[HN Gopher] Thank you, GitHub
___________________________________________________________________
Thank you, GitHub
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 734 points
Date : 2021-11-03 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.blog)
| orliesaurus wrote:
| If person's legacy is a list of all the good things (or bad
| things) they've done during their time, Nat's legacy as the CEO
| of GitHub can also be summed into a list. Let me get started...I
| only remember this one thing but other users of HN can help add
| more I supposed:
|
| - That one time when Nat spoke against DMCA law and said taking
| down youtube-dl was wrong and he actively pushed for their
| reinstatement. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1328365679473426432?l...
| snotrockets wrote:
| I also rememebr how he refused to drop ICE, and tried to treat
| violations of humans rights as if they were carbon offsets.
| dannyw wrote:
| That youtube-dl moment was a really defining moment for me,
| particularly as a heavy user of youtube-dl and having
| contributed a PR here or there.
|
| GitHub handled the situation really well, both in terms of the
| course of action it took, as well as setting up new procedures
| and a legal fund to prevent future incidents like this. Along
| with the EFF, they have actively promoted the right of
| developers (and FOSS) to tinker.
|
| I think people don't realise how impactful youtube-dl going the
| wrong way could be.
| lrvick wrote:
| That was just for show because it was a brand risk. Similar
| repos without journalists covering them are still banned
| without dispute.
|
| https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-0.
| ..
| iudqnolq wrote:
| If you read the response letter the EFF prepared you'll see
| their argument was that the "rolling cipher" yt-dl worked
| around was not an actual protection measure. They contrast
| it with widevine, which is. There's a good legal argument
| yt-dl was legal in the us, and there isn't for the repo you
| linked to. I think standing up for things that have a
| plausible argument that they're legal in the US but not
| things that aren't is a reasonable line for a corporation
| to draw.
| Cenk wrote:
| ICE contract?
| junon wrote:
| IIRC that existed before Nat. I could be wrong.
| Dangeranger wrote:
| Nat posted publicly on this topic back in 2019 [0].
|
| [0] https://github.blog/2019-10-09-github-and-us-government-
| deve...
| kylemh wrote:
| Sure, but ICE is still a customer
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I'm sure this is going to get hate but not all of ICE is
| bad. They're also the guys who go after the super rich
| crimes. The immigration stuff had such a bad effect on
| the agency that the money crime people literally asked to
| be separated so they could get back to hunting money
| crimes without the stigma of the immigration stuff. [0]
|
| Also, immigration control in itself isn't a bad thing.
| You shouldn't be asking that people stop providing
| services to a goverment agency. You should demand the
| goverment agency stops being a bunch of dicks.
|
| [0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2018/6/29/17517870/i...
| Dangeranger wrote:
| Correct. I'm not saying he "fixed" the problem, but that
| he made his and the companies positions more clear.
| c5e3ebe93d2c wrote:
| Could you explain the moral and legal reasoning that
| necessitates that Github block ICE from using their
| public services, but also allows them to continue their
| "Developers should be allowed to user our service" that
| allows them to defend youtube-dl and usage in Iran?
| b3morales wrote:
| Copilot is still fresh in my mind as a reason to question using
| GitHub to host my source code. Though I understand that my
| opinion on this is not universal.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| unlimited private repos for free if this is a concern?
| b3morales wrote:
| I don't entirely trust that they will remain excluded from
| Copilot in future. This probably isn't the place to re-
| litigate this discussion, but GitHub's claim is that source
| licenses simply do not apply to what Copilot ingests.
|
| That being the case, the only thing that distinguishes
| private repos in this context is a thin policy that can be
| changed at a whim (and perhaps without any announcement).
|
| Also, one of the reasons I put my code on a host like
| GitHub is so that I can share it/show it off*. So using a
| private repo to avoid Copliot defeats some of the purpose
| of me using GitHub in the first place.
|
| *To the extent anyone else cares, at least ;)
| fnord123 wrote:
| Nat has done a great job of embracing the ideals that many if
| us respect. I look forward to watching Thomas continue to
| extend Githubs influence in open source and productivity.
| patal wrote:
| I contacted Thomas several years ago about an Open Source
| project that he didn't maintain anymore and which I wanted to
| maintain. He was very cool about it and put maintainership in
| my hands. I wish him the best of luck, too.
| lrvick wrote:
| Let's not give -too- much credit here. This only happened after
| massive public outcry and targeting trolling campaigns
| exploiting Github design flaws forced them to take a position,
| and a position of anything other than defense of youtubedl was
| going to be an expensive reputation hit given all the
| journalists covering it.
|
| Meanwhile similar repos get DMCA banned daily, like when Google
| demanded they remove all repos using a public widevine
| decryption key:
| https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-0...
|
| Microsoft is a member of the RIAA so don't expect to see real
| defense of any repos unless there is major bad press.
| Dangeranger wrote:
| Github acquiring[0] and integrating with NPM.
|
| [0] https://github.blog/2020-03-16-npm-is-joining-github/
| notriddle wrote:
| And dependabot
| wil93 wrote:
| Made Github available again in Iran [1]
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1346517148357648385
| outside1234 wrote:
| He integrated Github with Microsoft and didn't screw it up.
| That is quite an accomplishment honestly.
| abzug wrote:
| There's plenty of time for this to happen...
| dzaima wrote:
| well, not anymore, as he's no longer the CEO. Unless you
| count that as screwing up (which it might well be)
| meragrin_ wrote:
| He is CEO through November 14th.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| So you are saying there's still a chance?
| mmcnl wrote:
| How is GitHub integrated actually? Honest question. I use
| GitHub almost daily and I almost forgot MS acquired GitHub.
| oaiey wrote:
| I think Microsoft was well aware that they had to run GitHub
| differently. And then they found the right manager idling
| around.
| laserlight wrote:
| This happened after the fact that EFF and the whole community
| got involved. See his dismissive attitude to this HN comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24995179
| bytematic wrote:
| Does anyone know more about where Nat is going? I am keenly
| interested
| dirkg wrote:
| Microsoft buying Github was the best thing that could've happened
| to Github/open source in general.
|
| Screw the people who still spread MS FUD. I cannot think of any
| other company, certainly not FB/Goog (Amzn has nothing in this
| space and no interest outside paid AWS services) that would've
| done anything close to what MS have done.
|
| Everything is better, tons of things are now free, integration
| has improved, there's full transparency. It helps that MS's own
| tools like VSCode, VS online etc are best in class by some margin
| and used by everyone.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| It's not FUD if Microsoft has a history of EEE.
|
| I'm rolling my eyes hard at your claim of VS Code as best in
| class. If the category is JS-powered code editors then I'll
| surely give them that title. However BS Code has many flaws
| compared to other IDEs. One being that it's restricted in
| performance by the language it's written in. I don't use those
| products so I must not be apart of everyone?
| safaci2000 wrote:
| "GitHub Actions has become the #1 CI service, used by popular
| open source projects and enterprises alike."
|
| I must be missing something. For whatever reason GH Actions just
| never appealed to me. Am I missing something? I've used Drone IO
| more, granted it's better than travis but the #1 CI services
| seems like a stretch.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| i assume he means #1 in usage (measurable) rather than in
| quality (an opinion, which he may also have, but which he
| probably wouldn't say as simply as "has become the #1").
|
| When you say "seems like a stretch", I read it as you thinking
| he meant "quality, as a matter of opinion".
|
| I would not be surprised if it's #1 in usage, getting there by
| being integrated in github and free and actually pretty darn
| good.
| DenseComet wrote:
| Its free for open source projects and integrated nicely into
| Github. Even if another CI service is better, the bar to get
| started with Actions is much lower.
| thom wrote:
| It's just extremely low friction. Push some YAML in an existing
| repo, done. I've enjoyed using TeamCity in the past, and
| tolerated Hudson/Jenkins, and I do keep expecting to hit
| something that makes me want to go back, but it hasn't happened
| yet.
| thesausageking wrote:
| Why "cd ~ && mkdir -p nat/next" instead of just "mkdir -p
| ~/nat/next"?
| hnov wrote:
| Popping the stack so to speak before embarking on the next
| ____.
| yibers wrote:
| Maybe he is first going home, than moving on to the next thing?
| Rokid wrote:
| Also, in which shell does `cd $` change into a newly created
| directory?
| staz wrote:
| it's `cd $_` with the underscore, it repeat the last
| argument.
|
| from bash man page
|
| > _ At shell startup, set to the pathname used to invoke the
| shell or shell script being executed as passed in the
| environment or argument list. Subse-
|
| > quently, expands to the last argument to the previous
| simple command executed in the foreground, after expansion.
| Also set to the full pathname used
|
| > to invoke each command executed and placed in the
| environment exported to that command. When checking mail,
| this parameter holds the name of the
|
| > mail file currently being checked.
| headmelted wrote:
| Has Nat said what he'll be doing next?
|
| I know he travels most of the time now and I'm wondering if this
| is a reflection of wanting to spend more time doing that or if
| there's some other new project he's moving on to.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > That's why I'm moving on to my next adventure: to support,
| advise, and invest in the founders and developers who are
| creating the future with technology and tackling some of the
| biggest opportunities of our day.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Ergo, I have enough money to retire and play around?
| siva7 wrote:
| Yes, the SV way of saying that he is retiring because he is
| obscenely rich.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I'm also one of the people in this thread who was under
| the misconception that he was a Github founder / early
| employee. if he's merely an employee of the acquiring
| company, why is he so rich?
| desas wrote:
| He was a founder of xamarin which sold to Microsoft for
| $400+ million five years ago.
| lawrencevillain wrote:
| Living the dream!
