Rewriting the Rules: Unleashing Human Potential by Managing Energy, Not Just Time, in Software Creation

How GitLab's CEO Bill Staples transformed 30 years of developer tools experience into a philosophy that could 10x the world's software engineering capacity.

Bill Staples' approach to leadership at GitLab reveals how managing personal energy rather than time enables sustainable high performance while building the infrastructure for humanity's software future.

Key Takeaways

• Managing energy instead of hours enables sustainable high performance by conserving resources for critical moments while maintaining consistent execution across demanding leadership responsibilities.
• Weekly operating cadences dramatically outperform quarterly planning cycles by enabling rapid course correction and preventing the typical "optimistic-concerned-failed" pattern that plagues long-term initiatives.
• AI will expand software engineering capacity by 10x through natural language programming, making code creation accessible to billions while increasing demand for quality assurance platforms.
• High-performing leadership teams require experts who can teach rather than just execute, prioritizing functional depth and human integrity over pure technical competence or industry experience.
• Remote-first organizations can scale globally without geographic constraints when supported by structured communication systems and intentional in-person collaboration for strategic planning sessions.
• The future of software development involves agent-driven automation handling tedious debugging and security tasks while humans focus on architecture, design, and strategic problem-solving at higher abstraction levels.
• Leading through passion rather than obligation creates organizational energy that attracts mission-aligned talent while establishing sustainable competitive advantages through intrinsic motivation versus external incentives.

Timeline Overview

• 00:42–08:16 — Leadership Philosophy and Mission: George Bernard Shaw quote about being thoroughly used up, finding purpose through cause-driven work, strict criteria for taking CEO roles
• 08:16–18:00 — Energy Management and Team Dynamics: Managing energy vs hours, weekly check-ins with executives, creating wake through high standards, separating personal passion from team expectations
• 18:00–29:27 — Career Journey and Technology Waves: 30-year span across Microsoft, Adobe, New Relic, riding major technology shifts, AI representing culture and life transformation beyond mere technology
• 29:27–41:36 — AI Impact on Software Development: Expanding engineering capacity 10x through natural language programming, creating more demand for quality and security platforms, agent-driven automation scenarios
• 41:36–51:22 — AI Tools and Collaboration: Personal LLM usage across different models, memory and stickiness challenges, domain-specific applications versus generic capabilities, treating AI as collaborator
• 51:22–54:22 — Product Strategy and Market Position: GitLab's full lifecycle approach, security capabilities investment, team excitement about AI integration, keeping pace with rapid innovation cycles
• 54:22–1:03:59 — Operating Systems and Daily Structure: Weekly priority cadences, structured customer engagement, blocking dinner time with wife, early morning work sessions, travel challenges
• 1:03:59–1:04:54 — Hiring and Company Culture: Global remote workforce across 65 countries, hiring for all positions anywhere, defining grit as comfort with uncomfortable challenges

The George Bernard Shaw Philosophy: Being Thoroughly Used Up

Bill Staples discovered a life-changing quote during his transition between CEO roles that fundamentally reshaped his approach to leadership and purpose. The George Bernard Shaw passage goes far beyond the commonly cited excerpt about wanting to be "thoroughly used up when I die." The complete quote reveals a philosophy about service, community, and burning brightly while holding the torch of leadership.

"This is the true joy in life. The being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one," Staples recites from memory. "The being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown out on the scrap heap. The being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little cloud of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

This philosophy shaped Staples' criteria for accepting his next role. He established non-negotiable requirements: passionate mission alignment, public company scale for global impact, and growth trajectory that enables meaningful change. These constraints deliberately narrowed opportunities to a handful of companies because, as he explains, "if you're the founder CEO who is having a mission that they care about obviously if they started it, they probably care about it at scale public company that's growing. Why would they leave?"

