Scaling GitHub's Employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#11

Post by eignerchris_ » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 8:03 PM UTC

holman wrote: post #8

eignerchris_ wrote: post #7

Don't get me wrong, I love GitHub and I love the processes they are using - I wish we did more of it at my current employer. But all of this back-patting feels a bit premature. They've really only scaled a single order of magnitude. Growing from 4 developers to 40 developers is excellent, but hardly "scaling" at all. Would the same flow work at Amazon, Netflix, or Apple?

I'd argue that how you go from 4 to 40 developers is much more important than how you go from 100 to 200 developers. What's more, I find this area fascinating to discuss since many users in our Hacker News community tends to be in the 1-10 developer area. How you can grow past that initial team is really important. I do actually mention at the end of the post that this likely doesn't scale up to hundreds and employee…

Ya I agree; 4 to 40 is more interesting than 100 to 200.

I was the fifth employee at my current employer, been through two acquisitions, now sitting at 220+ (not all developers). Scaling has been a difficult but rewarding and fun problem to tackle.

And damn, somehow I missed the last paragraph where you covered your ass ;) Thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#12

Post by alnayyir » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 8:06 PM UTC

These sorts of posts make me want to work at GitHub, which might very well be the objective. Taking a shot at a position there might even be worth learning Rails. (I have a primarily Python oriented background.)

Are there any other companies that have a culture/process like this?

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#13

Post by alnayyir » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 8:09 PM UTC

rguzman wrote: post #10

these series of posts about how they do stuff is great, i love it. however, dreaming up the end result is a lot easier than figuring out what seeds to plant when you are a team of 1 or 2. after reading these i'm always left with the question "great, but what should i be doing now to be able to have this kind of process later?" maybe the answer is in the article: figure out your core values and start applying them at…

Guz! I worked on HN Office Hours with you! How are you doing?

I think the actionable takeaway here is eliminating all friction that prevents an individual pushing the product forward. For GH, this meant automating everything possible, and providing accessible visibility into their data. How Hubot contributes to speeding up the onboarding of new engineers is worth thinking about too.

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#14

Post by masklinn » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 8:14 PM UTC

The more they explain, the more Github's organisation sounds like valve: very flat hierarchy, loose interest-based teams and ease of moving between them, etc...

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#15

Post by apsurd » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 9:14 PM UTC

I've never heard of Graphite. Is this it? http://graphite.wikidot.com/start

If so, can anyone care to explain how it would be used to "graph application exceptions" as per this post? thanks!

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#16

Post by DanielRibeiro » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 9:40 PM UTC

some days our CEO ships more code than the rest of us do

Now that is impressive for a 40-people startup.

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#17

Post by jrockway » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 9:43 PM UTC

DanielRibeiro wrote: post #16

some days our CEO ships more code than the rest of us do Now that is impressive for a 40-people startup.

They picked the right userbase. They don't have to put on suits and suck up to random douchebags with a lot of money. They just need to convince other programmers like them to shell out $7 a month. (Although I'm sure they make some money on FI, too :)

That leaves plenty of time for programming.

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#18

Post by yuvadam » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

apsurd wrote: post #15

I've never heard of Graphite. Is this it? http://graphite.wikidot.com/start If so, can anyone care to explain how it would be used to "graph application exceptions" as per this post? thanks!

Sure [1]

[1] - http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-meas...

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#19

Post by cirotix » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 10:05 PM UTC

alnayyir wrote: post #12

These sorts of posts make me want to work at GitHub, which might very well be the objective. Taking a shot at a position there might even be worth learning Rails. (I have a primarily Python oriented background.) Are there any other companies that have a culture/process like this?

I would say Tripadvisor. Check the culture paragraph here http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/6/27/tripadvisor-archit...

Re: Scaling GitHub's Employees

#20

Post by olliesaunders » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

eignerchris_ wrote: post #7

Don't get me wrong, I love GitHub and I love the processes they are using - I wish we did more of it at my current employer. But all of this back-patting feels a bit premature. They've really only scaled a single order of magnitude. Growing from 4 developers to 40 developers is excellent, but hardly "scaling" at all. Would the same flow work at Amazon, Netflix, or Apple?

Is scaling an order of magnitude really such a non-achievement? I mean, have you done that? Most of us would be delighted with that kind of growth. Besides, if they’re smart enough to get all this right so far, they’re probably smart enough to modify their policies when they stop working so well—sorry, if they stop working so well.