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Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

wired.com

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Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#61

Post by easton »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #36
Lio wrote: post #23

> GitHub—which was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 The makers of Sharepoint and Sourcesafe bought Github, truly the end of an era. :(

To be fair, the guys who rejected Sharepoint and Sourcesafe (for being shit) to have secret "illegal" Github Enterprise accounts (not managed by Microsoft Corp, but internally by the team) who later became upper management and executives are the ones that bought Github. Microsoft culturally changed, hard; in some ways good, in some ways bad. Fun fact, they had an internal proposal to buy Github when it was much small…

> proposal to clone Github using git instead of Sourcesafe

Maybe you're talking about something different, but this happened, didn't it? ADO supports Git alongside TFS (not Sourcesafe, but Sourcesafe has been dead forever and was pretty much dead when GitHub first started). It's very much store-brand GitHub repos, much of it is the same but there's tons of features missing and the code review tools aren't as good.

As far as I know (per publicly released blogs/docs/talks), the Windows monorepo lives inside ADO, not GitHub.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#62

Post by Apocryphon »

no_wizard wrote: post #59
Apocryphon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you somehow get your own office and not be forced to work in an open office plan

I didn’t. We had high walled cubicles though and buildings / floors were designated (IE only product and engineering worked in my area), and we had plenty of meeting rooms and micro offices for meetings that people didn’t take them at their desk either. I also had really good company paid noise canceling headphones and I’m hard of hearing, so that helped

Sounds like you were able to at least partially avoid the ubiquitous open office trend. Pre-pandemic, many in tech would’ve killed for a cubicle space of their own. It does sound like a rare good modern office space.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#64

Post by matwood »

tinyhouse wrote: post #41
matwood wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The coolest office perk we had was a ping pong table and keg. We also had a very good table tennis player come by and give us lessons every few weeks. A lot of great memories from that time, but everyone got older, married, had kids, and stopped hanging out after work. About a year before covid we went fully remote. Now, I'll never go into an office again if I can help it. But, if I was in my 20s again I'd probably h…

> But, if I was in my 20s again I'd probably have a different opinion. Or in your 60s and empty nester.

> Or in your 60s and empty nester.

Between my spouse, dogs, and hobbies, very unlikely.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#65

Post by no_wizard »

Apocryphon wrote: post #62
no_wizard wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t. We had high walled cubicles though and buildings / floors were designated (IE only product and engineering worked in my area), and we had plenty of meeting rooms and micro offices for meetings that people didn’t take them at their desk either. I also had really good company paid noise canceling headphones and I’m hard of hearing, so that helped

Sounds like you were able to at least partially avoid the ubiquitous open office trend. Pre-pandemic, many in tech would’ve killed for a cubicle space of their own. It does sound like a rare good modern office space.

Was my favorite in office experience bar none.

I had a different one with open ish plan and I would still take that today. Noise canceling headphones and good culture norms mitigate a lot for me

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#66

Post by mattlondon »

KenArrari wrote: post #3

Looking back it really is funny how impressed people used to be by dumb office perks. Free food and coffee? Sure, for the convenience. But the slides, the ball pits, the scooters? Sure it might make the office a nice place to be but once the novelty wears off it's still really hard to beat working from home.

> it's still really hard to beat working from home

Citation needed.

Personally, working from home is an absolute nightmare for me. There is an endless list of chores and things to do around the house that are a constant distraction and mind-space consumer, it is hard to disconnect at the end of the day, I am continually continually interrupted by family members (...and if I am not I am worrying if the kids are ok since why cant I hear them? Are they ok? Are they laying on the floor unconscious? etc etc), cleaners, the post man, the amazon delivery guy/gal, the list is endless. I have to keep half a brain "on-call" to listen out for and react to these interruptions.

This is even with a good sized dedicated office room. I did not even have that during covid and my entire family was in one room at a time.

At the office I can concentrate and get work done, since it is a workplace and there are no non-work distractions. Any interruptions at work are for work, so it is my job to handle them on work time.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#67

Post by ansible »

paul_f wrote: post #27
mtmail wrote: post #4

Photos (originally from user Manjuuu in a previous submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36107267 ) https://officesnapshots.com/2015/04/06/github-san-francisco-... https://www.officelovin.com/2014/05/inside-githubs-san-franc...

OMG, those barstools with the flat bottoms. Painful after 10 minutes. Who does this? I see this in co-working spaces all the time. Whoever designed them does not actually do any deep work. I just want a great chair and 3 monitors.

And the giant open-plan workspace, with no dividers or anything between all the people.

I just want a great chair and a very large 4K monitor, in a peaceful and quiet environment. If I want noise and hubbub, I can play something through my headphones.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#68

Post by bitwize »

"Okay, so like, this is my first day at GitHub. I went into work and they had blueberry açai smoothies and steel-cut oats with yogurt and fruit and that was like, super yummy. Then I stopped and listened to the live band they had playing at the hamburger bar. Then I had my first meeting and it was great..."

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#69

Post by xrd »

It feels like HN leans toward the idea that remote work is always better. I disagree, but I recognize I'm in the minority here.

But, I do want to point out that this happened:

https://www.wired.com/2014/04/tom-pw/

Correlation is not causation, etc. BUT, to me it feels like this kind of thing would not have happened if there had been more consistent in office time.

(ducks from the tidal wave of downvotes...)

Sure, I imagine that many will say: if people were not in the office, there are not opportunities for sexual harassment! But, I would say, interacting with people face to face leads to better communication and connection. And, in doing so, reduces the likelihood of interactions that are interpreted as sexual harassment, and reduces the likelihood that people will interact with others in a purely sexual way because they have limited exposure to them in person.

Re: Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture

#70

Post by bombolo »

lordswork wrote: post #60
tootie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a furniture store that did modern home and office furniture and decor. That was the nicest I'd ever seen. Horrible place to work though.

My back hurts just looking at most of those photos.

There are no desks in the photos, just the lunch break area.
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