• The complete Shaw quote emphasizes serving community over personal happiness, viewing life as a "splendid torch" to burn brightly before passing to future generations
• Staples' career transition criteria prioritized mission passion over financial gain, fame, or traditional executive career advancement metrics
• The narrow selection framework reflects understanding that meaningful CEO opportunities require founder departures or significant organizational challenges that create genuine need
• This philosophy aligns personal energy expenditure with maximum community benefit, treating leadership as stewardship rather than personal achievement

The timing proved perfect when GitLab founder Sid Sijbrandij needed to step down due to health issues. Staples' 30-year background building developer tools created natural alignment with GitLab's mission to transform software development globally. "I've spent like almost 30 years building software for developers. Developer tools and platforms. You know, what better mission?"

This approach demonstrates how constraining career choices around values rather than opportunities can create unexpected alignment when the right situation emerges.

Energy Management Over Time Management: A Revolutionary Leadership Approach

Traditional executive productivity focuses on time optimization, but Staples operates under a fundamentally different framework: energy management. This shift recognizes that leadership effectiveness depends on sustainable high performance rather than maximum hour utilization across demanding roles.

"I don't count my hours. I manage my energy," Staples explains. "So that means if I'm feeling out of energy after a long day of meetings, I'll take a few hours and eat dinner with my wife and try and recharge a little bit, but then I'll be right back at it Saturdays and Sundays."

The approach requires sophisticated preparation for high-energy demands. Earnings seasons exemplify this strategy—Staples conserves energy before the 48-hour marathon of calls, analyst meetings, and investor callbacks that define quarterly reporting. "When I know I'm up against that and I'm preparing for that, I conserve energy and prepare for that marathon for basically 48 hours."

Energy conservation involves multiple dimensions: eight-plus hours of sleep, stress management through exercise, and creative outlets like photography and cycling. These aren't leisure activities but strategic investments in maintaining the mental and emotional capacity required for sustained high performance.

• Active energy conservation includes deliberate sleep optimization, exercise routines, and creative pursuits that restore cognitive capacity rather than drain resources
• The approach acknowledges that CEO responsibilities operate 24/7/365 like parenting—"when you're a dad and you go on vacation if your kids are old enough to be on their own. It's not like you don't think about them"
• Energy management enables flexibility around work timing, allowing productive work at 3 AM when energy is available while resting during low-energy periods
• This framework separates personal sustainability from team expectations, recognizing that not everyone should or can operate at CEO-level intensity

The philosophy extends to team leadership by separating personal standards from organizational expectations. Staples maintains extremely high personal standards while recognizing that expecting CEO-level intensity from all employees would be unrealistic and counterproductive.

Weekly Cadences: Defeating the Quarterly Planning Trap

One of Staples' most significant operational innovations involves replacing quarterly planning cycles with weekly operating cadences. This shift addresses a fundamental problem in business execution: the predictable pattern of quarterly failure that plagues most organizations.

"When you set a quarter priority, you check in the first month and everyone's like, 'Yay, we're on track. This is such an awesome priority. We're going to nail this one.' Second month, you check in. Oh, we're off track a little bit. We're not sure we're going to make it," Staples describes. "And then the third month it's like oh shoot we failed."

The weekly cadence involves checking in with approximately 15 key company initiatives every week to understand progress, identify challenges, and provide real-time coaching or context. This frequency enables rapid course correction before problems become crises and prevents the typical quarterly rhythm of optimism followed by disappointment.

"Every day of my week is planned with those operating check-ins across the key initiatives of the company," Staples explains. The structure ensures leadership involvement without micromanagement, providing teams with consistent support while maintaining strategic oversight.

• Weekly check-ins prevent the three-month delay typical in quarterly planning where problems aren't addressed until they become crises
• The system requires breaking company priorities into measurable initiatives with key results that can be assessed weekly rather than monthly or quarterly
• Consistent engagement builds context over time, preventing "low context swooping" when issues arise that require immediate leadership attention
• The cadence balances strategic oversight with operational autonomy, ensuring teams receive support without feeling micromanaged

This approach reflects broader changes in business pace, particularly in technology companies where quarterly cycles feel inadequate for rapid market evolution. The weekly rhythm creates organizational learning loops that enable faster adaptation to changing circumstances.

