A spokeswoman confirmed to CNBC on 22 October that Meta will lay off some 600 workers in its artificial intelligence division as part of its efforts to streamline operations and cut layers. Alexandr Wang, the company’s chief AI officer, who was brought on board in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, wrote a memo outlining the cuts.
Employees at the Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR), Meta’s AI infrastructure units, and other roles involving products will be affected. According to those familiar with the situation, TBD Labs staff members, including many of the top-tier AI hires recruited into the social network company last summer, were unaffected by the layoffs, CNBC said.
According to the people, those workers under Wang’s supervision were exempt from the layoffs, highlighting Mark Zuckerberg’s wager on his pricey hires rather than the company’s long-standing staff.
Why Meta is Opting for Layoffs?
According to CNBC’s report, teams like FAIR and more product-focused units frequently competed for computing resources, making Meta’s AI section appear fat. They claimed that the company’s enormous Meta AI unit was passed down to the new hires as they joined to establish Superintelligence Labs. The layoffs are part of Meta’s ongoing effort to reduce the department and strengthen Wang’s position as the company’s AI leader.
In an effort to stay ahead of competitors like OpenAI and Google, Meta has been drastically changing its approach to AI in recent months. The company has been investing billions of dollars in hiring and infrastructure projects. According to the persons, Meta’s Superintelligence Labs now employs just under 3,000 people after the layoffs. On 22 October, Meta informed at least a few workers that they would be terminated on November 21 and that they would be placed in a “non-working notice period” until then.
The note, which CNBC saw, stated, “Your internal access will be removed during this time, and you do not need to do any additional work for Meta.” “You can look for another position at Meta during this time.” Additionally, the corporation stated that it will give 16 weeks of severance pay plus an additional two weeks for each year of service that has been completed, “minus your notice period.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg had become dissatisfied with Meta’s AI advancements, particularly after developers responded ambivalently to the company’s April release of its Llama 4 models.
Meta Cutting Down on its Expanses
Meta raised the low end of its prior estimate during its July second-quarter results call, stating that it anticipates its total expenses for 2025 to fall between $114 billion and $118 billion. Since Meta said that its AI activities will lead to a 2026 year-over-year expense growth rate that is higher than the 2025 expense growth, that number is only anticipated to rise.
Zuckerberg announced a new division dubbed Meta Superintelligence Labs, which is composed of leading AI researchers and engineers, after Meta made a significant investment in Scale AI. Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are in charge of the organisation. Meta and Blue Owl Capital announced a $27 billion agreement on October 21 to finance and build the gigantic Hyperion data centre in rural Louisiana. In a July post, Zuckerberg stated that the data centre would likely be big enough to occupy a “significant part of the footprint of Manhattan”.
Quick Shots
•Meta
to cut 600 employees from its AI division to streamline operations and reduce
redundancies.
•Alexandr
Wang, Meta’s Chief AI Officer, strengthens leadership as layoffs exempt his
direct teams.
•Cuts
impact FAIR, AI infrastructure teams, and product-focused roles; TBD Labs
staff largely unaffected.
•Meta’s
Superintelligence Labs now employs just under 3,000 people after layoffs.
GitHub Spark is Microsoft’s most recent venture into AI-powered software development. This new platform has the potential to completely change the way people develop apps. Spark is a comprehensive tool that enables anyone to create intelligent, full-stack apps using natural language, visual aids, or conventional code.
What Is GitHub Spark? Microsoft’s Next-Gen AI App Builder?
It was formally launched under the reputable GitHub banner. Indeed, it is compatible with the current Copilot plan, GitHub configuration, and even Visual Studio Code. GitHub Spark streamlines contemporary web development. Manual server configuration, SDK installation, and AI model management are not required.
Spark will scaffold out the user’s program, including both frontend and backend components, allowing the user to simply specify what he wants to create, such as a recipe app that can adjust to allergies or a budget tracker that integrates with Google Sheets.
