Welcome, everyone, to the U.S. Army Human Resources Command's live Facebook enlisted town hall. Thank you for joining us. We'll be getting underway in a minute, addressing your questions about the enlisted force assignment process and step. But first, a reminder, in addition to the live presentation you are watching here, HRC subject matter experts are already online reading and responding to your questions as they come into our Facebook event page. If you have specific questions about the assignment process or about step, that's the Army's select, train, educate, promote process, feel free to type them in. You will get an answer. Also, please keep in mind that a video of this event and a transcript of the live Q&A exchange will be archived on the HRC website and will be available to all soldiers for future reference. If you can't join us or are catching up with us after the fact, you can still get it right from HRC. So to kick off today's town hall, I would like to introduce the host of this event, HRC's senior enlisted leader, Command Sergeant Major Wardell Jefferson. Command Sergeant Major, sir of the floor is yours. Greetings, everyone. My name is Wardell Jefferson. I'm the Command Sergeant Major for the Human Resources Command. On behalf of our commanding general, Major General Thomas Siemens, I'd like to welcome you all to our live Facebook event. Today, we will be discussing the assignment process as well as the select, train, educate, and promote, which most of you know as step. As I travel around the various installations, myself and General Siemens, we receive a lot of questions on these two topics. So I thought it was very important to bring the subject matter experts to you to discuss these issues and answer any questions that you have for us today. So please, don't let this opportunity pass you. If you have questions that you are not getting the answers to, take this opportunity to submit your questions so that we can have the subject matter experts give you the answers. The next thing that I would like to do is I would like to introduce our first subject matter expert, which is Sergeant Major Bellinger. He's the operations division and the armor branch, sir major. He will be discussing the assignment process with you and answering any questions that you have. So at this time, Sergeant Major Bellinger, I'd like to pass it over to you. Good afternoon, Sergeant Major Jefferson and to our great team, our Army leaders out there. On behalf of our EPMD director, Colonel Kellogg, and our EPMD Sergeant Major Thorpe, we thank you for tuning in today. Sergeant Major, one of the frustrations that I have noticed as I battlefield circulate is that soldiers and leaders have a problem not understanding the assignment process. Have you felt any of that feedback from the force? Absolutely. You know, there's a lot of misconceptions out there. Soldiers feel that the assignment process is conducted in one way, but you know, a lot of the things that they're hearing is just what they hear from people that are out there, you know, telling them. So that's why I felt that it was very important that they were able to hear it from the experts that do this every day. So please provide some wisdom to them, Sergeant Major. Thank you very much. So team, I want to address two audiences today. First, I want to address the soldiers to ensure that you understand in layman's term what the assignment process consists of. And then how you can better inform your talent managers when you have discussions with them. Secondly, I would like to address the leaders and remind us of our vital role that we play in ensuring that our soldiers complete their critical leadership time, and we are doing all we can to prepare the soldier for broadening assignments. So for the next few minutes, I want to give you a general overview of the assignment process where we use this process to assign approximately 383,000 soldiers in over 170 MOSs. So I know you're asking, what is a so what? So what we want to do, the first thing up front is three things. We want to accomplish. We want to familiarize you with your steps that your talent manager takes to use in assigning you as soldiers in the assignment process. Secondly, we want to acquaint you with the language and the systems that your assignment manager uses as they do their jobs as PDNCOs. And then finally, we'll finish with some questions from the field. And we are very happy and we encourage you to start putting your questions in and we'll get to them by the end of this broadcast. Mr. Ruderman, what kind of questions do we receive from the force? Sir, we're getting questions in from the field as we speak. The first one we have popping up is how does time on station factor into the assignment process? Great question. Well, soldiers stationed stateside must meet a minimum time on station to be eligible for reassignment. Now that minimum time is normally 36 months. However, there are many exceptions to that 36 months requirement. There may be a soldier who has compassionate reassignment reasons. There may be a soldier who's in the married army couples program. Or there's a high priority assignment that the soldier has been selected to go to. Now, the 36 month criteria is just a general rule. That can be waived down to 24 months at the division chief level, our 06 level in here. And then that even can also be waived even further down to fewer than 24 months when there is a high priority assignment and the soldier meets those qualifications. That waiver is normally approved at the general officer level, which is our director. So, however, when you look at the assignment process, we normally want to make sure that we do our best to look at soldiers who have been on station longer before we move soldiers who have been on station less time. However, in some instances, the soldier who has been on station longer may not qualify to go on an assignment. So, it will cause a soldier who has less time on station meeting the army requirements to actually PCS and be put on assignment before they do. So, we want to talk about the steps that are required for us to go through the assignment process. Step one, please go to the slide. Step one begins the whole process with the authorization of spaces, faces, and department of the army policy. The DA policy gives demanding guidance for prioritizing personnel fields when the rules of assigning soldier. DA policy includes the following, the DOD policy that limits first-term soldiers from making PCS moves. Secondly, there is tour equity. We want to ensure that this is an internal policy that we have regarding back-to-back TDA assignments. We have further internal controls such as the enforcement of the home-based advanced assignment program, commonly known as the HAP, which is Assigning Returnees from Dependent Restricted Tours. And then, as always, we want to make sure that we take care of our soldiers and our families. We do our best as a rule regarding short notice assignments, those assignments within 120 days of report. And then finally, it is the faces, the army's inventory of soldiers to fill the spaces. It's like spreading the peanut butter to make sure that we have all the personnel authorized in the organizations. We synchronize all these things by using our Enlisted Professional Management Toolkit. There are some modules that we use in that program. The first one is the Soldier Assignment Module, and this enables us to filter through the 383,000 soldiers and determine the availability to fill a specific requisition at a specific time. We further use the Assignment Validation Report, AVR, which is commonly known here in the building. The AVR applies 67 different logics and modules through an assignment process and rules to ensure that the available pool is required to meet the requirements of the assignment, and then we have a quality control check in our processes. Our toolkit also provides a method to electronically route waivers to those AVR's rules if we determine that doing so is the right thing for the army, the right thing that meets the soldier's professional development needs. These waivers vary in their approval authorities, ranging from the branch chief, which is the O5 level, the division chief, the O6 level, and the director of the EMPD, which is the O6 level. Mr. Ruderman, let's take another question. Yes, sir. Next one up is, are my ask preferences truly considered? Because I haven't been assigned to any of my preferences. Additionally, I volunteer for assignments and ask, but I'm always turned down. Why? Bottom line, ask is taken into consideration. Assignments are determined by, first, needs of the army, your professional development requirements, and then the soldier preference. If we can cover all three of these things, then you will go on that assignment of choice. If one of those things cannot be met, army requirements, or your professional development requirements, then we cannot approve that assignment. Bottom line up front, you must update your ask. Sir Major, any thoughts on the ask program? Yeah, that last comment you made there, Sir Major, is excellent. I can't emphasize enough the importance of soldiers updating their ask. As I go around, there's a lot of soldiers that say, you know, I don't update my ask because they don't feel that we use it here at HRC, but I'm telling you, that is not true. Ask is one of the first things that the assignment managers or the talent managers go to when they look at placing a soldier on assignment, because at the end of the day, we try to get the yes. If a soldier is requesting to go to Fort Benning and everything lines up, they meet the criteria, it's within their movement window, then we're going to try our best to get them to Fort Benning. But if a soldier doesn't update his ask and we go on that ask and we find a location that's there, and as long as the senior asks, the assignment manager is going to try to get you there, so they've done their job, so it's very important that you do that. And then another key thing is time on station. You have to understand that sometimes what you have on your ask, it may not be available at your time, that you're scheduled to be moved, so everything has to line up, you know, your movement time, as well as you meet the criteria for that particular assignment. All those things have to line up in order for us to send you to that location. Thanks. Thank you, Sergeant Major. So, now, the Ask Satisfaction Key Program, the Volunteer Requisition Module, this uses an in-depth logic to ensure that soldiers who are eligible for an assignment before you can self-nominate for that assignment. However, there are some challenges to that module. The challenge is that the logic does not take into account the unit's current strength and it does not take into account the soldier's professional development needs. Again, in conversation and consultation with your assignment managers, if you are able to meet your professional development needs and the unit's strength is not affected, then you can be nominated for that assignment. However, if it is not and you can't meet those first two gates for accepting of being nominated for that assignment, the branch