| virgofx wrote:
| The moving on post was kind of vague. I'm curious if there are
| external factors involved. I do feel like Nat has done a great
| job at GitHub but curious as to extenuating factors. Would love
| to hear perspective/sentiment from current hubbers.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The github deal with MS closed almost exactly three years ago.
| I'm guessing there was a massive financial incentive that he
| just fulfilled by staying three years. Not a hubber, but this
| is a pretty common thing to see with acquisitions.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| But he was a MS employee pre-acquisition, right? Is it common
| for the acquiring company to give their employees that manage
| the acquisition massive incentives that vest in a short-
| medium window? (Honest question. It's not been common in my
| experience, but that's pretty limited.)
| dsizzle wrote:
| He was already an MS employee 3 years ago though (he came
| over when Xamarin was acquired in 2016), whereas I usually
| associate those terms started when you join the parent
| company. Granted, 2016 is not that much longer ago, and it
| does seem plausible there was some bonus that vested after 3
| years at Github, so you could be right.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Nat was not a hubber when Microsoft bought GitHub, he came
| over with the acquisition of Xamarin.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| As acquisitions go, this has probably been one of the best
| executed ones in recent history. MS deserves a lot of credit for
| having managed that very well. And I'm sure a lot of that is also
| due to Nat's management.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I'll take the "con" side. A lot of the core Rubyists left for
| Shopify after the sale, and I'm sure Nat had a contract to stay
| on for X amount of time, where Microsoft would make no major
| changes. Now that this is expiring, I fully expect Microsoft to
| start making changes with the site that will appeal to large
| corporations, at the expense of what I would prefer, as an
| individual user. I guess time will tell.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't see it. MS has Azure DevOps for their Ms-specific
| stack and Enterprise. GH is the closed source app where
| people come to do open source, and way too valuable as-is.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Bingo. This is precisely my point. I think they're going to
| phase out DevOps and replace it with GitHub in their
| lineup.
| passivate wrote:
| What changes are you expecting?
| jassmith87 wrote:
| Nat comes from the Microsoft side, not the GitHub side.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| To me, Nat and Miguel come from Xamarin Desktop, which made
| Linux on the desktop an actual pleasure in the late
| 90's/early 2000's. They're a couple of my heroes.
| ehfeng wrote:
| You are technically right, but Nat comes from Microsoft's
| acquisition of Xamarin. He definitely is not a lifelong
| Microsoft employee.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| I don't think that matters in the context of what's being
| discussed here.
|
| If there were any retention contracts that came with
| GitHub acquisition, that probably didn't apply to him.
| ehfeng wrote:
| You misunderstand why I brought up him being from
| Xamarin.
|
| The initial conversation was about how Nat was likely
| leaving because his contract ran out. The counterpoint
| was that he was from the Microsoft side and therefore he
| didn't have a retention contract. I brought up Xamarin
| because he was likely under a retention contract from
| that acquisition.
|
| That being said, these contracts probably had little to
| no effect on his decision though, as I'm sure he would
| have made more money than he could spend in a lifetime
| regardless of whether he had stayed or not.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > I brought up Xamarin because he was likely under a
| retention contract from that acquisition.
|
| Microsoft bought Xamarin in February 2016. I'm sure five-
| year retention contracts are possible, but that seems
| _extraordinarily_ long; I 've rarely seen longer than two
| years.
| oaiey wrote:
| Aside that Nat came from Microsoft, they made already tons of
| changes to GitHub. Both for the Enterprise and for the public
| open source.
|
| I do not see any indication about that being bound to a
| contract. They are also promoting the chief product officer
| which indicates that he did so far a good job. Which means,
| we can expect that they continue like they have done in the
| last year.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Now Github will require Microsoft login.
| crazysim wrote:
| Funny, if I log into Microsoft stuff nowadays, I have to
| provide a GitHub login. Even Xbox.
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Reading this and similar other pieces, I wonder what is _not_ at
| an inflection point?
| [deleted]
| robertwt7 wrote:
| Great guy. Going to miss him
| 88913527 wrote:
| Is this a sign of the continued progression of GitHub to be
| further molded in Microsoft's image? Usually there's a churn in
| leadership when the alignment isn't there anymore, though it's
| typically accompanied by graceful public communication.
| minhazm wrote:
| Nat wasn't originally at Github. He was already at Microsoft
| through the Xamarin acquisition and was installed as Github CEO
| post acquisition.
| supernovae wrote:
| Management changes all the time, People change all the time,
| hell, Microsoft has changed... If anything, Microsoft evolved
| around GitHub and it's for the better in doing so.
| junon wrote:
| Embrace, extend, extinguish still alive at MS it seems.
|
| E: Pointing out proven, explicitly-defined-in-internal-emails
| tactics used by Microsoft always seems to get downvoted on HN.
| Why? Would someone like to start a conversation?
| mpol wrote:
| I'm with you, but this is not the topic.
| pkaye wrote:
| Start a new discussion post instead of tagging into the
| current one.
| junon wrote:
| My comment is in direct response to the parent comment, so
| no. This is on-topic.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| What are they extinguishing? Which things do you think they
| extended?
|
| Pointing out stuff from decades ago doesn't really count as
| still proven tactics.
|
| Though of course all major companies do behave and do things
| like EEE in different ways.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > What are they extinguishing?
|
| All build tools that MS doesn't control. Their strategy has
| always been to try lock developers into their ecosystem so
| that only their ecosystem has all the software people want.
|
| > Which things do you think they extended?
|
| Acquiring and extending both Xamarin and Github. Atom
| editor is basically dead, MS/Github created an AI tool that
| presumably uses data they got from Github, they tried to
| remove features from free .NET tools, etc...
|
| How long until they try to apply some more blatant vendor
| lock-in techniques with Github, .NET/Mono or maybe Azure?
| zaphar wrote:
| Tactics that were true 20+ years ago are not necessarily
| still true today. The E E E trope is pithy and a shared
| cultural experience in our history. This does not immediately
| imply it is true now. You made no supporting argument as to
| why this announcement is an example of E E E. As such it
| contributed little to 0 content to the discussion. I suspect
| that is why you are getting downvoted in this instance.
| junon wrote:
| I wasn't responding to the announcement. I responded to the
| comment above me.
| blackoil wrote:
| Context or Details!! What will they extinguish Github??
| junon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_exti
| n...
| nyxaiur wrote:
| He had to stay on until he was free to leave under the
| microsoft acquisition contract. 2 years sound about right.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| That's not what happened here.
|
| Nat founded Xamarin which was acquired by Microsoft in 2016.
| Github was acquired in 2018 and Nat was already an Microsoft
| employee at time.
|
| So Nat departing now is actually 5 years post the Xamarin
| acquisition (when he joined Microsoft).
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/natfriedman/
|
| EDIT: what's also interesting is that Thomas Dohmke joined
| Microsoft in 2015, moved to the Github division around the
| time of the acquisition (2018) but only became CPO 4 months
| ago.
| oaiey wrote:
| Thomas' own blog sounded a bit like he was the special task
| manager. So do not read too much into this 4 months.
| fragmede wrote:
| We don't actually know one way or another. Golden handcuffs
| are very common in the industry and it's very easy to
| imagine that becoming CEO of very public and important
| subdivision of a cloud company comes with a _very_ large
| stock option grant. Easily 8-figures worth. When /how they
| expire are also a mystery to us. I'm sure he didn't get the
| standard engineer vesting schedule of 4-years with a 1-year
| cliff.
| ksec wrote:
| I wonder if he stick with Microsoft long enough would he
| have a chance of becoming the next M$ CEO.
| jassmith87 wrote:
| Many people within Microsoft felt that he was a clear
| contender for Satya's eventual successor.
| ksec wrote:
| Damn. Satya is 54, within 10 years he could definitely be
| the CEO. But I guess most entrepreneur just dont like
| sticking around and not building.
| scrubs wrote:
| If I read another piece of American corporate crap --- plastic,
| formulaic, always-be-selling --- I'm gonna throw up on my
| keyboard. The write-up is rife with stock phrases, and vapid
| emotionalism. Somewhere when the rest of us are busy there's a
| room somewhere where people get the cheat-sheet, fill-in-the-
| blank training that produces this junk. Look the guy probably had
| some success and met some great people. So why in the hell can't
| you say that in your own words?
| agumonkey wrote:
| I can be subject to similar views at times but here it's just
| the usual leaving message. Just like on the Firefox release,
| people should chill out. I guess the global context is getting
| to people's head.
| junon wrote:
| Nat is a mogul in SV. Everyone knows him, many even before
| GitHub. Simply walking away from GitHub without much of a
| speech would make it seem like he didn't care or left on bad
| terms, optics-wise. That would have a potentially serious
| effect on perception and thus shareholders would be affected.
| This clearly isn't his intent.
|
| I offer a contrary point of view: why does it bother _you_ so
| much? Simply do not read it.
| tgv wrote:
| > shareholders
|
| It belongs to Microsoft, doesn't it?
| joshmanders wrote:
| Microsoft has shareholders, don't they?
| est31 wrote:
| In 2018, MS had 110 billion USD in revenue, while Github
| had 200-300 million USD. So the Github business is <0.5%
| of MS's revenue.
| siva7 wrote:
| They don't care about revenue at this league of
| acquisitions. It's all about strategic power and market
| share.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| GitHub's acquisition cost was close to $24B (dividend and
| stock value today). Gitlab being far smaller are closing
| in on $20B valuation. Even if Microsoft is worth $2.5T,
| GitHub being worth $50B-75B still means a lot. Especially
| for the synergies they gain with Azure and the good
| publicity they get from being current stewards of GitHub.