Key Features of GitHub Spark: Natural Language to Full-Stack Code
Microsoft stated in a blog post that users’s apps run on an integrated, GitHub-hosted runtime and that it supports well-known frameworks like TypeScript and React. One can go from prototype to production more quickly than ever before thanks to built-in AI inference, one-click deployment, and instant previews. Leading AI models such as Claude Sonnet 4 power Spark’s internal workings, while more LLMs from OpenAI, Meta, DeepSeek, and xAI are optionally supported.
This implies that Spark will produce completely functioning code if you can explain functionality in simple terms, such as “build me a restaurant finder that adapts to my cuisine preferences.” There is no need to wrangle API keys. Behind the scenes, Spark manages model selection, authentication, and deployment through the well-known GitHub interface.
How GitHub Spark Works with Copilot and VS Code?
Spark can be used by users who are not developers, but if they are, there is a lot of functionality available. While experienced developers can delve deeply into the code using the Spark editor, GitHub Codespaces, or VS Code, beginners can rely solely on drag-and-drop tools and simple English prompts.
Additionally, GitHub Copilot integrates well, providing a coding agent for more complex processes, code completions, and suggestions. Spark is perfect for internal tools, personal side projects, and even full-fledged SaaS apps because of its dual-mode architecture.
No Free Subscription
The user will receive a monthly Spark message quota, unlimited manual edits, and support for many apps at once, depending on his GitHub Copilot plan. The runtime includes compute, storage, hosting, and AI inference.
Users who choose to exceed the stated limits will soon have the option to pay as they go. Because of this, Spark is an AI-first development environment right out of the box, not merely an editor or a tool for prototyping. GitHub is already used by more than 150 million developers, and Spark is made to be at the heart of this ecosystem.
It’s Microsoft’s response to the increasing need for scalable, intelligent app development free from steep learning curves and infrastructure issues.
What are remote meetings ? Also known as virtual meetings, remote meetings happen when a group of people, who are dispersed across different locations, use video and audio facilities to connect online. Remote meetings are extensively used by organisations who hire hybrid teams.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of remote meetings as in-person meetings became restricted. This was specifically true with multinational corporations with a global presence. The shift to remote meetings was quick and absolute. It became necessary to define ways that would maintain the purpose of remote meetings and design creative ways to bring the team together. Some key benefits of remote meetings are –
Recorded meetings
With time-zone differences, it may not be possible for everyone to join. In such a scenario recorded meetings allow team members to catch up on what transpired adding context to the notes taken at the meetings.
Optimal Use of Time
Virtual meetings with a set agenda are focused and to the point. They are time-bound, agenda bound and aim at a results-driven approach.
Outlining all the advantages while, at the same time, building a process that is an excellent case study for making remote meetings extremely effective is GitLab’s Remote Meetings process.
What is GitLab?
GitLab is a DevOps software package that combines the ability to develop, secure and operate the software on a single application. Ukrainian developer Dimitry Zaporozhets and Dutch developer Sytse Sijbrandij created this open-source software. GitLab Inc. was founded around this pre-existing GitLab software project by these developers in 2014 as a limited liability corporation. In 2018, GitLab Inc. was considered the first partly Ukrainian unicorn to be valued at more than USD 1 billion.
GitLab Annual Revenue from 2020 to 2022
As the largest all-remote company in the world, GitLab has approximately 30 million registered users with one million being active licensed users. Since its inception, GitLab has been centred around remote work.
GitLab is a free platform that offers a range of paid services. The company adopted a policy not to accept new customers unless it’s legally required. Additionally, they even prohibited political conversations in the workplace.
GitLab Remote Meetings
As an all-remote company with employees scattered in 65 regions across the globe, GitLab is an example of how to practice clear communication to stay connected and work efficiently. Working towards this agenda, GitLab has built a framework of policies and guidelines which help maintain the sanctity of a remote meeting.
GitLab Policies
Anti-harassment policies
Code of Business Conduct and Ethics
GitLab’s Whistle-blower Policy
Confidentiality Policy
Social Media Policy
These policies are enforceable and are also within the purview of the law of the land in which the company operates. Any deviation or deliberate action against what these policies specify is punishable by law and GitLab adheres to these policies firmly.
