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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

#551

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> Half the team is remote! Kudos to them for making this work. FWIW, I believe they're retrenching heavily on this. I remember reading articles about how they're trying to centralize management, and if you look at their jobs page ( https://github.com/about/jobs#positions ) most of their eng positions are SF only, at least the three or so I looked at. Only their support positions seem to be remote.

They still had remote positions the last time I looked but they were more client facing roles. Sales and tech consultants.

From looking more closely at the job descriptions, it seems most of them are tied to a geographic location, as opposed to previously, where remote was always an option. Seems like now remote has to be offered explicitly for your position.

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

#552

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UI. For UI, I would take github over gitlab any day.

Are there specific UI improvements we can make to improve your experience of GitLab? Thanks for the feedback!

You have to remove the fixed header in my opinion. It consumes 100px and I really see no reason for having it fixed.

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

#553
post #362

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$0. I would consider paying ~$30/mo for GitLab though, because it's free (as in freedom) software.

Agree, I would not mind paying for Gitlab private repos some sum of money (probably not 30/mo tho). Gitlab is superior in every possible way than Github except for it's speed.

I hear you. GitLab self hosted is fast but GitLab.com is too slow. From Monday we're having a daily 50 minute call to coordinate our efforts around https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly We'll try to reduce IOPS and make GitLab.com fast.

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a GitLab Community Advocate, so I'm biased, but off the top of my head: - Performance, we're working on improving this for GitLab.com but right now it's slower than we'd like. If you run your own instance it'll be fine as long as you meet the recommended specs, GitLab.com struggles because we have so many users by comparison. - Following users/social network-y things, we haven't really focused on this and don't h…

I love Gitlab but your main priorities right now should be: - Performance - Performance - Performance

You are right. Our focus right now is fixing the performance of GitLab.com. From Monday we're having a daily call to work on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly to reduce the number of IOPS that operations require.

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

#555
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.

Or is it - to me Github is just another example of the developer tools market cycle. Reminds me a bit of the image hosting market - image hosting company is created and gains momentum, then has to monetize, so they add advertising and people start to drift away when someone else then creates the next image hosting site. In the developer space, it seems pretty much the same. SourceForge was good/cool until it wasn't,…

> Developers have, as far as I can tell, almost zero brand loyalty

I feel like part of this stems from the fact that every service now wants to charge a monthly fee instead of offering a one time purchase.

If you want me to pay $X/mo, that fee has to correlate to the value you are providing me each month. The minute that equation changes, people start to consider other options.

One of the benefits to SaaS is that you can make more money and your revenue is more predictable, but on the other hand it means your market is more susceptible to competition because companies are comparing their options more frequently.

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

#556
post #521

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Oh, for sure, but I think it has an influence on our behaviour in the "real" world, and not a positive one. It's anecdotal, but several personal friends are friends with each other no longer in the wake of the Brexit vote. Actions in the virtual world have consequences in the physical world. (And, sorry, my wry sense of humour doesn't necessarily work in plain text and I should make more effort to remember that. To m…

The Brexit vote isn't "the virtual world" though, so I'm a bit confused here.

See my original post above this where I specifically cite online debate, including about the Brexit vote. I perhaps could have been clearer in my second post, but that was a direct response to somebody who'd responded to my first post.

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

#557
post #493

"GitHub quickly became essential to the code-writing process at technology companies of all sizes and gave birth to a new generation of programmers by hosting their open-source code for free." How much would you be willing to pay to store your open-source code at github?

Github Open source Hosting should be supported by donation model like Wikipedia. Where people and organisations who host code can donate in the foundation. This will remove major threat from it's existence. I would surely donate.

"Github Open source Hosting should be supported by donation model like Wikipedia."

That's why I asked the Q. Seems strange that large FOSS projects are hosted but no effort by github made to get some return.

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

#558
post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Brexit vote isn't "the virtual world" though, so I'm a bit confused here.

But the angry angry facebook comment slapfights are in the virtual world and are doubtless partly to blame for a lot of sundered acquaintances. I can think of a few comments by family members (aunts/uncles etc especially) on rants by 20 somethings on facebook about how the idiot olds were screwing us all over - being quite hurt by the positions taken in the rants. Some of this is to do with the weirdness that is face…

^^^This. Thank-you!

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

#559
post #466

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Whoa. I didn't know about that either. I'm not going to comment on the content or arguments because, pretty much whatever one says, is going to result in a flamewar. What I do find unsettling is the fallout, including GitHub's behaviour. I like GitHub as a product, and I use it all the time, but it seems at least moderately prudent to migrate repositories to Gitlab (or somewhere else) and keep them up to date, if onl…

> Old chestnut about all eggs in one basket, etc. The other old chestnut is "first they came for the..."

Yeah, and in cases like this, well, that could go either way.

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

#560
post #511
post #496

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> "Minorities" is a diverse group of people by itself. So would be "everyone except Asians" but that would be considered racist. But "everyone except white people" is clearly not racist because you can't be prejudiced against someone who happens to be white. /s > here are thousands of companies out there where people of color and women face harsh discrimination, so counterbalancing that with companies that favor them…

Yes, "no Asians" as a hiring policy is absolutely racist. It is of course possible to be prejudiced against white people (and that's bad) but on a societal level white people don't suffer from prejudice so there can be no comparison to the racism people of color face. > Why is the solution not more accountability? More policies in place to make complaints about discrimination more vocal? That also needs to be part of…

> on a societal level white people don't suffer from prejudice so there can be no comparison to the racism people of color face

You can only argue that this is true in "white" countries (I'm not even sure if I would agree that it's a country-wide thing either). In Asia, this statement is _far_ from true -- white people are very much stigmatised (especially in Japan). The world is much bigger than California.

> because societal influence is a strictly zero sum game.

Employment, especially in the tech industry, is far from a zero-sum game. There are more job openings than university graduates. "Societal influence" is such a hazy term that I'm not sure I can make any meaningful comment on it.

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