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How GitHub Works
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Zach Holman
March 09, 2012
Business
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220k
How GitHub Works
How GitHub Works.
Hint: it's pretty cool.
Zach Holman
March 09, 2012
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Transcript
HoW WORKS GITHUB
the story begins with
4 FOUNDERS IN A coffee shop
4 FOUNDERS IN A BAR
4 FOUNDERS IN A restaurant
4 FOUNDERS IN A plane
4 FOUNDERS IN A JAIL CELL
4 FOUNDERS IN A SOMEWHERE
None
no office had other jobs
None
this was the start of
distributed happy flexible github was forced to be
turns out, great way to work
this talk is kind of about github
but it’s really about improving your company
@holman
None
works howgithub zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works
BULLSHIT HOURS Are
9 to 5 DOES not wORK W O R K
I N G
crafting code is a hugely creative endeavor
you can’t force creativity to happen between 9 and 5.
the best solutions happen when you’re in the zone
our early birds night owls nine-to-fivers traveling employees international employees
office
embraceflexiBility
90 hours/week and loving it! x
working long hours isn’t a badge of honor ...it’s a
badge of foolishness
all-nighters are a recipe for redoing everything again later
marathon code sessions drain you mentally lead to poor code
quality impact future code
WE LET GITHUbbers work WHEREver AND WHENever THEY WANT TO
WORK
we want to get the best work from our employees
that happens when they are happy, fresh, and creative
FAMILIES
@MADDOX NEW DAD, May 26 @MOJOMBO NEW DAD, SOON @xpaulbettsx
NEW DAD LATE 2012 @bethnewland NEW MOM 2012ish
family github
BE A FAMILY COMPANY
being less hour-centric = more family-friendly
happy families, happy coworkers productive companies happy coworkers,
trust your employees
you hired them, after all
trust employees, help them out, then verify they’re doing the
work.
this requires communication are they committing? are they participating? what’s
their code look like?
bullshit hours w o r r y a b o
u t g o o d w o r k are
BE ASYNCHRONOUS
asynchronous a distributed way of getting things done
attention-aware J geographically-distributed G team-oriented g minimal process \
G @ sanfrancisco S githubhq
G turns out, the world is larger than just san
francisco.
G we want to hire the best S S S
S S S S S S S
G distributed work needs to be a priority for us
G flexible hours help with flexible location T
chat G limit required in-person contact beer:30 facetime recorded talks
summit 2010 G encourage structured team building summit 2011 get
people meeting in real-life! github summit 2012
attention-aware J team-oriented g minimal process \ geographically-distributed G
J we want developers in the zonetm
J minimize distractions the zone is difficult to re-enter
J no technical meetings no standup, daily, or planning meetings
J no in-person distractions instead, ping over chat
J no managers they just distract
J we can work this way because:
J dogfood product company full ownership profitable
J each company is different find out what works best
for yours
G geographically-distributed attention-aware J team-oriented g minimal process \ G
g G [ redacted ] [ redacted ] teams
g G small teams let you move quickly&independently
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:
g G small teams let you focus
G geographically-distributed attention-aware J team-oriented g minimal process \ G
\ how do we actually do all this?
\ plan·build·ship
\ show It as soon as possible chat pull requests
wikis, internal apps make it okay to say “no” plan
\ ideas&projects everyone contributes avoid abandonment see status updates plan
\ build simplebranching master branch pull request
\ simplebranching designer friendly (”Non-technical”) build
\ simplebranching simple rollback partial deploysstaff-only specific servers specific processes
build
\ pull requests are discussions that improve code quality build
\ push branch get feedback make improvements merge branch build
\ asynchronous, non-invasive extremely visible for your org one-click merge
button replaces traditional code review build
\ , superfasttests SHIP
\ , 14000 assertions in 200 seconds build (still not
fast enough)
\ , a slow test is a regression build
you don’t need distractions you don’t need to be in
the same country you really don’t need a lot of process
FOR OPTIMIZE HAPPINESS
2008 2009 2010 2011 May 2012
employees 83 employees who have left 0
a happiness-oriented workplace this requires
LEADS TO UNHAPPINESS AND TO LEAVING EMPLOYEE BURNOUT
EXPLORATION x
FREEDOM )
SELF-DIRECTION X
shared side projects hubot internal apps hardware hacking EXPLORATION x
PLAY
spanish tutoring arduino lessons kindles&ebooks KEEP EVERYONE LEARNING EXPLORATION x
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
BURNOUT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE NOT EXPLORATION x PERSONALLY GROWING
NO SET HOURS ) FREEDOM
NO MANAGERS ) FREEDOM
NO MEETINGS ) FREEDOM
NO NEED TO BE IN OFFICE ) FREEDOM
NO VACATION TRACKING ) FREEDOM
SELF-DIRECTION X WORK ON THINGS THAT INTEREST YOU
SELF-DIRECTION X WE HAVE TEAMS, BUT TEAMS SHOULD BE EASY
TO MOVE BEtweEN
KEEP YOUR EMPLOYEES HAPPY REALLY REALLY REALLY
flexible be
build a company you want to work for
happiness push for
thanks.
zachholman @holman zachholman.com/talks