Guidelines for Effective and Responsible Communication
As a company that functions in the virtual space, GitLab’s guidelines are process-driven, practical to implement, encouraging and inclusive. These guidelines work across borders and are applicable in every region their staff operates.
Follow Company Values
Assume Positive intent and begin with a position of grace
Be kind to colleagues and refrain from sending negative messages
Express thoughts responsibly and inclusively
If one says it, he or she owns it
Be a role model of specified company values
Give and receive feedback regularly
Asynchronous 1:1 communication is necessary to clear misunderstandings and a zoom call is effective for this
It is important to adhere to GitLab policies
Avoid discussing things that are not under the direct influence
Every team member in the meeting is a moderator
Avoid topics of a sensitive nature involving politics, religion, etc.
The culture and working style of GitLab is a poster child of modern-day professionalism. Globalisation has given businesses access to talent across the world and technological advances have eased the working culture that is no longer boundary-limited or time-bound.
Hiring and Working all over the world. No central hiring
Flexible working hours
Writing and recording knowledge
Written processes
Sharing of information
The results of work – over the hours put in
Formal communication channels
Key Practices During Meetings – Internal or External
Effective, efficient and focused meetings are a result of a team that is well-organised, clear on expectations, results-driven and solutions-focused. GitLab’s best practices during meetings are a shining example of remote meetings.
Keep the video on during the entire meeting. This is a way to communicate undivided attention and it promotes comfort between both parties
Have a list of clear agendas to be discussed during the meeting. This agenda must be shared via email before the meeting so everyone is aware of it.
Follow the 70/30 Rule. Allow the other attendees to speak 70% of the time by asking open-ended questions. This ensures equal participation for all
Taking Notes is a valuable skill as it helps retain and recall important information
Record all meetings. This way if someone is unable to attend, they have access to all discussions
Conclusion
It is true that what an in-person meeting or a personal touch can accomplish, goes far beyond the studied brilliance of remote meetings. However, the world is becoming smaller with technology. The Metaverse is a near-future reality. How companies will evolve to utilize this technology remains to be seen. In the meantime, GitLab’s success at conducting remote meetings is worth a study and, if possible, put into practice wherever applicable.
FAQ
What are some advantages of remote meetings?
The following are the advantages of remote meetings
Everyone Can Be Involved
Less Expensive
Shorter Sessions
More Frequent Meetings
The Chance to Record Meetings
Minimal Scheduling Needs
Better for Health
How do I know if my virtual meeting was effective?
You can ask for feedback in your meeting follow-up email. You can also take steps to make your meeting as effective as possible in the planning process.
Are there ways to improve remote employee engagement in my virtual meeting?
You can improve employee engagement by using icebreaker questions, sharing meeting itineraries and objectives, and carefully moderating your meeting to make sure everyone participates.
What is the purpose of a virtual meeting?
The purpose of a virtual meeting is to discuss important issues, achieve critical goals, or build and maintain healthy office relationships.
Company Profile is an initiative by Startup Talky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by HashiCorp.
The world is getting cloudy nowadays. The cloud seems to cover every nook and corner of the world. Yes, cloud services are peeking their way into every business activity. It creates a platform for new businesses to emerge. For some, the need for the cloud is an option but for certain businesses, it is certain. As far as the world relies on technology, computing, and virtual businesses, the growth of cloud technology is undeniable.
Many cloud establishments like cloud kitchens, cloud security, etc. are showing up in the modern world. Proper infrastructure is necessary for any business to run perfectly and this serves as a basic rule with no exceptions. Creating this infrastructure is a challenging task as it demands time and perfection. As a result, there emerged a few software companies that address these challenges via their open-sourced and cloud-based tools.
One such software company is HashiCorp Inc. which was established in 2012 in the US. It offers various business infrastructure-related solutions like software development, maintenance, security, error detection, task management, and various other software and cloud-related services through its platforms. This article covers the complete success story of HashiCorp, its funding, acquisitions, founders, future plans, and the challenges faced by the company.
