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How GitHub No Longer Works

zachholman.com

61–70 of 139 posts

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big deal about GitHub is that they were in large part responsible for the current Open Source Renaissance we currently find ourselves in. Do you remember the world before? Where you would hunt for someone's private SVN repo on their personal site and email them patches, only to hope that something comes of your effort? Compare that with the world of today, where, if I'm using GitHub, I can submit a fix to a proje…

Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy. All the previous social constructs around properly documenting, testing, and releasing stable versions of your code have been swept away. Instead we're faced with the constant churn of semi-functional code, users working in silos and then showing up with patches well after it's too late to give them direction, animated GIFs instead of careful engineering discussio…

> Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy.

I stopped reading. We're not operating on the same plane of reality.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#63
post #30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short-lived staging environments (eg, a temporary clone of a production environment) certainly have a place, such as when making architectural changes, but these kinds of changes are generally not happening on a regular basis if you are making incremental changes and doing continuous deployment. I'm sure that there are companies that have a valid engineering need for perpetual staging environments rather than feature…

You honestly can't think of good engineering reasons not to push new code directly into production?

You might want to do fewer, less frequent releases in order to provide training to end users. You might also want to do do fewer, less frequent releases in order to facilitate a marketing push centered around the release.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#64
post #15

Dear github, please sort out your: - Intermittent angry unicorns - Slow data transfer (150kb/sec?!) - Poor support - Expensive enterprise licence, why don't you host a better service and i will pay for it?

Why do you rate GitHub's support as "poor"?

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#65
post #18

Please remove "[video]" from the title. As of right now there's no video (there's a placeholder saying it's coming soon.)

When I submitted the link, the "[video]" wasn't in there; it was added by someone else later (when it hit the main HN page I presume).

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#66
Anybody else made sad by

Open positions: Technical Account Manager

or just me?

Or it's like my company, and they don't bother to list positions for software engineers because they're hiring those all the time.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#67
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy. All the previous social constructs around properly documenting, testing, and releasing stable versions of your code have been swept away. Instead we're faced with the constant churn of semi-functional code, users working in silos and then showing up with patches well after it's too late to give them direction, animated GIFs instead of careful engineering discussio…

> Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy. I stopped reading. We're not operating on the same plane of reality.

Then you missed out on an intelligent and frankly important critique. He managed to put in words what I have been thinking for a while. I was skeptical after the first two sentences too...

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#68
post #43

I'm always skeptical when companies say they have "no managers" and are a completely flat organization with 100+ employees. I don't pretend to fully understand organizational theory, but I take it that at some point, there will be someone doing the "management" work. Whether that's someone with the title of ninja/hacker/product guy/project manager/director/CEO/BDFL

(Disclaimer: Hubber.)

Here's the thing about "management work": it turns out you don't necessarily need management to do it.

Setting priorities? This can be done through consensus.

Making sure schedules are met? Don't have schedules. (1)

Hiring? Have everybody do it.

Giving out raises? Set up a deterministic system and forget about it.

Giving feedback? Everybody can do this.

Running meetings? Don't have meetings.

Communicating with the other parts of the company? We have technology for this.

1) EDIT: forgot my footnote. Of course, we're in sort of a fortunate situation here, and not every company can just not have a schedule.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#69
post #43

I'm always skeptical when companies say they have "no managers" and are a completely flat organization with 100+ employees. I don't pretend to fully understand organizational theory, but I take it that at some point, there will be someone doing the "management" work. Whether that's someone with the title of ninja/hacker/product guy/project manager/director/CEO/BDFL

(Disclaimer: Hubber.) Here's the thing about "management work": it turns out you don't necessarily need management to do it. Setting priorities? This can be done through consensus. Making sure schedules are met? Don't have schedules. (1) Hiring? Have everybody do it. Giving out raises? Set up a deterministic system and forget about it. Giving feedback? Everybody can do this. Running meetings? Don't have meetings. Com…

> Making sure schedules are met? Don't have schedules. (1)

Did you forgot a footnote (1)? I'm curious to read more.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: Hubber.) Here's the thing about "management work": it turns out you don't necessarily need management to do it. Setting priorities? This can be done through consensus. Making sure schedules are met? Don't have schedules. (1) Hiring? Have everybody do it. Giving out raises? Set up a deterministic system and forget about it. Giving feedback? Everybody can do this. Running meetings? Don't have meetings. Com…

> Making sure schedules are met? Don't have schedules. (1) Did you forgot a footnote (1)? I'm curious to read more.

Heh. Whoops. Thanks. :*)
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