Open software development platform GitLab looks at suspending new hires in China, Russia on geopolitics
- A controversial post by GitLab executive has drawn heated debate ever since some of China’s tech news channels picked it up this week
San Francisco-based GitLab, an open platform for developing and collaborating on coding, is looking at suspending new hiring for sensitive positions in China and Russia because of customer feedback in the “current geopolitical climate”.
In a post published on GitLab’s website, one of the company’s executives said the venture wanted to enable a “job family country block” for team members who have access to customer data and singled out two countries involved in the decision – China and Russia. The post also says current team members should be prevented from moving to these two countries.
The decision, according to Eric Johnson, vice-president of engineering at GitLab, came after the “expressed concern of several enterprise customers”, and was also to align with what is becoming “a common practice” in the industry in the current geopolitical climate. He noted that it affected “zero current employees”.
“We do not make offers to individuals residing in these countries. Current team members are prevented from moving to these countries and remaining in a role that prohibits it,” Johnson wrote two weeks ago in the “issues” section on the company’s site, soliciting internal discussions among various departments.
In a statement on Tuesday, GitLab clarified its position.
“We currently do not have team members for the roles ‘Support Engineers’ and ‘Site Reliability Engineers’ in countries that are identified on the US Department of Homeland Security Cyber Security list of threats, namely China, Russia, and North Korea,” said GitLab. “GitLab is considering not opening ‘Support Engineers’ and ‘Site Reliability Engineers’ positions in these restricted countries. This has not been implemented at this time, as we are discussing it as a company.”
