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bkeepers

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readable.news 1y ago

Show HN: Hacker News & Readability & RSS Feeds

bkeepers
1pts0
probot.github.io 8y ago

Probot – GitHub Apps to automate and improve your workflow

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5pts0
github.com 9y ago

Announcing Open Source Guides

bkeepers
254pts25
github.com 9y ago

GitHub Configurer – Pull Requests for GitHub Repository Settings

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2pts0
opensoul.org 10y ago

Carbon, Automobiles, Bebop, and Fashion

bkeepers
2pts0
opensoul.org 11y ago

On the importance of junk drawers

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opensoul.org 12y ago

Lessons learned from a cancelled project

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79pts16
opensoul.org 12y ago

A GIF is worth a thousand screenshots

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opensoul.org 13y ago

Ruby at GitHub

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1pts0
opensoul.org 13y ago

"Siri, add toilet paper to the shopping list"

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1pts0
opensoul.org 13y ago

Convert a GitHub Issue Into a Pull Request

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1pts0
opensoul.org 14y ago

What's it like to work at GitHub?

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172pts36
opensoul.org 14y ago

Why Our Code Smells

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1pts0
opensoul.org 14y ago

Releasing multiple gems from one repository

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1pts0
opensoul.org 14y ago

Getting Started with Sublime Text 2

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70pts18
opensoul.org 14y ago

The $40 Standup Desk

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206pts102
opensoul.org 14y ago

HAML: the unforgivable sin

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36pts44
opensoul.org 14y ago

Startup Fatigue

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opensoul.org 14y ago

Git: the NoSQL Database

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jonmagic.com 14y ago

Moving Speaker Deck to Heroku // jonmagic.com

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opensoul.org 15y ago

Validation Anti-Pattern

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1pts0
opensoul.org 15y ago

The world runs on bad software

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10pts1
opensoul.org 15y ago

Run JSLint with your Jasmine suite

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1pts0
opensoul.org 15y ago

Don't should on yourself

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1pts0
collectiveidea.com 15y ago

Practical Cucumber

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1pts0
collectiveidea.com 15y ago

Happy Git Commits

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122pts26
collectiveidea.com 16y ago

How to choose a Rails contractor

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2pts1
collectiveidea.com 16y ago

Reflections on MongoDB

bkeepers
58pts24

We are reaching out to customers that are in unique situations such as the one you're mentioning here. If you have questions about how the pricing changes affect you, please don’t hesitate to contact support@github.com.

The biggest difference is that our "PRPs" don't see management as their primary responsibility. They're still an engineer or designer first.

Every successful startup eventually discovers that the O(n^2) communication overhead of a perfectly flat org doesn't scale, and needs to adapt to deal with that. The question is whether to develop coordination specialists implicitly or explicitly.

Yep. This is certainly something we feel the pain of and are wrestling with right now.

Developing doublespeak to protect an idealistic worldview from its incompatibility with reality does seem pathological.

By definition, we don't have anyone that plays the role of "manager" right now (again, for better or worse). I wouldn't call that doublespeak.

You are right. For better or worse, we have not had traditional PMs at GitHub. Often that is a role played by what we call a PRP (primarily responsible person). That person is often an engineer or designer.

That's a question I hear often, or another form of it: "How do you get people to do things that nobody wants to do?" I usually answer this with two questions:

1. If everyone deeply cares about the culture and longevity of the company (which is a prerequisite), and nobody wants to do it, does it really need to get done? The answer is often no. But if the answer is yes…

2. How do you turn that into a celebrated task where everyone wants to do it?

One example of this at GitHub is support. Developers hate doing support. But we have decided that it is absolutely vital to our company to both provide good support and to have developers involved in it so we are constantly getting feedback about what is working and what is not.

So we created the "King of Developers", which is a position that is held by a developer for one week at a time, in which that developer's primary responsibility is support. Along with that comes a pimped out desk at our HQ in San Francisco and tons of street cred. We even have a ridiculous internal website to go along with it (http://dribbble.com/shots/554836-GitHub-King-of-Developers). There are currently 9 developers signed up waiting to be the King.

We have the advantage of using GitHub to build GitHub (http://zachholman.com/talk/how-github-uses-github-to-build-g...), so we all know what needs worked on. There is certainly some vision casting from a few core people, but everyone takes responsibility for figuring out what needs done and coordinating how to do it.

> Who makes these decisions, when there are multiple viable ways of going forward, but someone just has to put their foot down and decide which one?

We all do, but whoever submits the first pull request usually sets the tone of the conversation. Occasionally, a pull request will get abandoned, but usually it is the starting point and we build from there.

There are often intense conversations about how something should work. I've learned to just try one way and see if you like it. Not everyone will, but you can form some consensus.

It is a for-profit idea, but we promise we'll never clutter up your presentations with tacky ads. We currently only have small ads on the right for our own products. We may do other ads there in the future, but we promise they will be tasteful.

We have a lot of other ideas for monetizing it with premium and event-related features. But everything you see on Speaker Deck today will always be free.

I’ve heard a few other stories like that. I'd like to talk with one of the companies that has a lot of experience managing MongoDB and see if the horror stories are just a result of poorly managed servers, or if it is really a problem with MongoDB itself.

If it is with MongoDB, I’m hopeful that it is a result of MongoDBs immaturity, and over time it will become more stable.