What does this look like, quora? 8=============D~~~
No, that looks like an ascii dong.
Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
21–30 of 144 posts
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#22What does this look like, quora? 8=============D~~~
Quora doesn't make it easy to compile a bunch of questions and answers in one place. This is a much better forum for these discussions.
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#23We're currently using Redmine to keep track of tickets, but it's a bit of a pain having to manage it separately from our code in GH. Are you guys planning on overhauling your issues system to be as slick as everything else you offer?
I can neither confirm nor deny that we're working on kickass improvements to GitHub Issues.
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#24Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#25When are new Github tshirts coming? What are your thoughts on the BitBucket/Atlassian deal? Are there any new features coming soon that you can give us a sneak peek at? I'd personally like to see some kind of "looking for contributors" interface (similiar to OpenHatch), maybe even with recommended projects based on my repos or the repos I have watched in the past.
The new shipment of Fork You shirts will arrive at our office today. We will get the inventory online right away!
The BitBucket/Atlassian deal is interesting. Especially the price points they think they need to establish in order to make their offering attractive. I really don't think about it too much, I'm too busy making GitHub the best place to collaborate on code!
We don't talk about planned features. We find that if you talk about what you're GOING to do, then people will just be angry that it's not finished yet. If you wait until you're done, then people will go crazy over the shiny new feature. Apple knows how this works. Judge for yourself which approach you think works better. =)
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#26Is there any concern at all about alcoholism at Github given the success of your drinkups? For instance, does the health plan now cover rehab and alcohol induced cirrhosis?
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#27Can you share details about some critical decisions you made that led to the success of Github?
Making the user the namespace for code instead of the project.
Growing slowly and embracing the constraints of a limited budget in the early days.
Hiring only the absolute best people that we could find. Hiring people that we knew through their code. Making sure they were good cultural fits.
Not getting an office until two years after we started GitHub. Campfire was our office in the meantime and that let us put what money we did have into hiring the best people.
Always thinking for ourselves.
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#28Why did you choose git instead of hg, bzr, fossil, etc?
Also, what do you see as the future of git? Where is git going?
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#29Hi Tom - I saw your talk (streamed) from Startup School, loved it, and also read Drive over the weekend. I'm currently strongly considering bootstrappping my new company (healthmonth.com) similarly to how you've done. Are you willing to share a bit more detail about the timeline of the first year when you went from 2 people to ? people... when you hired, how much you spent on salaries versus how much you were making…
It took three months to go from inception to private beta. We used an invite only system to introduce artificial scarcity and drive buzz on Twitter (each new signup got five invites to use). After six months we launched to the public and started charging for private repos. Because we had such a great beta period, we converted a large number of users that day and were making money immediately! For the next several mon…
Link to GitHub FI for anyone else who was unfamiliar with it: http://fi.github.com/
Re: Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
#30Any comments on how you (either personally or GitHub as a whole) manages the work/life balance issues? Any pointers for dealing with cases when the people you work with turn out not to be "reasonable"? (I ask because I tend to find that soft-skill management issues are where I'm lacking in expertise)
Not having a set work schedule allows us to work when we're most effective, leaving more time available for taking care of personal affairs. If you want to take Wednesday off because your Mom's in town, then that's what you do. We all work hard enough and smart enough that I don't worry at all about our people getting their work done. We love what we do, and that's what makes it all work out.
So far we haven't hired anyone that has been "unreasonable." I hope that we never do. In past jobs, I have had to deal with unreasonable people. That is one reason I was drawn to being an entrepreneur. So I wouldn't have to do that anymore.