Ashley Kramer, GitLab | AWS re:Invent 2022

This is texturong TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to AWS reinvent coverage here on techstrong TV. Our next guest is Ashley Kramer.

She's from gitlab and we are thrilled to have her here with us Ashley. Welcome. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. It's our pleasure. Look our audience needs no introduction to get lab.

com and it was used to be just Sid back. Then I did interview Sid every other month. I don't think anybody else was talking to him.

He's an amazing person. Yes, he was I knew it back that. But anyway, This is the first time we're interviewing you though.

So why don't we if you don't mind anyone embarrass you but why don't you give people a little bit of your background? Sure. I would love to and I'm Ashley.

I am chief marketing and strategy officer at gitlab and I'm also acting CTO and I've been here for almost a year now at gitlab, but my background is pretty diverse. I'm a little bit of of a unicorn when it comes to how I arrived at becoming Chief marketing strategy officer. I'm a developer by trade.

So I was computer science major and worked at some pretty awesome companies like Amazon Tableau alteryx and War different hats products development marketing and I met Sid, you know a little over a year ago and he sold me on the gitlab dream and I've been I've been part of the company now for like I said the last year and it's been a really an amazing ride and the beauty of it is I get to sell in Market to what I used to be developers and that's been really awesome. To be on that Journey. Yeah, I would say it's more of a vision than a dream at this point dreams, you know should makes these dreams come true.

He makes a lot more of a vision and a path. He makes life dreams come true. Yeah, but but you're right it is right there, you know, it's interesting.

A lot of people here CMO and they're like, I don't want to talk to the marketing person. I can't tell you how many CMO who are also Chief strategy officers. I know who actually have more code committed into applications the most of the people out here watching this and that's a lesson right for for our audience.

Don't don't judge a book by its title necessarily there. There are a lot of very very smart engineering folks who do business roles. And and you're a great example of it.

So thank you for that. I'm glad we knocked that out. I want to talk to you about some of the trends and stuff that you've been writing and speaking about but before we do that, just wanted to quickly kind of get your impression of reinvent this year.

Yeah, it's been awesome. It's it's good to be back. I was here last year, but it was at limited capacity as it was and so I I can't say enough about the in-person aspect and seeing you know, I actually used to work for Adam solipsky at Tableau and really seeing his keynote yesterday was awesome and seems like we're really starting to see them lean more into serverless technology and I've been having a lot of customer conversations here around that and so I'm a huge AWS fan really excited to be here and I'm excited for you know, we still have a few Keynotes to go and a few announcements to go and so I'm excited for the rest of the week.

Absolutely there. Are they made some great answers. There's more And like you look 55,000 people, I'll be honest with you.

I was a little intimidated being around that many people again, really. Unless yesterday just going downstairs and we're in the wind. We're not even at the main thing, but the lobby downstairs was wall to wall people.

I haven't been in that kind of situation in a while. And I was like looking for my mask. I didn't know what to do with myself, but I just back within I walked through anyway, it is but Beyond just being with people the the energy It you know a certain amount of people a critical mass of people you're a greater a certain amount of energy, but there's more to it.

There's a like a you know a zapper, which is I think they really captured this year the idea of this ain't this ain't three years ago's Cloud, right? This is today and tomorrow's Cloud. That's right.

And and what we're doing with cloud computing and and how devops plays into that frankly and Cloud native and SRE and platform engineers and all of these kinds of things that we've seen sort of Percolating these last couple years when we couldn't get together. I'm interested. You know, look you're acting CTO CMO Chief strategy officer.

You've been seeing Trends in writing and talking about them I have on so one of the trends is based on the roots of gitlab, which is open source. And so what we're starting to see is, you know companies that will be successful through whatever the next few years hold have to operate with what we like to call an open source mindset. And so you've talked to sit it sounds like many times but we are at our Roots.

We were an open source now open core product and because of that sit also Infuse that within the culture of the company, we've always been all remote, which is pretty awesome. I get to live in Tahoe which I wouldn't be able to do it many other companies and as part of that it's really leaning into our values which is around transparency. We have a public handbook.

You can go and read anything about gitlab from our company strategy to our product strategy to how I run marketing to how I run engineering fully open fully transparent as much as we can be at this point as a public company and we're starting to See that at other companies too as as people had to close down shop close down offices for the pandemic and then tried to figure out what are they doing, you know to go forward. Are they going to be hybrid? Are they going to be all remote and so that that collaboration that transparency the iteration is something that we're starting to see infused within other companies and I think gitlab is is on The Cutting Edge.

That's Trend one. So we've interviewed I forget Chief remote officer. He lives in Caroline.

He wrote a book from gitlab. I think I don't think Darren Darren. Yes, we've interviewed down a number of times and he's amazing.

Yeah really familiar with his ideas on on remote, you know, when we talked about openness with gitlab though. A lot of people out here think open. They think open source software.

Yeah. I got the code to my software whether you're doing anything with it is another story but it's open source software and we build our stack on this open source software always always interesting about gitlab is they took the concept of open? Beyond code Beyond software I made a company built on open and I think that is this the real Special Sauce they've had the book.

Has always been the book right you taste. I don't know if they have it anymore because I don't look but they don't you send people salaries in there, you know, just that we still have the salary calculator and you know, it was it was it was Radical. You know when Sid was coming out of it out of Y2K and all of that with this idea.

