Drinking is a Public Relations Vehicle
There has been a vocal minority calling out the GitHub team on our extracurricular activities recently, an opinion summed up fairly well by an anonymous commenter on the recent Engine Yard blog post about our transition to Rackspace:
PS. GitHub guys. I am no-tea-totaller, but you need to layoff the constant stream of alcohol related events, and posts on twitter, etc. Paying customers don’t react well seeing party boys whooping it up when the service continues to suffer from frequent outages, slow queues, occasional inability to push/pull, frequent breakage after code pushes, etc. You need to be seen as serious about the product you are delivering as your customers are about theirs, and behave as though committed to it 110%. Please remember that other git hosting solutions are rising up and the opportunity cost of switching git providers is low due to Git’s distributed nature.
I started to write a post in response to this, but a commenter shortly thereafter nails it so well that I’d rather just include it here:
Getting involved in developer communities, whether via social networking online or in person, is part of the GitHub guys’ jobs. Nobody can be productive at a keyboard twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Is it a crime for them to spend a couple evenings a month buying drinks for their customers and potential customers, and finding out how to better serve those customers?I’m a paying GitHub customer, and I think they’re 110% committed while also being shrewd networkers. If you went out and had a beer with them, you could find out exactly why the site is slow and what they’re doing about it. They’re trying to do a lot with a very small team, and they’re doing a damn good job.
The next time you get up on your high horse to chastise someone for not being “110% committed”, put yourself in that position. Do you have a life? Do you do anything other than work? Do your activities outside of work directly benefit your company? Get real.
I think the truly unfortunate part is that we could put up a constant serious businessmen facade so that certain people can’t accuse of having too much fun, but what they’re failing to recognize is that we do what we do so we can meet GitHub users, figure out what they like, what they don’t like, form business relationships, meet new friends, and the list goes on and on. If there’s one thing I hope you can’t accuse our team of is that we’re unapproachable.
Any city we travel to, we always make an effort to either host an event or participate in events already happening, it’s all about community outreach and meeting new people. Would hosting a hack-fest make more sense for GitHub? Maybe, so just in case, we sponsor those too. But, when we host events at a bar, people actually talk to each other and socialize far beyond what they would do sitting in front of their laptop.
It’s amazing what a couple of beers will do to loosen up the crowd and allow folks to delve into candid conversations about our service. Make no mistake, we like going out and we like having fun, but we get to have fun and receive feedback at the same time. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
Furthermore, things like including a bottle of bourbon with our prizes is so simple and inexpensive, but surprisingly effective at spreading the word how could we not continue to do it? It works!
Truly, it may look like we’re constantly out drinking and goofing off, but I dare you to find anyone on our team that doesn’t work their ass off and care deeply about our service. We eat, sleep, and breathe GitHub and you’re only fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
I heart Github and the members of your team have generated a heckuva lot of useful open source code. It’d be impossible to create and run a service like Github, and continue to donate code and documentation to the OSS community without working your asses off. If I meet you guys I’ll make it a point to buy you a beer… then tweet about it.
It’s true, people do like to see that there are genuine, human people behind a business. There is a line of professionalism that can be crossed, but it doesn’t sound like Github ends up on the wrong side of the line.
I’ll drink to that!
I heard that Github was a cover operation for the traffic of crack cocaine from Cuba, subsidizing Hilary Clinton’s election campaign. Could you please confirm or deny this fact?
Many thanks, Erin.
Your information is incorrect. The traffic in fact comes from Columbia.
It really boils down to a difference in expected perceptions. In business, lots of people expect to see their suppliers in suits and ties. It looks serious. It’s the 80’s IBM look. It’s been decades since that look has been proven to be a smokescreen and no guarantee of competence, and the Silicon Valley culture has tried to turn it around. But you’ll still find a lot of people expecting you to ‘look serious’, even if that’s just not the way you work best. Sure, nowadays people no longer expect you to wear a suit to be serious and competent. But neither are they used to their suppliers doing lots of drinking. I’m with you here, but I hope you realize you’re fighting established norms :)
Word. For all the same reasons, Rails Machine generally throws parties instead of shelling out for the Diamond/Platinum level sponsorship at conferences.
You should come down to Miami, host an event and hang out on the beach. We have quit the developer community here and would love to have you. Maybe piggyback with FOWA Miami/BarCamp Miami at the end of February.
You guys drink!? that’s it, I’m moving all my code to codeplex
Twitter stalkers invading your privacy I guess, shame on them.
A persons work is defined by their working achievements. End of.
Keep up the good work, and don’t let these bastards spoil the fun!
Screw ‘em if they can’t take a drink. Happy to continue being a paying customer, even if you guys misplaced the suits.
If drinking were really a public relations vehicle, I’d be the most famous person in the world.
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