Richard Frank, Flow Communications

GitHub gained its fame for embodying the core ideology of open-source and collaborative development work. Developed by Chris Wanstrath, PJ Hyett, Tom Preston-Werner and Scott Chacon and underpinned by Ruby on Rails, the platform was originally a side hustle. Now it’s an institution. Since 2008, GitHub has gained traction, fans and momentum because it has helped developers collaborate more effectively and given them an exciting space to work together while solving problems, maintaining their code and innovating with new ideas. GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 for $7.5 billion and the company’s recent earnings call has put the annual revenue at $1 billion, with over 90 million active users. But this hasn’t made it immune to widespread layoffs in technology companies, and Microsoft fired GitHub’s entire engineering staff of 142 in India at the end of March, saying it had been a ‘difficult’ decision.

In this deep dive, we ask Joost Pielage, the chief technology officer at Quro Medical, and Richard Frank, the chief technology officer at Flow Communications, how they use, integrate and manage GitHub.