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Alcohol is a major part of the social fabric in America. Business deals, hacker meetups, weddings, reunions, all have alcohol at them. Hell, the writers of the

by tsally 17y ago

Alcohol is a major part of the social fabric in America. Business deals, hacker meetups, weddings, reunions, all have alcohol at them. Hell, the writers of the constitution consumed a ton of alcohol to celebrate when they finished. Alcohol serves a useful social function and it's been that way in this country since inception. Yes people are moronic and abuse alcohol, but that's hardly the case with the Github crew. The only reason why anyone would think that 'alcohol = failure' is some stupid notion about booze formed in college where abuse is actually rampant.

Perceval 17y ago
>Yes people are moronic and abuse alcohol, but that's hardly the case with the Github crew. How do you know? >The only reason why anyone would think that 'alcohol = lazy' is some stupid notion about booze formed in college where abuse is actually rampant. Eh, I don't drink, and whereas all my friends did in college, I wouldn't have said that lazy was a typical outcome of their drinking. That's not to say their drinking didn't have pretty major downsides on a number of occasions, but they all studied their asses off and were diligent when shit needed to get done. I do think that people tend to associate people that talk up their drinking habits with thoughtless, reckless, or stupid behavior. Whether that's a fair or unfair stereotype is for each person to decide on the basis of their own experience. Apparently some of GitHub's clients have that stereotype. Public image management is part of developing any business. GitHub uses alcohol to loosen customers and potential customers up, which may bring in new clients and maintain current clients. But that strategy will also lose them certain clients, and it's doubtful that writing a blog post about how "it's totally unfair to judge us for posting on our business's blog about how much fun we have drinking with customers" is going to convince otherwise skeptical clients. If the complaining customer is correct that GitHub still suffers from "frequent outages, slow queues, occasional inability to push/pull, frequent breakage after code pushes, etc", then the onus remains on GitHub to demonstrate that they work their asses off. Proof is in the pudding. At the end of the day, GitHub folks can do whatever they like, and people are free to disagree with that and switch services if they like. But there may be better public image strategies out there, perhaps ones that are more discreet at the very least.
- tekkub 17y ago
  There will always be people that don't like what we do, no matter what we do. Drink? Someone will hate us for it. Act like professional business executives, someone will think we take ourselves too seriously. I think the trick is to find the right balance for our target market, and I think the guys are doing quite well at that. I don't think any of us expect to pick up big businesses for Firewall Install at meetups, we're going to get those customers by way of developers that are already using git, and from the talks we give about git and GitHub at places like Yahoo. If all people see is us drinking every other Thursday, they're missing a lot. Customers complaining about performance certainly have a valid point. But if they believe that these issues are caused by a lack of dedication or just general "goofing off", I think they're mistaken. Frankly, Tom's been working his ass off since April with the Rackspace move. At the same time, Chris has focused nearly all of his time into keeping the site up as is and doing everything he can to maintain or improve performance with the hardware we have. There's simply hardware bottlenecks blocking our way at the moment. I'm sure everyone knows my feelings about GFS by now. Proof certainly is in the pudding, and I think everyone is going to love the pudding we'll be serving up from Rackspace. I know it's hard to be patient and wait for the move to happen... trust me I really do. I'm the one on the front line every day with unhappy customers who have to deal with the latency and job queue backups. I don't think there's anyone that wants the move to happen more than me.
  - Perceval 17y ago
    >There will always be people that don't like what we do, no matter what we do. You're absolutely right about this. >I think the trick is to find the right balance for our target market Again I agree. And maybe losing a customer or two who dislike the blog posts about drinking is acceptable, if the get togethers gain you more than enough clients to make up for that occasional loss. You are going to be the judge of the value of blogging about parties versus retaining some customers. As far as I can tell, the customer in question was upset principally about the blogging about the parties, not necessarily the fact that you are having a bunch of drinks with customers and potential customers. You might consider whether continuing with the customer parties, but refraining from blogging in indiscreet detail about them, is a better strategy for retaining frustrated existing customers. Is there a cost to not blogging about drinking? > If all people see is us drinking every other Thursday, they're missing a lot. I'm not a reader of your blog, but how many posts do you make saying "Tom upgraded X today, and is working on Y now," "Chris managed a major XYZ this week, and is working on optimizing ABC"? What is the ratio between posts highlighting you guys working your asses off and you guys having drinks with customers? Perhaps you should consider adjusting that ratio, if frustrated customers perceive it to be out of balance. What is the cost to you of making that change?
biohacker42 17y ago
Bullshit. I'm east European, I know what alcohol as a major part of the social fabric looks like. But I quite drinking a long time ago. And it hasn't hurt my social fabric at all. Not in eastern Europe not in America, not anywhere. There is absolutely no reason what so ever for YOU to drink. However, dry events in my experience tend to be worse attended, then the same events with alcohol. So I would describe Alcohol as a minor part of social conventions. It would be major if not drinking was a major social faux pas.