The 10x Software Engineering Revolution Through Natural Language

Staples' vision for AI's impact on software development extends far beyond current coding assistants to a fundamental transformation of who can create software. His perspective challenges conventional wisdom about AI replacing developers by arguing it will dramatically expand the universe of software creators.

"All the software we have today really have come about in the last 15 years. In 15 years, how many engineers built all that software? It's less than 1% of the world's population," Staples observes. "Imagine what can happen when we double, triple, quadruple, 10x the number of people who can now create software through natural language."

This expansion creates a paradox: more people creating software increases rather than decreases demand for professional software engineering platforms. The democratization of code creation generates massive needs for quality assurance, security scanning, compliance checking, and lifecycle management—exactly the services GitLab provides.

The vision involves agents handling tedious aspects of software engineering while humans focus on higher-level design and architecture. "Imagine a world where as an engineer you can instance an agent. In fact, you can instance 10 agents. You can parallelize the debugging and code fixing for 10 issues at a time on the same day in parallel."

• Natural language programming will enable billions of people to create software who currently cannot due to technical syntax requirements and programming complexity
• The explosion of software creation will increase demand for quality, security, and compliance tools rather than reducing need for professional development platforms
• Agent-driven automation will handle debugging, code review, security scanning, and deployment tasks, allowing human engineers to focus on architecture and strategic problem-solving
• The transformation parallels other technology adoption curves where increased accessibility drives greater overall usage rather than replacement of professional practitioners

This perspective positions GitLab advantageously for the AI transformation by focusing on the full software lifecycle rather than just code creation. While AI coding assistants generate initial code, the resulting software still requires versioning, testing, security validation, and deployment—all core GitLab capabilities.

Building Expert Teams That Can Teach Rather Than Just Execute

Staples' hiring philosophy prioritizes functional expertise combined with teaching ability over pure technical competence or industry experience. This approach reflects understanding that CEO effectiveness depends on surrounding himself with people who can expand his knowledge rather than simply executing his directions.

"I want to surround myself with a team of experts in their function who I can learn from," Staples explains. "I want people who can go 10 times deeper than I can in their function, who understand best practices, who understand how to measure and drive performance in that function, and who I'm constantly inspired by."

The framework extends beyond technical competence to human character. "For me also it's really gone beyond that in terms of I want to surround myself with really great human beings. Having integrity having trust in a team is like the most important thing." This dual requirement—functional expertise plus personal integrity—creates teams capable of both high performance and honest collaboration.

The approach acknowledges that CEO roles require generalist capabilities while recognizing the impossibility of matching specialist depth across all functions. By hiring experts who can teach, Staples creates continuous learning opportunities that keep him informed about best practices and emerging trends in areas outside his direct expertise.

• Expert team members must demonstrate ability to teach and explain complex concepts rather than simply possessing technical knowledge
• Human integrity and trustworthiness supersede pure functional competence because collaboration becomes impossible without trust during challenging business situations
• The learning orientation creates ongoing professional development for the CEO while ensuring teams operate with best practices in their specialized areas
• This philosophy enables delegation with confidence because team members understand their functions more deeply than the CEO and can be trusted to make appropriate decisions

The teaching requirement becomes particularly important in rapidly evolving fields like AI where staying current requires constant learning from people deeply embedded in emerging technologies and techniques.

Remote-First Global Operations: 65 Countries, Zero Offices

GitLab's fully remote structure represents one of the most radical experiments in global corporate organization. With team members across 65 countries and literally zero physical offices, the company demonstrates how technology can enable talent acquisition and collaboration at unprecedented scale.

"That's the beautiful thing. I think we have team members in 65 countries right now. That's wild. And no offices. So, everyone's working," Staples notes. This structure creates competitive advantages in talent acquisition by removing geographic constraints while reducing operational overhead associated with physical locations.

