5 ms·

Show HN: GitInsights – a weekly summary email of your team's GitHub activity

49 points by jeffreyjsatx 3y ago

throwanem 3y ago
What purpose does this serve?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- marktangotango 3y ago
  Give pointy head bosses (PHBs) insight into who is the most productive. At least that's how my former VP of engineering, the one who measured developer productivety by checking git commit counts, would use it.
  - adhesive_wombat 3y ago
    Now I know what my AI learning-by-doing project will be: Granulr: take a single diff and generate n commits that do the same thing but inflate line and commit diff counts along with plausible commit messages.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Count, not even the line diff. Outch.
- nescioquid 3y ago
  Probably can be divined from the sort order of the report. I'm surprised to keep encountering two bad ideas in software which everyone has known are bad ideas for a rather long time: a) integration by means of a shared database b) making engineers even suspect they are being evaluated on some source-code metrics
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    See my other comment here. The minute I know I evaluated on code metrics . I start to game then. It’s not even malicious. The second minute, it’s malicious and I just spend half a day becoming your best asset. while producing zero work of value and possibly creating tech debt.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  If these are the stats you are looking for, then this tool provides those stats.
  - swyx 3y ago
    waves hand these are not the stats you are looking for
    - alkonaut 3y ago
      These are not the stats we’re looking for.
westurner 3y ago
Do Bigquery queries of github activity gharchive still work? https://www.gharchive.org/#resources https://www.gharchive.org/#resources https://github.com/igrigorik/gharchive.org https://github.com/igrigorik/gharchive.org GH itself shcould provide a BigQuery-like query interface for API events /? "github archive" inurl:awesome site:github.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22github+archive%22+inurl%3Aawesome+site%3Agithub.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22github+archive%22+inurl%3...
personjerry 3y ago
Seems like a great way to get your engineers to optimize for vanity metrics
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  I can’t help it! It’s the overachiever in me. I need to get on that leaderboard.
nimbius 3y ago
This is great for teams that subscribe 100% to devops but have an entrenched core of shitty managers that still expect a weekly summary of their work in email. It serves no other purpose than to engineer around awful leadership.
peddamat 3y ago
I tried installing the app and got a "The change you wanted was rejected." error.
maddynator 3y ago
Hi Jeffreyjsatx, I tried GitInsight and wanted to share my feedback. Recorded a 5 min feedback video. https://www.loom.com/share/0fb4b5ec2f2744ed9f1239601f43f185?sid=402e6a27-0c40-48f8-a8ae-405e239077a8 https://www.loom.com/share/0fb4b5ec2f2744ed9f1239601f43f185?... I hope you find it useful and if you don't please disregard the video. Congrats on launch and happy building!!
- jeffreyjsatx 3y ago
  I really appreciate you taking the time to do this! I would love to add trend data to the email. If you are willing, can you please contact me via email (available on the website) or send me a message (via the feedback in app) so that i can get your thoughts on how to implement?
dboreham 3y ago
Goodhart's law enters the room.
TruthWillHurt 3y ago
Yes!! More emails from Github!!! Fck yea!!!
debarshri 3y ago
It is great tool for Engineering manager. If you can map it to DORA metrics or another derivative it might be valuable.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  How would you get any of these out of GutHub?
iamjfu 3y ago
I'm sorry for all the negative comments you're receiving in this post. I'm sure you worked really hard on this and I know it sucks when you share something like this and all people say is negative things. My team and I have actually been looking for something like this. Not to judge engineers productivity but to understand workload imbalances. For example, say we notice 2-3 people are doing all the PR reviews (something I think we could detect with this). Maybe the other engineers need training on PRs or we need to set expectations that everyone reviews PRs or maybe our PR load balancer isn't set up correctly. So, good work and good luck. I'll definitely be showing this to my team. Thanks for sharing this with everyone!
- jeffreyjsatx 3y ago
  Thanks a ton! If you have any feedback/needs that the app doesn't currently account for, please email me of send the feedback from directly within the app!
JCharante 3y ago
It’s cool that you built and launched something, but if an engineering manager is ever so disconnected that they need this then I fear I would not enjoy working there.
jeffreyjsatx 3y ago
OP here - really appreciate all of the feedback, whether it be negative or positive! To answer the question on use case: as an eng leader overseeing a large team or multiple teams, I would use this purely as an internal pulse-check, and that's it. Bringing these datapoints into a single place can help determine places to dig in, such as: Are we auto-shipping PRs without diligent review/code comments?. Are senior engineers putting enough time/effort into PR review? Are there a subset of engineers carrying the team in terms of PR feedback? Does a junior engineer's progress align with status updates Are we shipping PRs in reasonable sizes? We just finished planning and are moving into build cycle, are product requirements allowing devs to start building as expected? None of this email content is meant to be source-of-truth, but instead a signal/pulse-check. I do agree with a lot of the feedback on worry about how this data is used — e.g. commit count != productivity. That said, a good manager is not going to mis-use this data and your poor manager is already a poor manager without it.

