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New Year, New CEO for GitHub
- petercooper 13y agoNone of the reports I've seen mention this, but Chris was the CEO before Tom (and became CTO to focus on product) so is already very experienced in the role :-) http://www.quora.com/GitHub/Why-is-Chris-Wanstrath-no-longer-the-CEO-of-GitHub http://www.quora.com/GitHub/Why-is-Chris-Wanstrath-no-longer...
- than 13y agoI see Zach just responded to his own answer pointing out that the reverse of 2012 is true again.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jmduke 13y agoGitHub'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, classmates, and complete strangers" [1] and start being the best place to share your work and data with everyone. 2014 should be a great year for them. [1] https://github.com/about https://github.com/about
- devcpp 13y agoWell, it seems to me like they have only been implementing closed mechanisms instead of standardizing stuff, using public resources and/or opening their code. I hope that I'm wrong and it's just my pessimism talking.
- mpdehaan2 13y agoRelentless 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.
- stefan_kendall 13y agoThe code review pales in comparison to Crucible. Vertical diffs only, can't ignore whitespace without losing the ability to comment, and there's no fast navigation through files.
- gjtorikian 13y ago> and there's no fast navigation through files. Have you hit the "t" key on the site?
- aragot 13y ago> relentless with new functionality They also raised $800m in mid-2012: http://pando.com/2012/05/21/bootstrapped-github-now-raising-a-round-from-andreessen-horowitz/ http://pando.com/2012/05/21/bootstrapped-github-now-raising-...
- spikels 13y agoAs soon as Tom becomes President he gets a Secret Service detail with dark sunglasses! That animated gif is hilarious.
- nulagrithom 13y agoAs someone who wasn't following GitHub as a company, I have to say I quite appreciated the gif. Sums it up in all of 2 seconds. Bravo.
- spikels 13y agoYou're absolutely right. They say a picture is worth a thousand words - animated gifs even more so. I could almost imagine a world where animated gifs replace all kinds of communication. Press releases seem particularly ripe for change as they are usually wordsmithed to the point that any impression given is likely false.
- davidw 13y ago> I could almost imagine a world where animated gifs replace all kinds of communication. I can envision it too. Looks something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
- brucehubbard 13y agoJust pictured in my head a modern day "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" moment where Picard instead has to learn to speak in animated gifs.
- quaunaut 13y agoIt would've been a bit funnier if suddenly his half of the gif was transported to the Github Oval Office replica[1]. 1. http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/09/07/githubs-new-office-includes-a-replica-of-the-oval-office/#!sOEwr http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/09/07/githubs-new-offi...
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- bfe 13y agoI don't understand how a company could operate for a few months without publicly acknowledging who is really the CEO. I hope they use a "fork the CEO role" button.
- phillmv 13y agoI'm curious: to whom does this matter? The title is a formality, their organization is notoriously flat and being co-founders they probably don't make major initiatives without the other's approval anyways. If anything they're probably just swapping "who sits in the spotlight for this year". And when you head a tech-oriented company, the difference between CTO and CEO is probably negligible anyways.
- bfe 13y agoI think Tom and Chris are doing a fantastic job running and growing github. I'm just curious how this idea of trading CEO roles without making it public for a while works in practice. I think it could potentially matter to their employees, along the lines Ben Horowitz discussed in his post, "Shared Command" [1] - different situation, but analogous potential muddling of the chain of command. Obviously some companies with both a CEO and a President can be amazingly successful [2], but tend to still be clear about who is ultimately in charge. It's not that I doubt Tom and Chris share a vision for github and clearly communicate and execute on that vision together; I just wonder when and how that model might hit its limits. 1. http://bhorowitz.com/2013/07/03/shared-command/ http://bhorowitz.com/2013/07/03/shared-command/ 2. http://www.spacex.com/about/leadership http://www.spacex.com/about/leadership
- unfunco 13y agoGitHub is not a company floating on some publicly-traded market yet. How they operate internally is of very little business to those on the outside. GitHub can operate anyway they like.
- aashaykumar92 13y agoWe can easily expect GitHub to continue its exponential growth. The timing seems perfect to me...Chris will take on a role that will require him to ensure that the product remains excellent and will implement the innovation that Tom will be responsible for. Both suit their styles.
- stonemetal 13y agoFor those of us who are business ignorant, what is the difference between President and CEO? What are the typical responsibilities of each and such?
- iambateman 13y agoIt'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.
