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Comment by zmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

I'm constantly in awe of Gitlab's radical transparency approach. I have no idea if this is actually a good idea (surely every competitor of Gitlab has a huge amount of assymetrical information about Gitlab that Gitlab does not have in return) - but I am fascinated by it and truly grateful for them for daring to go out on a limb and do this experiment. My fingers are crossed that this brings them amazing success as I wish all companies worked this way.

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If you're sprinting in a race, the fact that the others can see how you run makes no difference. Most people worry too much about looking to the side, and if the others are looking at you, rather than with the running speed. Gitlab seems to be focused on running.

Good point. Still, can matter some years later, when new runners have joined the races and are now using the best of your ideas plus some of their own that you don't know about?

I've come across so many cases where information wasn't properly shared within a company (much because information was only disseminated on a need-to-know basis or some vague fear of leaking information), and that hurt the company in some way or another. Usually useless work done that needed rework, employee frustration, decisions not being made because of missing information.

I could well imagine that avoiding this one pitfall raises productivity enough to make up for any potential advantage that competitors have.

well, if you drown your competitors with more information per day than they can consume per day, do they really have any information :)

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