| junon wrote:
| Money is not the only part of any large acquisition such
| as GitHub. Given Microsoft's history, GitHub was the
| perfect acquisition for their goals.
| est31 wrote:
| Sure it was, and for MS there is definitely strategic
| value in owning Github. But I even if you factor in that
| strategic value, Github is not as important to Microsoft
| as, say, Instagram is to Facebook.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Instagram is likely the greatest acquisition of all time
| in terms of synergy and mainly financial gains.
|
| Instagram is worth hundreds of billions now. Bought for
| $1B. It is an actual unicorn situation of being
| incredibly rare.
|
| There's no point bringing up something so rare.
|
| For example, the only other [tech?] acquisition that I
| can think of even sniffing IG is Priceline (now Bookings
| Holdings) acquiring Bookings.com for a couple hundred
| million. Now being the core of the business.
|
| --
|
| Beyond that. Just to be geeky about this stuff. The only
| other general financial deals in this ballpark are
| SoftBank, Yahoo, and Naspers investments. Copy pasting
| previous comment:
|
| SoftBank and Yahoo bought around 40% stakes each in
| Alibaba. SoftBank spent $20M in 1999, the year Alibaba
| was founded. Alibaba owned 34% as of the mid 2010s. Now
| own 26%. Yahoo, because of Jerry Yang, invested $1B in
| 2005.
|
| Naspers invested $32M for almost 50% of Tencent in 2001.
| Probably the best investment ever. Naspers split into two
| companies. Prosus owns the remaining close to 30% stake
| now. Though Naspers and Prosus both own around one half
| of one another.
|
| All three investing companies have had issues with their
| own valuations. They've all had their own market caps be
| undervalued. Their one investment alone usually was close
| to or even exceeded the entire market cap of the company.
| Still the case for SoftBank and Prosus.
| junon wrote:
| I don't see how that's relevant. Github is a huge asset
| to Microsoft, regardless of its revenue streams. That's
| my point.
| adventured wrote:
| GitLab is currently trading for $16 billion.
|
| It'd be reasonable to peg GitHub as being worth $40-$50
| billion.
|
| That's a serious asset for Microsoft shareholders - even
| if the parent is worth $2t - and they will want to see it
| flourish. Which goes in line with what the parent comment
| noted about presenting the correct impression, not only
| to shareholders but also to anyone interested in working
| at GitHub for Microsoft. Potential employees will want to
| know that the context is healthy.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| yes. those are the shareholders.
| lexapro wrote:
| >thus shareholders would be affected
|
| Why not just tell it like it is then? Dear shareholders, I'm
| leaving because I'm rich / bored with Github and not because
| there was a falling-out.
|
| >why does it bother you so much? Simply do not read it.
|
| So you're suggesting people should just not read or listen to
| anything that they don't like? And just keep quiet?
| junon wrote:
| > Why not just tell it like it is then?
|
| Because what you suggested is extremely impersonal,
| arrogant, harsh, cold, and dismissive of the work of all
| the employees working under you.
| kodah wrote:
| A little off-topic, but why does the CEO even need to say
| goodbye? I'm not really concerned with listening the
| words of most CEOs of companies I work at. It's just
| another job at the company, albeit, probably one with a
| bit too much power and influence.
| oaiey wrote:
| Because most likely he is already somewhere and this other
| company is not ready yet to share the change of CEO.
|
| This case has more than 50% likelihood.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You need to read enough to be sick to realize what it is.
|
| In part because even the title is clickbait. Even the tl;dr
| manages to inject some platitudes before getting to the
| point.
|
| -
|
| And you're arguing a strawman. The comment you replied to
| never implied he shouldn't say farewell. They're complaining
| about how utterly insincere it comes across being blasted
| full of every trite corporate saying in existence
|
| If anything they're arguing for more of a farewell than this,
| and it would have taken less effort too.
|
| I wonder why it upsets you that someone would complain about
| this though, do you have a personal attachment to Nat?
| junon wrote:
| > I wonder why it upsets you that someone would complain
| about this though, do you have a personal attachment to
| Nat?
|
| Please point to where I implied I was at all upset.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| That last sentence alone "if it's so bad why read it?" is
| clearly something an upset person would say.
|
| -
|
| But this is HN where inferring tone is apparently a step
| too far in terms of speculation, so here.
|
| Have an ML model tell you how upset you sound:
| https://i.imgur.com/nztQgdY.jpg
| e0a74c wrote:
| I have no dog in this race but it sounds like you're
| assuming that a sentence with a negative sentiment
| (whatever that actually means) must have been created by
| a person who's upset. A bit of a stretch, no?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| A tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact HN users act
| _like basic social skills_ like the ability to infer tone
| are voodoo gets dissected like this?
|
| You can't make up this stuff up.
|
| To the reply:
|
| > would not be acceptable in any social setting otherwise
|
| You're close to getting it!
|
| In a normal social setting if someone says "If you don't
| like X don't interact with it!" that can reasonably
| understood as a _negative_ statement.
|
| Going "show me where I said I'm upset!!" instead of just
| clarifying is not acceptable in a social setting. Busting
| out an ML model is just holding up the mirror.
|
| -
|
| > I am not responsible for how the voice in your head
| portrays what you read.
|
| I'm not responsible for teaching people how basic social
| interactions work, yet here we are...
| junon wrote:
| > HN users act [lack] basic social skills
|
| I believe using a sentiment analysis tool you googled for
| to back up an assumption you made about me and my
| character would not be acceptable in any social setting
| otherwise. Just pointing this out. My original comment
| was made with an informative/inquisitive tone.
|
| I am not responsible for how the voice in your head
| portrays what you read.
| e0a74c wrote:
| You sound upset ;)
|
| (sorry, couldn't help myself. I think you're all great
| simply for being here and applying your intellects!)
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Of course you couldn't help yourself, I poopoo'd on your
| dog in the race and you couldn't think of something
| meaningful to reply with.
|
| -
|
| And I am upset, I hate working in one of the few
| industries where people wear social ineptitude like a
| badge:
|
| Like someone says something when they're clearly upset,
| you ask why they're upset, then suddenly they derail the
| conversation because
|
| "how dare you imply I am some descendant of a caveman
| capable of being _shudder_ upset "
|
| Like holy shit, real people get upset! Wowie what a
| concept!
|
| Dude was _upset_ someone insulted his rockstar idol that
| _everyone in SV knows_ and got called out.
|
| I jokingly tell him even a computer can see he's upset
| and now there's literally another reply to me by this
| "peter" person picking a fight with the computer!
|
| -
|
| Maybe you're all stuck in this weird passive aggressive
| bubble of timidity (maybe that's the "everyone") where
| you're not allowed to express emotion but I'm not going
| to coddle you, not here or in real life
|
| This person was upset. They didn't need to present it as
| some passive aggressive "informative", like the guy they
| replied to didn't know they couldn't read it.
|
| They're just not used to having to deal with emotions
| directly instead of being as biting as possible while
| seeming... "informative"
| peterdn wrote:
| > In a normal social setting if someone says "If you
| don't like X don't interact with it!" that can reasonably
| understood as a negative statement.
|
| Except they didn't say that, did they? What they said
| verbatim was "simply do not read it" which is a much more
| reasonable tone than how you seemingly interpreted it.
|
| Whether it's negative or not also depends on the context
| which in this case is a proposed solution to _literally
| the most negative and upset-sounding post in this chain:_
| the one that started it. What does your ML model think of
| "I'm gonna throw up on my keyboard"?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| "You don't have the social skills to realize _people_ can
| infer tone, so here let your fellow _computer_ tell it to
| you "
|
| _third person shows up to pick a fight with the
| computer._
|
| Never chance y'all.
|
| -
|
| And for the record, if someone complains about a piece of
| writing, and you tell them "simply not to read it"
|
| You are being a passive aggressive joke, and you are
| clearly upset with their critique.
|
| People are allowed to dislike things, and _gasp_ even
| hate things, you don 't need to get all _max passive
| aggression_ over that.
|
| Not everyone lives in an echo chamber of timidity where
| all emotions must be moderate some of you put yourselves
| in.
|
| -
|
| The person I replied to had no answer to the actual point
| I made, so they tried to derail the conversation to "how
| dare you claim I'm upset!" which was a complete aside in
| my comment as it was in theres.
|
| Yet now I am talking to a guy who wants to argue with an
| ML model so I guess well played?
| junon wrote:
| > I am talking to a guy who wants to argue with an ML
| model
|
| Are you suggesting ML models are infallible? You might
| want to sit down before I tell you the news...