HashiCorp is a SaaS platform that helps businesses in developing their infrastructures in the cloud. The software infrastructure model that HashiCorp builds helps companies to focus on the major business activities instead of their internal framework. This platform not only concentrates on technology but also pays attention to the real-world problems faced by any cloud-based business.
HashiCorp was established in 2012 in San Francisco, California. The company has customers from across the world. Certain huge and popular companies like Shopify, GitHub, Yahoo Japan, KeyBank, Ferguson, Comcast, and Pandora are said to use HashiCorp. This company has over 1500 employees from around the world with over 35,000 user group members and 100 million software downloads.
HashiCorp – Founders and Team
The following are the founders and other key people who serve to be the pillars of HashiCorp:
Armon Dadgar,Mitchell Hashimoto and Dave McJannet
Mitchell Hashimoto
Mitchell Hashimoto is the Co-founder of HashiCorp. He played a significant role in the development of most of the HashiCorp tools like Vagrant, Vault, Nomad, etc. Mitchell earlier served as the CEO and CTO of the company. He graduated BS in Computer Science from the University of Washington. During his college, Mitchell Hashimoto worked as a developer and operations engineer in CitrusByte and Kiip respectively.
Armon Dadgar
Armon Dadgar is the other Co-founder and the current CTO of HashiCorp. The design and implementation of most of the HashiCorp platforms have a touch of Armon Dadgar. His passion for cloud infrastructure and technology got him involved with Mitchell Hashimoto to co-found HashiCorp. He is also a graduate of the University of Washington.
Dave McJannet
Dave McJannet is the Chief Executive Officer of the company. He is a graduate of McGill University and has an excellent work experience in management and cloud platforms. His 20 years of experience include his employment in GitHub, Hortonworks, VMware, and Microsoft.
Navam Welihinda
Navam Welihinda is the Chief Financial Officer of HashiCorp. He left his position as the Vice President of the company in 2021 to take up his new role as the CFO. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Before joining HashiCorp, Navam served as the Senior Director of Finance in Deem, Inc. Later he became the VP and head of finance in Compose.io which was later acquired by IBM.
HashiCorp – Startup Story
The two friends, Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar met each other in 2008 at the University of Washington during their undergraduate years. They were placed in the development of a project called ‘Seattle’. This project was to formulate a public cloud technology for companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Since they were new to this and even the cloud itself was a new concept, there came loads of problems in the development and hence they abandoned it.
After this, Mitchell and Armon moved to San Francisco and worked together at a mobile ad company. Years later, they again came across cloud technology and realized it has a market in the future. The problems they faced years ago still existed and they decided to provide a solution to those. As a result, Mitchell Hashimoto left his job in the ad company and started HashiCorp in 2012. Armon Dadgar joined the startup in the next year and as one, they started providing automation tools and cloud infrastructure for organizations adopting multi-cloud and on-premises working conditions.
HashiCorp – Mission and Vision
HashiCorp operates with long-term and sustaining principles that help the company and its environment to grow and work better. It lists its principles as integrity, kindness, pragmatism, humility, vision, execution, and communication. HashiCorp aims at “solving some of the hardest, most important problems in infrastructure management, with a goal of helping organizations create and deliver powerful applications faster and more efficiently”. Once-in-a-generation company is what HashiCorp calls itself as it enters the workflow instead of technology and empowers and provides solutions to organizations around the world.
HashiCorp – Name and Logo
The name HashiCorp could be derived from the name of its founder Mitchell Hashimoto since he was the one who initially established the company in 2012. Armon Dadgar later joined this software infrastructure startup.
The logo of HashiCorp has an ‘H’ surrounded by a border. It overall resembles a hexagon.
