6 ms·

Scaling from 2k to 25k engineers on GitHub at Microsoft

225 points by myroon5 7y ago

roskilli 7y ago
Very cool, great that the portal is a Typescript Nodejs open source project itself too. Hope that companies can adopt this, it's pretty tedious setting up open source review committees and making it simple/keeping the friction low for developers to contribute/make their projects useful to others. Its usually death by a thousand cuts getting a lot of projects open sourced at companies.
baroffoos 7y ago
That level of growth is really intense. I have noticed github getting quite a lot better recently with things like go to definition support when clicking class/function names in the projects readme or code. I wonder how well gitlab will be able to keep up with this growth given they have about 600 employees in total. Maybe they are working more efficiently because GitHub certainly isn't 40x better.
- dwohnitmok 7y ago
  I interpreted the article as 25k Microsoft engineers working on open source projects affiliated with GitHub/Microsoft (e.g. Typescript) rather than GitHub the product. Moreover of those 25k they're not all full-time continuous or even contributing on company time.
- uponcoffee 7y ago
  From my understanding, this isn't saying there are 25k employees working directly for/on github. This is saying they have a lot of distinctly separate open source projects (e.g. VSCode) that teams work on that are hosted on Github. A quick google suggests there's some odd ~900 employees of Github, which is the same order of magnitude as Gitlab.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    Ah, that certainly makes a lot more sense.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
cshg 7y ago
The title makes it sound like the number of employees at Github scaled to 25k. The actual meaning though is that the number of Github contributers / participants at Microsoft increased to 25k. Quote: "At Microsoft today we have almost 25,000 engineers participating in our official GitHub organizations for open source, a great number of them contributing to open source communities throughout GitHub." Quite misleading IMO.
- seldonnn 7y ago
  I’m not an engineer and read it as the latter, correct meaning. Preposition “on” makes it pretty clear.
  - saghm 7y ago
    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)
    - uponcoffee 7y ago
      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.
    - jeffwilcox 7y ago
      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/ 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.
    - deleted 7y ago
CraftThatBlock 7y ago
In the past months, I feel like I see a new useful feature every week. When Microsoft acquired them I was a little scared, but I've been extremely impressed with GitHub since. Microsoft is playing the long game and I think it will pay off immensely for them.
- k_ 7y ago
  Same, but I also noticed more 500 errors (and a few strange bugs, but that happens to any software). I guess it's expected when a product moves faster that it breaks a little more often (and since I use it a lot, I have many occasions to be there at the wrong time), so I'm not worried [yet] and am just glad we get new features.
- Applejinx 7y ago
  So, 'extend' phase, then?
  - Crinus 7y ago
    EEE refers to formats and later standards, where an MS product would Embrace a format/standard (e.g. Lotus 1-2-3's macros or HTML) so that people who use competitor products will also be able to use their data with the MS product and then Extend it so that people will come to rely on MS-specific extensions - the Extinguish part comes passively from competitors not being able to keep up with Microsoft's changes, Microsoft doesn't actively try to extinguish something (otherwise they'd do that at the beginning) but it happens from people switching to their stuff. Obviously for this to work it needs two elements: 1. A format or standard that multiple vendors provide and Microsoft implements 2. The other vendors being unable to keep up with any Microsoft extensions None of the above apply to GitHub. The first part could apply to Git itself, but Microsoft has nothing to gain by doing that as the second part would be very difficult. EEE worked largely because Microsoft's competitors were companies with limited resources and programmers, but it doesn't work when any programmer and company can help keep up with them - see how they failed to apply it with HTML despite trying very hard. Also EEE really relies on network effects (the last E comes because people flock to MS products) and they already have a better network effect with GitHub's social aspect, they do not need to try and manufacture one.
vinay_ys 7y ago
Really nice blog post to read for anyone responsible for administering technical/billing/organizational stuff in a 500+ developer organization. A lot of problems around permissions, billing etc and how they have gone about solving sounds quite relatable and its good to know even Microsoft with all their horsepower to automate stuff in IT faces the same problems and end up with similar solutions that a much smaller company does.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
Nice to see that MS is very serious about open source. This is a huge change from back when Steve Balmer was still in charge and open source was a dirty word. Employing this many people to work on open source costs billions. I'm sure not all of those people are doing this full time. But still, this represents an enormous investment. That just goes to show how incredibly valuable OSS is these days. That's similar to the net worth of some open core companies that have been debated on HN recently (Mongo, Elastic, Redis, etc.). MS is getting plenty of return on investment. For example a lot of their development tooling is getting significant external contributions. Co-developing software with externals makes economic sense when the primary function of that software is to help people find their way to your for profit services and software. This reduces their cost, makes the software more valuable, and grows the user base of the software. More users means more opportunity for these people to find their way to for profit MS stuff. Even as a recruiting tool this is super valuable since no doubt many external contributors are on the radar for hiring. Just having a lot of developers give up their mac books and instead choosing to run windows again increases the chance that they might end up in Azure, which as we learned recently mostly runs Linux stuff these days. MS is relearning that staying on friendly terms with developers is important for them. This is something that e.g. Google or Apple may want to consider. They do lots of OSS as well of course but they seem a lot more focused on internals lately and some of what they do seems a bit hostile even. Especially Google is starting to act a lot like MS used to act. Maybe buying Gitlab would not be a bad idea for them ...
- spinningslate 7y ago
  >Just having a lot of developers give up their mac books and instead choosing to run windows again increases the chance that they might end up in Azure, which as we learned recently mostly runs Linux stuff these days. Key point in that sentence is this: "increases the chance that they might end up in Azure". That's the big strategy change that Nadella brought in. Balmer was ingrained in "Windows on every desktop" as the company's purpose - so linux/mac/anything else was a threat. The strategy now is, in essence, "do your compute and storage with us". In that context, Windows is almost a commodity: of course MS would _like_ you to be on Windows, but it's more important that you're on Azure. Irrespective of how you feel about Microsoft, they've always understood the importance of attracting developers. That hasn't changed. Some (though, evidently, not Balmer) recognised a shift to the *nix-based environments - e.g. LAMP and related. There's been a steady and directed effort to address that by embracing those platforms rather than rejecting them. No better examples than WSL2 or .net core. All are saying "they're all fine - because they all work on Azure". >Employing this many people to work on open source costs billions. The pro-OSS stance is, first and foremost, a commercial decision. As long as you run your apps on Azure, Microsoft makes money. If the community is funding development of the tools and frameworks you use, what's not to like? Double bonus in that the firm is now seen as being a community supporter instead of an enemy. Like Amazon, Microsoft has found a way to benefit commercially from open source. Warm and cuddly community spirit is all very nice - but it doesn't pay shareholder dividends. Which is not to denegrate the behaviour: I'm sure there are lots of people at Microsoft for whom the spirit and values of open source are closely-held beliefs. Equally there will be others who don't hold those beliefs and simply see OSS as a convenient tool to wield for commercial success. > Maybe buying Gitlab would not be a bad idea for them ... I really hope that doesn't happen. They already own Github. Buying Gitlab too would reduce choice with no obvious benefit to the market.
Tempest1981 7y ago
Manipulative headline, which put me in a bad mood. What they're doing is good, but this article left me feeling annoyed. Like contrived cheerleading.
ksec 7y ago
With more resources from Microsoft I am hoping Github would help and push Ruby Rails forward. There are relatively few people working Rails / Ruby Core working in Github

