Ben Balter

I'm @benbalter" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">threads.net/@benbalter, @benbalter" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mastodon.social/@benbalter, and bsky.app/profile/ben.ba….

Not that there's much insightful there worth preserving, but if you're looking for my Tweets, you can find them archived at ben.balter.com/tweets/, regardless of what happens to this site.

Remote work requires communicating more, less frequently, because async communication involves less frequent, but richer communication. There is less talking about the work and more doing it, allowing the system to optimize for throughput and flow. ben.balter.com/2023/08/04/rem…

@muanchiou @github Not my remit anymore, but if you shoot me an email with details (ben@github.com), happy to ask around on your behalf.

Shoutout to the commenter on the thread who called me an intern and unknowingly created an inside joke / troll that continues to this day. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5875396

Also, the comments on the orange site are exactly what you'd expect. Amazing to see how developer centric we were, even back then, and how much feedback from that thread was implemented in the following weeks. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5875262

Exactly 10 years ago today, I 🚢'd my first GitHub feature, GeoJSON rendering. The base layer has since moved from MapBox to Azure Maps, but the feature is still rendering more than 7 million maps a year across more than 27 million .geojson files. github.blog/2013-06-13-the…

Practice inclusive scheduling. When working as a distributed team, be mindful of cultural differences, time zones, encouraging breaks between meetings, and connecting as humans. ben.balter.com/2023/05/19/pra…

Pull requests are a form of documentation. When authoring a PR, use the body as an opportunity to document the proposed change, especially the “why”, and cross link any related issues or other PRs to create a trail of breadcrumbs for future contributors. ben.balter.com/2023/05/19/pul…

@BryanHirsch I used to do this, but with coffee. The last hour of every Friday was blocked off for “strategic planning” which meant the week ahead + other important, but not urgent stuff.

Trying to adopt a new habit of planning and setting priorities for next week at the end of the day on Fridays. Thinking maybe this'll stick better if it's weekly planning & cocktail hour...

If you're a Google Workspace user and are interested in pulling your own stats (calendar + email), I wrote a thing: github.com/benbalter/gmai…

@corywilkerson There’s another way?

Every Hubber will tell you that you should run your business in repos.

I made a few updates to my "Intro to GitHub for non-technical roles" article. Glad it has been helpful. Please keep the questions and feedback coming. ben.balter.com/2023/03/02/git…

@PhaniRa08905617 @JasonEtco I had forgotten about this!

@JasonEtco @benbalter I still fondly remember throwing 3 musketeers bars at people who correctly answered my questions.

If you’re at a large(r) tech company that you joined when it was closer to a start up, what aspects of your organization’s culture or values do you wish you could purposefully preserve (or bring back)?

@JasonEtco I _still_ remember the first demo of Atom I saw in 2013. I thought it was sci-fi.

@benbalter Company-wide, hype-focused demo days.

GitHub isn’t just for software developers. If you work with or alongside software development teams, this brief guide includes everything that you need to know to get started confidently with GitHub. ben.balter.com/2023/03/02/git…

@holman @danishkhan A quick Bing search suggests jqbx.fm or vertigomusic.com/about _might_ be that?

@danishkhan @benbalter building a new company has gotten me thinking of hacking on this again. wouldn't take nearly as much time to build since cloud music is finally a thing

It's amazing how songs can take you back. open.spotify.com/playlist/7qKzU…

@chacon @haacked Books by the foot!

@haacked Do you mean this door?

Man, RIP the GitHub office 3.0. That space was my baby. I'm sad in 100 different ways, but mostly for the amazing security team who have been there for years now and still recognize me on the rare occasions that I visit.