> While the sentiment of the feedback was mostly negative for the reasons below, the fact is we were able to get to the top of Hacker News - something we attempted in a previous OKR but were not successful with. So while I agree that this might not have been the way to do that, I think we DID learn something about it, and that the "ideal" post is somewhere between "writing attention-grabbing titles" and "only publishing boring, technical, emotionless content."
So which is it, this was just one employee's personal opinion or this was an attempt to meet a company OKR? You can't have it both ways, and it's quite shitty to put your employees in a situation where if they're successful the company takes credit but if they're not they get thrown under the bus.
And the "we" there refers more to my team - the author of the post is on my team. GitLab OKRs start at the company level, but every team has their own that roll up: https://about.gitlab.com/company/okrs/.
The author wrote a blog post about a project GitLab is working on to shine more light on the work that is being done. While the tone and content of the post needed to be better, as we have acknowledged in both comments and changes to the post, we did receive feedback that can help us improve this project going forward.
We're also going to learn from this and improve how we write blog posts in the future, too.
To address your last point, I want to be clear that the author is a valued member of my team. His hard work has been recognized repeatedly in recent weeks in the form of awards and other recognition. This blog post will not change the high regard I, and his other colleagues, hold him in.
Everything you have seen today is our team living up to its values: the author's bias for action in publishing this post, the transparency and being quick to say sorry in how we responded and addressed this community's feedback, and how our team assumed positive intent and worked together to try to improve and learn from this situation.
The comments are filled with GitLab employees, including your CEO, blaming the low quality of the post on it being "unfiltered", i.e. the employee's fault. If you value your employees, give them the tools they need to be successful, in this case an editor.
So which is it, this was just one employee's personal opinion or this was an attempt to meet a company OKR? You can't have it both ways, and it's quite shitty to put your employees in a situation where if they're successful the company takes credit but if they're not they get thrown under the bus.