manager is going to recommend that that assignment is not validated in the system and you can proceed on it. Now, the branch manager is just a recommendation. He provides a recommendation and the recommendation is called, another waiver is gone, is put up through the system and it is called a Ask Rejection Waiver and it is approved at the branch chief level. Thank you, Sergeant Major. Can we have another question? Yes, sir. Next question from the field is, what are my options to PCS? Very, very bluntly. Thank you. Options to PCS change daily here. Assignment locations are based, one, again, on the Army Manning requirements, on the soldier's professional development needs and then on the soldier's preference in that order. Let's go back to the slide to step two. Step two is the enlisted assignment process is the listed targets and that's how EPMD plans and distributes the faces across the spaces in accordance with the DA policy and the CG's and the director's guidance. Step three is requisitions. Requisitions are built by the readiness division here at HRC and they identify a particular targeted space at a unit to be filled by a specific MOS and grade. Moving to step four, which is probably, Sergeant Major, the most important piece of this presentation, the assignment process. Assignments are generated when the career divisions assign a face to a requisition. Let's have another question, Mr. Ruderman. Yes, sir. Next one in from the field is, I am currently stationed at Fort Wachuka who would like to retire at Fort Jackson when I hit my RCP in 12 months. I have not submitted a request for retirement so why can't I move? Well, in order to PCS from one conus location to another conus location a soldier must have 24 months remaining or a service remaining requirement of 24 months to move. One more question. Sir, several people are writing in asking what broadening assignments are available and do I qualify? It depends upon the MOS but most MOS's are authorized drill sergeants, AIT platoon sergeants which is a 24 month assignment, recruiter duty which is a 36 month assignment and instructor writer developers which is also a 36 month assignment. Now these normally require sergeant promotables through sergeant first class but there is also equal opportunity advisor, inspected general office and professional development NCOs at the rank of sergeant first class. Qualifications for these broadening assignments is listed on the HRC website and during consideration of these nominating positions your managers review your records to ensure that you qualify to meet these assignments. Sergeant Major that is one topic that I would like to get your feedback on. When it comes to broadening assignments I believe soldiers have a responsibility to ensure that they are doing all they can to qualify for these broadening assignments. Our current pool is very small and which requires us to only focus on a very small pool of soldiers who are eligible. Any thoughts on that as we attempt to encourage our force and our leaders to prepare soldiers for broadening assignments? Yes, I tell you one of the biggest disqualifiers for these broadening assignments is the background screening that we must conduct here at HRC as well as the Department of Army. A lot of the soldiers fail to meet the criteria because they have the derogatory information in their records and that will automatically disqualify you from serving in a lot of these positions the ones that we most commonly call positions of trust. So the first thing the soldiers can do is ensure that they are doing the right thing and they avoid getting any derogatory information in their records. The other thing that you can do in order to make yourself competitive for a broadening assignment or broadening opportunity is to become certified within your career management field or your military occupational, especially your MOS because there's a lot of soldiers that want to go out and do broadening assignments but they have failed to become certified within their MOS so therefore their promotion opportunities are a little bit limited. So another thing that soldiers need to understand is if you are selected to go out and do a broadening assignment a lot of these typically run two to three years. Assignments don't get comfortable out there and don't stay out there. Go out there, do a great job at that broadening assignment and then you get back into your CMF and you continue to progress within your CMF to get you up to the next level and make you competitive for that next promotion. Thank you, Sir Major. So at the end of the day, as we have preached throughout this process three things are prioritized when it comes to assignments. First, it is the Army requirements. What are the Army requirements? That is the first consideration that the branch managers and the PDNCOs do when they do their selection for soldiers and they do their review of records. And that Army requirement is derived from the active component manning guidance the force comm synchronization matrix and the structure of the force. Secondly, professional development. These needs are derived from the proponent published MOS professional development models codified in DAPAM 600-25 the non-commissioned officers professional development guide and this includes a progressive and broadening assignment opportunities and military schooling. Our role here at HRC is to provide professional developing opportunities during the assignment process. The soldier's actual professional development will occur at the individual and local command level. And then finally and most importantly, what is the soldier's preferences? These are identified by the soldiers themselves through the entries into the assignment satisfaction key program the elections for specific re-enlistment options and direct conversations with your assignment managers. I encourage you, if you have not spoken with your assignment manager you need to get to know them and have that conversation as they help shape your career. Finally, we have family concerns also which includes considerations as enrollment in the Army married couples program exceptional family member program high school senior stabilization and as I said before, compassionate assignment requests. Let's take one more question. Yes, sir. This one comes in from a soldier who asks I am ineligible for special duty assignments. I had a situation in the past. How can I still be competitive and set myself apart from my peers? We just want to encourage you that you can serve successfully in all duty positions at every level. Earning top ratings continue to do that let your evaluations speak for themselves. I would encourage you to continue to pursue technical proficiencies military and civilian education and then continue to show that you are always willing to learn and grow seeking opportunities to better yourself and those around you. I promise you it is notice when we review your records. Mr. Ruderman, we have a few minutes. Let's take a few more questions. Yes, sir. This also seems to be a time on station question. I haven't been at my current location for 36 months yet. Why am I being reassigned? Great question. Again, the overall intent is to leave soldiers at locations for 36 months. But certain situations such as drill sergeants, recruiter and AIT platoon sergeants and nominative assignments require us to PCS soldiers with less than an optimal 36 months as well as the installation strengths also drives when a soldier PCS's. One more question. Sir, we have one in from someone who asks, I am the only certified NCO and command sergeant major wants to keep me. Can you delete my schedule to sign it? Well, if it falls in accordance with the Army Manning Guidance, career progression and the SM meets the preferences to stay, then yes, we can support it. If it doesn't fall within Army Manning Guidance or the Soldiers Professional Development Model, your talent manager is going to recommend no to the chain of command here at HRC and we'll have those discussions. One more great question. Sir, we have one more. I think it's a serious question. I'm sure you have a serious answer. How do I get out of drill sergeant duty? That is a great question. Drill sergeant duty is 100% priority fill. Being a drill sergeant is one of the most important jobs in the generating force and our Army needs qualified soldiers in this all volunteer force to be capable capable of training other soldiers to fight and win in this complex world. Drill sergeants who have demonstrated their proficiencies and done well out on a trail have been promoted above their peers. Finally, we do not consider the mission complete until the soldier is at their gaining unit. We track the soldier until they sign in. We routinely monitor the soldier's availability even after we put them on assignment because as life happens things change. The soldier's status may change. He or she may get a medical profile or have some legal trouble or the soldier may request an assignment deferment or deletion based upon personal reasons or the unit reasons may have changed. The unit may have come down on a lad. And then we will take all those things into account after we put a soldier on assignment and there are changes that need to be made. So I thank you for the time sergeant major. I'll end where I begin. Readiness is the number one goal of the Army. We all soldiers, leaders and people at HRC and this great team have a responsibility and a shared responsibility to make sure that we do our best to ensure that soldiers understand the assignment process and our active people and active people in the process so that we can get soldiers where they need to be in accordance with the Army requirements, the professional development requirements and the soldier's preference. Sergeant major, I thank you for this time. I thank you for the opportunity to speak to the great team of soldiers and leaders out there on the assignment process. Again, if you have any questions, I would refer you to the listed personal management director at web page and the URL is located on the screen. And with there you will find your specific career management field experts and they are standing by ready to assist you in your assignment concerns. Thank you. Sergeant major Bellinger, I'd like to thank you for taking the time out to share this information with the soldiers out there in the field. I think it's very important that they hear it straight from HRC and we let them know exactly how this assignment process worked. For all the soldiers out there in the field listening to this, I hope that you understand that there's a common theme here. It's called communication. It's very important for you to communicate with your assignment managers. As Sergeant major Bellinger stated, you can go on the website, find your career management field and your manager by your skill level and grade and reach out to them. You can't come here because of your geographical location, but you can always give us a call. And if for some reason the assignment managers are away from their desk working issues for other soldiers and you don't reach them by phone, email. And email your assignment manager but look for that PD-NCO, that professional development NCO and see them as well so that that way you're bound to get one of those individuals to reply back to you. But as we continue on with this town hall, you're going to understand that communication is the key to success here. So Sergeant major Bellinger once again, I thank you for joining us and sharing this information with the soldiers to better set them up for success. Mr.  