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Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

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Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#71
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But in this case, it's highly relevant. She's not being hired _despite_ political activity that's irrelevant to the project, she's being hired _because_ of it. That makes the hiring itself an endorsement of the behaviour.

Please stop. This is already way off topic, and making it about a specific person takes it into vendetta territory, which is far from the kind of discussion we want here.

Sure; I disagree, but it's both rude and pointless arguing topicality with a mod :)

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His writeup: https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people We cannot know for sure whether it has anything to do with his firing (and he doesn't mention it in the writeup), but Julie Ann Horvath did accuse Zach of harassing her at GitHub.

I think the new outrage culture is toxic. It's a really tight knit subculture with its own rules and a vicious ingroup/outgroup attitude. Like goths or old school hippies, they have a distinct way of dressing and signalling to each other that they belong: purple or pink hair, Twitter profiles that specify "he/him" or "she/her" even when it's obvious, using words like "mansplaining", etc -- Outrage culture is a kind o…

> I think the new outrage culture is toxic.

Agreed.

> Outrage culture is a kind of conspiracy theory: people who are into it see oppression and harassment everywhere, and cast themselves as victims.

Definitely.

> Zach Holman is also a white male. I don't want to speculate on exactly what went down, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that he was railroaded out of the company...

Oh. It's almost like you forgot the last few paragraphs you wrote when you got to this point. Talk about conspiracy theory...

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#73
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His writeup: https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people We cannot know for sure whether it has anything to do with his firing (and he doesn't mention it in the writeup), but Julie Ann Horvath did accuse Zach of harassing her at GitHub.

I think the new outrage culture is toxic. It's a really tight knit subculture with its own rules and a vicious ingroup/outgroup attitude. Like goths or old school hippies, they have a distinct way of dressing and signalling to each other that they belong: purple or pink hair, Twitter profiles that specify "he/him" or "she/her" even when it's obvious, using words like "mansplaining", etc -- Outrage culture is a kind o…

Not only does this have nothing to do with what I said, but it's also ridiculous even if it had any bearing on what I said. If Julie actually won, Github would have agreed she was sexually harassed. They did not do so, and she was not happy with how everything turned out. And let's not forget that the CEO is still a white male.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#74
post #2

Also see the tweet before that https://twitter.com/holman/status/734842310609899520 "We’re still so far off from even scratching the surface of open, collaborative development tools. We need to speed up, not slow down." I totally agree with that vision and I'm very glad to have Zach join. He is an amazing advocate for developers and I feel honored that he joined us. More information about Zach Holman https://zachholm…

First of all, it's very exciting to hear that Zach will be joining GitLab as an advisor, especially given his background at GitHub being one of the first few engineers hired there.

Given that GitLab and GitHub have similarities in terms of the technologies used(RoR, git, fileservers, cache systems for git metadata), Zach could bring a lot to the table on the technical side. Could sytse or holman clarify if Zach will also get invloved with the engineering department as well?

I really enjoy the blog posts on GitLab, but some posts tend to be light on technical details such as this[1]. Regarding the mentioned post, it would be great if you can provide more details about the exact server specifications, the amount of traffic you recieve, the size and variety of the hosted repos, basically more of the numbers. One of the things that interests me is how GitLab scales and I hope you continue posting updates about the work you do to scale GitLab.

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/2016/04/29/look-into-gitlab-infrast...

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#75
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>demand either an 83b What you actually need to ask for in this case is RSUs (vs options). The 83b election is something you independently file with the IRS. (you may need a letter from the company for proof, but they'll have drafts of those already that they've used for the founders -- speaking from experience as the person who set this up for our company) However, RSUs only make sense in the seed stage. Past A roun…

Can you explain why RSUs are better than ISOs that convert to NSOs on departure?

long term capital gains.

