
Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor - mhfs
https://twitter.com/holman/status/734842346278244352
======
sytse
Also see the tweet before that
[https://twitter.com/holman/status/734842310609899520](https://twitter.com/holman/status/734842310609899520)
"We’re still so far off from even scratching the surface of open,
collaborative development tools. We need to speed up, not slow down."

I totally agree with that vision and I'm very glad to have Zach join. He is an
amazing advocate for developers and I feel honored that he joined us.

More information about Zach Holman
[https://zachholman.com/about](https://zachholman.com/about)

~~~
Smudge
Zach's advocacy of GitHub was one of the reasons I became such a fan over the
years. Ever since they fired him, things haven't quite felt the same... I
don't know the exact circumstances around his departure, but I do know that
GitHub lost someone who, for me, had become one of the leading faces of the
company.

Of course, maybe that's exactly why the let him go. Regardless, I'm looking
forward to seeing him do the same for GitLab. (Minus the firing.)

~~~
muglug
He discussed the firing here: [https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-
people](https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people)

~~~
x0x0
Wow. That really tanked my opinion of github.

    
    
       I had been talking to various officials in leadership for a few months 
       hammering out the details and had been under the impression that we had 
       reached an agreement, but I was surprised to find out that wasn’t the case. 
       I was informed 28 hours before my 90 day window closed that the agreement I 
       had thought I had didn’t exist; it was then that I realized I had 28 hours 
       to either come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn’t have 
       to save half of my stock, or I could sign the agreement as-is and avoid 
       losing half of my already-diminished stake. I opted to sign.
       [...]
       But I still haven’t found the next thing I’m really interested in, which 
       just feeds into the whole cycle some more. For better or worse, that’ll be 
       changing pretty quickly, since I’m pretty broke after working part-time and 
       living in San Francisco for so long. Even though I helped move a company’s 
       valuation almost two billion dollars, I haven’t made a dime from the company
       outside of making a pretty below-to-average salary. That’s after six years.
       
       Think on that, kids, when you’re busting your ass day and night to strike it 
       rich with your startup dreams.
    
    

I've read on here about Etsy similarly fucking employees who left.

Those options are worth a _lot_ less than you think they are. One of the
wonders of cash is it's very hard for companies to retroactively steal it
back.

If you're going to a company that gives options, demand either an 83b or iso
to nso flip / 10 year exercise window.

~~~
hkmurakami
>demand either an 83b

What you actually need to ask for in this case is RSUs (vs options). The 83b
election is something you independently file with the IRS. (you may need a
letter from the company for proof, but they'll have drafts of those already
that they've used for the founders -- speaking from experience as the person
who set this up for our company)

However, RSUs only make sense in the seed stage. Past A round, the 10 year
exercise window or an early exercise clause of ISOs into RSUs might make sense
depending on the numbers, but likely not.

~~~
abalone
Can you explain why RSUs are better than ISOs that convert to NSOs on
departure?

~~~
hkmurakami
long term capital gains.

"Which one is better" depends on many factors including stage of company, risk
tolerance of individual, legal precedence, marginal tax rates, outside wealth,
etc.

~~~
x0x0
The benefit of iso->nso flips is, afaik, it's way cheaper than rsus for the
employer and it gives the employee the ability to wait until you're in the
money before exercising

~~~
hkmurakami
Yes it is definitely a tradeoff for the employee. For the employer, the cost
of issuing RSUs I believe is tied with the fact that there would be no chance
that the employee let go of their shares via not exercising their options (I
do not believe RSUs are subject to employment tax).

But if you have 10 year exercise periods, that accomplishes the same thing for
the employer's perspective. The difference them becomes the tradeoff for the
employee between optionality and a possibly lower tax rate.

------
vonklaus
Gitlab has been the first "developer tools" company I have been using since
fairly early on. I fucking love them, think Holman will be a phenomenal
addition, and am just super excited for the new products/services they will be
offering. godspeed gitlabs...and I mean that somewhat literally. You guys have
to improve your speed a bit, but Holman was there for github's scaling
activities, so maybe that is one place they can leverage his skillset.

Also, gitlabs needs to start sending out more stickers like github. I want
some.

edit: Congrats to Zach Holman & Gitlab team!

~~~
Perihelion
Heya, shoot me an email (amanda@gitlab.com) and I'll see what I can do about
getting you some stickers. Thanks for the feedback! It's great to hear :)

~~~
otterpro
I'm a big fan of Gitlab, too. Can I also get a sticker? (I can send SASE to
cover shipping, if that's a concern).

~~~
Perihelion
Definitely! Shoot me an email :)

------
nrclark
@sytse (and @holman, now!)

As of the latest Gitlab (8.8.1), my "this breaks Gitlab" commit of the Linux
Kernel sources
([https://gitlab.com/nrclark/dummy_project/commit/81ebdea5df2f...](https://gitlab.com/nrclark/dummy_project/commit/81ebdea5df2fb42e59257cb3eaad671a5c53ca36))
still breaks Gitlab.

When I first submitted this as a bug in December, the act of clicking on the
commit would cause a Gitlab worker crash and the UI would either hang or
return a 503 error. Five releases later, my sample commit still takes 10-20
seconds to load. Once it does load, it grinds my browser to a painful
javascript standstill, and I have to close the tab.

Can we get some smarter diff handling on the roadmap? Please? There was a fix
deployed a couple of releases ago, but the behavior is still pretty broken. :(

~~~
sytse
Thanks for the example. For me it loads slowly too (probably it has a lot of
disk access) but doesn't affect the browser much. What browser are you using?
I'm using Chrome on OSX. Consider creating an issue on
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab-ce/issues) or adding it to your existing issue and linking that
here.

~~~
nrclark
Here's the issue I made a couple of months ago - [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab-ce/issues/14775](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/14775)

As for my browser, I'm on the latest Firefox on Fedora 23. Something
interesting - I think it's related to some kind of internal cache on Gitlab's
side. Could I maybe get you to try loading the same page in a few hours and
see what it does for you then?