Thank you, sir. Thank you, Sergeant major Bellinger. Again, we would like to remind everyone that HRC staff are reading and responding to your questions as we conduct this event and they will continue taking your questions after we wrap up the live video portion of our outreach. If you are just joining us, we are broadcasting live today to the field from HRC headquarters at Fort Knox. If you missed today's broadcast, a video of the entire event and a transcript of the live Q&A from our Facebook feed will be posted to the HRC website for everyone's future reference. Moving ahead, I want to turn the floor over again to HRC's senior enlisted leader, Command Sergeant Major Wardell Jefferson. Sir. Thank you, Mr. Ruderman. All right, now moving along with the next topic, another very important topic that's near and dear to everyone's heart and career is the Select, Train, Educate, and Promote, which I talked about everybody knows by step. I have today with me Mr. Bailey, he's the chief of the enlisted schools branch and he's going to share some information. As I stated up front, it is very important that you listen to this information because everything that we're discussing today affects your careers and your careers affects your family, so we think it's very important and we feel it's very important that we provide you the information to give you the best opportunity to continue to progress throughout your career. So Mr. Bailey, I'd like to thank you for joining us and sharing some information and I would like to turn it over to you. Okay, thank you, Sergeant Major. Good afternoon, Sergeant Major Jefferson and the great Army team. My name is Jesse Bailey. I'm the chief of the military schools branch and on behalf of the EPMD leadership, it is my pleasure to be here this afternoon to talk to you about STEP and how it has changed the way we schedule soldiers for ALC and SLC. STEP was established by Army Director of 2015-31. The directive revised how the Army promotion policy for enlisted soldiers in the regular Army National Guard and the reserves. The directive links structured self-development and the NCOES system to subsequent promotion. In order to implement STEP, HRC has had to change the way and change our methodology on the way that we train soldiers and how we schedule soldiers for ALC, SLC, and BLC for the AGR. This has led to numerous questions and phone calls from soldiers and leaders in the field. And I'm happy to be here this afternoon to discuss this with you and shed some light on how we schedule soldiers for STEP. Next slide, please. This slide depicts how soldiers are scheduled for stool and promoted. In column one, you'll see what promotions a soldier is scheduled for. And column two is what requirement for that soldier to be recommended for promotion. And in column three is what is required for that soldier to be promoted. Now, you'll notice for the Master Sergeant in column three, it says that MLC is required. MLC won't be required for Master Sergeant until the next, the calendar year 18 promotion list comes out. And currently for Sergeant Major, the requirement for recommendation for promotion is only SSD4 and for recommendation and for promotion pin-on, it is the Sergeant Major's course. CSM Jefferson, do you have anything there? Yes, Mr. Billy. One thing I'd like to highlight off of that slide is as he stated, the Master Leader course will not be effective until the results of the calendar year 18 Board results are released. So with that being said, if you are currently wearing the rank of Master Sergeant or First Sergeant, you are not going to be required to attend that course right now. But all individuals that come out on that list for Master Sergeant on calendar year 18, there will be a requirement for those individuals to attend the Master Leader course. That will become their PME requirement under this new STEP program. Thank you, Sergeant Major. Because we do get a lot of questions from current Master Sergeant asking if they are required to go to the Master Leader's course. And as the Sergeant Major stated, they are not required until the next promotion list of Master Sergeant comes out. Okay, Mr. Ruderman, can we have the first question from the field? Yes, sir. Mr. Bailey, the question we have is, how will soldiers be scheduled for ALC and SLC? Great question. And that's one that we receive in our branch quite frequently. Soldiers are scheduled for NCO PDS based on priority. For ALC, a soldier is scheduled based on the highest promotion points and by MOS. For SLC, soldiers are scheduled by the lowest sequence number. So that's priority one. For priority two is those soldiers that are in priority one but have been identified for deployment, short tour, or unit rotation. Priority three are those soldiers that are in the legacy backlog and that are deemed at risk for Q&P consideration. And that is the soldier has 24 months time and grade. And we do our best to try to schedule these guys for school but based on the number of seats that we have available, those soldiers are the third priority and may or may not be scheduled. Priority four are those soldiers in the legacy backlog with less than 24 months. We do our best also to try to schedule them, but like I stated before, priority one and priority two take precedence. Priority five are those trained head soldiers that are not in a promotable status. And basically, if we run out of soldiers in order to schedule and fill up all the classes, then we start scheduling the priority five soldiers. So I bet you have anything there? Mr. Bell, yes. I'd just like to add a couple comments to priority number three and priority number four. This, when STEP originally started, we were looking at soldiers, the legacy soldiers that had 37 months time and grade or more for priority three and then 36 months time and grade or less for priority four. As you can see from the slide, that has changed. It's now 24 months or more and then 23 months or less. Now, some of you may be saying, what is legacy? Legacy are those soldiers or those NCOs who have a data rank that was prior to STEP coming into effect of one January of last year. So those individuals, we call them legacy because they were promoted prior to STEP coming into effect and they still haven't gone to school yet. Thank you so much. Mr. Rubin, next question. Yes, Mr. Bailey, one soldier writes in asking, what happens if I receive a profile or can't attend school? Okay, if you receive a profile and can't attend school, you must submit a deferment request with a copy of the profile endorsed by the first general officer or at the SES in the chain of command. That request must state when the soldier will be available to attend the next class. I would also like to add that all deferment requests, whether they're operational, compassionate or medical, must be endorsed by a general officer or the SES before they come up to us. So I mean, do you have anything? That is great. You covered it. Okay. Next question, please. Sir, next question in from the field is, I recently graduated from BLC, ALC, SLC, but my ERB is not updated to reflect course completion. How long does it take to update? Okay, that is a frequent question we get into branch. Typically, it takes 10 to 14 days from the time a soldier graduates until their email poll or their ERB is updated or is updated in EDAS. If for some reason after that 14th day that your record is not updated, your ERB is not updated, feel free to send us a copy of 1059 to our branch and our managers will update that for you. Next question. Sir, next question in asks, I had an NCOES training date, but it was canceled due to a temporary profile. How long before I am rescheduled for school now that I'm off the profile? Okay, typically, if you're canceled for temporary profile for any reason, then what we do is we try to put you into the next available class. But it's still based on your sequence number or your promotion points. But everything depends on when, for temporary profile, when the profile expires. And still, any request still has to be endorsed by the first general officer and sent up to us by the first general officer or an SES. Sir, we have another question. It is, if I am in the backlog, when will I be rescheduled for ALC or SLC? Soldiers in the backlog are the third and fourth priority. And we will reschedule you if there are seats available. A lot of times, in some MOSs, there are no seats available, but in some MOSs, we can be able to get to you as soon as possible. But understand that we are going to try our best to get every soldier scheduled for school. Next question, please. Sir, we have a couple of more. Next one up is, what is the sunset clause? Okay, the sunset clause is applicable to soldiers that were selected for promotion on the calendar year 17, Sergeant First Class List and all following Sergeant First Class and Master Sergeant List. Basically, it states that if you have not completed SLC or whatever requisite course by the 24th month, that the first day of the 24th month that you could be administratively taken, removed from the list. Now, if you have not completed SLC based on no fault of your own, by the 17th month, you can request for training deferment. And that training deferment comes through us endorsed by the First General Officer, and then that will allow us to be able to go ahead and try to schedule you for the next available class. So for each month that you are now able to go to school, you'll get an additional month to stay on the promotion list. Sir, I think we have time for one more. Next one in is, when will soldiers be scheduled for the Master Leaders course or MLC? Okay, the Master Leaders course is a two-week course that would be taught at six locations, Fort Bliss, Fort Campbell, Fort Bragg, Fort Stewart, Fort Hood, and JBLM Lewis. Now, in FY17, we are teaching six validation courses. On 1 October of 2017, then those schools will start training 10 courses per school with 32 people in them. MLC will become a requirement for promotion pin-on to Master Sergeant with the release of the calendar year, F-18 Master Sergeant list. So right now, what we're trying to do is build up a bench. We're trying to schedule soldiers that may become promotable and we hope they become promotable and between now and that release of that Master Sergeant list when it's released. Sir, do you have anything else to add to that? No. Okay, so finally, I think there's all the questions we have from the field. Yes, sir. Okay, finally, I hope that this has helped you give you a better understanding of how soldiers are scheduled for school. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to either call or email one of my branch or my quota managers at the military schools branch. CSM, thank you for allowing me this opportunity and time to talk about step, a little bit about step scheduling. Yes, Mr. Bailey, I'd like to thank you for taking the opportunity to come out here and talk to the soldiers and inform them of this process. It is still a fairly new process and there are a lot of questions out there that appreciate you coming to take this time to do this. Thank you. To the soldiers out there in the field, I'll tell you, it is very important. We always talk about, you know, we have leaders who assist us with managing our careers, but I'll tell you, you are your best career manager and the way that you can assist yourself by being your best career manager is to become knowledgeable on all the things that affect you, your career, as well as your soldiers and their families. All these changes and everything that's coming out within our Army, if you sit back and you wait for someone to give you that information, all you're doing is hurting yourself. The best thing that you can do is take initiative, read up on it when you see these mail-per-messages coming out or you're seeing your leaders, the SAR Major to our Army, the FORSCOM Command SAR Major or the TRADOC Command SAR Major coming into your areas and conducting NCO professional development sessions, go out and attend those and take notes, you know, and also take the opportunity to ask questions while you have those individuals in your area. If you let senior leaders come into your areas and talk about things that are affecting you, your soldiers and families, and you don't take the opportunity to ask some questions, you're doing yourself a great injustice. You definitely need to do that. As I stated earlier, communication. Communication is the key. With your assignment managers as well as with the school's branch. I always tell leaders, there's nothing that HRC cannot work out for the soldiers and their organizations out there, but we need to know about it earlier. If you contact us early, let us know that there's an issue, then we can assist you with working through these problems. But the key is you got to understand that you're not always going to get it your way. Army requirements and readiness drive everything that we do here at HRC, and that is our primary mission. But as stated earlier, if we have the opportunity to accomplish the Army mission with readiness and take care of the soldier's preference and family, all in the same transaction, we will do that. So just make sure that you get engaged, talk to your leadership, educate yourself, and communicate with HRC. And expectation management is the biggest thing, is just knowing that you're not always going to get exactly what you want. Thank you. Thank you, Command Sergeant Major, and thank you very much, Mr. Bailey. We're drawing to the end of this live video portion of our town hall, but we would like to remind everyone presently online that HRC subject matter experts are answering your questions at this moment, and will continue responding on our live feed for the next hour or so. If they cannot respond to you today, our assignment, step, and promotion experts will respond to the Facebook feed of this event until everyone who has asked a question gets a response. We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that if you missed any part of today's broadcast, or have a battle buddy you know who should watch this, the video of the entire live stream and a transcript of the Q&A from our Facebook feed will be posted to the HRC website for your future reference, and we will post those links as soon as the material is ready. Command Sergeant Major Jefferson, thank you very much, sir. I'd like to announce to the force at large that HRC will be conducting a similar live Facebook event. We're shooting for some time in May, and the subject will be centralized promotion process. So thank you all for joining us today. Please come back and check with HRC for the results of today's event, and tune in in the future for additional information that will guide your Army career. Thank you for joining us to get it right from HRC.


This is stock number 9516, we are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used sports car headquarters. Today we are checking out this super clean 2013 Dodge Challenger SRT8. This vehicle has the 6.4 liter V8 Hemi motor, which pumps out 470 horsepower, plum crazy is the color. From this HD video, you will be able to tell that this car is extremely clean all the way around. It does have the HID headlights, factory fog lights, that front valance is in excellent shape, no scuffs or scrapes on that. It has the 20 inch painted and polished aluminum SRT8 rims that are in absolutely perfect condition. Here are your Eagle RSA tires, and these are 245.45 ZR20s and they have a very good amount of the tread left, I'd say probably close to 80 or 95%. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p, so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device, turn them on now, because it's like you're right here looking at the car with me. Other side rim is absolutely perfect as well, no scuffs or scrapes on that. And as we go down this side of the car, you can see just how clean the body is, how reflective, and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you're far away, or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down, you can still see the car, hear the car, and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at, before you even get here. You can see it does have the power sunroof, I didn't see any dents or dings down this side of the car on the body, very, very clean. Does have the Brembo brakes all the way around, this back rim is absolutely perfect as well, and those back tires have just as much tread as the front tires. Rear quarters in really nice condition, rear bumpers in excellent condition, it does have the dual rear exhaust. The deck lid is very clean, if we take a look in the trunk here, I love they got the little push button right there, don't need the key to press the button inside, so you have your license plate bracket for the front in here. This is the original air cleaner, it now has a K&N on it, and underneath here you have the Harman Kardon subwoofers, and the battery is back here. You also have a tire inflator kit. Rear spoiler is in excellent condition, and as we go down this side of the car, just as clean as that passenger side, this back rim is absolutely perfect as well, you can see it does have the slotted rotors, but very clean down this side. 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are, you are over that 30% number. And in terms of the 50% dwelling units, sounds, it looks like you are under the 50%. And maybe that's, this comment just came because Chris didn't have your summary at the time she did this, this draft. Instruction logistics, I'm on page nine, sign plan, traffic impact, issues for traffic. Board may wish to consider the issue of pedestrians crossing the driveway access and whether it is necessary to install signs to indicate that traffic may be entering or exiting the driveway. I guess Tom or Jonathan or even Philip, is there any thoughts about that? Based on the small number of parking spaces, I'd be hard pressed to say that the traffic is going to be changing much and whether we have an increased need for signages. Reduced number of transits across that sidewalk. There's more parking behind the building today than there will be after the development zone. All right, Janet. On that issue, I wondered if like a change in the surface for somebody walking by would kind of alert them that something's different. Because those are kind of funky little exits and entry ways. And I've been walking along and been a little startled to see a car there. So I wonder if there was some way, I don't know if it's paint or some kind of change in surface. So as you're walking, you sort of stop and say, oh, it's different. Will the public sidewalk be reconstructed in front of the project? Yes, it will. Okay. So maybe the surface treatment is something to consider as you come back with a little more detail on the site. Karen. So I'm thinking that in the future, there's going to be really a lot of electric bicycles. And if you're going to have any kind of families, there'll be bigger electric bicycles where children can be in the back. So there's that also that traffic coming from the storage area where I think I talked to Barry about the charging stations. And he mentioned that there would be charging stations for electric bicycles. I think we have to realistically say that we're moving in that direction probably pretty fast. And as far as traffic goes, I'm a big proponent of having these things be marked on the sidewalk so that you have sort of bicycle lanes kind of clear on the sidewalk. But that's another thing. But think of, I don't think you need signage here, but consider that there's also bicycles, not just these two cars there. There's a good point. All right. And then going farther down to the bottom of the page. Yes, we still need town engineer review. And work within the town right of way will need to be or may need to be approved by the town council. So I assume you will coordinate any of that with Chris. Yes. All right. So that's the full draft. If nobody, does anybody have further comments that we want to make this evening?  Sorry. Okay. All right. In that case, the time now is 9.32. Oh, Bruce, go ahead. You are muted. Bruce, you are muted. Well, still slow learner. I think about to support my motion for a continuation by examining the date and time. But I will move for continuation with the date and time. I know that's fine, Karen. But we need to nail down the details for you guys. Tom, you mentioned March 20th, two weeks from tonight, our next meeting. Chris, does that work for you? I think it works for us if I can get Pam to agree to that. Yep. Yep. Okay. Okay. And do we want to do that at 635 or, you know, I mean, as the first item, the first substantive item on the agenda? That sounds good. Yes. All right. So, Bruce and Karen, we would amend your motion to continue to March 20th at 635 p.m., if you are in support of that. I see a thumbs up from Bruce. I see a thumb and a shaking from Karen. So, all right. So, that's the motion on the floor. Any comments from the board before we run through a motion to continue? The vote yes is to continue and a vote no is to keep going this evening. All right. So, we'll go ahead with a roll call. Bruce? I vote yes. And Janet? Yes. All right. Johanna? Yes. Aaron? Yes. And I as well. So, that's, I guess, five members in favor, two members absent. Thank you, Mr. Reedy. Thank you, Mr. Roberts and your team. We'll see you in two weeks. You too. Thank you very much. All right. Good night. Good night. Okay. Time now is 634 and we'll go on to the next item in the agenda. That is old business regarding our site plan and special permit site plan review and special permit for the new Fort River Elementary School. Chris, do you want to introduce this or how would you like to proceed? Sure. I would be happy to introduce it. There was a question about, I think I sent out some potential conditions and when you reviewed the conditions last time you