How GitHub Works: innovation is important

Guide: GitHub company staff Zach Holman wrote an article on "GitHub How to operate management," the article is divided into three parts, this is the third part: innovation is very important . (Part I and part two, below is full text)

We want to create an innovative environment. Employees will love the environment when they do the project, it is exciting, exciting is easy to infect people, can be passed from one project to another project. Even if we don't make money on a project, the sense of cheer will still be brought into the program that allows us to make money.

Alcohol

It's no secret that quite a lot of people in GitHub like to drink. I mean, we have four beers available at any time in every office locker. But alcohol is not just addictive, it has many other uses.

party . At our sponsorship cocktail party, we are meeting with friends from San Francisco and around the world. Beer can make people excited about our products, and employees will feel that working for GitHub is a very exciting thing. (Having a few drinks with someone and hiring people in an atmosphere of ease is more reliable than a massive, stressful interview.) )

build Friendships . We work together, we are not only a working partner, but also a friend. We build friendships in our work. It's hard to tell whether we're talking about work or talking. It's not just feeling good about yourself. When you have a good relationship with someone, you will be more honest with him. If someone has an idea, you tell them what you think and help them improve. This is the social aspect, so alcohol is called social lubricant.

Brain Storm . A bar is a good place to do hypothetical analysis. Do not be too specific-can talk about the direction of industrial development, can be applied to your products, we will develop in three years. Many of our product features come from less specific discussions in the San Francisco pub.

Disagree

We set up Arduino stores in the office for programmers without actual combat experience. GitHub organizes fitness activities every month. We're going to have a heated philosophical debate about who can win the most fans on Twitter. We encourage employees to discuss anything that can be an obscure programming problem that can be a mountain climbing.

Encourage employees to be interested in different areas, motivate them, and let them think in a completely new way. This not only enhances the individual, but also helps improve the company.

innovation means self-guidance.

One of the first questions that Chris asked me, and the reason I wrote this blog, was because I believed that a lot of people couldn't just be the product they wanted to do, it was a fact.

Of course some things are even more urgent, such as modifying the event table before it affects the entire site, which is more important than creating a new footer, but in GitHub, the most important thing is to guide yourself, if you are interested in something, then do the most interesting. Often great works come from the hands of people who are passionate about the work itself.

We are able to do this because we are talking more about our products and everyone has the opportunity to participate. Pull requests gave us a platform where we could try out our new ideas in the product release. We make different attempts to avoid grandstanding. If you are really interested in an idea, do it. We will follow your prototype to do it. This is a great way to give birth to a lot of products. From a design standpoint, Kyle wrote a number of articles about using GitHub to publish products.