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?
Got a rigorous analysis anywhere backing the assertion that GitHub's failures are due to '"inclusive" practices'?
GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
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Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
"... who could replace them?" Im hoping it's a company run by women and minorities, just for your sake.
Lets be clear, I never implied that women and minorities can't do tech or are in any way inferior. But I'm not a fan of actively bringing bias into hiring. You're just being racist if you hire someone on the basis of them being a skin colour. I don't support racist organisations of any kind. If there is a company that happens to be funded and started by minorities and women is successful then that's fine, of course t…
Why did we work so hard to become great at our jobs to just have someone else less qualified plopped in next to us because of their skin color and gender? How is that fair? Trust me there is a silent resentment happening here.
Why can't we break down the barriers without being specifically hateful to white men? There is this assumption that it's not racism if directed towards them? How is it helpful to anyone involved?
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#113Earlier 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.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#114This is an example of how VCs distort the market for other businesses. I had a recent conversation with a prospect and they took issue with the price of our software. Our app is in a specialized industry (ie. a smaller market). We charge a per use fee of $35. This fee enables our customer to immediately earn nearly $200 (a 5x return with no risk to them). Despite the significant benefit and profitability of using the…
Not to mention open source, sponsored by big companies, universities and passionate individual contributors. E.g. try and sell a compiler, a JS framework or an IDE.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Github's UI makes sense. I can find anything in the blink of an eye and it's blazing fast. The team I'm currently working with is completely fed up with Gitlab.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'll just move the code to gitlab. Git allow us to do it almost painlessly (well, with a missing issue backlog). It's not a big deal.
99% of the value of github is the user interface, not the mere fact that it's a hosted git repository.
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#117Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#119The takeaways from the article: (1) They went on a hiring spree in 2015-16, dramatically increasing their costs before their revenue was able to keep up. Something to keep an eye on in 2017. (2) Half the team is remote! Kudos to them for making this work.
>Half the team is remote! Kudos to them for making this work. Are you being sarcastic (esp, in light of your point 1) )? Out of curiosity from someone not in the know, would remote employees cost more or less than ones made to come in every morning?
Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016
#120I 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 th…