I really liked Shopify's remote model of not closing offices, but turning them into "ports" for teams in major cities to get together throughout the year for planning, team building, and retreats. You had an official place to get together, enjoy the perks of tech company offices, but with the intention of deep short bursts of interaction rather than focused work.
My heart goes out to the laid off employees, though I think they'll be able to find solid jobs (or start their own companies) when they're ready.
What I'm more surprised by is: 1. GitHub operating so independently from Microsoft at large that they have their own layoffs (not included in the 10k people that Microsoft announced they'll be parting ways with). 2. GitHub operating SO INDEPENDENTLY that they can decide to go remote-first.
Fortune now confirming: https://fortune.com/2023/02/09/github-is-laying-off-10-of-st...
Remote only is short sighted. It might work okay for your experienced workforce, but for junior hires, especially new graduates, they get a lot from working alongside more experienced people. And when you’re young you want to go for drinks after work and socialise with colleagues. If you can’t keep the junior employees then your company has no future.
This really is the techpocalypse, huh? I’m young (35) but I’ve never seen layoffs so continuous. I wonder how far into the year this will go and if we’ll ever come back. Maybe companies truly will start offshoring.
Here is some follow-up that's more than just my tweet.
https://fortune.com/2023/02/09/github-is-laying-off-10-of-st...
GitHub has had so many outages in the last year. I can't imagine this is going to get better if they are going to lay off 10% of people. So many companies developer productivity relies on GitHub being up. I hope the remaining the folks who were not impacted can make large strides in increasing reliability of GitHub.
An observation, Microsoft subsidiaries are being told to use teams.
Cisco subsidiaries are being told to use webex in place of slack.
We might be in a new world of chaos
Wow what an odd coincidence both git companies doing layoffs on the same day.
Also interesting that GitHub is so separate from Microsoft that they are doing their own layoffs and weren’t included in the larger Microsoft layoffs.
Reminder: Nat Friedman is no longer the CEO of Github.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/03/github-gets-a-new-ceo/
GitHub CEO Nat Friedman is stepping down from his role on November 15 to become the Chairman Emeritus of the Microsoft-owned service. Thomas Dohmke, who only recently became GitHub’s chief product officer, will step into the CEO role.
With Friedman, who thanks to his developer and open source background brought a lot of community goodwill with him when he took the job, GitHub remained independent and platform-neutral during his three-year tenure.
The German-born Dohmke is probably best known as the co-founder and CEO of HockeyApp, which Microsoft acquired in 2015.
When I visited the GitHub office in SF in 2017, it was nearly empty. Given how extravagant and beautiful it is, it struck me as a colossal waste of money even then.
Just wait till Microsoft starts charging a license for vs code and developers heads implode.
Is this in addition to the 10,000 people Microsoft announced in it's layoffs 3-weeks ago?
wild how so many companies are laying off 7-15% of their workforce in such quick succession
Well, by this time is clear that company loyalty doesn't exist anymore.
I think a new market will rise up from this debacle: companies selling good & services with strong employee loyalty values. These companies will use this as a marketing hack to get the public (mostly middle class)on their side, just like the concept of "parallel economy" is getting people to choose companies aligned with their values.
A little depressing to see GitHub join the zeitgeist. Probably mandated from above by Microsoft. The next time I'm on a job search, I'll be de-prioritizing, and possibly even excluding, those tech companies that laid people off in order to signal to investors that they had their finances under control. I was kind of attached to GitHub, though, so this is disappointing.
Didnt MS want everyone back in office? I'm confused? Or do github employees now only have access to MS offices?
I'm sure this will do wonders to all the broken features github keeps adding since being acquired.
At one point I stopped thinking about github because it Just Worked. These days its a dice roll if even simple things like loading a repo page or perusing the notifications actually does what its supposed to.
say what you will about the recession but since Microsoft picked it up, Github has taken an absolute shellacking. They couldnt figure out how to comply with US sanctions without alienating users, the ICE contract went over like a lead balloon, and the 2014 harassment case didnt help either but the most damning indictment is the uptime and performance.
https://www.githubstatus.com/history
just this year there have been 26 incidents. basically everything that could fail took a knee in just the first two months of this year.
Last year was more than one hundred service impacting issues. Redmond captured the devs, but in the end much like Ballmers chanting its become a pretty meaningless acquisition.
They're closing the offices so you can't find out who of your virtual colleagues is a chatGPT which they're going to replace you with.
