yes if it's technical it might be strong yes on your neck skills it's behavioral might be as strong yes on its soft skills and soft skills matter okay great things I think we should all use this because I'm hiring a lot of people and I don't have that process but to me the first talk is always do you fit can you speak and can you write just write one paragraph because then it's if your remote it's much easier exactly need communication this is way more important than technical skills you just have right now it's funny my whole talk and this conference was about this I know is there so another one um when you look at your Twitter and you're getting that feed in it it's all looks amazing it's like to me whatever you touch is gold but that's really it's it's rarely true there's always some stuff just like or maybe this didn't work or something in life happened when you curate what goes out but what are the things that you didn't post that actually helped you to be better at other things do you have some of those oh yeah I have I think I had even few cases like first of all when I joined gitlab and I was working for like two months there was a lot of stress for me because you're slightly changing your approach company culture like working for product it was my first product company after being in the agency it was outsourced previously and I was so stressed I actually had high anxiety I even tweeted about this so who my Twitter I remember this if not only was after the conference we attended together yes exactly yes and I was like I'm so stressed and the funny thing I had a talk with about this with my manager because he all of it also reads by Twitter yes that's nice actually and what could you expect like if the manager is bad it will probably get said okay you have anxiety might have some performance issues due to this this is bad but no this wasn't the case when were speaking he said like absolutely the golden rule for me we are not running a sprint we're running a marathon so everything is fine if something slipped it's fine as well what matters is how do you feel if you have an anxiety you can just take a few days off just relax and we will keep in touch in this and I actually overcame this really fast because my actual work didn't put any stress on me like you do what you do everything is good if something sleep we can manage it so basically they trust you yes and this is the one of the key aspects of being a good manager I guess exactly if you trust people everything gonna be good okay it's very important for listeners or viewers to know is you are like this up there and you have the same things as everybody else of course has this many times so it's great that people everybody has this stuff so it's a four person to point it out so this is a question I ask all the time it's kind of a funny one so do you have something that you are that good at or an expert at that nobody really knows about it yes I was a hardcore volley for Flair for like eight years was planing top on Russian guild and I'm really good at this I was top here I was always trying to top any kind of rates as a here and it's fine thing because second here not even second like my competing healer at the same yield was a person who now is my husband we met in World of Warcraft so what of Warcraft now I know they re released some stuff but do you think everybody still knows what this is this game is it's still famous now or do we maybe need to explain I believe like healer is very well known pattern even if you didn't play World of Warcraft and it's pretty famous even right now yes I mean when I said about World of Warcraft in the United States I immediately I was speaking about this from stage I immediately had a question from the audience really loud like horde or lives oh this is cool so it's like really a thing people care about area so what I play these Warcraft 1 oh my god this is old-school then Warcraft 3 came and it was too hard for me because it became online I just couldn't do it and then World of Warcraft I said maybe I'm a bit older than you but for me it didn't resonate it didn't play it but then I saw avatar and I only did that so that's maybe that's the problem but so how did you meet your husband exactly were you like destroying him or was he working with you or other data so in fact if you play World of Warcraft you need to collaborate with people you can adjust compete with that so we are collaborating but we were also trying to like be a top one still so it was like kind of mix of competition and collaboration and yeah but was he in the same country as you know he is actually from Russia okay so he did move to Ukraine ah so he moved back then yeah and do you still play I think I don't I quitted all doubts of Draenor it was like three or four years ago and he's still playing sometimes but not at hardcore anymore because it takes a lot of time like oh yes it's like you quit world of warcraft and you become really good in javascript it's its secret of a good career well you see a lot of people who are actually now a developer that did other computer related creative things it's probably your mind forms a certain way it's for you probably helped I'm not sure what do you think I think it helped in a way like when I'm doing something it doesn't matter if it's a game or if it's like coding I'm really trying to dive deep understand everything like written guides just trying to be the best of what I'm doing a critic at least really good at it and this behavior really helps