225 points by myroon5 7y ago

Very cool, great that the portal is a Typescript Nodejs open source project itself too. Hope that companies can adopt this, it's pretty tedious setting up open source review committees and making it simple/keeping the friction low for developers to contribute/make their projects useful to others. Its usually death by a thousand cuts getting a lot of projects open sourced at companies.

baroffoos 7y ago

That level of growth is really intense. I have noticed github getting quite a lot better recently with things like go to definition support when clicking class/function names in the projects readme or code. I wonder how well gitlab will be able to keep up with this growth given they have about 600 employees in total. Maybe they are working more efficiently because GitHub certainly isn't 40x better.

dwohnitmok 7y ago
I interpreted the article as 25k Microsoft engineers working on open source projects affiliated with GitHub/Microsoft (e.g. Typescript) rather than GitHub the product. Moreover of those 25k they're not all full-time continuous or even contributing on company time.
uponcoffee 7y ago
From my understanding, this isn't saying there are 25k employees working directly for/on github. This is saying they have a lot of distinctly separate open source projects (e.g. VSCode) that teams work on that are hosted on Github. A quick google suggests there's some odd ~900 employees of Github, which is the same order of magnitude as Gitlab.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Ah, that certainly makes a lot more sense.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

cshg 7y ago

The title makes it sound like the number of employees at Github scaled to 25k. The actual meaning though is that the number of Github contributers / participants at Microsoft increased to 25k. Quote: "At Microsoft today we have almost 25,000 engineers participating in our official GitHub organizations for open source, a great number of them contributing to open source communities throughout GitHub." Quite misleading IMO.

seldonnn 7y ago
I’m not an engineer and read it as the latter, correct meaning. Preposition “on” makes it pretty clear.
- saghm 7y ago
  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)
  - uponcoffee 7y ago
    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.
  - jeffwilcox 7y ago
    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/ 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.
  - deleted 7y ago

CraftThatBlock 7y ago

In the past months, I feel like I see a new useful feature every week. When Microsoft acquired them I was a little scared, but I've been extremely impressed with GitHub since. Microsoft is playing the long game and I think it will pay off immensely for them.