were talking about the Fort River School, you came upon one that had to do with screening of mechanical units on the roof and the applicant who is here, Tim Cooper, he's on behalf of Denisco and Rick Rice is also here and Donna Denisco and Kathy Shane and I'm sorry that you had to wait so long. But in any event, they said that they hadn't included screening of the mechanicals on the roof because they didn't think they would be seen from really from anywhere. But then the board questioned that and so we came up with a potential condition of anything that's within 25 feet of the edge of the roof should be screened and anything beyond that doesn't need to be screened. But then when we presented that to the board members via email, Ms. McGowan said that she thought that this really should be discussed in public. So we're bringing it to you to discuss it in public and hope that you will come to an agreement about what needs to be done. And I do understand that they didn't include the cost estimate for a lot of screening of mechanicals within their cost estimate for the project. And so that's a concern to the people on that team. I think that's an explanation. Chris, would you mind reading the condition that you were proposing? Oh, we would ask that. Let's see. Do I have that? I didn't find it. I think I do. Yes, here it is. Oh, good. The one that we proposed was all air conditioning units and other mechanical equipment that is located within it should have said 25 feet of the edge of the roof shall be screened. Such equipment that is located more than 25 feet from the edge of the roof, i.e. in the middle of the roof is not required to be screened. So that was the condition that we circulated as the alternative to condition 14, as we reviewed it on that evening. Okay. All right. So I think one of the concerns that we had was that whether we were giving special treatment to a town project as opposed to other projects, board members, how do you feel about this condition? I will say that personally, given the renderings that were sent, the fact that I can see some mechanical equipment from 600 feet away seems pretty unobjectionable to me, even if it were a commercial project. And I do think that the view from the public way is what we need to value the most. So how do other people feel? Bruce? I agree with you. I don't need to say more than that. I don't think. Okay. Other board members, if we were to have a motion to adopt the condition that Chris has drafted, what kinds of comments would you have? Janet? I have a question for the designers. Does that condition work for you?  Okay. All right. Chris, I assume you proposed it after talking with Denisco and the OPM, probably, maybe even Cathy, about and that it was all that I assumed it was acceptable to that team. Is that true? Yes. I sent that condition with the blanks, and I asked Tim Cooper to fill in the blank as to what he would be comfortable with, and he said 25 feet would be reasonable for him. So that's what he proposed, and that's what I just read to you. You do have images. I think Tim might have even prepared some more images. I don't know whether you want to look at images of of the mechanical equipment screened tonight or whether you're happy with that condition. Okay. Tim, as there's some material that you've presented in, you would actually like to share with us? We have presented or prepared a few images that will further illustrate what you will see and where you can see it from. And if you want to look at it, I'm happy to share. Why don't you go ahead and show that? And in that way, at least whatever members of the public are still with us can see what we've probably received in our packets. And Johanna and Bruce will come back to you after he shows these images. Maybe I can just say that perhaps while this is coming up, I should have said that since the last meeting, I've been appointed to the school building committee. I don't know whether that's a conflict. I don't think it's a conflict of interest, but it probably should be stated as a member declaration. Okay. Thank you, Bruce. And congratulations. So on the screen, now you can see the roof plan superimposed on the site plan. And the typical equipment that we're talking about is located within the center of the roof. There are four major pieces of equipment. Those are the sort of dark gray rectangles that were visible on the roof. Okay. Those are the dark gray rectangles. They're air handlers over the gym on the third floor high roof and here to the eastern edge of the building. And those pieces of equipment are more than 25 feet away from the roof edge. The language was shared with us by Chris Preskrip and it meets the current condition. What this diagram shows is that we do include in the current design screening that will block the equipment visually, looking from the west, which is the way bus traffic, people entering from the public way, many of the users will approach the building and also approaching from the northwest through the parking lot, the way parents dropping off at school. We also included some visuals of what these pieces of equipment actually are. They are self-contained units with all of the mechanical equipment inside. They're typically matte, close to sky-colored boxes. We don't know the exact color because this is a public project. So we have to give three or equals to meet public bidding laws, but this is generally what you're looking at. It is depending on the manufacturer, the sizes can vary a little bit, but this particular one, which is the basis of the design for three pieces of equipment, is seven foot six feet tall and then it will be mounted on a curve. So the total height from the roof will be in the neighborhood of 10 feet. And then the other type is this, another manufacturer, a slightly different type of machinery, but a similar configuration of a matte painted box with some ductwork coming out of it. The exact configuration of that ductwork we don't know because we don't know until we'll know which equipment we are using. And then we just wanted to illustrate what would we required if we were to totally visually screen all of the equipment from anywhere on the site. We're not including a screen to the west because that's essentially wooded land on the east of the four river sites until you get a considerable distance from the site. We don't think anyone will be able to see the equipment from the east side of the building, but if we were to add screening where the red lines are dashed, which would be new in addition to what is already provided in the project, there'd be a couple of impacts. One, a decent amount of the PV solar generation on the roof would be impacted and don't have to be moved, not just the areas that are directly impacted by the added screen, which are the blue rectangles around on all of the roof surfaces, but there is also shadow created by them. If the screens are tall enough to completely block the equipment, they would be about 10 to 11 feet tall. So they have a subsequent shadow which takes some of the PV that we have shown here out of the picture. And then there's also a cost. We happen to have a pretty good number of what this would be if we were to place more screen in kind because at DD, we actually eliminated some of this screen wall. So all in total, you're looking at about a 340 linear feet of screen wall. And with markups, it's about $300,000 for the project to add this. So we just wanted to have that in context for this discussion. And then if you're interested, we have a little bit more modeling from the site that will show you exactly what you'll be able to see in the 3D models that I can share. The equipment is rendered as bright red. So it's perfectly clear what it is. But in real life, it would not be, but this is just illustrative model. Give me one second, I'll pull that out. So this is the path that a parent dropping off at school would take. You started back at the public way, but now you're coming into the parking lot driving south through approaching the building. So you can see the rooftop equipment is there. We've painted it red. So there's no mistake that you will be able to see it. But it is, you know, as the images just shared, it's a box on the roof. And if we were to build a mechanical screen all the way around it, it would be significantly more visible. At this point, presumably you're actually looking forward and if you were driving, hopefully you would be. There are kids. Yes. But for the sake of this conversation, we are looking, we are a passenger in the car and we are looking at the building. And so here we are not fully back, but almost to the northern end of the athletic fields. And so that is that 600 foot number that you mentioned before that was included in the previous materials that were emailed after this discussion came up. And one more since it addresses a specific question at the very northern edge of the property at the public way. And in truth, there would probably be some trees that are at the property line obscuring your view from this point. You are considerably north of the entrance drive. But if we were to move along the northern edge of the property line north of the walking path, north of the athletic fields, looking at the building, you know, you are some 650, 700 feet away from the building. So you're looking at a very oblique angle, but you can see the equipment. And we've made it red here to make it pop against the building. And there are buildings to the north, a couple of parcels that, you know, we have no intention of saying that you won't see the equipment, but there it is. So we didn't talk a lot about the colors of the building itself. Is it, you know, from this distance, it feels like if the units and the ductwork were all basically a color that was compatible with the rest of the building, it would simply be, you know, those are the bumps on the top of the building. Are you expecting to have that, you know, given that they probably won't be painted red? They will not be painted red. Typically, manufacturers, for the equipment themselves, it's a neutral matte color that basically blends in with the sky. And then some things that you may see in addition to the equipment itself are the ductwork that comes out, which is usually not at the top, it's lower.  And you certainly would not see it anywhere close to the building at all. You would have to be very far back as far back as you are here. And that we clad in roofing material, which would be neutral and in the character of the rest of the building. Right. Okay, Johanna, and then after that, Janet, or maybe Bruce. Thank you. I was just going to, you had asked the question of whether we felt comfortable, and I just wanted to say that I had responded to Chris and said I felt comfortable with the 25 but distance. And then I really appreciate the added explanation from the designers about what additional screening would entail. I think it is definitely not worth losing the rooftop solar capacity or the $300,000. So those are my thoughts. Okay. Thanks for that opinion. Bruce. And Karen was before me. I wasn't. My hand just went up. But briefly, I agree totally with what Johanna said. Okay. All right. Most especially, I wanted to thank Tim for this very thorough present, no holds barred.  