3 ms·

I dunno. I do R&D tax credit studies for hundreds of enterprise software firms and I always ask what version control system(s) they use and where/how it is host

by stult 9y ago

I dunno. I do R&D tax credit studies for hundreds of enterprise software firms and I always ask what version control system(s) they use and where/how it is hosted. I would guesstimate between a third and a half use GitLab in some capacity. And even then a lot of the time it's only for some teams or some projects. I do work with a disproportionate number of MS shops and a disproportionate number of medium to large companies (and few very large companies), but that's kind of the point. Those companies account for a lot of the enterprise market, yet you aren't including them in your claim. You've still got amazing market share and an impressive product, so there's no need to exaggerate. Just say 2/3rds of self-hosted git. That's a powerful enough marketing statement in and of itself.

sytse 9y ago
> a disproportionate number of MS shops What breakdown of version control systems you seeing? If between a third and a half use GitLab I would love to know what the rest are using.
- stult 9y ago
  Just to clarify, between a third and a half use GitLab in some capacity. But to answer your question, I see a lot of TFS these days. Easily 90% of the MS stack firms, and even some with more diverse stacks. And increasingly with the VS git for Windows plugin as the VCS. Those are probably around 50% of my clients. SVN and Mercurial have a noticeable presence, say around 30% of my clients, but that number seems to be declining. I mostly see this with smaller firms with a single large, mature, legacy product that's in the cash cow stage. They're barely investing in new features, so why bother to upgrade their internal systems? A really shocking number of firms don't have any VCS whatsoever (around 15%) or individual teams decide on their own solutions (around 10%) or individual teams may supplement the firm wide VCS for production with their own dev solutions (around 15%, which overlaps with all the other categories). A lot of those teams seem to use GitHub private repos or GitLab, though frequently I see institutional constraints prevent them from adopting a self-hosted solution (a company too dumb to set up VCS isn't likely to spring for a server--these are the same people that have dev and prod but no test servers). I frankly don't know how the firms without a VCS function. They tend to be my most challenging clients, so the answer is probably not well. And then a really large number of firms have legacy homegrown solutions. Probably like 20%. These tend to be larger companies with an in-house tech department supporting a really unremarkable product that's been in use for 20+ years, like an eCommerce solution for a mid-sized retailer or an inventory system for a manufacturer. I think it's probably a much larger segment than shows up in a lot of stats because they tend to be... weird. They feel less like development teams and more like overgrown IT departments. Notice that these numbers don't add up to 100. That's because there's lots of overlap, especially at larger firms that have grown by acquisition, where individual entities can operate nearly independently. Really, there's a huge selection bias here too. My clients tend to be either very well organized MS shops or nightmarishly anarchic hodgepodges. That's driven by client size and by my firm's market position and by my own sales abilities. I do better with MS shops because that's the stack I use and it makes it easier for me to speak their language, as it were. My firm targets mid-sized companies over very large companies or very small ones. So take what I say with a grain of salt.
  - sytse 9y ago
    Thanks for the detailed insights!

by stult 9y ago

sytse 9y ago

> a disproportionate number of MS shops What breakdown of version control systems you seeing? If between a third and a half use GitLab I would love to know what the rest are using.

stult 9y ago
Just to clarify, between a third and a half use GitLab in some capacity. But to answer your question, I see a lot of TFS these days. Easily 90% of the MS stack firms, and even some with more diverse stacks. And increasingly with the VS git for Windows plugin as the VCS. Those are probably around 50% of my clients. SVN and Mercurial have a noticeable presence, say around 30% of my clients, but that number seems to be declining. I mostly see this with smaller firms with a single large, mature, legacy product that's in the cash cow stage. They're barely investing in new features, so why bother to upgrade their internal systems? A really shocking number of firms don't have any VCS whatsoever (around 15%) or individual teams decide on their own solutions (around 10%) or individual teams may supplement the firm wide VCS for production with their own dev solutions (around 15%, which overlaps with all the other categories). A lot of those teams seem to use GitHub private repos or GitLab, though frequently I see institutional constraints prevent them from adopting a self-hosted solution (a company too dumb to set up VCS isn't likely to spring for a server--these are the same people that have dev and prod but no test servers). I frankly don't know how the firms without a VCS function. They tend to be my most challenging clients, so the answer is probably not well. And then a really large number of firms have legacy homegrown solutions. Probably like 20%. These tend to be larger companies with an in-house tech department supporting a really unremarkable product that's been in use for 20+ years, like an eCommerce solution for a mid-sized retailer or an inventory system for a manufacturer. I think it's probably a much larger segment than shows up in a lot of stats because they tend to be... weird. They feel less like development teams and more like overgrown IT departments. Notice that these numbers don't add up to 100. That's because there's lots of overlap, especially at larger firms that have grown by acquisition, where individual entities can operate nearly independently. Really, there's a huge selection bias here too. My clients tend to be either very well organized MS shops or nightmarishly anarchic hodgepodges. That's driven by client size and by my firm's market position and by my own sales abilities. I do better with MS shops because that's the stack I use and it makes it easier for me to speak their language, as it were. My firm targets mid-sized companies over very large companies or very small ones. So take what I say with a grain of salt.
- sytse 9y ago
  Thanks for the detailed insights!