GitHub and Emergent Culture By Design | Hacker News Reader

GitHub and Emergent Culture By Design

alexhillman.com

43 pointsalexknowshtml11 comments

Not to be rude (everything I've heard about GitHub makes it sound like an amazing place to work), but the entire point of a company culture is that it's 'bigger than any one person.' Culture that's the size of one person isn't culture, it's just that person's personality.

This is a fluff piece that says literally nothing more than 'hey GitHub is cool' -- it doesn't explain GitHub's 'unique culture' beyond the fact that every employee is working towards a common goal, which is hardly unique.

Honestly, I expect more from Svbtle-branded blogs.

This article is a summary of another article. I'm not sure what the point of it is other than to fawn over GH.

To his defense, at least it was short, so just a bit of my time was wasted. A journalist would span the same non-information over 4 pages.

You my friend are an optimist.

You're being pedantic about the definition of culture. Many companies "cultures" are held together by a single personality, or a select few. When that person or people leaves (or stop beating the drum), the "culture" dies.

GitHub - much like the tool chain it's built around - has done a remarkable job of decentralizing culture. Far better than most companies of any scale, even ones much smaller than it.

You seem to have read past the connection between their goal as a company - which is easy to say but hard to practice consistently, otherwise more companies would succeed at building a culture that attracts an retains like GitHub does.

> You're being pedantic about the definition of culture.

Not at all. We're trying to encourage HN posts that provide insight or information.

What the heck is a svbtle brand? A silicon valley corruption of subtle?

Yep. It's for 'super' bloggers who are enjoying a throwback to simpler design where their words are taken as gospel and no one is allowed to comment. /snark

I'm a huge Github fan, but this blog post is complete fluff.

"[Github] helps people build software together... it doesn’t do this by accident - it’s by design. It’s intentional. It takes work. And it pays dividends."

Ok....

Last I heard, Captain Obvious was seen near the server rack hosting his blog

Yep, also Github fan and user here, but truth be told, it felt like reading a corporate advertisement on an in-flight magazine. As they said, at least it was short.

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