I have to say it's probably borderline sacrilegious, but I saw the pompadour center in Paris as it was being constructed. And I talked to a lot of people, Parisians at the time. And they didn't like it at first, but now it's one of their treasured buildings, and it's been repainted. And God damn it, they did it the same way.  So thanks, Tim. That was wonderful. I enjoyed the trip, but you've just made me more emphatically supportive of the the condition that Chris drafted. Okay. All right. Janet. So I agree with what people are saying. And I, you know, Doug, I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking if it's light colored and match the building, it wouldn't cross your mind. So is it an easy fix just to paint it or just, you know, or whatever. But I also think expecting not to see any mechanicals at seven, six or 700 feet seems like a lot to ask. And so, you know, I'm fine. You know, and I do appreciate that you made it red because a lot of times when I look at these renderings, they're kind of sometimes are very sneaky in a way that favors the project.  And people are just really happy walking around all the time. And so this, this was like a very negative presentation that I appreciate. It was neutral. Not. All right. So I think we've got a clear board majority that are fine with this condition, Chris. Take a vote on it. Yeah, I want to do that. But before I do that, I'm going to put Kathy on the spot. Kathy as a as the as the head of our school school building committee and but also as a town counselor. Do you feel comfortable with us going ahead with this? Absolutely hearing that we're not having to put up more screening. I mean Tim just quickly said that one of the tradeoffs we made was to cut the cost of the building but not hurt the building. We have more insulated windows rather than some screening up on the roof. You know, I mean, there were a lot of efforts to keep the integrity. And I think one of the exciting things about this building is it is a net zero. And so what you're going to see is you're going to have solar panels on the roof and this equipment is not burners, you know, it's not oil fuel. So it's sort of a statement. So absolutely delighted that we're not having to spend $300,000 and remove panels for and the other thing just people should know we have the first salvo the the initial site preparation is March 26th is the celebration of it and that bid came in substantially under what we had estimated. So there is more money in the project but there's potentially savings along the way, you know, so it's toward the building. So it's terrific that you're not increasing the cost of something that almost no one will even know is there. That's great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. You know, it does make me wonder if you're going to save $300,000 at some point. So okay. All right. So why don't we go through a vote? So I think we need a motion to let's see, we already have a motion and it's already seconded, right? Wasn't that Bruce and Karen? Okay, that was an earlier one. I guess it's been a long enough night already. That was the continuation. But yeah, okay. All right. So in that case, Bruce, you want to do another one or do you want me to do it? I'll move that we support the condition as proposed by the planning director. Okay, I'll second that. All right. We'll do a roll call vote unless anybody else wants to raise their hand again. All right. Going from the end of the alphabet, Karen? I. All right. Johanna? I. Janet? I. Bruce? I. And I'm an I as well. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you all three of you from Denisco. We look forward to the, did you say it was a groundbreaking in March or the start of the project? They have some sort. The initial site preparation, March 26, 330. Okay. At Fort River. All right. Thank you. Thank you all for staying through most of the evening before we got to you. Thank you. All right. So let's say I lost my agenda here. Here we go. Okay. All right. Chris, continuing, I guess I'll say the time is now 956. Chris, any other old business not reasonably anticipated? None. All right. How about new business not reasonably? I don't think so. Nate was going to bring something up. Oh, he's here. He has been just going to say something about something. All right. Nate, anything you want to say? There he is. I don't think so. Not a 10 o'clock. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So next is Form A and R subdivision. We did not have any. All right. ZBA. I haven't received any transmittals, so I have nothing to report. Okay. SBP, SBR, SBB. We do have one. Pam, do you want to describe it because you know more about it? Well, let's see. The Emily Dickinson Museum is working to submit a site plan review application. They want to rebuild the carriage house on the Evergreens. So we have most of that together and we will do a staff review of it and look for a hearing date and we'll keep you aware. Okay. Great. Planning board, committee, and liaison reports. Bruce, anything for PVPC? No. I have nothing for CPAC. Karen, anything for DRB? No. Chris, anything for CRC? Yes, I'm starting to talk to them about the solar bylaw. So that should be kicking off, I think March 26th. Okay. Okay. Next is report of chair. I really don't have anything, but Chris, I do want to ask, when do you think we will introduce the board to our design guidelines team and that process? That's a good question. I'll have to work with Nate on that. I see he's still here. That might be a question for him. Yeah. Nate, do you want to comment on when you think that team will be ready to talk to us? Yeah. I'm not sure. We're trying to get stakeholder meetings. I was hoping for this week and at least next week to get those started. And then they're hoping to do some existing conditions assessments. They've already been in town. I'd have to look at when they were planning to get in front of certain boards, but definitely a number of members of the planning board were part of a stakeholder meetings. And so then, yeah, I don't know exactly when in front of the planning board, but we're trying to get that going, like I said, next week or so. Right.  I may have missed this. I missed a meeting. So who are the stakeholders? Has that all that been identified or who are those who? Nate? They haven't. We're looking at a few different stakeholder groups. One is board and midi representatives. One is downtown property owners and business owners. One is residents. And then there may be another one. And so each stakeholder group could have eight to 12 people. And then Dotson is hoping to have a working group of 25 to 30, maybe a few more people that would they'd meet with about six times throughout the process. And they would just be a group that would advise Dotson in terms of the process. So the stakeholder groups would meet initially to give comments without staff. And then they might be, they might meet one more time with Dotson. And then there's this working group that would be meeting periodically throughout the process. Do people volunteer for those things? Or like, is there someone they can contact to volunteer? Yeah, we've been getting emails. So I mean, if you send something to Chris or myself, or people are listening, they could. Okay. And I think Janet and Doug have already said that they wanted to be part of this. So we put your names down on the list of potential stakeholders. So you'll be contacted. And I think Karen also said she was interested. So okay. Great. Thank you. All right. Well, that concludes my report of chair. Chris, anything on staff? I have no report. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else want to offer anything that needs to be said at 10 01? I was gonna say one other thing. Wayfinder is holding a community meeting over Zoom tomorrow night at seven to talk about their affordable housing product on Belcher Town Road and Southeast Street. And so they've already submitted their initial project eligibility letter to the state or the sub-sizing agency to begin that comprehensive permit process. And so this public meeting is a chance to hear a presentation from them and then for the public to ask questions or comments of the project. And that's tomorrow night? Tomorrow night, yes. Is that posted on our website? It's on the community calendar. It's not sponsored by a board or committee. So it's been on the trust webpage and it was in the news online. They'll have other meetings, you know, before they actually submit a comprehensive permit. They hope to have an in-person meeting or a site visit with people. But this is really just to get initial comments as part of this project eligibility phase. Wasn't that service net that was part of it? Or is that another project? Isn't that a different project? It's a different project. Yeah. That was 20 Belcher Town Road. This is farther out. Right. This is, yeah, this is the town purchased three properties combined into one at 76 or so Belcher Town Road. So it's a little path. It's almost at the entrance of Colonial Village. And so there's about 45 units proposed there in a new building. And then 33 units are still proposed on Southeast Street with, you know, six studios being renovated in the old school building. Right. Okay. Yep. Janet? I'm thinking that that project will go to the ZBA for permitting, but it'd be nice to have them come to us and make a presentation for some input. That usually happens after the application is received. So we haven't received the comprehensive permit application. And at that time, we would come to you and ask you if you wanted to review the project to make recommendations. Yeah. We're thinking that the application probably won't be submitted until June or July. Okay. Well, it sounds like we would, you don't even need to ask us if we want to see it. I think we want to see it. Sounds very exciting. Okay. So unless anybody has anything else, we can adjourn. Time is 10.04. Thanks all for sticking in for a long, what turned out to be a long meeting, but it seemed like we made good headway on the Barry Roberts project. Thank you. Bye. All right. Good night. Bye. Good night. Are you sure you want to stop? Yes.


