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”.