HashiCorp – Business and Revenue Model
HashiCorp provides its software and tools through open-source for organizations to strengthen their infrastructure. Most of its tools are freemium-based while others are offered on a charge or in enterprise packs. Vagrant, Packer, Consul, Vault, Nomad, Terraform, Boundary, and Waypoint are open-source tools while Vault, Terraform, Consul, and Nomad have enterprise and paid plans too. HashiCorp believes that offering open-source tools helps businesses to innovate, develop their infrastructure and solve problems and in turn, ensures the growth of the business ecosystem.
HashiCorp – Employees
More than 1500 employees work for HashiCorp as of today. It is a remote-oriented company and asserts to have over 1000 employees working from different parts of the world. HashiCorp believes that this practice helps them employ the best talents from around the world.
HashiCorp – Challenges Faced
HashiCorp suffered a Supply Chain Attack in April 2021. Hackers breached the HashiCorp networks through Codecov, thus launching a cyber attack. Although their presence was there for only a limited time, the credentials of HashiCorp’s customers got leaked. The company reacted quickly by nullifying its private signing key and replacing it with a new one.
HashiCorp – Products
The following are the products developed and marketed by HashiCorp:
Vagrant
Vagrant helps you to create a coherent and portable software development environment on cloud technology in a single flow of work. This increases resilience and productivity in the organization.
Waypoint
Developers can use Waypoint to mobilize, manage and monitor applications on various platforms in the given infrastructure. Build, deploy and release is what it takes to launch an application in Waypoint.
Nomad
Nomad helps in the optimum utilization of the application by reducing overheads and maximizing production. It efficiently manages workloads in group tasks.
Consul
Consul uses service mesh and DNS-based service patterns to automate and securely connect the networking across various cloud platforms. It can even detect failures on the cloud network.
Terraform
Terraform provides infrastructure facilities to organizations adopting the cloud. It assists them in increasing productivity, and risk reduction and ensures a smooth flow of business across various networks.
Packer
Packer is an open-source tool that helps in creating machine images of any type from the source configuration. Packer can automatically build these images from a single source.
Vault
Vault helps in safeguarding your sensitive information through encryption keys, tokens, certificates, and passwords. It protects business data from breaches and leaks.
Boundary
Boundary provides extreme security to data even in the host location and zero-trust environments. Access to the protected data is identity-based and you don’t have to uncover your network or manage credentials.
HashiCorp – Funding, and Investors
A sum of $349.2 million was secured by HashiCorp from the investors over the years. It went through seven funding rounds in order to procure this amount. HashiCorp also launched its IPO in December 2021 under NASDAQ and raised $1.2 billion from it. The following is the list of all the funding rounds and the name of the investors of HashiCorp:
Date
Funding Round
Amount
Name of the Investors
March 1, 2021
Secondary Market
–
Employee Stock Option Fund
March 16, 2020
Series E
$175M
GGV Capital, Redpoint, True Ventures, Mayfield Fund, IVP, Franklin Templeton Investments and two others
November 1, 2018
Series D
$100M
IVP, GGV Capital, Redpoint, True Ventures, Mayfield Fund and Bessemer Venture Partners
October 24, 2017
Series C
$40M
GGV Capital, Redpoint, True Ventures and Mayfield Fund
September 7, 2016
Series B
$24M
GGV Capital, Redpoint, True Ventures and Mayfield Fund
December 10, 2014
Series A
$10.2M
GGV Capital, True Ventures, Mayfield Fund and Haystack
October 29, 2013
Seed Round
–
Haystack
HashiCorp – Acquisition
It was earlier announced that HashiCorp acquired a SaaS platform named Vektra in June 2016 for an undisclosed amount. Like HashiCorp, Vektra is also involved in helping businesses build software infrastructures and management tools. It was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. But the current status of this acquisition and the operatives of Vektra remains unknown.
HashiCorp – Growth
After their initial experiences in cloud technology, Mitchell Hashimoto founded his own company HashiCorp in 2012 where Armon Dadgar joined later. It was just the two founders for the first two years who laid the foundation for the company. They employed their first employee in 2014 and now, there are over 1500 of them working behind HashiCorp’s growth.
The vision and the growth of HashiCorp attracted more investors and investments with every funding round. The company also started spreading its business operations in foreign lands like Europe, Japan, etc. With the launch of its IPO in December 2021, HashiCorp reached a valuation of over $15 billion.
The products and tools of HashiCorp have achieved qualitative and quantitative growth over the years. The first product, Vagrant, was developed before the company’s establishment. After incorporating HashiCorp, the company launched a couple of new products and tools every year, starting in 2013. Certain tools even got upgraded and enhanced over the years. The quality service these products offer to the customers carries a huge credit in HashiCorp’s current prosperity in the global cloud market.
HashiCorp – Competitors
The following are the top competitors of HashiCorp:
Canonical
Canonical is an open-source software company based in the United Kingdom. This company publishes Ubuntu and other software and services surrounding it. Canonical has developed several projects and tools to meet the needs of its customers. This company was established in 2004 and today operates in over 30 countries around the world.
Puppet
Puppet is a management tool for software configurations that uses its own language to define its format. It was established in 2005 and runs on Windows, Linux, and Unix operating systems. It is an easy-to-use platform and doesn’t require excessive programming knowledge to operate it.
Red Hat
Red Hat is an open-source software enterprise that is a subsidiary of IBM. It was founded in 1993 and operates its business activities worldwide. Red Hat also provides services like virtualization, management service, consultant service, middleware, storage, etc. The company quickly delivers services cost-effectively in the required infrastructure.
GitHub
GitHub is another software platform that helps in storing, monitoring, and participating in various projects. This company claims to have over 83 million developers, who together are responsible for the company’s growth. GitHub is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft since October 2018.
FAQs
What are Hashicorp products used for?
Hashicorp products are used for Collaboration & Automation of IT infrastructures.
Are Hashicorp & AWS used together?
Hashicorp is a partner service by AWS.
Is Hashicorp a coding language?
Hashicorp is a configuration language commonly known as HCL
Today, the competition is increasing at a rapid rate. Going to college and getting a degree is not enough. It is important to learn and develop skills to earn a good job. Employers nowadays look for relevant knowledge in candidates. So, students try their best to develop skills and make projects with them.
In technical fields, programmers make different projects to showcase their coding knowledge. When we think of posting these projects, the first name to pop up in heads is GitHub. But now, it is not the only trusted platform for coders. The internet has many other alternatives like GitLab, Launchpad, BitBucket, and more.
GitHub is a popular platform that hosts codes. It is a great and useful platform for coders. They can practice and learn further with the help of it. It allows them to work on many different projects.
It also allows coders to work with other coders on the same projects. It means different people can work on a project as a collaboration. The best part is that it has a control system. This ensures that the original version of the project is not hampered and stays intact.
This platform is great for programmers, as they can find like-minded people and code with them. The projects here are what we call open-source software.
Top Alternatives for GitHub
Whenever a person is looking for a code hosting platform, GitHub gets the place on top. But now many other platforms serve as their alternatives.
The following are some of its top substitutes:
BitBucket
Bitbucket – Best GitHub Alternative
BitBucket is a Git and Mercurial code management and collaboration platform. It came into existence in the year 2008. It has both free and monetary plans. It is a great platform for professionals to plan, collaborate, build, test, and deploy software.
It offers a place where professionals can manage git repositories and join up on their source code. It has tools like Jira, HipChat, and Confluence. This helps to make it one of the most popular choices for big enterprises.
It offers many features for developers. For example- code review, branch permissions, pipelines, integration, collaboration, and more.
GitLab
GitLab- Best GitHub Alternative
GitLab is an open-core company, launched in 2014 that provides software. It blends three abilities. These are development, security, and operating software, all in a single application.
This platform allows planning of projects, source code collaboration and management, CI/CD, and monitoring. GitLab offers a feature-based system with integration for web developers.
It offers many different features to make the platform more exclusive. For example- version control, bug tracking, code review, issue management, and more.
Another popular alternative is Gitea. This came into existence in the year 2016. It is an open-source forge software. It is a package for self-hosting a lightweight Git server. Along with self-hosting, it also offers free public first-party instances.
It has a well-documented API and allows the set up of various webhooks. The software is under the MIT OSS license and is community-managed.
It comes with various attractive features. For example- pull request and code reviews, multiple code maintainers, wikis and bug tracking, and more.
Launchpad
Launchpad – Best GitHub Alternative
Launchpad is a website that was put in motion in 2004. The platform allows software collaboration, where the users can develop and maintain open-source software.
One can not only host but also import git repositories here. It provides translations, FAQs, and answers tracking and specifications tracking. A user can enjoy this platform for free.
This provides many features to its users. For example- code reviews, code hosting, bug tracking, mailing lists, etc.
RhodeCode is an open-source self-hosted platform, founded in 2010. It is an enterprise source code management platform. This offers the unification of Git, mercurial, and subversion repositories.
It applies unified user control, permissions, and tool integrations. It has an enterprise edition, where you can link enterprise tools, premium support, and more.
The platform offers various features to its users. For example- advanced code review, workflow automation, permission management, etc.
Phabricator
Phabricator – Best GitHub Alternative
Phabricator is another popular alternative software, launched in the year 2010. It is a series of web development collaboration tools. These tools are- differential code review tool, diffusion repository browser, Herald change monitoring tool, Maniphest bug tracker, and Phriction wiki.
It can be used for large datasets and also scale to large organizations. It is open-source, fast, and free software, where you own all your data.
There are many features provided by the platform. For example- code review, repository hosting, issue tracking, change auditing, and more.
SourceForge
SourceForge – Best GitHub Alternative
SourceForge is a popular web service that supports the open-source software community. It aims to provide a platform for developers to control and manage software projects.
The platform has projects based on myriad tools. It helps developers with the storage of a project’s source code under revision control. It is a platform for both open-source software and business software.
It is a great alternative to GitHub with many features. For example- Git, mercurial repositories, project wikis, unique subdomain URLs, etc.
Google Cloud Source Repositories
Google Cloud Source Repositories – Best GitHub Alternative
This is another great alternative, developed by Google. It is a cloud-based private Git repository tool that enables users to design, develop, and manage their codes.
It enables developers to host as well as track the changes to large codebases on its platform. It has a cloud source repository that can be accessed and used by many users at the same place.
It offers exclusive features. For example – unlimited private repositories, built-in CI, powerful code search capabilities, and more.
Gogs
Gogs – Best GitHub Alternative
Gogs is a self-hosted Git server where you can host your codes. It is a super lightweight and easy to install solution. It allows expanding a local Git server for a machine or small network.
It is completely self-hosted so its scope is not as wide as GitHub. But it has many similar features found on other platforms.
Gogs provides features like repository management, organization webhooks, deploy keys, and more.
Coding is something that has a wide scope. So, it is important for the developers to learn and practice their skills. The open-source platforms play a very important role here. These help the developers to learn better and connect with other like-minded people.
The above mentioned are some of the most popular names that can be used as GitHub alternatives. Apart from these, there are more options available as well. Some of these are Beanstalk, TaraVault, Gerrit, etc.
FAQs
What is GitHub?
GitHub is a popular platform that hosts codes. It allows different coders to work on the same projects as a collaboration.
Is GitHub a software?
GitHub is a web-based version-control and collaboration platform for software developers. It works on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model.
In the world of modern software development, the expectations of the software products we use are getting increasingly higher, and the demands on the team’s software development process are increasing proportionally.
In a world where distributed teams and remote work is here to stay, it is also of crucial importance to keep the development cycle open, transparent, and allowing more close collaboration on the team.
Teams seem to struggle with the same recurring issues: Code reviews that are taking forever, PRs that cannot get merged due to missing dependencies from other branches, an almost grotesque meantime to restore a bug and a missing overview of the lead time it takes to ship a new feature. These issues are exactly what inspired Simon to create Sigmetic.io to gain insight into these processes. