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GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

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351–360 of 594 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

(the research I read about was way stronger than just statistically significant, or something like it. I would be pretty shocked if it failed to be replicated. It's a very strong effect.)

The phrasing you say you actually use isn't an anchor. But you can still try different ways of phrasing it!

Extremely subtle differences in phrasing can have huge effects on people's reactions. If people are not reacting reasonably, try a slightly different phrasing, as well as different offers :)

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

#352
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.

Bitbucket is in a weird position, in that Atlassian can't make the best Git hosting solution. It's not that they can't technically, it's just that they have complimentary products that cripples how good you can make code reviewing (crucible), issue tracking (jira), analytics (fisheye), wiki (confluence), and so on.

GitHub and GitLab are not bound by the same constraints, and can focus on creating the best end to end Git hosting product. While Atlassian has to be careful about cannibalizing other product lines.

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

#353
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.

GitHub is a $100M ARR revenue company that is probably (2 VC rounds where they had a lot of leverage) still controlled by the founders. They are in a healthy state right now, regardless of the high burn compared to most VC-backed companies. They certainly made a lot of mistakes, had changes in the leadership team and are successful despite that not because of it, but I don't see them dying anytime soon. $60M burn ove…

"I'm more surprised why Bloomberg makes such a big deal out of it."

this is a pretty bad hit piece from Bloomberg, they should be ashamed

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

#354
post #60

Earlier 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.

Except that value is non-existent at the enterprise level. Substandard at most everything it does. It's the most expensive code viewing tool there is. They really need to turn their Enterprise offering around, because I don't see any value in it other than saying "we pay for GitHub enterprise."

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a rigorous analysis anywhere backing the assertion that GitHub's failures are due to '"inclusive" practices'?

Do YOU have any rigorous analysis that "inclusive" practices like insulting white people by saying "white middle managers can't have empathy" in internal company presentations increases profitability and success at a company?

This account has been using HN primarily for political arguments. That's an abuse of this site, so please don't do that.

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

#356
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With their latest revamp? No way. UX-wise it's very similar to GitHub. You're probably talking of experiences in an older iteration or it's just users that were used to GitHub and didn't feel like learning something that looks slightly different.

We're using the latest build at work. I have really like Gitlab's merge request system. Their experience is pretty straight forward and they fixed a lot of the scalability issues with the built-in wiki.

The opening/home page of Github is still better though. What really got people into Gitlab was the self hosting. Github has depended on selling their enterprise version. I was at a talk where Wanstrath said something to the effects of their expensive enterprise version that only people with money to spend need. .. (Years after I left my job at a state university ... they bought a license. -_- I hated how they paid for a lot of stuff they didn't need).

Even though Gitlab may lack in some UI elements, it's more than good enough and it doesn't hinder work. I'm at a shop that still uses the community edition too.

Gitlab and Bitbucket really cut into Github's model. There are more clones out there now too. If you really want a self-hosted Github like UI, there's Gogs too.

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

#357
post #231
post #60

Earlier 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.

Gitlab is slower then Github

Keep in mind that the whole point of Gitlab/gogs is to self-host it.

In my experience, both are lightning fast compared to GitHub over the internet.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The political issues inside the company are a lot more troubling than anything involving the product, I agree.

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

#359
post #352
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.

Bitbucket is in a weird position, in that Atlassian can't make the best Git hosting solution. It's not that they can't technically, it's just that they have complimentary products that cripples how good you can make code reviewing (crucible), issue tracking (jira), analytics (fisheye), wiki (confluence), and so on. GitHub and GitLab are not bound by the same constraints, and can focus on creating the best end to end…

We're a big Atlassian shop, and switched from Crucible to Bitbucket Server (then Stash). I do not get the sense that Crucible is the future as far as Atlassian is concerned - I believe they see Bitbucket Server as what they are going to focus on.

FWIW, with the latest releases, they've addressed most of the remaining features that were missing from Crucible, and I'm very happy now with the PR/code review flow in Bitbucket Server.

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

#360
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping other companies from using your GPL software in their proprietary stuff without telling anyone? Not every company out there is a startup who needs to be sparkling clean to pass due diligence for the next round, acquisition or IPO. A lot of companies out there are perfectly fine with a little bit of cheating here and there — I would actually say that most of them are. Especially when you remember about…

It gives you a future market share via so many people using your software for free. They won't pay if it weren't free anyway, but would use a competing piece of software. That is, without the free (as in freedom) version, few would even consider paying for a commercial license. Did you ever think why Microsoft is so lazy about enforcing the end-user Windows licenses on non-business customers? Maybe they want kids get…

Which is all fine and good when you have VC funding and can run at a loss for years, or are growing at a rate where you don't care about a few cheats using your product. But, for all those bootstrapped business' your argument falls flat.
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