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I physically cringed reading this.
|
| My comment said something a social skill as simple as
| inferring tone is too far above you.
|
| Now here you are, still trying argue about the ML model
| that was used to compare your social skills to that of a
| text analysis model.
|
| Hint: It was never about the ML model.
|
| Like at first it was funny, now it's just sad. It's too
| on the nose.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Yeah, why is everyone so mad, you don't get to decide how
| someone writes their farewell letter.
| xxs wrote:
| mostly b/c it's rather unlikely that someone has decided,
| themselves, to do that. There is no human behind the pen
| (or the keystrokes). I suppose some might have been in a
| similar position and resent it.
| kodah wrote:
| I feel you. Words of those in leadership positions can often
| seem fairly hollow. They don't just seem so, though, they are
| and that's on purpose.
|
| Being authentic as a leader is impossible. Your thoughts,
| desires, core beliefs, etc are going to be offensive to someone
| -- even if those disagreeable things made agreeable outcomes
| for people mad at your words. I mean offensive in the broadest
| possible definition here; more plainly, they'll be perceived
| negatively by someone with enough motivation to be nasty and
| often it's not worth the trouble of dealing with someone who
| woke up feeling nasty. We live in a world where people think
| it's okay to read into the words (and lives) of others, try to
| derive deep meaning out of simple actions (even if there is
| none), and where people believe you're lying by default (as a
| leader). The fact is, as time has gone on confirmation of these
| things in various people and businesses builds, so they're hard
| assuations to just toss aside. Therefore, it is most safe to
| type a paragraph giving direction, listing accomplishments, and
| thanking entities that helped you along the way in the most
| taste-free way one can, while saying absolutely nothing at all.
| romanhn wrote:
| You're absolutely right, though is this case even the taste-
| free text is offending enough people. Being a leader means
| you'll offend someone, so it becomes an exercise in whom
| you're ok with offending.
| macNchz wrote:
| I'm with you about corporate drivel generally, but I'm not
| really seeing it here... this post is much more human and
| expresses seemingly genuine gratitude towards team members in a
| way that's absent from the utter tripe I find, for example, in
| the LinkedIn feed.
| htrp wrote:
| I always wonder how much of these statements are PR driven vs
| PR edited... what percentage of these words actually belong to
| Nat vs the corporate communications team.
| xxs wrote:
| Sometimes I truly wonder if people can actually =talk= like
| that for reals. The 'blog' is practically unreadable mess,
| esp. given its name 'blog'.
| alexashka wrote:
| Hear, hear.
|
| As I live longer, I realize some people take to corporate speak
| and corporate values like ducks to water.
|
| It's actually their preferred mode of communication and
| existence.
|
| Politicians play this game most clearly - they need to
| communicate allegiance to the rich, their political party _and_
| 'the people', which is an impossible ask (because the parties
| are not aligned and you please one by taking away from the
| other) but they do quite well by having invented a vocabulary
| that's interpreted differently by each group, plus they can
| outright lie, which's a last resort move they try to avoid.
|
| Anyhoo :)
| hawski wrote:
| If we only could have honest tribal liars as Zoons have.
| friedman23 wrote:
| If I was a ceo and I had an assistant, I would definitely tell
| them to write all the bs company letters for me...
| ferdowsi wrote:
| When you are a company leader, your words can have a material
| effect on your business. This is doubly so true at a disruptive
| point like leadership exits. Of course words are going to be
| delicately chosen?
|
| That being said I didn't notice anything particularly offensive
| about this letter. He describes the accomplishments under his
| watch, expresses gratitude for employees, and expresses
| confidence in his successor.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| There is one particular corporate leader who speaks their
| mind and has made a tremendous impact on the world. So, it's
| not clear if it has anything to do with polished big-corp
| language.
|
| I'd rather listen to someone who is straightforward than
| Sundar Pichai speaking entirely in corporate-speak while
| saying absolutely nothing of value or substance. Completely
| uninspiring.
|
| All corporate speak is rather an invention of the 80's and
| 90's. Listen to corporate leaders from any other time before
| that.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Why is one thing a corporate persona and the other
| "speaking their mind"? I think most CEOs are good at
| cultivating a personal brand that speaks to the people they
| want to be reaching out to.
|
| Musk is equally if not more pompous with his nuggets of
| wisdom, and offers no value or substance either.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Who is that?
| aerosmile wrote:
| Elon
|
| Edit: lol, this will be the most downvotes on a char
| count basis I've ever received. I thought it was
| generally accepted that for better or worse, he does not
| mince words.
| __s wrote:
| Musk
| ghostly_s wrote:
| LOL, Github has made more impact on the world than Elon.
| __s wrote:
| ?
|
| systemvoltage made no comparison between impact of Musk &
| impact of GitHub
| kreeben wrote:
| It's funny to me that you think Musk isn't an "always-be-
| selling" type of person and that you think he speaks his
| mind without spewing "corporate speak" because to me,
| "Musk speak" is just another form of corporate speak.
|
| Musk isn't so much "speaking the truth", he's more
| "selling things, his way".
| jaywalk wrote:
| You've essentially expanded the definition of "corporate
| speak" to be "anything a person in a leadership position
| says"
| Apocryphon wrote:
| When you're a corporate leader, the way you speak is by
| default a form of corporate speak, because as a public
| figure who is listened to, everything you say is a
| reflection of the brand.
| jaywalk wrote:
| No. Corporate speak is a specific way of speaking.
| kreeben wrote:
| Will you agree with this?
|
| Corporate speak, definition:
|
| - to say what's in the best interest of the corporation,
| no matter what the circumstance
|
| - to not tell the truth, unless it's something that can
| become a huge PR success for the corporation
|
| - to not tell a lie, unless it's something that can
| become a huge PR success for the corporation
|
| For the "Musk speak" definition, simply replace "the
| corporation" with "Musk".
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think there's a specific "corporate style" of speaking
| that's very stiff and blandly positive, which is what
| they're thinking of when they're saying corporate speak.
| But I agree with your point and was making it, even
| though Musk speak is a different style, it ultimately
| works the same way as the corporate style, which is to
| buff up his brand in a way that maximizes shareholder
| value. Musk speak might not be the corporate _style_ ,
| but it's still a form of corporate speak, as per your
| definition.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Exactly, his shtick just happens to be the complete
| opposite of conventional corporate speak. It's edgy
| "tell-it-like-it-is" trolling, but it's still designed to
| build a brand and a relationship with the consumer. He's
| not even the only corpo who does that.
| __s wrote:
| That's cool; I was just answering ghostly_'s question as
| to whom systemvoltage was implying
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Ah yes Elon Musk also tweets about "TITS university". I'm
| sure there's no one that finds issue with that, but doesn't
| have the power to speak against it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There are over 7 billion people on this planet. I'm sure
| that for every utterance you could construct in the
| English language, you could find someone who "finds issue
| with that, but doesn't have the power to speak against
| it".
| xibalba wrote:
| People are entitled to their opinions, but I personally
| just can't take the pearl clutchers seriously in their
| offense-taking on this one.
|
| The framing on this as a demonstration of deep misogyny
| in tech is just way, way too morbidly absurd.
| jaywalk wrote:
| If someone finds issue with it but doesn't have the power
| to speak against it, then _who cares_ that they find
| issue with it? If Elon was worried about making sure he
| didn 't offend anyone, he wouldn't speak the way he does.
| [deleted]
| yongjik wrote:
| Can't deny that Musk is an incredibly successful man, but
| if it's the choice between Sundar Pichai's corporate speech
| and someone who attacks a rescue expert as "pedo guy"
| because his ego is hurt, I'd rather work for Pichai.
|
| I mean, if we can excuse Musk's behavior as "So what? His
| companies have been incredibly successful," then, fine, but
| why can't we say the same for other CEOs? Other CEOs at
| least have a good sense of keeping their personal feuds out
| of twitter.
| scrubs wrote:
| Agree. Corporate speak is un-open. It's a spin. It's
| pejorative because it's essentially manipulative. To get
| out of that and to work from one's own experience requires
| intelligence and some (not a ton) of confidence. If the
| putative speaker doesn't have that, how in the hell did he
| get into the top spot? To be sure, such plain speak also
| comes with a take, a slant, and frame. Is that
| manipulative? Not in the end: you see it coming. You see
| from whom it's coming. And the listener can assess how it
| lands. If there's a meeting of the minds, great. If not no
| harm, no-foul.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > Of course words are going to be delicately chosen?
|
| that question mark at the end of a non-question. Nothing
| personal, just critique on a larger trend, but IMO upspeak
| and vocal fry are more annoying than corporate speak.
|
| But I agree about these exit letter being more delicate. The
| more intimate notes are fine internally.
| ksec wrote:
| Mostly started by Google as "Do No Evil" PR, and later by
| Apple's creating products that "enrich people's lives."
|
| I dont think it is this letter in particular. So may be it is
| not fair to criticise it. But my guess is that the
| accumulation of these cooperate speaks, PR, and the past 10
| years of main stream media riding along these PR to new
| height, just happen to tricker OP this time around.
|
| And it doesn't seems to be an American things either, I read
| a lot of Fortune 500 post, somehow these over the top PR
| speak are mostly related to tech only.
|
| However, I still think Github and Nat deserve _a lot_ of
| praise for what they have done. Lots of changes and
| improvement happened _after_ the acquisition. And not only
| credit to Nat but also to Microsoft.
| jaywalk wrote:
| This stuff easily predates Google's founding, and isn't
| remotely limited to tech. It's been standard "big
| corporation" stuff for a very long time.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Corporate PR speak is a reflection of the American public's
| willingness to have corporations put their foot on their neck,
| and then play for the pleasure of it.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Corporate PR speak is a reflection of the American media's
| willingness to endlessly mock anything that is outside the
| accepted norm. PR speak is meaningless because saying
| something interesting isn't worth the potential blowback.
| VRay wrote:
| Yeah, any time an executive speaks plainly it blows up in
| their face
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Incendiary statements don't add much to the conversation.
|
| You probably like buying groceries, you're typing on a
| computer and you presumably at least own clothes so you don't
| have a problem with all corporations. One would also assume
| you don't want a return to feudal society in which the goods
| generally available to you were those produced in a 2-mile
| radius.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Here come the "yet you participate in society...curious!"
| posters. Also, nice strawman
| spicybright wrote:
| The computer point is fair, but for many growing your own
| food and making your own clothes is nearly impossible with
| some kind of corporation involvement.
| TheJoYo wrote:
| You might be reading the anti-corporate sentiment into that
| comment.
|
| It seems more directed towards the public space of Twitter
| and Facebook where corporations have enough rope to hang
| themselves in the town square.
| barelysapient wrote:
| This is written in Protect-The-Stock-Price::English; a late
| post-modern dialect of American English distinctive for its
| bold and verbose phrases that are also in-explicitly devoid of
| any substance.
|
| We're confident that intelligent audience members, like
| yourself OP, can appreciate the large amounts of money and
| diverse political sensitivities that our communication must be
| careful to navigate. And while we respectfully regret any
| discomfort you might have experienced, we hope that you find
| joy in our future communications.
| [deleted]
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Then don't read it. I'm more tired of the whining.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Not OP, but it's hard to unread things.
| Taywee wrote:
| Fewer people probably would have read it if the title said
| what it actually was.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| Then don't read it.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I don't think they did...
