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GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

bloomberg.com

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

#331

Post by monkmartinez »

moritzplassnig wrote: post #286
justinclift wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more surprised why Bloomberg makes such a big deal out of it. They're probably sounding alarmist to try maximising attention. :/

Could be or they probably don't know the details of GitHub's business, product, etc. If you aren't an engineer, writing for Bloomberg and getting the financials of a hyped startup like GitHub, that article is the outcome in most of the cases. Imagine them writing about Docker - I doubt it would be different. Which is a bummer. I wish there would be somebody more closely analyzing the industry. There's so much going o…

> If you aren't an engineer, writing for Bloomberg and getting the financials of a hyped startup like GitHub, that article is the outcome in most of the cases. Imagine them writing about Docker - I doubt it would be different.

And it shouldn't be different. If the financials are not well, then the financials are not well. Docker, like github, DOES NOT have their future "locked up" 100%. There are a lot of reasons why both could ultimately fail and burning piles of cash seems pretty darn relevant despite the echo chamber that is Silicon Valley.

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

#332

Post by flukus »

gizmo wrote: post #190
dsacco wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the idea that venture capitalists alter ("distort" is a loaded term) the market in their favor. That's part of the natural process of systems commoditizing their complements. But I really think that you characterize this in an uncharitable way with your example, which I have difficulty believing as it was stated. If your lead really understood that they would "immediately earn a 5x return with no risk",…

Perhaps you live in a world different from mine, but what you describe as "cartoonishly foolish" behavior I consider completely standard. Customers refuse to spend 5000 to make 20.000 all the time, or they're willing to waste weeks finding a different vendor that can offer the same for 3000. Others are willing to walk away from a great deal unless they get a discount, but are content with a tiny discount. Because a d…

A bit of business advice my sister got for her hair salon recently was to double the prices overnight. They were skeptical but were out of options so they gave it a go. Now they have less customers but they can give they ones they do have more attention and a better experience and the ones they lost were the troublesome customers anyway, so now they make more money from less customers.

It was an interesting example of how it's best to not try and please everyone.

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

#333

Post by taspeotis »

Shorel wrote: post #317

Everyone is comparing GitHub with GitLab in the comments, but they are ignoring the other competitor. I think Atlassian is the company that makes the most out of the git marketplace, even if they have fewer customers. They are simply more efficient, and are ready to take over with Bitbucket if GitHub fails. Also, many companies pay for Jira+Confluence even if they use GitHub.

If you're looking for a dark horse, look at Microsoft's offering [1]. Those are some deep pockets that aren't going to run out.

[1] https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/

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

#334

Post by dsacco »

tlogan wrote: post #230
yesimahuman wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well my company is paying GitHub a lot of money right now so I'm not sure this really applies to customers that are real businesses.

It is funny that mention this: "paying GitHub a lot of money right now". Believe me: you are not paying as much as you should. Ask some people who were dev managers in 1990s how much was a single ClearCase license... The software is so cheap now...

"Should" is an odd word to use. You're comparing two completely different markets. The only commonality between the two is software sales, otherwise the landscape, incumbents and products have changed significantly.

Beyond that, there is no "should." You price the product at what the market will bear.

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

#335

Post by joeax »

noobermin wrote: post #110
joeax wrote: post #54

The 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?

> Are you being sarcastic

Definitely not, I work remote. I feel I am more productive as remote employee, probably about 10-20% more. I read somewhere that for every 10 miles you commute daily, it costs you $10,000/year in gas/vehicle wear-and-tear/health and psychological side effects, etc, not to mention the lost hours sitting in traffic.

Would you rather have your employees sitting in traffic, or working on critical projects?

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

#336

Post by vacri »

dsacco wrote: post #262
ithinkinstereo wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most customers don't like, or don't know how, to negotiate (yes even B2B customers where you would think this is the norm). So if the initial price is too high, they won't even bother to talk to you. The conversation literally dies.

Alternatively, they know how to negotiate, or don't mind it, but given the bigger picture it's not worth their time to go back and forth through the intro emails -> demo conference call -> pricing negotiation loop with every company that has high prices, and they are faced with an information asymmetry as to which ones are worth it.

Oh, yes. When exploring a new domain, the "call us for pricing" people get put at the end of the line. We're not an enterprise, and we're not going to waste our time with sales small-talk before we've even seen what the product can do.

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

#337

Post by dangoor »

epriest wrote: post #266
dangoor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New features doesn't generally scale linearly with employee count (due to required communication paths, etc.) That said, I actually do think there's been an uptick in useful new features from GitHub this year. We use Phabricator at Khan Academy, and many aspects of Phab that were superior last year when I joined KA are now in line with GitHub's offering.

We've been working hard to remove features, introduce bugs, and decrease quality throughout the year.

Phabricator definitely has a superior sense of humor. (If anyone reading this hasn't checked out their website, I highly recommend it)

I was, of course, not trying to say that Phab was regressing but rather that GitHub had picked up the pace. There have absolutely been good improvements to Phab this year too!

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

#338

Post by tominous »

logicallee wrote: post #322
tominous wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good advice, but I don't think getting paid to produce a specific result is anchoring to "free". I guess it depends on how precise the scope is. If it sounds vague and up to the client's discretion, that they just want free work on spec, then run away. But if it's easy to define and measure, then it's a useful way to signal competence and avoid anchoring to a rate instead of the business need. Anyway, I'm happ…

Anchoring is a different effect than you might have thought. In breakthrough research, it was shown that when people were asked to write down completely random numbers (such as the last four digits of their social security number), before taking a guess at the value of a home (say; might have been something else), it had an absurdly strong effect on the value of their guesses. (People with coincidentally high last-fo…

FWIW the phrasing I use with clients is "fixed-price for successful completion of the following objectives" so it's a bit of a moot point.

I do think you're overstating the research though. Many studies of unconscious priming haven't been replicated, and psychology as a whole is very subject to publication bias. [1]

Anchoring is a real effect, and I'm a fan of Kahneman (especially prospect theory), but the evidence about "incidental" influences is very weak.

[1] http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...

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

#339

Post by joeax »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #119
noobermin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

joeax means managing / coordinating remote workers is often harder than on-site workers because of different time zones and conference software problems.

That is true there is a cost to managing remote workers. But after 1 or 2 workers the cost diminishes as there are established practices in place to ensure productivity: Slack, Skype or appear.in, join.me, Google Hangouts.

For more tips on managing remote workers, check out remotive.io (disclaimer: I am not affiliated with them at all)

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

#340

Post by alistproducer2 »

The subtext to this (at least why this made it to the front page) is "github is lighting money on fire, can't last forever, but github is infrastructure-status now what if it disappears?"

I think this anxiety is why there's a lot of work being done in the decentralized space right now. The UX-side of "web 3.0" is sorely lacking but I think it's only a matter of time before people begin to crack it.

I'd love to see some research into what it would take (in terms of network size) to provide robust, decentralized replacements for service-as-infrastructure products like Github.

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