The remote-first approach requires sophisticated communication systems and structured interaction protocols. Despite the lack of offices, Staples emphasizes the importance of strategic in-person collaboration: "In-person meetings, there's a certain quality you get there that you can't get anywhere else. And so I do bring the team together and we do planning events."

The model challenges conventional wisdom about corporate culture and collaboration while proving that distributed teams can operate effectively at public company scale. GitLab's success with this structure provides evidence that physical proximity may be less essential for knowledge work than traditionally assumed.

• Geographic distribution across 65 countries enables access to global talent pools without visa or relocation constraints
• Zero physical offices eliminate real estate costs while enabling investment in distributed collaboration technologies and tools
• Strategic in-person gatherings focus on planning and relationship building rather than daily operational work
• The structure proves that corporate culture can be maintained through intentional communication systems rather than physical proximity

This approach positions GitLab advantageously for competing for talent globally while demonstrating operational efficiency that traditional office-based companies struggle to match.

AI as Collaborative Partner Rather Than Productivity Tool

Staples' approach to AI utilization reflects sophisticated understanding of how to maximize value from large language models through relationship building rather than task automation. His daily practice involves 30-45 minutes of direct interaction with various AI systems to understand their capabilities and limitations.

"I have found myself carving out 30 to 45 minutes every day, whether it's at night or just during work to get into these LLMs. Like I'll just live in ChatGPT to just like feel the contours of the technology and the limits of what I'm bumping into," he explains.

The multi-model approach involves using Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok for different types of queries, switching between them when unsatisfied with responses. This behavior demonstrates understanding that different AI systems have varying strengths and personalities that can be leveraged strategically.

The collaborative mindset extends to prompt engineering that establishes ongoing relationships rather than transactional interactions. "The best advice I've seen is like stop treating it like a tool and treat it like a collaborator. Like somebody you want you want to have as a lifelong collaborator."

• Daily AI interaction time enables intuitive understanding of model capabilities that cannot be learned through reading about the technology
• Multi-model usage recognizes that different AI systems excel at different types of reasoning and information synthesis
• Collaborative relationship building with AI systems enables more sophisticated prompt engineering and context development over time
• The approach positions AI as augmentation for human judgment rather than replacement for human decision-making

This philosophy influences GitLab's product development by incorporating similar collaborative AI capabilities into software engineering workflows rather than simple automation tools.

Conclusion

Bill Staples' leadership philosophy at GitLab demonstrates how personal energy management, operational excellence, and technological vision can combine to create sustainable competitive advantages in rapidly evolving markets. His approach to managing energy rather than hours enables consistent high performance while avoiding the burnout that plagues many executive leaders. The weekly operating cadence innovation shows how simple structural changes can dramatically improve execution effectiveness by enabling rapid course correction before problems become crises. Most importantly, his vision for AI expanding software engineering capacity by 10x through natural language programming positions GitLab advantageously for a future where billions of people can create software, dramatically increasing demand for quality assurance and lifecycle management platforms. The combination of remote-first global operations, expert team building, and collaborative AI utilization creates a blueprint for how technology companies can operate effectively in an increasingly distributed and AI-augmented future.

Practical Implications

• Replace time management with energy management by tracking personal capacity and conserving resources for high-demand periods while maintaining flexibility around work timing
• Implement weekly rather than quarterly operating cadences to enable rapid course correction and prevent the typical optimism-to-failure pattern in strategic initiatives
• Hire experts who can teach rather than just execute, prioritizing functional depth and teaching ability over pure technical competence or industry experience
• Treat AI systems as collaborative partners rather than productivity tools, investing daily time to understand capabilities and developing long-term relationships through consistent interaction
• Structure global remote operations around intentional communication systems while preserving strategic in-person collaboration for planning and relationship building
• Position organizations for AI transformation by focusing on quality assurance and lifecycle management rather than competing directly with AI-powered code generation tools
• Establish cause-driven career criteria that constrain opportunities to mission-aligned roles rather than optimizing for traditional advancement metrics
• Build sustainable leadership practices that separate personal passion from team expectations while maintaining high standards for organizational performance