when you're coding because you still feel like my code is not good enough I feel this every single day and I press when you were teaching me graph QL I felt that all the time my god done but I believe like if you look at your own code that he rolled like two years ago and if you think oh this is really good this is not a good sign you stopped progressing right because code is aging as well ever even said this during his talking is true code is aging and you were not that proficient as you're right now so I believe like every single piece of code I'm writing right now is not perfect as well okay so the funny thing is we are in a few conference we didn't even talk about the fact you're in a few or team that's like here you were like this awesome version of the core team and we just talked about get lab so quick on that how did you get that job hahaha first of all it's not job you're not paid for games and okay and their privilege is that it it what do you think it's more like freeze that if stop you need to do for free but no pressure it's like Evan is really nice about this when remember he's talkin he's like oh we should have documentation ready by then and I'm seeking like surgery like thanks Evan no pressure yeah because section the you do documentation stuff yes I did recommendation stuff mostly I contribute if you stay alive you Apollo and I did some contributions to view 3 as well mostly like reporting and fixing some small box because when you write documentation you find very lots of bugs that's cool exactly when you try to document things because nothing is perfect as we just said so yeah but how did I get there I was contributing to view and video in particular for a long time and I was also communicating with view team mostly with talks team because I was contributing there and it happens like when you do this for a long time people start taking you as a core member if you even if you're not a core member for me it happened at I think GS heroes conference in Romania when actually MC introduced me as a core member and I was like I'm sorry I'm not so you just organically became one yes and then it's just a formal stuff everyone takes you as a core member then you just add it to the github repositories and everyone's like oh oh I thought you already remember well that usually means you did something well that if I want to like go up in my job I just do that job that I want to do for a while okay and at one point they cannot mistake you for it you just you are doing it that should be the way to go I would say I think this is the way to go for any job you're just taking responsibilities and your if your start managing a team at some point because you have a few people you need to manage it to deliver some stuff eventually become a manager yes that's what I do whether you're doing right what I do now is I actually don't write as much code anymore but I get my strengths in front of a client from having written the code and manage it so I can actually ask answer the questions so now I'm feeling a little bit angsty because I haven't written as much so I do more projects now to learn more but yeah this is a kid two jobs but that's that's the way to be the best in my case because I want to be confident about it yes that's true so we are almost at the end looking at the time so this is the one question I ask everybody at the end so let's say you have a billboard and like millions of people that they see it because they're it's like on a highway or something what would you put on it I would say the road of a thousand Li starts with the first step this mean this is like all training is rewarding and it means just if you want to achieve anything you start doing this do baby steps just continue doing this and eventually you will achieve what do you want to achieve but that also means you have to have persistence yes exactly because nothing is just coming to you from out of nowhere if exactly the case when people ask me like oh how did you achieved it I would have been working on this for a long time in eventually I'm here exactly okay one last one so in all these conferences where you go it's a lot lately what do you do with all the stickers I consider stickers to be like a speaker's currency you can exchange the best ones you can trade them and then you can put the best ones you find on your laptop okay so not like me this one has to get full so what is your best one I really like oh my god this is going to be really fancy because my I have to favor it once one is an octa cat from github I'm ashamed saying this but it is me a github sticker yes this is a de Lovelace ahktar cat and I think this is absolutely amazing for me because first of all it's a first woman programmer and it kind of represents Who I am as well at school and second one this shows a perfect balance even if you work for github you're using github and there is it's like when you use frameworks for some reason people assume if you work for get lop your head get up and vice versa if you work on your core team you should hate react I don't I really like all the frameworks don't react angular whatever else yes exactly this shows a balance and my second favorite sticker is actually placed inside a lot of it's like there and it's really funny it says employees must wash hands after using javascript it's very big sticker I guess yes but it's not it's kinda not public because well we are in the JavaScript community it could be taken wrong thanks so much for your time thank you for interview