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| Could have a warning label in the title similar to spoilers
| though - [PRSPAM]
| soheil wrote:
| Because this _is_ a corporation. Why would he say it in his own
| words? This is not a dinner party with aunt and grandma, it 's
| a multi-billion dollar business with lots of liability.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Yoooooooooooo homies. I'm dippin out! Tom the new homie now.
| This a legit cruise. One love to y'all. Always remember,
| Snitches get stitches. Peace out braphogs.
|
| -Phat Nat
| throwaway84636 wrote:
| He probably can but doesn't want to. He may be posturing for
| whatever thing he wants to do next which requires being "very
| professional" (aka high-quality executive bullshit). Or he
| might just be boring as hell. My dad was an executive, and he
| was one of the most bland and uncreative human beings I've ever
| met.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop creating accounts for every few
| comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in
| the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a
| community, users need some identity for other users to relate
| to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no
| community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https
| ://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
| throwaway84636 wrote:
| It turns out that using throwaway accounts completely
| changes the votes I receive for comments. It seems to
| result in way more positive feedback than sockpuppets. The
| last two throwaways I've used accrued several hundred
| points in less than a month just from comments (no
| submissions), whereas my 'normal' account actually gets so
| many negative and neutral votes that the score doesn't
| change, and seeing that literally makes me feel
| bad/sad/angry. It seems like throwaways could indeed create
| a different kind of forum - one where we get more positive
| feedback and don't feel bad. Or as another way to put it, a
| community can be toxic _because_ people think they know who
| someone is.
| tacon wrote:
| >I will become Chairman Emeritus, which fulfills my lifelong
| ambition of having a title in Latin.
|
| "plastic, formulaic, always-be-selling"
|
| Huh?
| b3morales wrote:
| While I think the complaint above is a little over the top,
| the sentence you quote is a solitary fleck of personality in
| a sea of boilerplate.
| jb1991 wrote:
| "..which fulfills my lifelong ambition of..."
|
| OP is probably referring to this tired, cliched turn of
| phrase (among other examples in the blog).
| junon wrote:
| A lighthearted phrase, at worst. Are we not allowed to
| express ourselves except for the dryest, most information-
| dense prose?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I read this as a tongue in cheek joke?
| jb1991 wrote:
| That's right, it is tongue-in-cheek, and a stereotypical
| way of doing so.
| abzug wrote:
| I read as dumb. It doesn't give any value to the piece,
| very akin to virtue signaling.
| meowface wrote:
| I don't really think it's virtue signaling. "Virtue
| signaling" is itself an extremely tired
| cliche/accusation. To me it feels more like stock
| "relatability signaling", which gives me a similarly
| unctuous feeling. Kind of the nerd-corporatespeak version
| of "hello, fellow kids".
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| The mind numbing boringness is entirely the point. The real
| message is that there's nothing to see here, everyone is on the
| same page, everyone loves the successor, if you're an investor
| or an employee this is definitely not an event that should make
| you reconsider your relationship with the company.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| If you don't want to read this type of stuff, don't read
| corporate blogs. Especially CEO posts. That's easy.
| Kiro wrote:
| Obnoxious comment and perfect example of how toxic this place
| has become.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Are you kidding? Even the _title_ is intentionally
| uninformative clickbait.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| How so? My first thought when reading the title and seeing
| it was a GitHub blog was that someone was probably leaving
| the company. Do you expect someone leaving their company to
| title their goodbye blog post like "John Doe leaving
| GitHub"?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Have we really reached a place where now "Thank you
| Company" means "I'm leaving Company"???
| Taywee wrote:
| My first thought was "GitHub has some underappreciated
| feature or functionality that saved somebody's ass at
| their job, and this is their write-up".
| meragrin_ wrote:
| But the blog post was on GitHub's blog. They would title
| something like that more like "How FEATURE Saves Your
| Ass".
| Taywee wrote:
| I agree. I clicked on this expecting something more
| interesting than some corporate executive's resignation
| letter.
| azemetre wrote:
| Is it really obnoxious?
|
| The world is starting to realize that tech companies are
| causing a lot of societal damage that will take years, if not
| generations to repair.
|
| People are also starting to get upset at large corporations
| for being tone death and having zero social contracts for the
| societies they reside in.
|
| Public opinion is turning and GitHub/Microsoft are just
| getting caught in the crosshairs with public sentiment.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| To me, it's obnoxious because this kind of "complaint" is
| just as formulaic and will appear on every single
| announcement post thread.
| azemetre wrote:
| That's fair. It is interesting when you look at other
| types of farewell post over the years/decade on HN
| (mostly open source projects or programming langs). There
| is definitely a tendency to favor those types versus
| corporate ones.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| disagree. Honest exasperation over the constant fakeness in
| the industry and how corporate it has become is valuable in
| the sense that it at least expresses a genuine emotion,
| something that can't be said about the empty but faux-civil
| communication that is 99% of the tech industry nowadays with
| its constant need to pat its own back.
| fishtacos wrote:
| I actually thought OP's take was very pertinent to the
| situation.
|
| ...which was riddled with phrases like:
|
| "With all that we've accomplished in mind, and more than five
| great years at Microsoft under my belt, I've decided it's
| time for me to go back to my startup roots. What drives me is
| enabling builders to create the future.
|
| Not even Clark Kent could be this braggadocios.
| _vertigo wrote:
| Sorry, what's bad about that?
| afarrell wrote:
| If you start from the assumption that it is meaningless
| and insincere, then it is eye-rollingly vapid.
|
| If you start from the assumption that it is a genuine
| attempt to put messy feelings into concise words, then it
| is a bit lacks vividness but is nonetheless heartfelt.
|
| When you choose not to trust someone, you make them
| untrustworthy.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Is that why we make judgement calls on this case? No one
| can know the intent or original thoughts of the author,
| but we can certainly ascribe qualities to their product
| based on our experience...
|
| The fun exercise here is not that this is yet another
| vapid post on HN, but that people are defending it.
| adventured wrote:
| > The fun exercise here is not that this is yet another
| vapid post on HN, but that people are defending it.
|
| It's quite plausible that the simple truth of the matter
| is that some people commenting here, defending the post,
| may feel that HN shouldn't be so very frequently cynical,
| negative, mean, quick to jump to assuming the worst about
| intentions, and so on. The Guidelines - for good reason -
| even go out of the way to try to drive users away from
| behaving that way.
| afarrell wrote:
| Thats my motive. Why?
|
| Because "If people would assume the worst about someone
| as competent at communication as $leader, then how much
| more likely are they to mistrust me when I try to
| communicate sincerely?" is the story I tell myself.
| Spending time in low-trust environments does bad things
| to the psyche.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Reading up higher will inform you of context, but to
| reiterate:
|
| OP: "Look the guy probably had some success and met some
| great people. So why in the hell can't you say that in
| your own words?"
|
| My comment: "Not even Clark Kent could be this
| braggadocios."
|
| There are better way of expressing one's
| (dis)satisfaction in the workplace. Starting with,
| perhaps, whittling down one's pride in accomplishing what
| tens of thousands already have...
| renewiltord wrote:
| When a leader lists each of these accomplishments, it's
| less "See what I did" and more "To the team that did
| this: I see you, I recognize your contribution".
|
| I think all these comments are incredibly childish. It's
| a nice goodbye letter from their well known and visible
| leader.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Then we probably agree to disagree on this point.
|
| A braggadocios "goodbye letter" is worse than no letter
| at all.
|
| The corporate speak regurgitation is icing on the cake.
| nine_k wrote:
| He cannot say it in his own words because it's a ritual.
| All formulae here are ritualistic, following a corporate
| protocol for such speeches. The speaker's agency
| is,limited to choosing which formulae to choose, and
| filling in the predefined slots in them.
|
| The point of the ritual is to signal the world that all
| goes as planned, while giving away as few salient details
| as possible.
| fishtacos wrote:
| "The speaker's agency is,limited to choosing which
| formulae to choose, and filling in the predefined slots
| in them."
|
| Sometimes it's better to say nothing at all than be
| thought a fool.
| notriddle wrote:
| "Nate, after stepping down as the CEO of GitHub, has
| declined to comment."
|
| Yeah... what message do you think _that_ would send.
| afarrell wrote:
| It is better to risk being thought a fool by some than to
| act foolishly out of fear.
| stelonix wrote:
| I do agree we're living an eternal september for the past
| months and comment quality has gone down to reddit-level, but
| I also agree with the commenter about this specific post from
| GH's founder.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Curious as to why you think this is an "eternal september"
| vs.... anything else/your standard.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852
|
| From the HN guidelines.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Reddit-level is a moving target. Both are trending in the
| same direction, one faster and earlier than the other.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Exactly, why is that the top comment.
| jrockway wrote:
| Good data. We have learned that if your company ever gets bought
| by Microsoft, you have to wait about three years to be fully
| vested. (The acquisition was in June 2018, but I guess it must
| have been finalized on November 3rd ;)
| [deleted]
| zerkten wrote:
| Why is that a surprise? All of the top tech companies have many
| public acquisitions and all of the leader info is available
| from multiple sources. In fact, you could use that leader info
| from LinkedIn to understand that Nat was already at MS from the
| Xamarin acquisition to know that his tenure at GitHub wouldn't
| be a good data point.
| sandyarmstrong wrote:
| Nat was originally on the Microsoft side when GitHub was
| acquired, not the GitHub side.
