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Comment by seldonnn | Hacker News Reader

I’m not an engineer and read it as the latter, correct meaning. Preposition “on” makes it pretty clear.

Maybe it just sounds that way to engineers then; I'm an engineer, and I read it the same way GP did. "on" is the preposition I'd use if I were describing the engineers as working on Github (as I just did right now)

I'm in the same boat. On has many meanings, as written 'on Github' could mean:

- Github is the platform/medium/support facilitating work - Github is the target/aim/focus of the work

E.g. 'Working on a table' means I could be making a table or I am using a table to work on something.

I'm on Github and I'm also on Facebook, but I don't work for either of them, and I don't think either of those statements is in any way confusing. I think the confusion is due to the use of the term scaling. Github has 37 million users, so 'scaling' it by another 25k is kind of meaningless.

Having said that we know Microsoft owns Github. If the same article had come out in relation to Apple we'd immediately know what it was talking about without any confusion.

Are you a lead engineer on Facebook? I am. I don't work for Facebook but they host my baby photos. I think it's a little confusing.

If you worked for the company, I'd usually expect 'lead engineer at Facebook'.

The adjective "lead" would be somewhat diluted if there were 25k of them?

Sorry for any confusion! I originally intended this as an update to a previous post (years before we acquired GitHub) that had the title "From 20 to 2,000 engineers on GitHub: Azure, GitHub and our Open Source Portal", so was attempting to go for a good side-by-side comparison.

Post from 2015: https://jeffwilcox.blog/2015/11/azure-on-github/

I do realize it's probably very unlikely anyone here read that post. Happy to see if the OP wants to clarify better.

If the title said scaling to 25k engineers on Windows at Microsoft, would you think it's the number of people running Windows?

Not clear to me. Microsoft has many departments. "On Github" I took to mean "Working On Github" as opposed to "Working on Office 365"

Yes for a native speaker its obvious unfortunately not every one is and gets caught out.

When your writing potentially for non native speakers you have to be careful.

I am doing a document that may well be read by our European co workers, so I am making sure to use basic grammar and explicitly explain what a "synonym" is in case I accidently confuse them.

They should've said "using" instead of "on" so it's unambiguous. I was confused too.

No, it's not clear at all. You can read it either way. Github is now a product for Microsoft. Teams work on products. The title was misleading and poorly written.

Title could have been, "Scaling Microsofts GitHub usage from 2k to 25k teams."

Or "Migrating the remaining Microsoft engineers into GitHub organisations, a scaling story from 2k to 25k contributors.

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