We just had a Support Ticket with them that took them over a month just to respond to, claiming they had too much volume!
Surely, they're not 'overstaffed'
A good thing some company are going all in on remote. In the UK most companies are going back to requiring office presence
What does closing all offices mean? Do they go full remote or employees are going to move to Microsoft offices
They still have 1 job opening ...
Couldn't they find someone internally?
GitHub is definitely a thought-leader in the midsize tech company world. Lots of other companies aspire to be like them and look to them for guidance. I wonder if we will see other similar sized companies close their offices as well now.
2,500 workers total so 250 will loose jobs.
Best of luck to the folks who get cut finding something better!
The World Economic Forum have stated in a white paper that Corporations and Governments will be expected as part of climate action to help move more people into cities. So that "15 minute cities" legislation can be implemented world wide. This appears to be nothing but a long term climate lockdown. I personally think that to have everyone working locally in these 15 minute zones in each major city and to have them never leave the zone would require that remote work is the norm beforehand. If people think that remote work equals freedom they are in for one hell of a shock.
Too bad, That SF Office was an excellent spot to visit for various meetups.
Posted about 25 minutes earlier:
I’m surprised this isn’t happening up and down the line. All those law/consulting/accounting firms (where the culture assumes most people have private offices) are leasing enormous amounts of space that’s underutilized now because people are only in a couple or few times a week. With the economic belt tightening coming up it seems like a no brainer to start trying to end these leases.
I was there in 2020/2021 and declined their offer. Too many distractions, the company didn't look like concentrated in the business but more in sjw activities. Being minority myself, I didn't feel comfortable having to go through some 3 hours diversity interview. I just wanted to work on github,not join a woke club.
Closing all offices? That means remote-only right? Sounds like a great place to work once the layoffs are a distant memory
Seriously WTF? I swear none of these companies were anywhere near a need for layoffs.
Do they all just follow the trends?
What if Tech Companies can lay off people fairly risk free now, due to the statistical data gathered from remote work tools like Microsoft Teams?
That activity data, makes it easier to distinguish between essential and non-essential workers, especially for larger companies.
Off topic but the “More Tweets” section under this tweet is just…full of trash memes.
As I've mentioned, this is a perfect chance for new startups to thrive. The economy is doing well, and all these potential co-founders and employees are available simultaneously.
Gosh, I start to wonder if there will be enough jobs for everyone... :(
All those layoffs sound super bad of ppl in developed countries and super good for ppl in less developed countries.
Im getting twice as much offers now and salary ranges double every few weeks.
when will these layoffs reflect in boom town housing markets ?
I fail to believe in this. They probably are going to need at least a small office or two. 99% remote - perhaps. 100% remote - highly unlikely.
Layoffs will forever be in the shareholder playbook as long as the market still keeps reaffirming these decisions with stock price increases.
Interesting about the offices. Is it because they are merging with MSFT even more or because they are embracing a remote-only philosophy?
These layoffs are not part of the Microsoft's layoffs? It's in addition to the Microsoft layoffs announced last month?
Seen on a related business networking site [1] a while ago:
CFO to CEO: What if we train our employees, and they leave?
CEO to CFO: What if we don't, and they stay?
[1] LinkedIn.
The WFH productivity gain optimizations continue. I would have expected more than 10% given the gains claimed here.
Embrace, extend, extinguish...
I hear the low roar of apartment prices tumbling down in SF.
I'm really behind. I thought Github had no offices, no org chart, and full comp transparency. Was that a very early version during a bubble? There's probably a book I could read by now.
Will they just be using Microsoft's offices?
both git companies doing layoffs
has atlassian done them too
Does this mean we need to start migrating open source off GitHub? Will GitHub tighten up the restrictions on the free tier?
Good
Gitlab and Github look like they are forked from the same branch. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/09/gitlab-layoffs-company-to-cu...
The worst part of this is that everyone at GitHub is now forced to use Microsoft Teams.
I am absolutely certain this is to suppress wages and employee rights. It is a coordinated effort across the industry and should be immediately investigated.
I assume this is due to synergies from using Windows instead of whatever.
Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face.
Five years from now, I think we will not see "remote only" for a large company and think "ooh, they value their employees I guess", but rather, "uh oh, they like to think of their employees as being like virtual servers, easy to spin up and easy to shut down the moment you don't need to pay for that capacity".