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New Year, New CEO for GitHub

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Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#61

Post by mpdehaan2 »

jmduke wrote: post #5

GitHub's growth in 2013 has been fascinating to watch. They've been relentless with new functionality, and the overwhelming trend with that new functionality is a marked increase in the scope of their operations: stuff like generic data support, baked-in visualizations, and quality-of-life improvements points to the conclusion that GitHub is going to stop being the "best place to share code with friends, co-workers,…

Relentless with new functionality? Yes, no, maybe, I don't know.

I'd love to see things fixed up in their issue tracker, and you still can't apply a label to a pull request while looking at the pull request.

I love GitHub for many reasons, but I question whether the push towards 'managerless-culture' means some less interesting things don't get done sometimes.

I do note the ability to see web traffic prior to someone's implementation of a hack to do it on HackerNews, but on the other hand, I still miss the impact graph. How about being able to see number of clones and updates instead of just web traffic?

The ways to spotlight interesting new projects is great, but I think the social and discovery aspects could be upgraded too.

But #1, the bug tracker needs help. Code review tools seem nice, but are seemingly enterprise only. While I welcome and encourage that kind of business model, large open source projects could benefit the most from that kind of functionality.

So, yeah, GitHub is becoming the standard for code sharing. It's great... but there's a lot of opportunity not being capitalized on too relative to their organizational size.

From the outside, it looks like they are probably dealing more with internal plumbing than new functionality to me. Which is also understandable. It's just a shame that some features that are quite useful (say, impact graph) get cut or uninteresting to work on (issue tracking) don't get worked on.

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#62

Post by rchowe »

krig wrote: post #18
bhouston wrote: post #14

I love Github, but they need to build out more serious features into their issue tracker for it to be useful as a software estimation tool. Specifically I need: * Time estimation. * GRANTT charts.

Personally, I disagree. Sure, first you get time estimation. Then you get task-based time tracking, then you get average resolution time per committer, then you get weekly spreadsheet generation and analysis meetings on thursday afternoons and there you go, now you're getting memos about adding coversheets to your TPS reports. I hope they are very careful about adding features and would rather see them focus on trimm…

Honestly I think that, like version control, time estimation can be a very useful feature for people working on a project alone if they use something like Joel Spolsky's evidence-based scheduling[1]. It would be nice if GitHub provided a way to keep track of that. I agree with you that there's a point where there get to be too many features, but if they're building a project for teams to work on things time estimation seems too useful to pass up.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#63

Post by [deleted] »

j_baker wrote: post #43
deeths wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are a lot of responsibilities that might vary company-to-company, the CEO reports to the Board of Directors (who represent the shareholders). Shareholders have control over the company because they can elect the Board of Directors (and depending on structure the CEO). The board has control because they get a vote on important matters like major officers and big expenditures. Depending on structure, they m…

The CEO most certainly does not represent the shareholders. The shareholders elect a board to represent them. The CEO represents the company's management, and is responsible for attaining the goals the board sets for him/her. It's worth pointing out that those goals aren't necessarily getting a high stock price or maximizing revenue. Lately, there have been a number of companies that set goals that have more to do wi…

[deleted]

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#64

Post by morganherlocker »

Ryel wrote: post #25

Github PLEASE work on some kind of 'Proof Of Activity' 98% of my work is private and all employers get to see is about 100 open-source commits when I have roughly 4,000 commits throughout several private organizations. I know I need more open source contributions but I should be able to prove to an employer that I am a heavy Github user and have more experience than 100 commits. Sometimes I've been asked to send a sc…

You should use this tool, IMO. It creates images with your commit history graph :-)

https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#65

Post by [deleted] »

deeths wrote: post #59
j_baker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO most certainly does not represent the shareholders. The shareholders elect a board to represent them. The CEO represents the company's management, and is responsible for attaining the goals the board sets for him/her. It's worth pointing out that those goals aren't necessarily getting a high stock price or maximizing revenue. Lately, there have been a number of companies that set goals that have more to do wi…

Sorry, it should have read: "Because the CEO represents the interests of the shareholders". While the CEO is not (absent other roles) a representative of the shareholders (as you pointed out), there is a legal duty of loyalty to act in the best interest of the shareholders. So while not a representative of the shareholders, the CEO is always responsible for representing the interests of the shareholders. As you state…

[deleted]

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#66

Post by AndyKelley »

Ryel wrote: post #25

Github PLEASE work on some kind of 'Proof Of Activity' 98% of my work is private and all employers get to see is about 100 open-source commits when I have roughly 4,000 commits throughout several private organizations. I know I need more open source contributions but I should be able to prove to an employer that I am a heavy Github user and have more experience than 100 commits. Sometimes I've been asked to send a sc…

Solution: Arrange it so that you end up working on more open source projects :)

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#67

Post by judk »

Ryel wrote: post #25

Github PLEASE work on some kind of 'Proof Of Activity' 98% of my work is private and all employers get to see is about 100 open-source commits when I have roughly 4,000 commits throughout several private organizations. I know I need more open source contributions but I should be able to prove to an employer that I am a heavy Github user and have more experience than 100 commits. Sometimes I've been asked to send a sc…

You just need to find less idiotic hiring teams.

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#68

Post by ricardobeat »

rchowe wrote: post #62
krig wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I disagree. Sure, first you get time estimation. Then you get task-based time tracking, then you get average resolution time per committer, then you get weekly spreadsheet generation and analysis meetings on thursday afternoons and there you go, now you're getting memos about adding coversheets to your TPS reports. I hope they are very careful about adding features and would rather see them focus on trimm…

Honestly I think that, like version control, time estimation can be a very useful feature for people working on a project alone if they use something like Joel Spolsky's evidence-based scheduling[1]. It would be nice if GitHub provided a way to keep track of that. I agree with you that there's a point where there get to be too many features, but if they're building a project for teams to work on things time estimatio…

There are a number of time-tracking tools that interface with GitHub via it's API.

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#69

Post by haacked »

holman wrote: post #50
joshschreuder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there one person that gets to work in there, or do they rotate it?

Typically that's where Haley sits, who is typically the person you'll first meet when you're visiting or if you're dealing with some logistics with the SF office. (As an aside, the idea behind the Oval Office as a visitor's reception is to turn the notion on its head a little bit. We've all been to companies where the reception area is just an afterthought, and you're stuck awkwardly standing in the middle of an open…

To add to what Holman said, at most companies the receptionist is considered unimportant, and is treated as such.

GitHub turns that on its head. Haley sits at the president's desk and is entrusted with people's first experience with GitHub's HQ. She's an important part of our culture. It's an big responsibility and a position deserving respect (as all positions are).

Re: New Year, New CEO for GitHub

#70

Post by majelix »

iambateman wrote: post #12
stonemetal wrote: post #10

For those of us who are business ignorant, what is the difference between President and CEO? What are the typical responsibilities of each and such?

It's different for every business but typically a CEO is the visionary, strategic leader of the company while the president leads the day-to-day operations. If Github started selling insurance, there's a good chance they would have a president for Github Code and a president for Github Insurance. They wouldn't have two CEO's, though.

> while the president leads the day-to-day operations.

How would you characterize the COO then?

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