How GitHub Works - Speaker Deck

How GitHub Works

by Zach Holman

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HoW WORKS GITHUB

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the story begins with

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4 FOUNDERS IN A coffee shop

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4 FOUNDERS IN A BAR

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4 FOUNDERS IN A restaurant

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4 FOUNDERS IN A plane

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4 FOUNDERS IN A JAIL CELL

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4 FOUNDERS IN A SOMEWHERE

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no office had other jobs

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this was the start of

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distributed happy flexible github was forced to be

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turns out, great way to work

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this talk is kind of about github

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but it’s really about improving your company

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@holman

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works howgithub zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works

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BULLSHIT HOURS Are

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9 to 5 DOES not wORK W O R K I N G

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crafting code is a hugely creative endeavor

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you can’t force creativity to happen between 9 and 5.

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the best solutions happen when you’re in the zone

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our early birds night owls nine-to-fivers traveling employees international employees office

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embraceflexiBility

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90 hours/week and loving it! x

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working long hours isn’t a badge of honor ...it’s a badge of foolishness

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all-nighters are a recipe for redoing everything again later

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marathon code sessions drain you mentally lead to poor code quality impact future code

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WE LET GITHUbbers work WHEREver AND WHENever THEY WANT TO WORK

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we want to get the best work from our employees that happens when they are happy, fresh, and creative

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FAMILIES

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@MADDOX NEW DAD, May 26 @MOJOMBO NEW DAD, SOON @xpaulbettsx NEW DAD LATE 2012 @bethnewland NEW MOM 2012ish

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family github

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BE A FAMILY COMPANY

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being less hour-centric = more family-friendly

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happy families, happy coworkers productive companies happy coworkers,

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trust your employees

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you hired them, after all

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trust employees, help them out, then verify they’re doing the work.

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this requires communication are they committing? are they participating? what’s their code look like?

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bullshit hours w o r r y a b o u t g o o d w o r k are

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BE ASYNCHRONOUS

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asynchronous a distributed way of getting things done

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attention-aware J geographically-distributed G team-oriented g minimal process \

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G @ sanfrancisco S githubhq

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G turns out, the world is larger than just san francisco.

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G we want to hire the best S S S S S S S S S S

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G distributed work needs to be a priority for us

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G flexible hours help with flexible location T

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chat G limit required in-person contact beer:30 facetime recorded talks

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summit 2010 G encourage structured team building summit 2011 get people meeting in real-life! github summit 2012

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attention-aware J team-oriented g minimal process \ geographically-distributed G

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J we want developers in the zonetm

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J minimize distractions the zone is difficult to re-enter

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J no technical meetings no standup, daily, or planning meetings

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J no in-person distractions instead, ping over chat

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J no managers they just distract

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J we can work this way because:

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J dogfood product company full ownership profitable

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J each company is different find out what works best for yours

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G geographically-distributed attention-aware J team-oriented g minimal process \ G

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g G [ redacted ] [ redacted ] teams

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g G small teams let you move quickly&independently

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g G the danger room the serious room the enterprise room the design room the support room the internal room the native room the (redacted) roo the mobile room the ops room e notices room o 30+rooms:

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g G small teams let you focus

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G geographically-distributed attention-aware J team-oriented g minimal process \ G

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\ how do we actually do all this?

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\ plan·build·ship

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\ show It as soon as possible chat pull requests wikis, internal apps make it okay to say “no” plan

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\ ideas&projects everyone contributes avoid abandonment see status updates plan

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\ build simplebranching master branch pull request

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\ simplebranching designer friendly (”Non-technical”) build

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\ simplebranching simple rollback partial deploysstaff-only specific servers specific processes build

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\ pull requests are discussions that improve code quality build

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\ push branch get feedback make improvements merge branch build

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\ asynchronous, non-invasive extremely visible for your org one-click merge button replaces traditional code review build

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\ , superfasttests SHIP

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\ , 14000 assertions in 200 seconds build (still not fast enough)

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\ , a slow test is a regression build

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you don’t need distractions you don’t need to be in the same country you really don’t need a lot of process

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FOR OPTIMIZE HAPPINESS

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2008 2009 2010 2011 May 2012

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employees 83 employees who have left 0

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a happiness-oriented workplace this requires

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LEADS TO UNHAPPINESS AND TO LEAVING EMPLOYEE BURNOUT

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EXPLORATION x

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FREEDOM )

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SELF-DIRECTION X

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shared side projects hubot internal apps hardware hacking EXPLORATION x PLAY

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spanish tutoring arduino lessons kindles&ebooks KEEP EVERYONE LEARNING EXPLORATION x

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ACCEPTED TO SPEAK AT A CONFERENCE? GITHUB PAYS FOR YOU AND A TRAVEL BUDDY NETWORKING EXPLORATION x MARKETING FOR GITHUB DRINKUPS, YOUR TALK MEET PEOPLE POTENTIAL HIRES, SOCIALIZING IS FUN