- majelix 13y ago> while the president leads the day-to-day operations. How would you characterize the COO then?
- erichocean 13y agoCOOs manage the day-to-day operations.
- seunosewa 13y agoWhat's the difference between "leading" day to day operations and "managing" them?
- goldenkey 13y agoI know SC2 is probably a poor example but it fits very well here. It's the difference between managing a team strategy in an RTS versus looking at the individual unit deaths/spawns, types of units, etc.
- dworin 13y agoThe two are similar, and you'll often see them combined. For the most part, president pre-dates the CXO nomenclature. Before there were CEOs, COOs, and CFOs, there were Chairmen, Presidents, and Treasurers. Those titles/roles still exist, but are often merged with CXO functions.
- bhouston 13y agoI 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.
- raganwald 13y agoGRANNT Chart: A Grantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Grantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project, such that completion of the project qualifies the team for a research and development grant. Serious answer: Issues are not--to my knowledge--a software estimation tool. I have worked for decades in estimation-oriented development environments, and in my (anecdotal) experience, it is a mistake to use the same tool for both estimation and delivery. It is seductive for them to be the same thing, as you can feed actual times back into your project, but the conclusion I've drawn is that the estimate reflects a kind of "interface" visible to the outside world, while the issues reflect an "implementation" visible to the team. When they are the same thing, you end up doing a lot of work fiddling with the estimate to keep it congruent with the internal tasks, even when that congruence is not relevant to the delivery date(s). I realize that this is heterodoxy.
- heartbreak 13y agoIsn't this type of chart a GANTT chart without the "R" character?
- tomphoolery 13y agoThe gif is LOL.
- shmerl 13y agoWhy are they using GIF for video, instead of a proper video file in the video tag?
- frou_dh 13y ago<div id="something-to-complain-about"
- frandroid 13y agoIt's not worth invoking a flash container for 4 seconds of video.
- shmerl 13y agoDid I say anything about Flash? I was talking about a video tag. And are you saying that a 4 seconds video in the video tag will be less efficient than an img tag with an animated GIF? Personally I see no point in using GIFs, unless on a site which allows embedding images, but not videos. On a site which you control, video tag works just fine.
- alexcroox 13y agoI think they can spend the following required time on better things: - Deal with cross browser inconsistencies with html5 video. - Create a poster image for the video - Save the video format in mp4, ogg, webm - Save out and build flash alternative for older browsers ... ... - Realize that a gif probably would have been the best option for this post.
- Ryel 13y agoIs the sky falling?
- Ryel 13y agoGithub 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 screenshot of my total number of commits, and happily oblige to the odd request but a screenshot is not even worth it's weight in the physical world (aka nothing).
- rubiquity 13y agoIf a flock of employers were requesting this feature it might be more reasonable. A candidate requesting this feature seems odd when the solution is obvious, and you know what the solution is already: write more code that you own.
- georgemcbay 13y agoUsing total number of github commits as any sort of qualifier for employment is as bad (maybe even worse) as asking for a wc -l LOC count on your last project. To be clear, I don't have an issue with github contributions being seen as a plus for hiring... but trying to turn this into something concretely quantifiable via total commit count (especially on commits you can't even see) seems crazy to me. Please let me know which employers are asking you for this information so I can avoid applying to them in the future!
- Ryel 13y agoThey are not(I hope) judging quality of my work based on # of commits. -They are assuming I have little to no experience in a service they use every day. -They are assuming I don't contribute to Open Source in any way (I contribute to private repos that are at the core of several large OS projects but are private for business concerns). -Github provides an easy metric to see what most of my work is. I can see that 45% of my work is done in Python, and maybe the rest in front-end tech. That would be useful information to an employer if I apply to an Obj-C position. Actually the work I am most proud of is in my side-projects, which I would much rather employers go on and interact with rather than scour over the github repo. Posted above is not just something I want, but something I see much more value in for Github to become a more friendly intermediary between employer/employee.
- guynamedloren 13y agoI love how this is tagged as "New Features". Oh GitHub :)
- aragot 13y agoWhat did you want it to be? A bug?
- _zen 13y agoI'm looking forward to GitHub branching out beyond software. Revision control for business, academia, etc.
- vonseel 13y agoI read this imagining a git reset on actual people. Thanks for the laugh :)
- maaku 13y agoI thought GitHub was a flat organization?
- hardwaresofton 13y agoLeast boring upper-management change announcement I have seen all year. More things should be done with gifs.
- coreymgilmore 13y agofree private repos?