5 ms·

IMHO GitHub should be spending less resources on adding achievement badges and more resources on preventing frequent service disruptions...

o_m 4y ago
In a way it is good that they are focusing on the wrong things. It makes it easier for competitors to catch up and compete.
- smeagull 4y ago
  As far as actions go, I still think gitlab has a better CI/CD story.
  - wdb 4y ago
    I wished the gitlab.com runners had the same specs as the Github ones :(
Raed667 4y ago
More likely the team that worked on the badges (UI and data engineers) have no impact or ownership over disruptions (SREs and infra)
- dandellion 4y ago
  Exactly, they could be spending more resources on hiring more SREs and infra and less UI and data engineers.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    Stuffing twice the amount of engineers into a team is not exactly a good way to reduce complexity and reduce downtime, though.
    - hksoftware 4y ago
      Investing into a department is not the same as stuffing more engineers into a team
      - vinnymac 4y ago
        Almost as simple as Quality > Quantity.
    - nine_k 4y ago
      But maybe hiring few more senior folks at higher salaries could help more than hiring twice as many juniors?
      - jopsen 4y ago
        Or just doing less..
    - s_dev 4y ago
      Investing could mean hiring more experienced candidates rather than more candidates. Investing could mean having a fraction of the devs and far more resources for each one of them. Whatever the problem this is absolutely a GitHub management issue they gotta fix.
- dijit 4y ago
  Common rebuttal and one I sympathise with. But that assumes that the people assigned to achievements could never help the platform to be reliable. If that’s the case, why hire them at all? Either way you slice it, money is being spent here.
  - sime2009 4y ago
    They could put together some badges and achievements for the SRE team to help motivate them to keep the f-ing thing running.
    - imdsm 4y ago
      Are you saying the "It has been 001 days since the last outage" sign isn't working?
- tylersmith 4y ago
  They're still a misallocation of Github's resources that could go into other teams.
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  Even more likely that most SRE and infra engineers have no ownership over that either, since it's all Microsoft-authored code (in case you didn't know: GitHub Actions is Azure DevOps Pipelines is VS TFS Pipelines).
- s_dev 4y ago
  Yes but management are responsible for allocating resources. Pointing to another team that has no bearing on the issue at hand doesn't nothing to absolve management from this.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - droopyEyelids 4y ago
    Are you making a "10 women should be able to have a baby in a month" type argument?
    - s_dev 4y ago
      No -- are you presuming 'allocating resources' can only mean hiring more devs? It doesn't.
  - pc86 4y ago
    Yes and it's a poor allocation of resources. Instead of hiring n designers they could have hired m SREs and it stands to reason we'd have a less-gamified GitHub and a more stable GitHub. So plusses all around, I think.

o_m 4y ago

In a way it is good that they are focusing on the wrong things. It makes it easier for competitors to catch up and compete.

smeagull 4y ago
As far as actions go, I still think gitlab has a better CI/CD story.
- wdb 4y ago
  I wished the gitlab.com runners had the same specs as the Github ones :(

Raed667 4y ago

More likely the team that worked on the badges (UI and data engineers) have no impact or ownership over disruptions (SREs and infra)

dandellion 4y ago
Exactly, they could be spending more resources on hiring more SREs and infra and less UI and data engineers.
- matsemann 4y ago
  Stuffing twice the amount of engineers into a team is not exactly a good way to reduce complexity and reduce downtime, though.
  - hksoftware 4y ago
    Investing into a department is not the same as stuffing more engineers into a team
    - vinnymac 4y ago
      Almost as simple as Quality > Quantity.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    But maybe hiring few more senior folks at higher salaries could help more than hiring twice as many juniors?
    - jopsen 4y ago
      Or just doing less..
  - s_dev 4y ago
    Investing could mean hiring more experienced candidates rather than more candidates. Investing could mean having a fraction of the devs and far more resources for each one of them. Whatever the problem this is absolutely a GitHub management issue they gotta fix.
dijit 4y ago
Common rebuttal and one I sympathise with. But that assumes that the people assigned to achievements could never help the platform to be reliable. If that’s the case, why hire them at all? Either way you slice it, money is being spent here.
- sime2009 4y ago
  They could put together some badges and achievements for the SRE team to help motivate them to keep the f-ing thing running.
  - imdsm 4y ago
    Are you saying the "It has been 001 days since the last outage" sign isn't working?
tylersmith 4y ago
They're still a misallocation of Github's resources that could go into other teams.
sascha_sl 4y ago
Even more likely that most SRE and infra engineers have no ownership over that either, since it's all Microsoft-authored code (in case you didn't know: GitHub Actions is Azure DevOps Pipelines is VS TFS Pipelines).
s_dev 4y ago
Yes but management are responsible for allocating resources. Pointing to another team that has no bearing on the issue at hand doesn't nothing to absolve management from this.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  Are you making a "10 women should be able to have a baby in a month" type argument?
  - s_dev 4y ago
    No -- are you presuming 'allocating resources' can only mean hiring more devs? It doesn't.
- pc86 4y ago
  Yes and it's a poor allocation of resources. Instead of hiring n designers they could have hired m SREs and it stands to reason we'd have a less-gamified GitHub and a more stable GitHub. So plusses all around, I think.