TRL 160: Becoming the First Head of Remote & The Future of Work with Darren Murph, Head of Remote at GitLab

That Remote Life | Interviews with Digital Nomads and Location Independent Entrepreneurs

Today on the podcast Mitko (@mitkoka) is joined by Darren Murph (@darrenmurph) the Head of Remote at GitLab. Darren is the original Head of Remote helping to create the position at GitLab and was instrumental in the creation of their now legendary remote work structure

During this interview, Darren discussed how being the most prolific blogger in the world (something he holds a Guinness World Record for) helped him become the Head of Remote at GitLab, how young professionals who have only worked remotely can grow in their careers, and why remote work is only the first domino of a much larger societal shift.

💬 Topics Discussed:

• Darren’s Guinness World Record
• Benefits of being in the Guinness World Record community
• How Darren ended up working for ThePointsGuy
• Leveraging airline loyalty programs
• Darren’s first international trip
• Coming up with the Head of Remote role at Gitlab
• The impact of having a distributive team and iteration
• Making a career shift from a prolific writer to head of remote
• Advocating open source knowledge as a company
• Normalizing the conversation about asynchronous work and processes
• Avoiding burnout and the importance of downtime
• Ways people recharge and recover from remote work
• The Manager of One principle
• Gitlab’s MECC (Managing so Everyone Can Contribute) philosophy
• Striving towards time-independent work
• Decentralization of opportunity
• Embracing the distributive workforce as a company
• Building remote-first culture, values and tools
• Ways of growing your career from a remote-first standpoint
• Building work relationships in a remote-first environment
• How remote work will affect the world in the future
• How to get a Head of Remote job

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🎒 Resources:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenmurph
• https://twitter.com/darrenmurph
• https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/
• https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/11/13/embracing-remote-work-meet-the-oracles.html
• https://www.engadget.com/
• https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-prolific-professional-blogger
• https://thepointsguy.com/
• https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/
• https://klinger.io/
• https://experience.dropbox.com/resources/a-guide-to-managing-remote-teams
• https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/
• https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/mecc/
• https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/11/millennial-and-gen-zs-days-of-remote-working-could-be-numbered.html
• https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/readmes/dmurph/
• https://weworkremotely.com/
• https://runningremote.com/
• https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/remote-certification/