853 karma · joined June 13, 2010
https://developer.github.com/apps/building-integrations/sett... https://developer.github.com/apps/building-integrations/sett...
> Every successful startup eventually discovers that the O(n^2) communication overhead of a perfectly flat org doesn't scale, and needs to adapt to deal with that. The question is whether to develop coordination specialists implicitly or explicitly.
Yep. This is certainly something we feel the pain of and are wrestling with right now.
> Developing doublespeak to protect an idealistic worldview from its incompatibility with reality does seem pathological.
By definition, we don't have anyone that plays the role of "manager" right now (again, for better or worse). I wouldn't call that doublespeak.
In your honor, I used an example from the cryptoparty handbook. Cheers!
1. If everyone deeply cares about the culture and longevity of the company (which is a prerequisite), and nobody wants to do it, does it really need to get done? The answer is often no. But if the answer is yes…
2. How do you turn that into a celebrated task where everyone wants to do it?
One example of this at GitHub is support. Developers hate doing support. But we have decided that it is absolutely vital to our company to both provide good support and to have developers involved in it so we are constantly getting feedback about what is working and what is not.
So we created the "King of Developers", which is a position that is held by a developer for one week at a time, in which that developer's primary responsibility is support. Along with that comes a pimped out desk at our HQ in San Francisco and tons of street cred. We even have a ridiculous internal website to go along with it (http://dribbble.com/shots/554836-GitHub-King-of-Developers). There are currently 9 developers signed up waiting to be the King.
> Who makes these decisions, when there are multiple viable ways of going forward, but someone just has to put their foot down and decide which one?
We all do, but whoever submits the first pull request usually sets the tone of the conversation. Occasionally, a pull request will get abandoned, but usually it is the starting point and we build from there.
There are often intense conversations about how something should work. I've learned to just try one way and see if you like it. Not everyone will, but you can form some consensus.
We have a lot of other ideas for monetizing it with premium and event-related features. But everything you see on Speaker Deck today will always be free.
If it is with MongoDB, I’m hopeful that it is a result of MongoDBs immaturity, and over time it will become more stable.