~~~
sytse
Interesting, we do cache things in Redis, not sure if it is relevant here. I
mentioned a performance specialist and our frontend lead in the issue.

~~~
jakecodes
On it! Thanks for mentioning.

------
eachro
I read his Fired post, and still can't really seem to understand why he got
fired. Anyone have a better read on his firing situation?

~~~
argonaut
His writeup: [https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-
people](https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people)

We cannot know for sure whether it has anything to do with his firing (and he
doesn't mention it in the writeup), but Julie Ann Horvath did accuse Zach of
harassing her at GitHub.

~~~
dcposch
I think the new outrage culture is toxic.

It's a really tight knit subculture with its own rules and a vicious
ingroup/outgroup attitude.

Like goths or old school hippies, they have a distinct way of dressing and
signalling to each other that they belong: purple or pink hair, Twitter
profiles that specify "he/him" or "she/her" even when it's obvious, using
words like "mansplaining", etc

\--

Outrage culture is a kind of conspiracy theory: people who are into it see
oppression and harassment everywhere, and cast themselves as victims.

Here's a great explanation of the history and ideology of outrage culture:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=cYpELqKZ02Q](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cYpELqKZ02Q)

\---

Github has been taken over by outrage culture. Check out this insane story
from earlier this year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067)

* Leaked internal HR slides talking about how "white women" are often "part of the problem"

* An employee casually mentioning to BusinessWeek that "it's hard to even interview white people"

* One Github executive sending this flagrantly illegal tweet: [http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008...](http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008b505e-791-385/danilo%20campos-tweet.png)

Imagine the instant EEOC investigation if that tweet said "black, male"
instead of "white, male".

\--

Anyway, Zach Holman is also a white male. I don't want to speculate on exactly
what went down, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that he was
railroaded out of the company in the wake of the Julie Hovarth scandal.

\--

I don't in any way defend the most visible opponents of outrage culture --
rank bigots like r/RedPill, Trump enthusiasts, and so on.

I just want to point out that outrage culture is, itself, bigoted and
intolerant, just in a different way.

I really respect Zach. I learned how to give better talks from his amazing
ones. He was the face of Github to me and I wish him the best!

~~~
untog
> I think the new outrage culture is toxic.

Agreed.

> Outrage culture is a kind of conspiracy theory: people who are into it see
> oppression and harassment everywhere, and cast themselves as victims.

Definitely.

> Zach Holman is also a white male. I don't want to speculate on exactly what
> went down, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that he was
> railroaded out of the company...

Oh. It's almost like you forgot the last few paragraphs you wrote when you got
to this point. Talk about conspiracy theory...

~~~
dcposch
No, that's different.

Julie Hovarth and Zach were partners at one point. Later they broke up, and
after the big story of her exit from Github, she told journalists that Zach:

> "was complicit in the actions of both Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner and
> even admitted to plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women at the
> company fired. He should be let go from GitHub and I regret being kind to
> him in previous interviews."

Source: [http://www.dailydot.com/business/julie-ann-horvath-names-
git...](http://www.dailydot.com/business/julie-ann-horvath-names-github-
harassment/)

This strikes me as unprofessional and dishonest.

Combine that with the statements by the new Github executives who came in
after Tom Preston-Warner's departure, especially this rather unbelievable
tweet:
[http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008...](http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008b505e-791-385/danilo%20campos-
tweet.png)

Ironically, the new leadership has created an environment of bullying and
bigotry. They are fighting what they see as intolerance with intolerance of
their own.

You're right that I shouldn't have speculated about specifics.

But I think we can both agree that when someone's being accused of vague
transgressions by people this patently biased, fired, and not allowed to talk
about why, we should treat that with healthy skepticism.

------
sshconnection
Awaiting a "GitLab advisor here" comment from him...

~~~
holman
GitLab advisor here!

~~~
sytse
:) I'm still waiting for my GitLab CEO here t-shirt.

~~~
ph0rque
You should talk to the GitLab CEO to get them made... oh wait :)

------
avitzurel
Is this the new "X is now a Githubber"? :)

Following Zach on his blog and his talks, I think he has a lot of input to
add. I feel this will be good for Gitlab users.

Good luck, to both sides.

~~~
sytse
Thanks Avi! We certainly think this will be a win for GitLab users.

------
jrgifford
Wow. The Lab vs Hub wars just got interesting.

~~~
sytse
Does 'The Lab vs Hub wars' read like a J. R. R. Tolkien book title for other
people too?

~~~
nathancahill
More like a Neal Stephenson title I think.

------
auggierose
You can't keep a good man down.

------
joeblau
I can't read... whoops!

~~~
etjossem
s/GitHub/GitLab?

~~~
flipp3r
Hey now, don't reveal GitLab's secret trick!

------
mbavio
<joke>TR-8R</joke>

Congrats, Mr. Holman!

------
koolba
In the words of M. Night Shyamalan, " _What a twist!_ "