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| Does not change the fact that he stepped into the company he
| co-founded with vesting shares 3 years ago.
| aroman wrote:
| Nat was not a cofounder of GitHub.
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| sorry my mistake, I had the idea he went full circle when
| were assigned as the CEO
| apetresc wrote:
| I still can't tell what you're alluding to. The company he
| founded was acquired 5 years ago, not 3.
| kodah wrote:
| Nat has had the privilege of working on some large projects
| and startups. I doubt money is something he's too concerned
| about at this point.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| So how come he made so much money that he can waltz off to
| what sounds like a life of casual angel investing?
| sandyarmstrong wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Friedman
| kalium-xyz wrote:
| 30 times as many likes as comments, are people upvoting this
| without reading or do people actually use the delay function?
| SirSourdough wrote:
| It's only 5x now. But also... it's "big news" but I doubt
| people have all that much to say about it.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Most likely people posting it, but how do you correlate likes
| and comments? Not everyone that likes an article needs to
| comment on it?
| EastOfTruth wrote:
| > how do you correlate likes and comments?
|
| That doesn't make it good or bad, but HN itself changes the
| ranking of an article based on the upvotes/comments ratio...
| lxe wrote:
| Post titles like these are HN's flavor of clickbait. I get that
| it's the title of the article, but it doesn't mean it should be
| the title of the post.
| aigo wrote:
| As a newer user that's actually one of the things I love about
| HN, that people accurately and succinctly summarise the link's
| content in the title. And if not, someone will ask them to do
| so in the comments.
| zrail wrote:
| That's actually (generally) the opposite of what happens.
| Usually someone will editorialize the title and the admins
| will change it to the contents of the title tag. If you see a
| good synopsis it's probably because the author of the piece
| took the time to write a hook-ful title.
| lxe wrote:
| Instead of "Thank You, GitHub", the post title should be
| "GitHub's CEO farewell address" or something.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| Related post by the new CEO Thomas Dohmke:
| https://github.blog/2021-11-03-building-the-next-phase-of-gi...
|
| (nascent) HN discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29095759
| kerng wrote:
| There seems to be a lot of confusion in the HN community about
| Nat originally coming from Github. He was already a Microsoft
| employee at the time Github was aquired.
|
| That confusion alone speaks books on how well Microsoft
| integrated Github under his tenure. Kudos.
| qwertox wrote:
| I fully agree, I was one of those until 5 minutes ago. I'm
| happy that GitHub managed to stay being what it used to be, and
| has the strong financial backing of Microsoft.
|
| Stack Exchange, GitHub and Wikipedia, God bless them.
| mythz wrote:
| Didn't see this one coming, considering how well Nat/GitHub was
| doing since MS acquired them where they now appear to be
| unstoppably dominant who are successfully branching out of repo
| hosting to take over more of the dev/project lifecycle.
|
| Will be interesting to see what his next plans are.
| ksec wrote:
| >Didn't see this one coming
|
| It also happened M$ promoted [1] a new president of the MSFT
| DevDiv, which includes GitHub.
|
| It happened on the same day, I mean I cant help to read a lot
| into it.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29098640#29098677
| tevon wrote:
| Agreed, github has seemed to be absolutely crushing it lately.
| With novel features every couple months: Copilot, workspaces,
| wayyyy better CI.
| toxik wrote:
| Tangential but what do you mean with better CI? GitHub
| doesn't do any CI at all as far as I know, and Travis turned
| commercial only. Did I miss something?
| jitl wrote:
| Github is one of the biggest CI players around, I think.
| https://github.com/features/actions
|
| At Notion we use Actions to build our iOS and Android
| nightly apps and deploy our client and server releases to
| production.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| while i agree that github is a huge CI player, i really
| really miss gitlab's ci -- i feel like they were more
| flexible compared to github's.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It was only a couple years ago when it seemed competitors
| were eating at many of GitHub's fringe uses, and even some
| (like GitLab) were hacking at the core.
|
| GitHub really amped it up and not only brought out useful
| features from around 2018 on, it also started fixing some
| (not all) of the most annoying long-term gripes users and
| maintainers have had.
|
| Couple that with adding more abilities to free accounts, and
| they seem to have all the momentum for dev tooling right now.
|
| I just hope they don't get complacent, or target the
| enterprise stuff too much.
| oaiey wrote:
| Seems like they promoted the chief product officer. Seems
| like exactly the person who delivered this.
| jppope wrote:
| Thats a bummer. I was a Nat fan during his tenure. I think he
| really embraced the spirit of the role. Hopefully the next CEO
| continues his work
| alpb wrote:
| Perhaps the moderation can consider changing the title to "GitHub
| names new CEO as Nat Friedman steps down"?
| dang wrote:
| I considered it, briefly changed it, but reverted it.
|
| Reason for changing: probably the most important exception to
| HN's title rule (" _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._") is in the case
| of corporate press releases, whose bland titles are usually a
| kind of misdirection (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&pag
| e=0&prefix=true&sor...).
|
| Reason for reverting: on reflection I think the title is more
| Nat's voice than corporate PR, and I'd rather respect that.
| m0zg wrote:
| I'm kinda worried about GH now. I actually worked at MS over a
| decade ago. They had a pattern at the time which routinely drove
| their acquisitions into the ground. It went something like this:
| an acquisition happens, and in order for folks who matter to not
| jump ship immediately, the acquired company would be allowed to
| operate semi-autonomously for a while. A year, year and a half
| sharks from Microsoft proper would start coming in smelling the
| water for blood. Someone leaves (or is stabbed in the back and
| fired), and MS "mafia" would start moving in, quickly bringing
| their old boys network with them. Absolutely the most soulless,
| corporate types imaginable. Dev team then inevitably notices this
| turn of events and bails. A new, much weaker dev team is brought
| in to replace it. Acquisition is now in smoldering ruins, sharks
| start looking to ruin something else. Lather, rinse, repeat. Seen
| this happen several times in adjacent teams.
| outside1234 wrote:
| This one does seem to be different. Github is held at arms
| length from the rest of Microsoft (like LinkedIn) such that all
| of this sort of interference can't happen currently.
|
| It will be interesting to see if they can keep that up. It is
| clearly an advantage to have an organization that can think
| "developers first" and not Azure, Windows, or whatever first.
| lmickh wrote:
| Hundreds of developers were moved from Azure teams to the
| GitHub org about a year or so ago. Several new features they
| have added are effectively rebranding/built on top of other
| Azure projects.
|
| GitHub is hardly at arms length from MS.
| oaiey wrote:
| Let us be straight: they effectively made the Azure DevOps
| (the leftover from the once might Team Foundation Server) a
| weak product to further foster GitHub. So when this team
| brought some tech over, that just means, they are now
| working for GitHub primarily and no longer on Azure DevOps.
| rickbradley wrote:
| [Citation needed]
| m0zg wrote:
| We'll see soon enough. If this is what's going on, the
| process rarely takes more than a year, year and a half.
| pantulis wrote:
| I guess the post-Gates Ballmer era was prone to these types
| of acquisition wreckage. My feeling is that under Nadella
| everything is more nuanced. Still, we'll see soon enough.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| You forgot the part about "leveraging" Windows into places
| where the acquired company had previously determined it was
| wholly unsuitable.
|
| Gack, what a terrible company.
| eat_veggies wrote:
| nat's only starred gist says drop ice:
| https://gist.github.com/nat/starred
| Xavdidtheshadow wrote:
| That seems to have changed since you posted it - I see no
| starred gists.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Interestinf. What's the ICE contract?
| max1cc wrote:
| lol. didn't he have enough time while he was actually CEO?
| feels like quite a cop out
| Brosper wrote:
| Cool story bro
| onion2k wrote:
| I like and respect nat because he never seemed afraid of engaging
| directly with customers (here on HN, on Twitter, etc). You need
| to talk to customers at the start of founding any startup, but to
| carry on doing that _long_ past the point of being able to have a
| team to do it for you is pretty awesome. I hope the next CEO is
| equally open to listening to us.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Build, test, and deploy your code right from GitHub"
|
| And then loose everything if the supreme being puts you on a
| blacklist just because it stopped liking your government.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Heh, heh. Wonder what Microsoft did to piss him off.
| MikusR wrote:
| They promoted the person responsible for this
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972431
| supernovae wrote:
| Nothing.
| mtmail wrote:
| https://restofworld.org/2021/github-microsoft-in-china-how-l...
| "As Microsoft scales back the Chinese version of LinkedIn,
| developers worry the code repository could be next." though I
| personally don't believe it to be the reason.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Do you also wonder what Amazon did to piss Bezos off?
| oaiey wrote:
| Simple: gave him too much money and shares.
| hackitup7 wrote:
| Sometimes people just want to move on. No different than
| engineers seeking greener pastures.
| ya3r wrote:
| Nat was a great CEO. The best that could have happened to Github
| after the acquisition IMO.
|
| The one time that I won't forget about Github under Nat, was when
| they stood up for Iranian developers [1]. They went the extra
| distance to get a permission/license from the US government
| specially to offer full Github to developers from Iran. Many
| other companies didn't do something similar.
|
| [1]: https://github.blog/2021-01-05-advancing-developer-
| freedom-g...
| rarkins wrote:
| I agree. youtube-dl was another example of them turning a
| vulnerable moment into a win:
| https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1328365679473426432
| fragmede wrote:
| Which, btw, was also thanks to the EFF. Their mission is
| occasionally murky these days, but their part in the
| subsequent restoration of _youtube-dl_ in the face of a DMCA
| takedown is not to be ignored or forgotten.
|
| https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1.
| ..
| 5faulker wrote:
| Here's another new chapter to software development.
| rsync wrote:
| "They went the extra distance to get a permission/license from
| the US government specially to offer full Github to developers
| from Iran."
|
| Wait, that's a thing ?
|
| We get a signup from Iran about once every month and I always,
| apologetically, send a personal note saying that I wish we
| could provide service to them but ...
|
| You're saying rsync.net can legally provide service to Iranians
| with ... some paperwork ?
