I wonder if somebody could give me an overview of the daily work and work-life balance at GitHub.
What about the deadlines? Which tools do you use for control? Micromanagement? Lots of meetings?
How flexible are they in terms of personal schedules, doctor appointments, etc?
I appreciate any responses. Would love to hear from both employees and contractors, if there are any differences.
It is awful.
The environment is no longer a laid back startup feel driving progress for developers. It is an arm of Microsoft and bound and overwhelmed by its policies and beauracracy.
In my department we are forced to use a ms built system that fails routinely and has a myriad of bugs and easily one of the biggest headaches of my day to day.
My boss lacks basic leadership skills like even running a meeting, assigning tasks or guiding reports. He is completely wrapped up in being performative and seen by leadership- this is how you advance. You play politics and games and things are not merit based but on - who likes you?
I interviewed for a role on another team and it’s just as horrific. During the process we used codility for technical interviews and sadly the team I was interviewing for also had a leadership problem. He chose to have as interviewers simply people who volunteered on his team- no experience or awareness whatsoever. My interviewer was an Indian man, still working to advance early MS ideals- only Indian males were qualified developers, and in the codility he blatantly detailed his racism. I saw this in detail as the app is accessible to all employees. Males, females, white people, people of color- all disparaged by this man in Codility as being stupid, inconsiderate or ‘a waste of time’ - literal words he posted. I shared the feedback with his lead and he did nothing and did not care.
The CEO, Thomas, let’s put it this way- wears his German status and *values* strongly, despite their legacy roots. (I am confident he voted for Orangesicle).
An example- last year before Juneteenth- a holiday federally recognized- an employee asked if we were going to have it off. He flippantly replied “we could, but definitely won’t “. And refused to expand. 😵💫 He regularly makes comments and stances like this highlighting not just his values but his non existent emotional intelligence.
The literal second day after I started, the entire department went through a reorg because of abusive managers who were fired. With this, teams changed and the role I was hired for no longer existed. I was never given any training and have been stumbling along since day one. My boss regularly says in our monthly 1/1s (because that’s how frequently he responds to me, no exaggeration) I am still missing things and have gaps in my knowledge- but he “doesn’t blame me, because no one trained me “ but then never does anything to change the circumstances and reprimands every effort I make to find answers, as wrong.
I have been crying most days since month 3 and actively looking for new opportunities since month five. I am one month shy of being there a year.
I would not recommend it to anyone.
This is so accurate and even describes the crying spells due to the ongoing abuse. There are a lot of good people and I have made good contacts, however if you are not a player, liar or blowhard you just get bruised and beaten by leaders who never actually learned how to manage people. Thomas is great and much kinder than just about any other leader at the company and he is so passionate about code!