Today open and open source is has become the the way right? It's more it's more the rule than the exception right? Yeah.

It is. It's like from the from the company perspective great openness. I can be a transparent leader, which is really important.

I can be my authentic self with my team. But if you think about it's also the best product incubator, I have the wider open source Community contributing all the time to our product what better way to produce faster innovation in coordination, of course with the gitlab team members, it's pretty awesome every 20 second of the month. That's right still over a hundred and thirty minutes and still going.

Well. We have Brendan Brendan O'Leary does a monthly he's on my team. He's great.

Try to do it every month. Sometimes. It's a little later but he does something on TV called the lab.

Okay, he talks about hey, what's what's in this month's release what's in this month? And we try to run it as close after the 22nd as we can. so openness number one what else we got number two is is one that really What what we've positioned as our devsec Ops platform of the future and that is we used to say and it's still true.

Every company is a software company great and you know get lab make software companies more efficient, but every company is now becoming a security company as well. And that's not just from the technology piece. Obviously Integrated Security as part of our platform is is a really integral piece.

But also it's a it's a cultural thing. It's making sure everybody in the company no matter what your role is has Security in compliance top of mind and so we're really starting to see that be a trend and it is unfortunately based on some of the things that have happened the breeches the vulnerabilities that have happened at other companies. We've seen in the news over the past, but we're really, you know, I've talked to probably 15 to 20 customers since I've been here joint customers with AWS that is top of mind for all of them.

And that's what we talk about is. The technology is part of it and let's make sure we're constantly testing before we're releasing that code making sure it's secure but also make sure it's a cultural shift within your company. So Securities my background 25 years in security excellence Yeah, I mean it does my heart good to actually see, you know, we've talked about security being one of your top three priorities.

I'm insecurity but their hands never reach their pockets when it came time to do anything and you're right security technology's a piece of it, but just like everything else in our world here in it. It's people process technology and I'll add culture and We are now really starting to see. the technology for Securities there, but the culture of Securities everyone's responsibility the people I don't care whether you're a developer or an SRE or whatever you are in the scheme of things Securities part of your job too because collectively the thing about security is it insecurity and you know innately goes for the week weakest link.

They will it will find the weakest link and it's usually a person unfortunately not a machine. That's right and So it is important look again get Labs been out in front of this. I remembered I think was for leap came on from acquisition.

They first started doing security. But again, that was more technology Security's been built into the gitlab products right for years, but now you're right. We're starting to see it front and center and more and more important in top of mind for our customers.

And yeah and it is still very very high up on our roadmap to continue that's strengthening and improving right the tech not well the technology is never finished when it comes to security. That's what no, we're always finding unfortunate. It's just the nature that Beast.

What else do we have? Yeah, and so so the final one is the third one is something that I'm pretty passionate about because my background as I mentioned is Tableau, which is you know in the analytics space and it's really around Ai and ml To increase productivity. So what we're seeing in the market right now, unfortunately companies are figuring out how to save costs sometimes unfortunately, it breaks my heart to see the LinkedIn announcements of layoffs and everything.

But those companies are still being asked to deliver. They still have goals to hit they're asked to do more with less in a lot of cases. That means less humans or that means less money.

And so if you think about what's the opportunity here, it's AI. It's ml to introduce things like automation to take those mundane tasks out of people's lives so we can use the people that are still in seat. The money that we still have we can use our brain power for the more effective things and automate all of the things that we don't really need to be spending our time out of our lives.

Yep. You know, I've been through a lot of Cycles in technology. And I've seen a lot of Handy pennies.

com. It was like, oh we're not gonna need QA people that's anymore. Not and we're gonna yeah, we're gonna automate security.

I wish I have never seen Ai and M AIML automation. These kinds of Technologies create net Less jobs. They don't they create net-net better jobs more productive more productive.

Well, not only more productive or more efficient, but for the worker more empowering more challenging more stop. You know, what Ain ml is good for very mundane repetitive. Robotic, if I could use the word sort of task that allow people to use their god-given brains to do exciting things.

That's right. And so yes, there are layoffs. It's the cycles of things there are layoffs, but just because companies adopt AIML does it mean they're gonna have less people that's right.

They're gonna have better roles and that's what I always like to tell more impactful and everybody wants that job where they wake up excited every year and they're not excited about those tasks that can be automated out of there that's repetitive, you know back to cook bacon donuts. Oh and wants the big Donuts we could automate baking Donuts. I love to eat you and me both.

All right. Well you eat them less than I it looks like but anyway, so those are our three big that's it. That's all right.

That's what we're seeing happening in the market and we're excited for absolutely impactful your head. com Obviously you could stay up to date on everything but on some of your kind of musings writing speakings. How can they follow you?

Yeah, so I'm I have a biggest presence on LinkedIn so you can reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'm starting to build my Twitter presence, but I'm starting to wonder. We're all looking, right. Yeah you and me.

We were a world in that boat. I'm starting I looked at on there's something else called post that I'm on a waiting list, right? I don't even know what yeah, nobody really knows but linkedin's the bit where I hear your post.

Most of my sister would be both actually was a pleasure having you aren't you know, this is your first time with texture on TV, but hopefully it won't be your last I would love to come back anytime through this three days a week. Well, we're not in Vegas three days a week, but we do it be a zoom and everything else three days a week and you have a standing invitation. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it. All righty get lab. Go check it out here at AWS reinvent.

We're gonna be back in a moment.