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| They are a trillion dollar company which spends ten million
| dollars a year on lobbying for reasons like this.
| dharmab wrote:
| It would take some intensive lobbying:
|
| > And separately, we took our case to the Office of Foreign
| Assets Control (OFAC), part of the US Treasury Department,
| and began a lengthy and intensive process of advocating for
| broad and open access to GitHub in sanctioned countries. Over
| the course of two years, we were able to demonstrate how
| developer use of GitHub advances human progress,
| international communication, and the enduring US foreign
| policy of promoting free speech and the free flow of
| information. We are grateful to OFAC for the engagement which
| has led to this great result for developers.
| saurik wrote:
| There are standing "general" licenses for any product /
| company that is doing certain activities and "specific"
| licenses granted to individual companies. I believe GitHub
| managed to get a general exemption for anyone providing
| source code hosting? The general idea is that there are
| things that the US government _wants_ people in Iran to be
| able to do as it would _help_ their fight rather than hurt
| it. This page has the list of general licenses:
|
| https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-
| sanctions/...
| ya3r wrote:
| Definitely a thing.
|
| Regarding the cost, it might be more than "some paperwork".
| AriaMinaei wrote:
| Iranian dev here. I can tell you if a company goes the
| extra mile to provide services to us, the reason is almost
| always that they just care. It's not a marketing tactic.
| You _have_ to care if you go through all that trouble. And
| there is very little publicity to these acts. No one is
| going to notice it but us. They only do it out of the
| goodness of their hearts.
| rvnx wrote:
| They also went the extra-mile to block Iranian
| developers, they didn't have to do so much police, and
| probably tried to buy their redemption. For example, in
| theory Hackernews should block Iranians, but they will
| probably pretend not to be aware and won't actively chase
| them.
| ralph84 wrote:
| Compliance with US export controls and sanctions isn't
| optional. That some companies are less diligent about it
| than others doesn't change the compliance requirements,
| and people can and do regularly go to prison for willful
| violations.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > You're saying rsync.net can legally provide service to
| Iranians with ... some paperwork ?
|
| A lot of it probably. Also, not sure how you can collect
| payment from these users. And keep in mind your software
| might end up being used by their regime for oppressive
| purpose.
|
| Keep in mind the people of Iran can end these sanctions at
| any time. It's a personal and societal choice.
| type_enthusiast wrote:
| > the people of Iran can end these sanctions at any time
|
| Sorry to bite on this off-topic thing... but, _how_?
| Overthrowing their government? I guess that would be
| technically true, but "at any time" seems like a weird
| phrase to use for that.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Yes. Just look at Libya during the Arab Spring. Democracy
| is never given, it is earned.
| hni wrote:
| Never given; but taken, sometimes.
| ghuntley wrote:
| In case people missed it. There was two promotions today. A new
| CEO at GitHub and the person GitHub reports to a MSFT also got
| promoted.
|
| Here's the internal msft email
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29098640
|
| This person at MSFT who got promoted is the one that caused the
| problems in the dotnet community where features that had a go-
| live RTM license (as in merged and ready for long term support)
| were removed from the programming language so that more
| Microsoft Visual Studio licenses could be sold.
|
| Other items under this persons remit:
|
| - Visual Studio
|
| - .NET
|
| - Python
|
| - TypeScript
|
| - OpenJDK
|
| - GitHub (+NPM)
|
| - (hint hint) Azure SDKs (hint hint)
|
| - (hint hint) Azure PaaS / Azure Serverless (hint hint)
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Wow.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > removed from the programming language so that more
| Microsoft Visual Studio licenses could be sold.
|
| Honestly, I'm fine with this level of dickishness so long as
| it means the rest of the VS ecosystem is free-to-use.
|
| Someone or something has to subsidise VSCode.
| geofft wrote:
| Right, I have to admit I don't entirely understand the .NET
| kerfuffle. .NET is clearly Microsoft's language ecosystem,
| just as much as Swift is Apple's, and much more so than,
| say, Go is Google's. A lot of the value in .NET is how it
| works with the Microsoft ecosystem - or put another way, as
| someone who mostly doesn't develop on Windows (but uses
| Windows a lot as a desktop OS), I have never once felt that
| .NET was the best way to solve a problem that wasn't a
| Windows-specific problem.
|
| It would be totally fine if .NET were a closed-source,
| Microsoft-run language. It is pretty cool that this isn't
| true. But the idea that Microsoft organizationally having
| control over the .NET open source project is somehow bad
| for open source is just incomprehensible to me, who grew up
| on .NET not being open source at all.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > It is pretty cool that this isn't true. But the idea
| that Microsoft organizationally having control over the
| .NET open source project is somehow bad for open source
| is just incomprehensible to me, who grew up on .NET not
| being open source at all.
|
| It's not about open-source: it's more that major
| organizations and industries won't use a programming
| platform that is _entirely_ at the whims of a company
| they have no real control over and without independent
| means to ensure it keeps on working, so a compromise
| position that Microsoft took is to make .NET open-source,
| so that in the event Microsoft disappears overnight (say,
| Mt. Rainier erupting and wiping out the Seattle metro
| area) people have something they can keep on using and
| build and maintain themselves. We saw the opposite with
| VB6: the VB6 platform was never open and shared and now
| all the companies that invested in VBA and VB6 in the
| 1990s is rightfully annoyed because VB6 is a complete
| dead-end with no feasible upgrade-path to .NET (VB.NET is
| not compatible with VB6).
|
| --------
|
| While my SaaS (and my current job) is a .NET shop because
| it originated with some "Classic" ASP 3.0 VBScripts that
| my boss put together himself in the late 1990s that was
| slowly transitioned through .NET WebForms (ew) and
| ASP.NET MVC, we still use it for new greenfield projects
| because .NET is a nice platform overall that scales
| really well from one-off prototype projects that can be
| easily transitioned to high-performance distributed
| applications without any major rewrites (the only thing
| I've had to "rewrite" was the conversion from .aspx (as
| an MVC View, not WebForms) to Razor .cshtml, everything
| else has been refactored through the years. The tooling
| and integration between MS products and services does
| save a lot of trouble otherwise (that's where the value
| is).
|
| My experience from other shops, and the problems I've
| seen there is _not_ that other "stacks" (I hate that
| word) like MySQL+PHP, Postgres+Python, Anything+NodeJS
| are somehow less capable (excepting PHP, it's often the
| opposite, actually) but that you end up with dozens of
| projects all with their own separate stacks and build
| environments, all with their own tedious onboarding
| processes (e.g. having one Angular project that
| absolutely requires Node 12, not Node 14, to run) while
| another project's server-side NodeJS code absolutely
| requires Node 16 _and_ Python _and_ Tomcat somewhere.
|
| So I'm more than happy to pay the thousands of USD per
| year for my MSDN Subscription because it gives me a
| platform that saves me the trouble and headaches of a
| highly heterogenous environment especially given the fact
| we're a small shop.
| passivate wrote:
| > it's more that major organizations and industries won't
| use a programming platform that is entirely at the whims
| of a company they have no real control over and without
| independent means to ensure it keeps on working,
|
| That is a risk that is common to every single industry,
| and as such is a risk that is easily understood and
| quantifiable. We live in an interdependent world. You're
| always going to be dependent on suppliers, vendors,
| equipment etc. We have seen how covid related supply
| chain issues have affected everyone. Atleast with a S/W
| platform, what you have in-hand continues to work, and
| you can continue to use the compiler, libraries, etc to
| churn out new binaries.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > major organizations and industries won't use a
| programming platform that is entirely at the whims of a
| company they have no real control over
|
| 100% this, the biggest issue I see with dotnet and Swift
| is that they're spending too much time trying to be
| appealing to people who don't want to use them. Swift, as
| a language, _really_ only makes sense to use if you 're
| extensively targeting Apple systems and planning to skip
| Windows/Linux altogether. That's a pretty shit deal, from
| the perspective of developers who want to deliver
| software to the largest possible audience. Similarly,
| writing an entire program in dotnet used to be a death
| sentence until Mono finally got thrown together. Even
| still it's not a very attractive framework for most
| cases, which just goes to show how important open
| governance can be when developing such a complex system.
| tills13 wrote:
| This comment is 100% FUD.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I wonder if services of non-Iranians ever get canceled if they
| travel to Iran for vacation or business. Has anyone heard of
| that happening?
