Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Scaling Happiness
Search
Ted Nyman
January 31, 2013
Technology
19
2.3k
Scaling Happiness
Why is GitHub structured the way it is?
Ted Nyman
January 31, 2013
Tweet
Share
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
Copilot coding agentにベットしたいCTOが開発組織で取り組んだこと / GitHub Copilot coding agent in Team
tnir
0
190
IPA&AWSダブル全冠が明かす、人生を変えた勉強法のすべて
iwamot
PRO
2
230
マルチプロダクト環境におけるSREの役割 / SRE NEXT 2025 lunch session
sugamasao
1
730
推し書籍📚 / Books and a QA Engineer
ak1210
0
140
ソフトウェアQAがハードウェアの人になったの
mineo_matsuya
3
200
american aa airlines®️ USA Contact Numbers: Complete 2025 Support Guide
aaguide
0
500
無理しない AI 活用サービス / #jazug
koudaiii
0
100
Transformerを用いたアイテム間の 相互影響を考慮したレコメンドリスト生成
recruitengineers
PRO
2
430
60以上のプロダクトを持つ組織における開発者体験向上への取り組み - チームAPIとBackstageで構築する組織の可視化基盤 - / sre next 2025 Efforts to Improve Developer Experience in an Organization with Over 60 Products
vtryo
3
1.9k
Introduction to Sansan for Engineers / エンジニア向け会社紹介
sansan33
PRO
5
39k
“日本一のM&A企業”を支える、少人数SREの効率化戦略 / SRE NEXT 2025
genda
1
270
研究開発部メンバーの働き⽅ / Sansan R&D Profile
sansan33
PRO
3
18k
Featured
See All Featured
Templates, Plugins, & Blocks: Oh My! Creating the theme that thinks of everything
marktimemedia
31
2.4k
GraphQLの誤解/rethinking-graphql
sonatard
71
11k
Keith and Marios Guide to Fast Websites
keithpitt
411
22k
Imperfection Machines: The Place of Print at Facebook
scottboms
267
13k
Practical Orchestrator
shlominoach
189
11k
No one is an island. Learnings from fostering a developers community.
thoeni
21
3.4k
Adopting Sorbet at Scale
ufuk
77
9.5k
The Cost Of JavaScript in 2023
addyosmani
51
8.6k
Code Review Best Practice
trishagee
69
19k
Building a Modern Day E-commerce SEO Strategy
aleyda
42
7.4k
Stop Working from a Prison Cell
hatefulcrawdad
271
21k
Building Applications with DynamoDB
mza
95
6.5k
Transcript
scaling happiness Ted Nyman Engineer at GitHub @tnm
Most working life is inauthentic
Hierarchy creates inauthentic relationships
Without authenticity we become alienated “Work is a kind of
vacuum, an emptiness, where I just switch off everything except the scant intelligence necessary to keep me going.”
Perks are weak substitutes for an authentic working life
Plato on Love
Plato was Wrong
I’ll never quit because X perk is just so good
“ ”
A better X will appear, and they are gone
You can’t truly make people happy with bread and circuses
“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up”
You can’t build culture with words “How little our careers
express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up”
Token ‘freedom gestures’ are just not enough “How little our
careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up”
The real way is organizational structure
The lack of formal managers creates GitHub’s working culture
Cultural and technological adaptations grow naturally from this
Create the structure and let the culture form. The culture
then reinforces the structure.
Earthly software craft paradise
Nothing Actually Scales
None
Here’s what we actually do
Accept awkwardness
Embrace disorder
Let ‘teams’ form naturally
Propagate culture bottom-up
Technology creates order when needed
You can’t make anyone do anything
Consistency comes from libraries
You have to accept mistakes
Authenticity and autonomy are priceless
MOST IMPORTANT (META) QUESTION
Who sets these ‘policies’?
Everyone
Everyone Culture
Everyone Culture Structure