And it's only been about three weeks since our last functional group update. So we'll go through this pretty quickly and hopefully leave lots of time for questions. Here on the accomplishments slide, I wanna be very clear here that Canada has officially been removed. We are done with the work we need to do to safely hire in Canada. Australia is very close. So we can start looking at candidates, we can start sourcing, but there's still some contractual stuff we need to get into place before it's official. We're going to continue to try to expand or limit the do not hire country list. And these were the two first countries that we made progress with. We'll continue to try to make progress. Vacancies have been added to the team page, but we want feedback. So that's why we also linked to the feedback issue here. We're trying to do things differently to show how much hiring we're doing, to show that all of those future hires are positions here at GitLab that are important to us and future teammates that we wish to have. So if maybe it also incentivizes us if we see a little too many new vacancies on the team page, then we can all help and use our networks to help replace new vacancy with a name or at least initials once they get hired. The also take a look at the new transfer policy, not a whole lot of new updates here. Just wanted to make sure that everybody understands that here at GitLab, when we work at GitLab, our previous colleagues, our previous managers are references to us for a new job. We really wanna support growth and development. We want people to be able to move around if that increases their engagement at GitLab and their contributions to GitLab. But we also wanna make sure that it's clear that there needs to be transition plans put into place so that it doesn't just work the business too much as well as being able to know that your manager may have feedback for you for that new role and for you new manager. Doesn't mean that a manager can block a transfer. It just means that they are part of informing the decision. And I brought up the chat box and I'm gonna move it to the side, sorry about that. So I also am, as you can see here, doing open office hours starting next week. I wanted to start that this week but wasn't able to get it started this week. The idea of this is I'm gonna leave my Zoom open for an hour from 10 to 11 on Thursdays and the link is my standard Zoom link. And if you want to join me and just pop in and say hi or have a question or it can be very casual. If you see other people are in there, depending on the nature of the discussion, we can all talk together or we can have you call back in once that discussion's over. If there is a very confidential discussion that you wanna have with me though, however, I would still go ahead and schedule a meeting with me. But this is just a way for me to try to be more open and more accessible to the Git labbers that we have here. If we were in a traditional office space, you'd be able to walk by my desk. And if I was sitting there, you'd be able to reach me. This is kind of me trying to experiment with that. May or not work, but if I'm sitting there with no one joining me for those hours, that's okay. Cause I'll still get a lot of work done, but would love to see you. Will the office hour be on the team calendar? Thanks for creating that. Excellent choice, Clamont. Team calendar. I'm gonna confess my lack of awareness here. And if you wanna speak up, feel free to unmute. Are you talking about the availability calendar? What specific team calendar? I think Clamont's asking about the meeting calendar, where for instance, the FGUs are and any team meetings are. Okay. I think that's the availability calendar. Yeah, that's the availability calendar. And I'm not quite sure if that's the great use for it. So we'll talk about that. If we continue to use it in that way, sure I can add it to that. If we decide to have a different option there, then I'm not quite sure. But great question, especially when I don't have the answer, you know it's a good one. So going on to plans. We are re-looking at titles at GitLab. You can click on that issue to see what we're doing there. We're basically trying to, it doesn't change a whole lot, but we're trying to phase out junior and intermediate as being terms that we will not continue using and insert the terms of numbers like some companies do. Every company does this different. Titles are not used consistently anywhere. They're not a good way to gauge a level of a candidate to be honest with you, if you're hired from an outside company, because every company does it differently. We're doing it a little more consistently to Google with this new mechanism. However, it's not exactly the same. We can continue to iterate off this and it won't be necessarily that every team needs all the same job levels. For example, I will probably use recruiter two, three and senior, but I likely won't use staff recruiter. So different teams might have different levels they use, but that you can get more details on the issue. And if you've already had the chance to read the issue then you can open up to questions at the end as well. The comp calculator continue iterations. Brittany continues to do work on the comp calculator and you can get some insight and visibility into the iterations on that there. Performance review feedback cycle is coming up. You're gonna start hearing me change the way I talk about quote performance reviews because I don't wanna talk about them as performance reviews. I wanna talk about them as feedback. I think that review carries a lot of baggage from other places we've worked and other companies we've worked at. And I really want this to be about investing in each other and providing feedback to each other and less about judging each other and giving each other a rating. So I will start talking about it more as performance feedback. One thing that we're doing at the company and this was actually a recommendation from Sid is the GitLab 101s are really great and it's wonderful that Sid gives his time to our new teammates by holding those 101s. The other functional groups, the other leaders are going to start doing this as well. So you can look forward to start seeing GitLab 101s for people ops and we're getting motion to schedule those every six weeks. These are for the invite list will be the same invite list that Sid uses for his GitLab 101s. And of course we're doing lots of hirings. We still want lots of referrals. We've implemented a job of the week for once a week and Scott's and the recruiting team will announce what the job of the week is. That's a little way just to motivate you to kind of go into your networks and say, hey, do I have anyone who qualify for that job? But your help shouldn't start there. We all want to work with studying colleagues. We want to all have amazing teammates and you might know those people. So make sure that we get to know them as well. And on Fridays, the team is going to be working very, very focused on sourcing on Fridays. And that's a fun little thing to do too if you just put an hour in your calendar to say, I'm going to go treasure hunting for an hour on Friday and send all the gold that you find over to the recruiting team. So with that, I will open it up to questions. Hey, Barbie, this is Ashisha, I have a question. So as I've joined the team, a lot of people have been curious, I've told my network how great this company is to work for. They should come join. I've made a couple of referrals but there have been a couple of instances in which people saw an opening and were curious about the role, wanted to know more. So they wanted to have kind of an informal conversation or interview with somebody in the company or in that team to know more. So is there a mechanism or do we want to create a mechanism like that? I know that's a lot of overhead then for a lot of people. But if there's somebody who's referred and you know them but they're not sure if they want to go through the process yet because they want to understand exactly what that role entails. Is it something that we do today or something we can think about doing? Well, I'll be honest, normally referrals are people that the person who refers them would be having a conversation with them about the company. Normally it's natural if I know you. It's not the company, it's the particular role, right? Okay, yeah. I may not know a lot about what a director for CICD, I know what the director will do and what they will deliver. But what are the particular challenges they're looking to solve? And so that candidate, there's a candidate I referred to your team and they wanted to know more about exactly what it meant. And I gave them the best information I could. But it would be great if they really want to talk to somebody and not go through the whole interview process before they think it's a match. It's something they're going to be passionate about. So just a suggestion. Yeah, no, I think that that can happen and I think that there's no problem with that happening. I think that what you should do probably, and I'm thinking out loud here, is reach out to the recruiter and then together between you and the recruiter and the hiring manager, you guys can determine who the best person for them to talk to is. I would also say that I really encourage very good and viable referrals. I know sometimes it's hard for us to say to our friends, yeah, it's great that you're interested, but I really don't think you're the right fit for GitLab or this role. And you know the person well enough to know that they're probably not going to get to the process, but you don't want to tell them that. Probably not best to use the hiring manager's time and the recruiter's time, putting extra effort towards a candidate that... Yeah, no, no, I agree. I think the person I wanted to refer was a good fit. There have been others that I've thought, okay, they would not function in this environment. They're too into his lipstick or the culture isn't right. But if there is a candidate who's strong and they just are curious to know what there is, that's a good suggestion to go through. Yeah, then certainly we can put the time there. And I do think that referrals do garner a little bit of a different treatment in terms of they've actually been referred. We should acknowledge that. And it doesn't mean that the person who referred them is going to get all the details about why they were hired or not, because that's confidential to the candidate, but we should ensure to be giving good service to all our candidates. But an example of them we'll hear about when we don't, we'll hear from our referrals because they'll tell the people who referred them, right? And that's when we can get a lot of good feedback on our recruiting process, because quite often referrals are the ones to be the most direct with us. Yep, patience. So wonder if recruiting team can meet with two or three of these on our sourcing Fridays. That's from GitLab moderator. Don't know who GitLab moderator is. Bobby, it's me, it's Nadia. Oh, okay. I don't know why I'm moderator again. Okay. But what do you mean by two or three of these? Well, of these candidates that get referred that maybe wants to speak to someone internally. I was just wondering if maybe we could use our sourcing Fridays to early in the morning or late in the afternoon to meet with two or three of these referrals because it helps with sourcing as well, so just an option. Yeah, certainly no reason not to, right? And since that I regularly take calls from people interested in working at GitLab, I do too. I think it's a natural thing you do. A lot of these candidates, you're kind of just planting the seed of them wanting to work here someday. And it might not happen that week where they raise their hand and say, yep, I officially want to apply, but you might find over time as you continue to talk about what a great place to work it is and how unique it is, then eventually they finally decide, wait, I actually should really consider this. So it can be a definitely good investment. Indeed, and she's like just