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> A mistake GitLab made, and continued to make when I left, was not caring enough about scalability. Yes, directors would say it was important and improvements
by eadmund 3y ago
> A mistake GitLab made, and continued to make when I left, was not caring enough about scalability. Yes, directors would say it was important and improvements were certainly made, but it was never as much of a priority as other goals. At the heart of this problem lies the way GitLab makes money: it primarily earns money from customers self-hosting GitLab Enterprise Edition, not GitLab.com. In fact, GitLab.com always cost much more money than it brought in.
Is that really a mistake, then? As a first approximation, company has to invest in the thing which makes money, not the thing which loses money. Now, higher-order thinking might suggest that a more-performant gitlab.com might bring in more customers, build a stronger reputation and so forth. Still, if the company’s real business is selling self-hosted software, it makes sense to focus development resources on self-hosted software.
- zero_ 3y agoBut to be honest I do see the point of the author. Either stop "half-assing" GitLab.com or remove the product (GitLab.com) entirely (and focus only on self-hosting customers (GitLab Enterprise Edition)) might be a better decision in the long run. But I am sure no one on management level wants to do this decision. So you half-ass a product. This kind of situation can be frustrating for people working on the product itself (at least when they care). And each new developer that joins the product will probably suggest: "Oh we should care more about scalability." And each senior will be: "yeah yeah, i know..."
- jacquesm 3y agoGitlab.com is a marketing instrument and if you 'remove the product entirely' then the enterprise edition will sell only a small fraction of what it sells today.
- zero_ 3y agoI do not know if your statement holds true. But you shouldn't half-ass a marketing instrument either IMHO.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat I agree with. There are some weird incentives at work though: a commercial user of Gitlab.com might see their frustration with Gitlab.com as the reason to go for an enterprise license rather than to switch to the competition.
- insensible 3y agoYes, it’s a mistake to design your company’s output in a way that results in shipping a defective product.
- foobarbazboff 3y agoIs it a defective product, or is it a fully-featured demo that is just good enough to show companies what they could have if they host the software themselves? "You get all these features, plus all the speed and security that comes with running this in your own corporate environment" Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
- dijit 3y agoIf Gitlab.com is a money losing product why is it the same price as the self-hosted option. I literally bought licenses from gitlab before realising that the seat cost is the same if I let them host it or we do it. So why take the infrastructure cost?
- jaxr 3y agoYou have more control on the data. Isn't that why you self hosted it in the first place?
- fred_is_fred 3y agoI’d guess because many IT departments figure that on-premise=secure and provides them the illusion that they can prevent source code from leaking this way.