49 points by jeffreyjsatx 3y ago

throwanem 3y ago

What purpose does this serve?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
marktangotango 3y ago
Give pointy head bosses (PHBs) insight into who is the most productive. At least that's how my former VP of engineering, the one who measured developer productivety by checking git commit counts, would use it.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  Now I know what my AI learning-by-doing project will be: Granulr: take a single diff and generate n commits that do the same thing but inflate line and commit diff counts along with plausible commit messages.
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  Count, not even the line diff. Outch.
nescioquid 3y ago
Probably can be divined from the sort order of the report. I'm surprised to keep encountering two bad ideas in software which everyone has known are bad ideas for a rather long time: a) integration by means of a shared database b) making engineers even suspect they are being evaluated on some source-code metrics
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  See my other comment here. The minute I know I evaluated on code metrics . I start to game then. It’s not even malicious. The second minute, it’s malicious and I just spend half a day becoming your best asset. while producing zero work of value and possibly creating tech debt.
alkonaut 3y ago
If these are the stats you are looking for, then this tool provides those stats.
- swyx 3y ago
  waves hand these are not the stats you are looking for
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    These are not the stats we’re looking for.

westurner 3y ago

Do Bigquery queries of github activity gharchive still work? https://www.gharchive.org/#resources https://www.gharchive.org/#resources https://github.com/igrigorik/gharchive.org https://github.com/igrigorik/gharchive.org GH itself shcould provide a BigQuery-like query interface for API events /? "github archive" inurl:awesome site:github.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22github+archive%22+inurl%3Aawesome+site%3Agithub.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22github+archive%22+inurl%3...

personjerry 3y ago

Seems like a great way to get your engineers to optimize for vanity metrics

dopidopHN 3y ago
I can’t help it! It’s the overachiever in me. I need to get on that leaderboard.

nimbius 3y ago

This is great for teams that subscribe 100% to devops but have an entrenched core of shitty managers that still expect a weekly summary of their work in email. It serves no other purpose than to engineer around awful leadership.

peddamat 3y ago

I tried installing the app and got a "The change you wanted was rejected." error.

maddynator 3y ago

Hi Jeffreyjsatx, I tried GitInsight and wanted to share my feedback. Recorded a 5 min feedback video. https://www.loom.com/share/0fb4b5ec2f2744ed9f1239601f43f185?sid=402e6a27-0c40-48f8-a8ae-405e239077a8 https://www.loom.com/share/0fb4b5ec2f2744ed9f1239601f43f185?... I hope you find it useful and if you don't please disregard the video. Congrats on launch and happy building!!

jeffreyjsatx 3y ago
I really appreciate you taking the time to do this! I would love to add trend data to the email. If you are willing, can you please contact me via email (available on the website) or send me a message (via the feedback in app) so that i can get your thoughts on how to implement?

dboreham 3y ago

Goodhart's law enters the room.

TruthWillHurt 3y ago

Yes!! More emails from Github!!! Fck yea!!!

debarshri 3y ago

It is great tool for Engineering manager. If you can map it to DORA metrics or another derivative it might be valuable.

ajmurmann 3y ago
How would you get any of these out of GutHub?

iamjfu 3y ago

I'm sorry for all the negative comments you're receiving in this post. I'm sure you worked really hard on this and I know it sucks when you share something like this and all people say is negative things. My team and I have actually been looking for something like this. Not to judge engineers productivity but to understand workload imbalances. For example, say we notice 2-3 people are doing all the PR reviews (something I think we could detect with this). Maybe the other engineers need training on PRs or we need to set expectations that everyone reviews PRs or maybe our PR load balancer isn't set up correctly. So, good work and good luck. I'll definitely be showing this to my team. Thanks for sharing this with everyone!

jeffreyjsatx 3y ago
Thanks a ton! If you have any feedback/needs that the app doesn't currently account for, please email me of send the feedback from directly within the app!

JCharante 3y ago

It’s cool that you built and launched something, but if an engineering manager is ever so disconnected that they need this then I fear I would not enjoy working there.

jeffreyjsatx 3y ago

OP here - really appreciate all of the feedback, whether it be negative or positive! To answer the question on use case: as an eng leader overseeing a large team or multiple teams, I would use this purely as an internal pulse-check, and that's it. Bringing these datapoints into a single place can help determine places to dig in, such as: Are we auto-shipping PRs without diligent review/code comments?. Are senior engineers putting enough time/effort into PR review? Are there a subset of engineers carrying the team in terms of PR feedback? Does a junior engineer's progress align with status updates Are we shipping PRs in reasonable sizes? We just finished planning and are moving into build cycle, are product requirements allowing devs to start building as expected? None of this email content is meant to be source-of-truth, but instead a signal/pulse-check. I do agree with a lot of the feedback on worry about how this data is used — e.g. commit count != productivity. That said, a good manager is not going to mis-use this data and your poor manager is already a poor manager without it.