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What's it like to work at GitHub?

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Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#21

Post by andrewcooke »

cmoylan wrote: post #15
andrewcooke wrote: post #11

"Talented people with a lot of experience have strong opinions." i hear this often. and i've worked with some people like that, many of whom i admire (in some ways). yet i am not at all opinionated (as far as i can tell). when people ask me for advice, i often find it very hard to guide them because there are so many options, and what will work best seems to depend so much on non-technical factors. and i am not sure…

"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell

also, "second coming" by yeats, but i am not sure it is true - i have been lucky enough to work with some very good people, and some of the best were like this.

as j_baker says, it seems like it's just one of those "life is complicated" things...

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#22

Post by Kynlyn »

jessed wrote: post #20

I think Github is a special case because at Github they are their own customers. Developer/hackers know what other developer/hackers want because they want it themselves. It's a great place to be as a developer and as a product company, but I don't think it's attainable everywhere.

Exactly my point. I think what they are doing is great and there is a lot to learn from it. However, they have very talented developers whose job is to build tools for other developers. Scratching your own itch is much more likely to benefit the organization at GH than it is at, say, a corporate IT department or any other company whose customers aren't developers.

A big part of what makes their culture possible is the product they are building and the customer that they are building it for. Change those things, and unfortunately, you are very likely to have to change the culture a bit.

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#23

Post by DonnyV »

ipmb wrote: post #19
DonnyV wrote: post #16

I wonder how this would shake out in a consulting company?

The difficulty in a consulting company is that (unlike a SaaS company) there is typically a 1:1 ratio between hours worked and money earned. Our company does many of the same things, but in the end, we're still tied to the billable hour. I talked about it briefly here: http://lincolnloop.com/blog/2012/may/31/lincoln-loop-everyon...

Wow..just read your post. A couple questions...

  How many people are in the company? 
  Usually being the owner and founder you get more money. How do you avoid "The boss takes all the money" comment. Not saying you are, but I think this comes   up even if your making only a little more then everyone else. 
  What happens when a developer asks for more money then your willing to give?

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#24

Post by ionforce »

andrewcooke wrote: post #11

"Talented people with a lot of experience have strong opinions." i hear this often. and i've worked with some people like that, many of whom i admire (in some ways). yet i am not at all opinionated (as far as i can tell). when people ask me for advice, i often find it very hard to guide them because there are so many options, and what will work best seems to depend so much on non-technical factors. and i am not sure…

Have you ever taken an MBTI test before?

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#25

Post by ionforce »

MidwestMuster wrote: post #10
albertzeyer wrote: post #2

Sounds a bit like Valve. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871463 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3838880 Or the free 20% at Google. I get the feeling that if you have a group of highly talented people around, it really pays off to give them much freedom. From the view of the employee, it is also probably a much more motivating, challenging and interesting setting.

What is interesting is that Valve and Github were both self-funded/bootstrapped.

Free of influence from investors/meddlers.

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#26

Post by david_shaw »

As the director of an engineering team myself, this is an extremely insightful article.

Bossing people around and utilizing extreme micromanagement might work in retail (though, honestly, I doubt it), but being a drill sergeant is not the way to get things done with very intelligent and headstrong individuals in a technical capacity.

The trick of excellent technical management, to me, is the ability to balance the business requirements of management with the technical passions of the engineers. If this balance is off in either direction, the company as a whole suffers greatly.

Engineers need to be intellectually engaged, and need to feel that they can make decisions for themselves (even if it's just within the code base). At the same time, products and services need to ship to keep everyone employed.

It's a tough but rewarding job.

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#27

Post by TwistedWeasel »

They say people work on what they want but they still advertise for specific jobs (https://github.com/about/jobs), so surely there is some level of direction there. i.e. If you're hired as a Data Miner then you are expected to spend your time mining data, what happens when that engineer decides he wants to work on something else?

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#28

Post by holman »

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #27

They say people work on what they want but they still advertise for specific jobs ( https://github.com/about/jobs ), so surely there is some level of direction there. i.e. If you're hired as a Data Miner then you are expected to spend your time mining data, what happens when that engineer decides he wants to work on something else?

We've been splitting up into teams (or roles) a bit more as we've grown- it just helps to keep the focus on things that matter.

That said, the most important part about this is that those teams are extremely weak. In other words, you should feel strongly able to float between teams, work on different repositories, or take a week or month off and pursue a different problem if the problem seems important or if it keeps you happy and productive.

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#29

Post by arrbee »

siavosh wrote: post #14

I wonder if they face the challenge of who has to deal with the less popular things that need to get done. And at what point resentment might kick in. The whole thing seems like it can work until there's one bad apple or one miscommunication.

I think this depends on what you mean by "the less popular things that need to get done." In my experience, things that were less popular at other places I've worked, are often tackled with enthusiasm at GitHub. When the company culture leads you to feel passionately about building something lasting, going back to clean up old rotting code or fix tests that were not written well or debug obscure issues become things to be proud of.

Also, I believe that often the less popular work corresponds to things that are subtly judged to be less valuable work. At GitHub, I see people praised for tackling the types of things that have been less popular at my other jobs, and everyone here, even the most prominent GitHubbers, participate in most every aspect of maintaining the product. Internally, the message is pretty clear - doing the things that "need to get done" is a huge part of what makes everyone else here proud of you and is valued highly.

This is not to say that people don't tire of working on particular areas, but that's a somewhat different issue and probably a large enough topic for a writeup of its own.

Re: What's it like to work at GitHub?

#30

Post by kyt »

The reason why this environment works at GitHub is because they're profitable -- extremely so. Money rolls in regardless of what their engineers are working on. If they were in a pre-revenue state I doubt they would be organized in the same way.
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