"Which one is better" depends on many factors including stage of company, risk tolerance of individual, legal precedence, marginal tax rates, outside wealth, etc.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#76
post #2

Also see the tweet before that https://twitter.com/holman/status/734842310609899520 "We’re still so far off from even scratching the surface of open, collaborative development tools. We need to speed up, not slow down." I totally agree with that vision and I'm very glad to have Zach join. He is an amazing advocate for developers and I feel honored that he joined us. More information about Zach Holman https://zachholm…

First of all, it's very exciting to hear that Zach will be joining GitLab as an advisor, especially given his background at GitHub being one of the first few engineers hired there. Given that GitLab and GitHub have similarities in terms of the technologies used(RoR, git, fileservers, cache systems for git metadata), Zach could bring a lot to the table on the technical side. Could sytse or holman clarify if Zach will…

> I really enjoy the blog posts on GitLab, but some posts tend to be light on technical details such as this[1]. Regarding the mentioned post, it would be great if you can provide more details about the exact server specifications, the amount of traffic you receive, the size and variety of the hosted repos, basically more of the numbers. One of the things that interests me is how GitLab scales and I hope you continue posting updates about the work you do to scale GitLab.

Numbers: About 1MM projects, >.5MM users. Repos range from smallest to 45GB (although we have a limit of 10GB). I have no quick data on languages, but I'm sure we'll blog about it some time.

Specs: Runs on Azure. Last I remember in total we have >100 servers, maybe half of which run GitLab.com. I've asked my colleagues for further detail and will update here.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#77
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why RSUs are better than ISOs that convert to NSOs on departure?

long term capital gains. "Which one is better" depends on many factors including stage of company, risk tolerance of individual, legal precedence, marginal tax rates, outside wealth, etc.

The benefit of iso->nso flips is, afaik, it's way cheaper than rsus for the employer and it gives the employee the ability to wait until you're in the money before exercising

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#78
post #72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the new outrage culture is toxic. It's a really tight knit subculture with its own rules and a vicious ingroup/outgroup attitude. Like goths or old school hippies, they have a distinct way of dressing and signalling to each other that they belong: purple or pink hair, Twitter profiles that specify "he/him" or "she/her" even when it's obvious, using words like "mansplaining", etc -- Outrage culture is a kind o…

> I think the new outrage culture is toxic. Agreed. > Outrage culture is a kind of conspiracy theory: people who are into it see oppression and harassment everywhere, and cast themselves as victims. Definitely. > Zach Holman is also a white male. I don't want to speculate on exactly what went down, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that he was railroaded out of the company... Oh. It's almost like you f…

No, that's different.

Julie Hovarth and Zach were partners at one point. Later they broke up, and after the big story of her exit from Github, she told journalists that Zach:

> "was complicit in the actions of both Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner and even admitted to plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women at the company fired. He should be let go from GitHub and I regret being kind to him in previous interviews."

Source: http://www.dailydot.com/business/julie-ann-horvath-names-git...

This strikes me as unprofessional and dishonest.

Combine that with the statements by the new Github executives who came in after Tom Preston-Warner's departure, especially this rather unbelievable tweet: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008...

Ironically, the new leadership has created an environment of bullying and bigotry. They are fighting what they see as intolerance with intolerance of their own.

You're right that I shouldn't have speculated about specifics.

But I think we can both agree that when someone's being accused of vague transgressions by people this patently biased, fired, and not allowed to talk about why, we should treat that with healthy skepticism.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#79
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

long term capital gains. "Which one is better" depends on many factors including stage of company, risk tolerance of individual, legal precedence, marginal tax rates, outside wealth, etc.

The benefit of iso->nso flips is, afaik, it's way cheaper than rsus for the employer and it gives the employee the ability to wait until you're in the money before exercising

Yes it is definitely a tradeoff for the employee. For the employer, the cost of issuing RSUs I believe is tied with the fact that there would be no chance that the employee let go of their shares via not exercising their options (I do not believe RSUs are subject to employment tax).

But if you have 10 year exercise periods, that accomplishes the same thing for the employer's perspective. The difference them becomes the tradeoff for the employee between optionality and a possibly lower tax rate.

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