Interview? - Githubissues

perilstar commented 8 years ago

Dear Mr. Haack,

I'm a high school student at Mountain Vista currently taken a Business class. I'm also a user of GitHub's services. For my class, I've been tasked to find a socially responsible company for a pretend venture capitalist firm. When I think of social responsibility, the first thing that pops into my head is GitHub's Student Developer Pack. I've chosen this company because it's already gotten two very generous donations from venture capitalist firms, and seems to be an extremely profitable company. Unfortunately, the information I've found this far is not enough for my presentation. I'm writing to you in the hopes that you can answer some of the following questions about GitHub as a company.

How is GitHub environmentally responsible?
How does GitHub use ethics in advertising?
How does GitHub create jobs?
What is the culture of the GitHub workplace?
What benefits do GitHub employees enjoy?
What motivational tactics are used by managers?
When did GitHub change from a flat, decentralized organization to a more centralized organization with middle managers? Why did this transition occur?
How does GitHub enable consumerism?
Does GitHub donate to any charities?
How was GitHub funded initially? Does it have privately traded stock?

If it would be at all easier, I would be willing to have a quick Skype conversation with you about these topics. If you're interested, contact me so we can schedule a time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this issue.

(I contacted GitHub directly with these questions, but they were unable to help me. If you could do so, I'd be very grateful; this is for my Business final.)

haacked commented 8 years ago

I'm working on it. When do you need it by?

perilstar commented 8 years ago

If you could get it to me tonight, that'd be great. I need a non-internet source for my project, and my teacher allows us to count interviews for that. If you can't answer all of the questions for any reason I understand completely.

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 12:50 PM Phil Haack notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm working on it. When do you need it by?

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/Haacked/feedback/issues/135#issuecomment-218850855

haacked commented 8 years ago

I probably can't get it done tonight. Would tomorrow work?

perilstar commented 8 years ago

Tomorrow is when I'm supposed to be presenting my project... Oops. I've found other sources for many of the things I need. Any info you can provide tonight would be very much appreciated, even if it's not in-depth. On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 16:37 Phil Haack notifications@github.com wrote:

I probably can't get it done tonight. Would tomorrow work?

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/Haacked/feedback/issues/135#issuecomment-218905636

haacked commented 8 years ago

How is GitHub environmentally responsible?

I'm not qualified to give a comprehensive answer to this. I know our headquarters has motion sensors for lights in order to turn them off when there's no activity. There's probably much more that we do that I'm unaware of. Like most of the company, I work remotely and only visit HQ a few times a year.

How does GitHub use ethics in advertising? I'm not sure I understand the question. GitHub doesn't do a whole lot of advertising and we hold ourselves to high ethical standards in everything we do.
How does GitHub create jobs? I suppose the way any business creates jobs. As our product grows in popularity, our customers increase along with their needs. We then hire more people to position us to meet those needs.
What is the culture of the GitHub workplace? I'd say GitHub employees tend to be high achievers with a sense of humor. Much of my interactions with other employees takes place in Slack, GitHub Issues and Pull Requests, and over BlueJeans (video conferencing software). We try not to take ourselves too seriously and have fun with our work. We pepper messages with emojis and animated gifs. We put a high premium on being respectful, kind, and inclusive. And we love to ship new features to our users and seeing how their work improves because of what we've done.
What benefits do GitHub employees enjoy? Our About page covers that pretty well: https://github.com/about/jobs
What motivational tactics are used by managers? We focus hard on intrinsic motivations. Much of the work we do is very interesting and people are naturally motivated to work hard.
When did GitHub change from a flat, decentralized organization to a more centralized organization with middle managers? Why did this transition occur? A couple of years ago roughly. The transition occurred because the challenges we started to face as we grew were the types of challenges that having good managers could help mitigate.
How does GitHub enable consumerism? Not sure I understand the question.
Does GitHub donate to any charities? Yes! GitHub donates to quite a few. I don't know all of them off the top of my head. Also, GitHub uses BrightFunds to match employee contributions.
How was GitHub funded initially? Does it have privately traded stock? For the first four years of its existence, it was a bootstrapped company. In 2012 it raised $100M in a series A. In 2015 GitHub took a series B and raised another $250 M. It is not publicly traded, but employees do receive stock options.

haacked commented 8 years ago

I learned that our HQ is LEEDS certified.

perilstar commented 8 years ago

Thank you, this is all very helpful.

On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 10:53 AM Phil Haack notifications@github.com wrote:

I learned that our HQ is LEEDS certified.

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/Haacked/feedback/issues/135#issuecomment-219098968

haacked / feedback

Interview? #135