k_ 7y ago
Same, but I also noticed more 500 errors (and a few strange bugs, but that happens to any software). I guess it's expected when a product moves faster that it breaks a little more often (and since I use it a lot, I have many occasions to be there at the wrong time), so I'm not worried [yet] and am just glad we get new features.
Applejinx 7y ago
So, 'extend' phase, then?
- Crinus 7y ago
  EEE refers to formats and later standards, where an MS product would Embrace a format/standard (e.g. Lotus 1-2-3's macros or HTML) so that people who use competitor products will also be able to use their data with the MS product and then Extend it so that people will come to rely on MS-specific extensions - the Extinguish part comes passively from competitors not being able to keep up with Microsoft's changes, Microsoft doesn't actively try to extinguish something (otherwise they'd do that at the beginning) but it happens from people switching to their stuff. Obviously for this to work it needs two elements: 1. A format or standard that multiple vendors provide and Microsoft implements 2. The other vendors being unable to keep up with any Microsoft extensions None of the above apply to GitHub. The first part could apply to Git itself, but Microsoft has nothing to gain by doing that as the second part would be very difficult. EEE worked largely because Microsoft's competitors were companies with limited resources and programmers, but it doesn't work when any programmer and company can help keep up with them - see how they failed to apply it with HTML despite trying very hard. Also EEE really relies on network effects (the last E comes because people flock to MS products) and they already have a better network effect with GitHub's social aspect, they do not need to try and manufacture one.

vinay_ys 7y ago

Really nice blog post to read for anyone responsible for administering technical/billing/organizational stuff in a 500+ developer organization. A lot of problems around permissions, billing etc and how they have gone about solving sounds quite relatable and its good to know even Microsoft with all their horsepower to automate stuff in IT faces the same problems and end up with similar solutions that a much smaller company does.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

Nice to see that MS is very serious about open source. This is a huge change from back when Steve Balmer was still in charge and open source was a dirty word. Employing this many people to work on open source costs billions. I'm sure not all of those people are doing this full time. But still, this represents an enormous investment. That just goes to show how incredibly valuable OSS is these days. That's similar to the net worth of some open core companies that have been debated on HN recently (Mongo, Elastic, Redis, etc.). MS is getting plenty of return on investment. For example a lot of their development tooling is getting significant external contributions. Co-developing software with externals makes economic sense when the primary function of that software is to help people find their way to your for profit services and software. This reduces their cost, makes the software more valuable, and grows the user base of the software. More users means more opportunity for these people to find their way to for profit MS stuff. Even as a recruiting tool this is super valuable since no doubt many external contributors are on the radar for hiring. Just having a lot of developers give up their mac books and instead choosing to run windows again increases the chance that they might end up in Azure, which as we learned recently mostly runs Linux stuff these days. MS is relearning that staying on friendly terms with developers is important for them. This is something that e.g. Google or Apple may want to consider. They do lots of OSS as well of course but they seem a lot more focused on internals lately and some of what they do seems a bit hostile even. Especially Google is starting to act a lot like MS used to act. Maybe buying Gitlab would not be a bad idea for them ...

spinningslate 7y ago
>Just having a lot of developers give up their mac books and instead choosing to run windows again increases the chance that they might end up in Azure, which as we learned recently mostly runs Linux stuff these days. Key point in that sentence is this: "increases the chance that they might end up in Azure". That's the big strategy change that Nadella brought in. Balmer was ingrained in "Windows on every desktop" as the company's purpose - so linux/mac/anything else was a threat. The strategy now is, in essence, "do your compute and storage with us". In that context, Windows is almost a commodity: of course MS would _like_ you to be on Windows, but it's more important that you're on Azure. Irrespective of how you feel about Microsoft, they've always understood the importance of attracting developers. That hasn't changed. Some (though, evidently, not Balmer) recognised a shift to the *nix-based environments - e.g. LAMP and related. There's been a steady and directed effort to address that by embracing those platforms rather than rejecting them. No better examples than WSL2 or .net core. All are saying "they're all fine - because they all work on Azure". >Employing this many people to work on open source costs billions. The pro-OSS stance is, first and foremost, a commercial decision. As long as you run your apps on Azure, Microsoft makes money. If the community is funding development of the tools and frameworks you use, what's not to like? Double bonus in that the firm is now seen as being a community supporter instead of an enemy. Like Amazon, Microsoft has found a way to benefit commercially from open source. Warm and cuddly community spirit is all very nice - but it doesn't pay shareholder dividends. Which is not to denegrate the behaviour: I'm sure there are lots of people at Microsoft for whom the spirit and values of open source are closely-held beliefs. Equally there will be others who don't hold those beliefs and simply see OSS as a convenient tool to wield for commercial success. > Maybe buying Gitlab would not be a bad idea for them ... I really hope that doesn't happen. They already own Github. Buying Gitlab too would reduce choice with no obvious benefit to the market.

Tempest1981 7y ago

Manipulative headline, which put me in a bad mood. What they're doing is good, but this article left me feeling annoyed. Like contrived cheerleading.

ksec 7y ago

With more resources from Microsoft I am hoping Github would help and push Ruby Rails forward. There are relatively few people working Rails / Ruby Core working in Github