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GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

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Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#411

Post by chadash »

softwaredoug wrote: post #201

I really liked Shopify's remote model of not closing offices, but turning them into "ports" for teams in major cities to get together throughout the year for planning, team building, and retreats. You had an official place to get together, enjoy the perks of tech company offices, but with the intention of deep short bursts of interaction rather than focused work.

What is needed is something like WeWork for large office gatherings. Something between a WeWork and a hotel conference center. The former is not really made for big meetings. The latter is either very expensive, too large or too small. You need a space for 10-200 people to meet and collaborate... not a conference center.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#412

Post by Raed667 »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #405
WorldMaker wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the history of labor unions involved meeting in secret in venues outside of work's control. Very few labor unions were ever formed in the halls of an office building. Also, human connnection isn't irrational, but expecting all or most of your human connections to come from your job may be.

"Officies, especially the great ones (as in also very expensive) create an irrational emotional attachment " I was responding to that part. Office create a rational connection in an irrational setting. My grandfather and most of my great uncles were coal miners in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. They all talked about unions and striking in the mines. And they formed close bonds which made going on strike much easier as well…

Ok that might have been poorly worded on my end.

The irrational attachment I was talking about is about having a large, status-symbol office with ~20% average occupancy. Downsizing to a smaller office harms morale even though most people work most of the time at home, yet they feel attached to almost always empty office, that's the irrational/sentimental part for me.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#413

Post by johnbellone »

tpmx wrote: post #272

Reminder: Nat Friedman is no longer the CEO of Github. https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/03/github-gets-a-new-ceo/ GitHub CEO Nat Friedman is stepping down from his role on November 15 to become the Chairman Emeritus of the Microsoft-owned service. Thomas Dohmke, who only recently became GitHub’s chief product officer, will step into the CEO role. With Friedman, who thanks to his developer and open source background bro…

I mean doesn’t the last sentence say it all?

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#414

Post by persedes »

axlee wrote: post #324
widowlark wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that its very top heavy and is not well done, has lots of UI bugs and really is a pain to work with

For meetings, calls, screensharing, and scheduling it's superior to Slack in every single way. Written experience is worse though. If only Slack spent a month writing a "Schedule a meeting with those people, and add the meeting with a link to everyone's calendar" feature, they would be on par.

On par won't be enough for slack though if teams comes"for free" with your existing office subscription.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#415

Post by twoodfin »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #342
LarryMullins wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could believe that Microsoft appreciates Excel that much. Excel is one of the most empowering applications ever written and the single greatest thing Microsoft has ever been involved with.

Credit where due, spreadsheet applications were already established AND bundled into suites by the time Microsoft got around to leveraging their market position to make Office the de facto standard. But, yeah, I owe most of my career to making real web apps out of badly designed, hard to use, vile to share, yet somehow better than nothing Excel workbooks. Even with all the modern trappings, and besides specific appli…

That undersells the innovation of Excel, which started out as a Macintosh exclusive before being ported to Windows.

It was the first major spreadsheet to be GUI-based from the ground up. It didn’t need Office bundling (which came much later) to dominate, it was by far the superior spreadsheet in the Windows 3.0/3.1 era.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#416

Post by twoodfin »

ijustlovemath wrote: post #312
LarryMullins wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could believe that Microsoft appreciates Excel that much. Excel is one of the most empowering applications ever written and the single greatest thing Microsoft has ever been involved with.

What most techies don't get about Excel is that people wouldn't build their businesses around it if it weren't a really powerful abstraction . Sure, a dev could set up a CRUD app, but then you need a dev, which is far outside the budget of most SMBs. Rather than Excel being the root of all evil, we should view it as the empowerment tool that it really is!

When SPJ of Haskell fame was working for Microsoft, he put together a fantastic presentation on this theme:

https://www.lambdadays.org/static/upload/media/1616736415929...

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#418

Post by SahAssar »

relaxing wrote: post #308
brookst wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also confused because almost all of my company's Teams usage happens in unthreaded chats.

The unthreaded chats are all private, no? If you want to use the group chat it forces you into threaded (or is there a way to switch out of that?)

Are you talking about threads or channels? It sounds like you are describing what slack calls channels.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#419

Post by TylerE »

chadash wrote: post #411
softwaredoug wrote: post #201

I really liked Shopify's remote model of not closing offices, but turning them into "ports" for teams in major cities to get together throughout the year for planning, team building, and retreats. You had an official place to get together, enjoy the perks of tech company offices, but with the intention of deep short bursts of interaction rather than focused work.

What is needed is something like WeWork for large office gatherings. Something between a WeWork and a hotel conference center. The former is not really made for big meetings. The latter is either very expensive, too large or too small. You need a space for 10-200 people to meet and collaborate... not a conference center.

A space for 100-200 people sounds a LOT like a hotel conference center. They are very flexible spaces.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#420

Post by rossdavidh »

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face.

Five years from now, I think we will not see "remote only" for a large company and think "ooh, they value their employees I guess", but rather, "uh oh, they like to think of their employees as being like virtual servers, easy to spin up and easy to shut down the moment you don't need to pay for that capacity".

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