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > And so today, I am excited to announce that effective November
| 15th, Thomas Dohmke (@ashtom), GitHub's Chief Product Officer,
| will become CEO and I [Nat Friedman] will become Chairman
| Emeritus.
| [deleted]
| teh_klev wrote:
| How very HN, a TLDR; of the TLDR; at the top of the post.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Sorry Dang, I meant this as good humoured comment rather
| than "HN is becoming reddit".
| throwaway84636 wrote:
| How very HN, a comment about how very HN a comment is
| kalium-xyz wrote:
| The blogs TLDR was too long to be effective.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| A short paragraph? What a world we live in.
| kalium-xyz wrote:
| it looks like a foreword. Modern articles have made sure
| I never read those.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Summary: Leaving.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| Summary: exit(0).
| karagenit wrote:
| > n.b.: bye
|
| Let's code golf this and see how short we can get it :)
| xook wrote:
| Shortest version might be:
| Taywee wrote:
| More of a "saved you a click" than a TL;DR. Most people on HN
| probably don't care to read about GitHub changing CEOs.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Most people probably say this just to be like "I know Nat, look
| at me." I don't know how to phrase this to avoid that:
|
| Nat is an incredible person. I've been lucky to get to know him
| over the past couple months. Not only is he super chill, but he's
| also not afraid to ask basic questions. Many of you might roll
| your eyes at that, but it's a real problem: when you're
| organizing something, you feel pressured to know everything, or
| else you'll lose people's confidence. So all the people who try
| to act confident also rarely ask basic questions.
|
| Hackers are the opposite. We're always focused on breaking down
| problems into the most basic components, and then building up
| complexity once we understand the system.
|
| When Nat reached out to me, I didn't know what to expect. But I
| certainly didn't expect him to be a fellow hacker that happened
| to be famous. I think it's incredible that someone can go so long
| without losing that spirit -- imagine suddenly having a boatload
| of money. Most of us would probably take things easier.
|
| Another surprise is how incredibly chill he is. When things go
| seriously wrong, he's totally cool about it, in a way that's hard
| to put into words. I learned the phrase "No stress, friend" from
| him, and I've used it a few times to soothe other people. As
| cliche as it sounds, sometimes it's the one thing in the world
| you need to hear.
|
| I wish I could tell a certain story to underscore the point, but
| Nat's stories are his to tell. I hope he writes a book someday --
| nothing fancy, just a raw thought stream of all his experiences.
|
| And I wish I could share his future ambition. It's so exciting
| that I can hardly contain myself. It might not work out, but
| that's true of everything.
|
| I don't know if anyone will see this. But I just wanted to write
| a little note to say how rare Nat is. He actually cares -- deeply
| -- and also cares about you. Most leaders don't.
|
| If someone reading this has the opportunity to work with him on
| his new project, I encourage you to leave your cushy job on that
| basis alone. It'll be fun in a way you won't experience
| elsewhere.
| cbatr wrote:
| He (unless someone impersonated him) made some quite
| undiplomatic remarks regarding CoPilot here on HN. As an OSS
| author, I was offended by those remarks.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I think it's fine that someone shares their bold opinions on
| future technology and puts it out in the public without
| hiding all this discussion in private where the public can
| not interact with them.
| rightiousrob wrote:
| Are you in love with your ex- boss?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I love my wife, which isn't entirely dissimilar :)
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > I don't know if anyone will see this. But I just wanted to
| write a little note to say how rare Nat is. He actually cares
| -- deeply -- and also cares about you. Most leaders don't.
|
| That's the worrying thing - how will Github be 5 years from now
| without Nat at the helm.
| ghuntley wrote:
| In case people missed it. There was two promotions today. A new
| CEO at GitHub and the person GitHub reports to a MSFT also got
| promoted.
|
| Here's the internal msft email
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29098640
|
| This person at MSFT who got promoted is the one that caused the
| problems in the dotnet community where features that had a go-
| live RTM license (as in merged and ready for long term support)
| were removed from the programming language so that more Microsoft
| Visual Studio licenses could be sold.
|
| Other items under this persons remit:
|
| - Visual Studio
|
| - .NET
|
| - Python
|
| - TypeScript
|
| - OpenJDK
|
| - GitHub (+NPM)
|
| - (hint hint) Azure SDKs (hint hint)
|
| - (hint hint) Azure PaaS / Azure Serverless (hint hint)
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Nat successfully Embraced, and Extended Github. I'm just hoping
| he wasn't the one holding back an inevitable Extinguish... but
| here we are
| MikusR wrote:
| This is probably what caused him to resign.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Despite Visual Studio being a paid product it's always slow and
| a pain to use. Maybe they should fix that instead of trying to
| gatekeep features.
|
| Don't forget https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/pull/22262
| FpUser wrote:
| I use Visual Studio to develop software ( C++ ) for Windows
| and Linux targets. I do not find it slow and rather than
| being "pain" it is actually way above other development IDEs
| in my opinion.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| What do you mean by Python being under them?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I use most of those technologies daily, and I'm across much of
| the "controversies" and issues, but I don't get what you're
| hinting at.
|
| Feel free to be more candid...
| nothatscool wrote:
| Strong feeling of impending doom
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Stayed long enough to screw up the Azure DevOps future, but not
| long enough to make GitHub a viable alternative.
| Yuioup wrote:
| Staying on this subject, how is the Azure DevOps phase-out
| going? When can I expect to see a "migrate now!" button?
| EscargotCult wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if it takes years for the phase-out,
| if it ever gets phased out at all. There is a particular type
| of organizational culture that believes having the "big"
| option for a productivity tool is the best option. AzDO feels
| like the "big" option. It is quite customizable and can
| emulate (and in some areas surpass) GitHub's functionality,
| but at the expense of having more knobs. To me, AzDO feels
| like the inside of a space shuttle, but I'm certain that this
| complexity is seen as a strength to some orgs.
|
| In CI-land, though, I think GitHub Actions and Azure
| Pipelines fates are much more closely intertwined. The
| Microsoft-hosted runners for Azure Pipelines have the same
| environment as GitHub Actions (or perhaps it's GitHub Actions
| that's standing on the shoulders of Azure Pipelines)[1].
|
| 1: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/azure/devops/pipelines/agen...
| oaiey wrote:
| I would also say that deployment pipelines have a place
| inside the portfolio of a public cloud. Not the issue
| tracking but repo and pipelines.
|
| AWS has this as well
| sktrdie wrote:
| I should say that back in the day Nat was one that got me into
| coding. His nat.org blog (unfortunately cannot find it anymore on
| archive) was such an authentic piece of writing with his Xamarin
| and GNOME adventures along with posts and great photography on
| his general coding life working for OSS and other smallerish
| companies such as Novell. It was truly inspiration and made me
| want to live that life - building cool things with great people -
| but more importantly enjoying the whole human side around it
| where your colleagues become your friends and coding is just
| something that gets you closer to one another - similar to
| "playing guitar" or "cycling around town" or "going snowboarding
| together".
|
| Of course his corporate persona is a bit different, but his work
| is still inspiring. Best of luck with your next adventure Nat!
| Cheers.
| emddudley wrote:
| His blog seems to be excluded from archive.org, but I have
| found archived copies elsewhere. I don't want to link directly
| but you can find it with a little searching for his "Evolution
| for Windows" blog post from 2005.
| larrywright wrote:
| I loved his blog too. I looked and found the post you're
| referring to, but can't find most of the interesting stuff
| that I recall seeing.
| wojciechpolak wrote:
| I loved reading his blog in the early 00s. Imagine that one day
| in 2006 I ran "wget --mirror" on nat.org/blog and I still keep
| the result in my archive folder. I really don't get it why he
| deleted it.
| nikodunk wrote:
| I loved his blog too!
|
| I still have some printed cards where I copied his idea to
| print 'Your_Name would like to apologize most abjectly for
| his behavior on the evening of ___________'
| diskzero wrote:
| I was at Eazel back in the day and worked with Nat and Miguel
| when they were at Ximian. It was obvious then that Nat would go
| on to do great things. What will be next for Nat? Something
| amazing I hope!
| krrrh wrote:
| I also had a parasocial relationship with him through nat.org.
| There were some great posts about him and his friend buying a
| used British roadster that had a lot of problems. I still
| remember one of my favourite lines, "this car is a real dude
| magnet."
| adfm wrote:
| Interestingly, no mention of Linus anywhere. So much for that
| open source ethos.
| sneak wrote:
| Things Nat Friedman could have done, but didn't, while CEO of
| GitHub: stop the use of GitHub Enterprise in organizations that
| operate concentration camps.
|
| https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/m7jpgy/open-source-commu...
| tessierashpool wrote:
| and the worst part is that's probably not even what they fired
| him for.
| jassmith87 wrote:
| There is no way they fired him. He is leaving by his own
| choice.
| junon wrote:
| Hate to see this downvoted, and glad it got vouched. This is my
| number one gripe with GitHub and is frequently dismissed as a
| conspiracy when it is very real. GitHub does nothing because
| nobody cares, and that's a sad state of affairs.
| dannyw wrote:
| People can care and not think that version control software
| providers should start to denying service to governmental
| agencies.
| junon wrote:
| This is a motte and bailey response. You're right,
| governmental agencies shouldn't be denied service by
| Github. I don't think anyone here is denying that statement
| _as is_. However, the business ICE conducts, the actions
| they take against other humans, and the vile, insideous
| content they post in private facebook groups about it, are
| something most people would have a problem with if they
| were aware of it.
| euroderf wrote:
| In the current mood, shouldn't it be Chairperson Emeritum ?
| bob229 wrote:
| Who cares. Pathetic corporate pish
| Drblessing wrote:
| Thanks for making GitHub great , Nat!
| MattIPv4 wrote:
| Thank You, Nat.
| sbussard wrote:
| Nat Friedman is very cool in real life
| beermonster wrote:
| From the things he stood up for, the direction he took GitHub
| in and his comments on HN, I can believe this.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| I think he should follow that up with a thank you letter to a guy
| named Linus Torvalds.
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