Leading GitHub to a $7.5 billion acquisition (Changelog Interviews #395)

Jason Warner (CTO at GitHub) joined the show to talk with us about the backstory of how he helped to lead GitHub to a $7.5 billion acquisition by Microsoft. Specifically how they trusted their gut not just the data, and how they understood the value they were bringing to market. We also talk about Jason’s focus on “horizon 3” for GitHub, and his thoughts on remote work and how they’re leading GitHub engineering today.

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Featuring:

• Jason Warner – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• GitHub’s CTO on architecting engineering teams that scale
• Current stats – 40M+ developers with 100M+ repos
• Go back in time to hear our reactions to Microsoft buying GitHub - “The news is true. Microsoft is acquiring GitHub.”
• The Changelog #331: GitHub Actions is the next big thing with Kyle Daigle

Jason’s book recommendations:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• Team of Teams by Gen. Stanley McChrystal
  The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
• High Output Management by Andrew Grove

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!