by tsally 17y ago

Perceval 17y ago

>Yes people are moronic and abuse alcohol, but that's hardly the case with the Github crew. How do you know? >The only reason why anyone would think that 'alcohol = lazy' is some stupid notion about booze formed in college where abuse is actually rampant. Eh, I don't drink, and whereas all my friends did in college, I wouldn't have said that lazy was a typical outcome of their drinking. That's not to say their drinking didn't have pretty major downsides on a number of occasions, but they all studied their asses off and were diligent when shit needed to get done. I do think that people tend to associate people that talk up their drinking habits with thoughtless, reckless, or stupid behavior. Whether that's a fair or unfair stereotype is for each person to decide on the basis of their own experience. Apparently some of GitHub's clients have that stereotype. Public image management is part of developing any business. GitHub uses alcohol to loosen customers and potential customers up, which may bring in new clients and maintain current clients. But that strategy will also lose them certain clients, and it's doubtful that writing a blog post about how "it's totally unfair to judge us for posting on our business's blog about how much fun we have drinking with customers" is going to convince otherwise skeptical clients. If the complaining customer is correct that GitHub still suffers from "frequent outages, slow queues, occasional inability to push/pull, frequent breakage after code pushes, etc", then the onus remains on GitHub to demonstrate that they work their asses off. Proof is in the pudding. At the end of the day, GitHub folks can do whatever they like, and people are free to disagree with that and switch services if they like. But there may be better public image strategies out there, perhaps ones that are more discreet at the very least.

tekkub 17y ago
There will always be people that don't like what we do, no matter what we do. Drink? Someone will hate us for it. Act like professional business executives, someone will think we take ourselves too seriously. I think the trick is to find the right balance for our target market, and I think the guys are doing quite well at that. I don't think any of us expect to pick up big businesses for Firewall Install at meetups, we're going to get those customers by way of developers that are already using git, and from the talks we give about git and GitHub at places like Yahoo. If all people see is us drinking every other Thursday, they're missing a lot. Customers complaining about performance certainly have a valid point. But if they believe that these issues are caused by a lack of dedication or just general "goofing off", I think they're mistaken. Frankly, Tom's been working his ass off since April with the Rackspace move. At the same time, Chris has focused nearly all of his time into keeping the site up as is and doing everything he can to maintain or improve performance with the hardware we have. There's simply hardware bottlenecks blocking our way at the moment. I'm sure everyone knows my feelings about GFS by now. Proof certainly is in the pudding, and I think everyone is going to love the pudding we'll be serving up from Rackspace. I know it's hard to be patient and wait for the move to happen... trust me I really do. I'm the one on the front line every day with unhappy customers who have to deal with the latency and job queue backups. I don't think there's anyone that wants the move to happen more than me.
- Perceval 17y ago
  >There will always be people that don't like what we do, no matter what we do. You're absolutely right about this. >I think the trick is to find the right balance for our target market Again I agree. And maybe losing a customer or two who dislike the blog posts about drinking is acceptable, if the get togethers gain you more than enough clients to make up for that occasional loss. You are going to be the judge of the value of blogging about parties versus retaining some customers. As far as I can tell, the customer in question was upset principally about the blogging about the parties, not necessarily the fact that you are having a bunch of drinks with customers and potential customers. You might consider whether continuing with the customer parties, but refraining from blogging in indiscreet detail about them, is a better strategy for retaining frustrated existing customers. Is there a cost to not blogging about drinking? > If all people see is us drinking every other Thursday, they're missing a lot. I'm not a reader of your blog, but how many posts do you make saying "Tom upgraded X today, and is working on Y now," "Chris managed a major XYZ this week, and is working on optimizing ABC"? What is the ratio between posts highlighting you guys working your asses off and you guys having drinks with customers? Perhaps you should consider adjusting that ratio, if frustrated customers perceive it to be out of balance. What is the cost to you of making that change?

biohacker42 17y ago

Bullshit. I'm east European, I know what alcohol as a major part of the social fabric looks like. But I quite drinking a long time ago. And it hasn't hurt my social fabric at all. Not in eastern Europe not in America, not anywhere. There is absolutely no reason what so ever for YOU to drink. However, dry events in my experience tend to be worse attended, then the same events with alcohol. So I would describe Alcohol as a minor part of social conventions. It would be major if not drinking was a major social faux pas.