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GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

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Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#91

Post by tekklloneer »

OliverJones wrote: post #89
drchiu wrote: post #19

I can't find the blog post, but some blog wrote a while ago why VCs invest in companies like Github. TL;DR -- basically it provides infrastructure for other startups. The business itself may not be a great business due to the amount of cost it takes to run it -- but it's necessary for the running of other ventures. Sort of like highways and non-toll bridges.

Whoa. Dumb money, those VCs, if this is true. A scrappy low-budget startup can do just fine with a medium sized vm on one of the several places renting vms, running a simple source code control system server. Blowing dozens of megabucks to build a palace in a high-rent district to replace something that's close to free seems, well, dumb.

Github is better. It just is. You don't have to worry about backups, it has great tools built on top of the vcs to make working with it and project management easier. It makes it easier to manage the D part of DVCS, and it lets you easily put your tools into the community.

I suspect they see it as a charity case, if true.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#92

Post by dotnetisnotdead »

jrubinovitz wrote: post #27
dijit wrote: post #4

Part of me is glad the "inclusive" practices of only hiring women and minorities isn't being rewarded. At the same time, GitHub really is at the centre of opensource- how can they be losing money when they are literally the defacto code hosting site? And if they go under, who could replace them?

I think it's more that hiring and coddling ~600 white men is really expensive.

Any more ignorance/racism you'd care to share with us today?

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#93

Post by munchor »

Fiahil wrote: post #77
cperciva wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the value of github is the user interface, not the mere fact that it's a hosted git repository.

I believe gitlab's UI has gotten better lastly. Nevertheless, if 99% of the value provided by github comes from their interface, should we remember how much time they needed to implement the "+1" counters on messages?

Their UI/UX is still nowhere comparable to GitHub's. GitHub is so much simpler to use that GitLab and everyone I talk to seems to have the same opinion. GitLab is still lagging far behind when it comes to user experience, it's just not easy to find stuff.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#94

Post by UweSchmidt »

Analemma_ wrote: post #52
mmastrac wrote: post #3

The thought of losing Github to the startup graveyard is kind of scary. It was bad enough to lose Google Code and when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects.

If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.

What missteps?

Supposedly competitors may be cheaper or offer more in the free tier, and I could imagine you'd call Git itself a 'misstep', but otherwise I can only think of incredible cultural and technical achievements by GitHub?

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#95

Post by douche »

s_kilk wrote: post #11
dijit wrote: post #4

Part of me is glad the "inclusive" practices of only hiring women and minorities isn't being rewarded. At the same time, GitHub really is at the centre of opensource- how can they be losing money when they are literally the defacto code hosting site? And if they go under, who could replace them?

> how can they be losing money when they are literally the defacto code hosting site? Because, to a first approximation, no-one is paying them for that hosting.

They've done enough irritating and questionable things that I've stopped paying them for my hosting and moved to other options for my paid, private repos.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#96

Post by annon »

drchiu wrote: post #19

I can't find the blog post, but some blog wrote a while ago why VCs invest in companies like Github. TL;DR -- basically it provides infrastructure for other startups. The business itself may not be a great business due to the amount of cost it takes to run it -- but it's necessary for the running of other ventures. Sort of like highways and non-toll bridges.

Except as pointed out in the article, the massive increase in spending was fairly frivolous. They spent crazy money on a new huge office, threw big parties, and sent their employees traveling everywhere. They also doubled their headcount, when I think we can all agree that they haven't had a surge in volume or features that merits that many new employees.

There's no reason that GitHub couldn't be run profitably if they weren't just out there burning VC money as quickly as possible.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#97

Post by drspacemonkey »

Fiahil wrote: post #77
cperciva wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the value of github is the user interface, not the mere fact that it's a hosted git repository.

I believe gitlab's UI has gotten better lastly. Nevertheless, if 99% of the value provided by github comes from their interface, should we remember how much time they needed to implement the "+1" counters on messages?

Agreed. Gitlab's interface is better. Especially the issue board. Throw in their fully-integrated CI platform and container registry basically makes Gitlab a winner.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#98

Post by geofft »

jessedhillon wrote: post #12
doktrin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you substantiate that ideological extrapolation of yours?

As opposed to the hiring of people based on their demonstrated ability to contribute to your team. S/he's reacting to the perception that people are being hired primarily on, or being heavily credited for, their identities. I'm not expressing an opinion on the idea, just outlining the debate for you.

> As opposed to the hiring of people based on their demonstrated ability to contribute to your team.

That is a super optimistic view of software engineering hiring. Hiring is a disaster and a crapshoot, and everyone knows it; don't pretend that processes with certain demographic qualities (any demographic qualities, honestly) are somehow rigorous. You hire based on a brief interview and some algorithmic trivia people forgot from college, or you give up on that and decide that hiring based on where someone went to school or who referred them to you is higher-quality.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#99

Post by DrJokepu »

jakub_g wrote: post #86
cperciva wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that VCs are investing because they see companies like GitHub as being public goods? That's contrary to normal investing principles, unless there's some reason to think that a VC investing will result in their portfolio companies having superior access.

The point is more or less, if VC invests (or plans to) in 20 software companies, investing additionally in something like GitHub or npm makes it more likely that the other 20 companies will succeed. They don't invest just in GitHub from the goodness of their hearts.

I know nothing about investing but I feel somewhat skeptical about these arguments. How many startups actually failed because they were using a poor package manager or source control host?

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#100

Post by gkoberger »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #94
Analemma_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.

What missteps? Supposedly competitors may be cheaper or offer more in the free tier, and I could imagine you'd call Git itself a 'misstep', but otherwise I can only think of incredible cultural and technical achievements by GitHub?

I love GitHub (product + company), however over the past few years there's been a lot of very public internal issues.

That being said, the product itself is stellar.

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