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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

> Damn, that email from the CEO about his private Twitter. That's completely out of line.

It regarded his professional work on GitLab: https://twitter.com/suprnova32/status/720396175954698240

I think it's completely appropriate that he link instead to GitLab for such a thing, and I think it's remarkable that he didn't think the same. This isn't like the ad world, where if your customer is Coke you can't be seen drinking a Pepsi in public (which I agree is crazy): he was posting about GitLab itself, linking to their GitHub mirror instead of to their own site, which completely undermines the GitLab position.

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Not commenting on whether or not this was "right/wrong", but it's worth noting that the GitHub contributor page is showing something different than the GitLab contributor page (adds vs. commits). If adds is what he wanted to show, GitHub may have been the only place to show that.

It's also worth noting that if you search Google for GitLab source code, GitHub is the first thing that comes up. To an uninformed outsider, it looks like GitHub is where GitLab development happens.

It may not have been the best thing to do, but I don't think this tweet "completely undermines the GitLab position".

There doesn't appear to be a GitLab equivalent. And that still doesn't change that it was his personal Twitter with 146 followers. The Tweet got one single like. "Undermining the GitLab position" with a Tweet that has one like seems ridiculous.

"Even GitLab employees use GitHub to track project progress and contributions - look at this senior GitLab employee twitter post. GitHub is clearly superior product" - magazine article or competitor to potential client.

CEO ask to link to GitLab was completely legitimate. CEO could have phrased it more politely but even as it is it's ok and nothing to complain about.

If a tweet like that can undermine their position then the tweet itself is the least of their problems.

Why is GitLab even using Github?

https://github.com/gitlabhq

Backup.

That's fine, but why would GitLab execs not insist on keeping it private?

Doesn't inspire confidence in the platform...

I started to refute this, but as I reviewed my post, I came to the realization that I have less confidence in the platform today than I did 12 months ago. Don't get me wrong, I like the Gitlab team, if you could call it that, for their transparency under duress, and how they kept us abreast of the troubles. However, the 'people' is not to be confused with the 'product', and if you're one of the users affected by recent events, then you may be justified in not giving a positive review of their service.

Automated builds with Docker Hub as one of the reasons, IIRC.

Nowadays the stuff on GitHub is simply a mirror. Originally, they used GitHub primarily. Why they used GitHub was explained by Sytse (or Sid) in 2013:

"We're just going to stay where the people are. [...] GitHub is where the contributors are."

You can hear him yourself in The Changelog #103 podcast at https://changelog.com/podcast/103. Again, this was from late 2013.

It's just a mirror nowadays. In the past we used to accept merge requests via this mirror as well.

I agree with you.

This is not about how many followers see this or if it undermines the company's position. It's about culture. If the CEO of the company lets things like this go, it will keep happening. And it will only get worse.

From my experience, I would rather not have this kind of employee around than trying to play nice with him personally because this kind of attitude spills over and eventually affects the entire team morale.

Wow, you guys are totally off base. Do you realize it's his private twitter account and not company's? How does it matter if it's about his job? If I work for Google and I made a comment on how Bing was funny or DDG respects privacy, I don't expect Sundar to send me a mail.

What if your CEO followed all your social media and day to day life and commented on things? But yeah, from my experience, I would rather not have commenters like you around as this attitude of overseeing my shoulders in my personal twitter account spills over everywhere and affects the entire team morale.

You're comparing one of the largest companies in the world with a startup with just over hundred employees. Of course the CEO of Google has more important things to do.

Also I'm not saying the CEO was absolutely right. I wouldn't follow my employee on Twitter at all personally for the same reason. And I would definitely not enjoy if my CEO told me to change my tweet either.

But that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about this guy. Aside from what the CEO did, this guy is a toxic guy, even after reading his own post that's obviously biased towards himself. He was not mistreated. I would understand if he's writing about how the company fucked him over by not letting him take his stock options. But no, this guy came to medium and wrote about how he's NOT going to take the stock options that were offered to him. If you really think this guy is the purely innocent guy and the company fucked him over, then I really have nothing more to talk about.

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