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How GitHub No Longer Works

zachholman.com

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Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#81

Post by benihana »

strumptrumpet wrote: post #60
techpeace wrote: post #58

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…

>Github optimized being lazy, and this was appealing, and in doing so they broke most of the technical and social structure that held together open source's ability to produce reliable, stable, well-documented software.

And yet, here we are, years after Github optimized being lazy and broke most of the technical and social structure of open source, and we still have hundreds of thousands of usable and awesome open source projects available to use and contribute to. The internet and the apps built on it still run just fine, people are getting more done with technology than ever before, and more people are getting their code out to the world than before Github.

I think that you're either overly cynical and negative, or you're upset because Github has taken away implicit social power you used to have or you're pissed off cause you have to deal with the plebs who use your obviously brilliant software in ways that aren't correct (i.e. ways you didn't think) then have the audacity to file bugs on it in ways that are wrong (i.e. ways you don't like).

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#82

Post by ben_straub »

techscruggs wrote: post #75
ben_straub wrote: post #68

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…

What is your deterministic system for determining salary?

Note that I didn't say salary, I said raises. ;)

Every other job I've had uses some sort of stressful review as part of the salary process. You get a good review, your raise is bigger; bad review, smaller raise. This seems like it works, but it actually doesn't.

What's the goal of a review? To provide feedback. Shouldn't you be interested in feedback so you can get better, not just so you can get paid more? If so, shouldn't you be getting it all the time, instead of twice a year?

What's the goal of a raise? To keep you from being effectively paid less (because the cost of living keeps going up), and to make sure you feel satisfied with how much money you're making. There's nothing in there about making sure some people feel less appreciated than others. So pick a percentage number, preferably one that's above COLA, and just give everybody that. If that's not enough, your base salary isn't enough.

Note that none of these goals overlap. Feedback and salary don't really have common goals. If you're trying to get people to do better work by dangling the salary carrot, you're taking away intrinsic motivation – see DHH on mixing open-source and money, he did a good job with this topic – and you'll end up with less performance and motivation, not more.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#83

Post by seivan »

jcutrell wrote: post #47
skrebbel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admittedly I'm cynical, but how is a "primarily responsible person" different from a lead developer? It feels a bit like you're just calling things different to avoid manager-like names.

Sometimes the primarily responsible person isn't a developer on a given team. Especially at smaller firms, hats of responsibility are passed around to multiple members of the team, regardless of that member's particular talents/core competencies. We call them project champions. I work in an agency model, so we have many clients who have many projects. The project champion usually knows the client, their wishes, etc -…

The product owner should be the person building the product and also be the facilitator for the client. This model of having non engineer/designers as project directors or whatever is broken.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#84

Post by brown9-2 »

canistr wrote: 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

I'm skeptical when people claim that their lack of managers mean they don't have a hierarchy. If there isn't an official hierarchy there will still be an unofficial one in some way - founders and early employees with more esteem/authority, etc.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#85

Post by [deleted] »

benihana wrote: post #81
strumptrumpet wrote: post #60

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…

>Github optimized being lazy, and this was appealing, and in doing so they broke most of the technical and social structure that held together open source's ability to produce reliable, stable, well-documented software. And yet, here we are, years after Github optimized being lazy and broke most of the technical and social structure of open source, and we still have hundreds of thousands of usable and awesome open so…

[deleted]

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#86

Post by Macha »

aliakbarkhan wrote: post #49
TylerE wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And G+ is worse because the thing with Facebook...I'm never FORCED to reveal my Facebook identity on the open web. G+ doesn't really give me that option.

You've clearly never been to one of the many sites that insists you log in through Facebook.

The only one I recall it being mandatory on is Quora. Most offer Facebook as an alternative.

And as a result, I never used Quora.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#87

Post by mwarkentin »

trumbitta2 wrote: post #76
holman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. As I mentioned, we have 150+ rooms that we chill in, and most of our day-to-day work practices are tied into chat. Mention someone's name in a room they're not present in and we send push notifications to their phone and desktop- works great to pull people in as needed, without needing to distract them with the noise of being in the room 24/7. Our ops team is particularly in deep with chat. Instead of sil…

I still don't get how do you manage to do security-sensitive things in Campfire via Hubot :-/

I've been working on adding configuration management via environment variables at work. We allow setting configs via the command line, but it posts a notification to our devops room in Hipchat showing who made the change, and which config was changed, but not the new value.

This means that people can see what is going on, without having full access to the settings which may be sensitive.

I suppose you could also set sensitive credentials in a one on one chat with Hubot.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#88

Post by dingaling »

jbarnette wrote: post #45
skrebbel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admittedly I'm cynical, but how is a "primarily responsible person" different from a lead developer? It feels a bit like you're just calling things different to avoid manager-like names.

We use PRP in any situation where someone explicitly takes responsibility for an outcome, no matter whether the outcome is some software or a clean office or an accurate tax return.

I'm intrigued as to what happens when no-one 'takes responsibility' for a non-optional task. Like a compliance issue, or that tax return.

Who assigns the shit task to whom?

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#89

Post by darkmighty »

benihana wrote: post #81
strumptrumpet wrote: post #60

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…

>Github optimized being lazy, and this was appealing, and in doing so they broke most of the technical and social structure that held together open source's ability to produce reliable, stable, well-documented software. And yet, here we are, years after Github optimized being lazy and broke most of the technical and social structure of open source, and we still have hundreds of thousands of usable and awesome open so…

Oh the good ole' deep psychological personality trait evaluation handed out because of an opinion.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#90

Post by ben_straub »

brown9-2 wrote: post #84
canistr wrote: 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

I'm skeptical when people claim that their lack of managers mean they don't have a hierarchy. If there isn't an official hierarchy there will still be an unofficial one in some way - founders and early employees with more esteem/authority, etc.

Spot on. What you're describing is leadership, which is pretty deeply wired into human nature. We don't try to avoid this; rather, we want to recognize it as a discipline, and help people become better at it.

Authority, however, is totally different. It's the power to make someone do something they don't want to, and we try our darnedest to avoid that kind of situation. (Also note that "having authority" is different from "being authoritative".)

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