introduce them to the person that knows more about the role. Like anyone at GitLab should take a, getting to know another person called. Great, thank you. It is great though. In the informal getting to know people called I Love, but if someone's actually been referred, I would like notes and lever. Oh yeah, for sure. What that discussion was and what the person they talked to felt. If it's the more informal thing, that's less easy to do because they might not be in lever, but if they are officially applied, let's try to have updated notes and lever. From Dmitri would be a solution to create more async personal culture, create a video that tells the story for each role and explains the problems and challenges. Sometimes you just want to see a human. It's an interesting idea, Dmitri. That's a fun thing that we could probably think about doing in the future for the roles that we have a lot of, can we do an SDR video of a day in the life of an SDR, or a BDR, or an account manager, or a dev ops for production engineer, or that could be an interesting thing for us to consider. I hadn't thought about it, but it's certainly an idea that we could think about as a team. And I go on scrolling up, see what I missed here. What about doing an external GitLab 101? AMA once per period. Sid, do you post your GitLab 101s on YouTube? No, not the one-on-ones, because those are new people, so it's a comfortable environment. But I think an external is like an AMA, like that's common on Reddit and things like that. So if someone's to set it up, probably somebody marketing that has experienced live streaming, I'd be happy to go on a call for 15 minutes and ensure the famous YouTube comments. Or we can have a get a room, but let's do YouTube comments because I love to be myself. And Lyle, I would be happy to do that as well. We do it at the summit. I know we do the external AMAs at the summit. I'm not quite sure how often we do it outside of that, but I think as a new candidate, that was really helpful at the last summit. I watched those a lot. Oh, good. Good. Then yeah, we probably should think about doing more of those. So Sid and I will follow up with marketing. Keep scrolling up. If anyone sees something I missed, I love the comments in group chat, but I'm also happy to have you just speak up.  Yeah, there's a question from Clément. Yeah. And how do you get up under internal promotions? What was the question? I see the office hours one. Yeah, it's a question from Clément actually. How do we get up under internal promotions? How do we do internal promotions? Exactly. Okay. Yeah, how do we handle them? Excellent question. You can get more details in the transfer policy update link on these slides. That actually takes you to the promotion and transfers page. So it'll have a lot of good detail for you there, but philosophically wise, promotions are a combination of doing amazing work and growing in a way that a promotion is the right thing. There's different kinds of promotions. There's going up a level as an individual contributor and there's going into management. When you start thinking about going into management or team lead, then it's gonna be doing your current job great, but it's also gonna be about your skills on giving feedback, on setting context, on hiring, on the management, the cross functional, all those things are gonna come into play as well. So it's a little bit of what you can do in your achievements and your abilities. It's also a little bit of luck because the needs of the organization come into play here too. So we don't need two CEOs. So if you wanna be CEO of GitLab, there's gotta be a CEO vacancy there, right? So there's a little bit of luck in play too, which is more difficult to handle because you wanna think if I do everything right, then it'll come and it may, but it may not come at the exact timing you were hoping for, depending on what the needs of the organization are. So, but there's a lot of details on how we handle that here at GitLab in that link. And, but anyway, if you wanna be CEO, you gotta apply to the board. And if the board hires you, I cannot block you from being hired. That's the point. That is true. That is true. Go for it. Come on. So. Thanks. Yeah, promotions, internal promotions are a great thing. And so are internal transfers. I just wanna make sure we do it in the right way. I'm not seeing, I'm still not seeing that question, come on. But thank you very much for raising it for my attention. Oh, there it is, found it. Okay. We already write down a lot of questions we get from candidates during the hiring process to help with making those videos that Dmitri suggested. Okay, excellent. You can feed us with some content. That's excellent. Okay, more support for the AMAs. Oh, okay, so Abby asked, can you apply for the transfer even if there's no headcount for that team? And she starts that with, I'm asking a question without reading the handbook, sorry in advance, please do not be sorry. None of us can know and memorize everything in the handbook. I don't want anyone ever feeling uncomfortable for asking a question that's in there. I know sometimes when I say something like it's in that link that is not said to make you feel like you shouldn't have asked it. It's just said to help you get more information in context because my answer might not be as inclusive as that link is. But please, please, please ask questions. Don't worry about that. Transfer, yes, you can technically not apply for transfer if the headcount's not there because the vacancy won't be there to apply to. So the transfer process includes you going through the applying to the role, interviewing for the role, for the vacancy. And if it's not there, then you won't have that. However, I would say there is no problem at all with being interested in a team, going out there and having an informational discussion with that manager of that team or some of those team members saying, hey, what it's like on this team? What it's like to work here? Might you have openings going forward? You can absolutely have those informational and exploratory discussions and shouldn't be afraid to do that. Excellent question. Great questions this today, everybody. Anything else that I think, oh, I have one next. Okay, go ahead and then I'll do the question from Jacob. So one of the things I thought about with this job titles thing is one of the fun things that we did at Google was you were allowed to set a working title. So we had a bunch of boring job level titles, but it was also possible to set a custom title based on your personality. So I kind of feel like we have the boring solution and the quirkiness as both options. Yeah, official, I think it was called working title is you could still use it externally. So you could still make it visibly external, but you still had an official people ops title. Yeah, I think that isn't uncommon when you have your titling that you have in your company for levels and for everyone understanding and then you have people who wanna put open source guru or something different on their business project or LinkedIn profile. I don't think we have anything official on that at GitLab yet. So Sid, you can speak up to you, but I personally, I don't mind some creativity there, but go ahead, Sid. I do mind creativity. You have one title, that's it. Organizations like Google are super hard to navigate externally and tripping people up by unofficial titles is one of the ways. It's the same thing why we don't have names for our releases. It's not called a funny badger or like those Ubuntu names because you end up with two titles for every release. I got a Google twice to find something. So you have one title. However, we're not using the expertise is enough. So you can add expertise is all you like and people are not doing that enough. So I really encourage people to add more expertise and if you wanna have an expertise of open source, source, I'm not your guru, but expert, that is totally fine. So be a bit more generous with the expertise is on the team page. Feel free to add them yourself. Feel free to have your manager merge them. And what we want with the expertise is to be able to be the answer questions like, I have an, I don't know, a problem with LDAP. Who's an expert? I have a problem with internal transfers. Who's an expert? I have a problem. Well, you can think of all the categories with open source licensing, who's an expert? So feel free to add those liberally. But we have one title. The idea of titles is like organizations are hard to navigate both externally and internally. So that's why we have an org chart on our team structure page and we're not gonna confuse that by having multiple titles. So different opinions on that one. So we can, I think that what Seth said makes sense. I also think that the exact levels of titles don't always make sense. So I think that the two, the three, the staff, the, those levels and things that we can, we can debate on that some more. And then going back up to Jacob, could a transfer ever be temporarily rejected because the original team can't afford to lose you or similar? I'm gonna say no, but I think that that's what the transition plan has to help solve. I think ideally just try to have short transition plans. It's very difficult for a teammate to be kind of straddling two teams and trying to divide their work up. It can get very challenging for them. So as quickly as possible, you should have a clean transition. That doesn't mean that day one will be the transfer day. There needs to be thinking about the best interests of the company and the business and what we've got committed and work that might need to get finished. All those things are where we need to use excellent judgment on determining that transition and that timing. But I don't consider that a temporary block. I consider that a transition. Thanks a lot. So Mont Asif is a way to incentivize more experts. There might be, you guys tell me, do you think you need to be incentivized to put that up on there? To put where your pieces are on? I mean, I feel like the incentive should be that people will recognize what you're an expert in and you'll be able to have more clarification on those things that you should be reached out for and that you can help with and that you can find it's a fortuitous cycle. If you're looking for an expertise, you can find it as well. Is there more incentive we need? Maybe managers could reach out to each individual and maybe bring that conversation during the review time, performance review to have another loop to remind ourselves to add to that page because I know a lot of people may forget that it's there. Okay, that's a good idea. I think it might be interesting during a functional group update to have the presenter of FGU present out their team and like introduce team members and their expertise to the rest of the company. I would certainly be interested in hearing about that for other groups and that might incentivize people to get their expertise up to date. I like it. You guys have some really fun ideas. We'll have to figure out which ones to experiment with first. Best goal ever, but we're out of time. Okay, thank you everyone. Thanks for the questions.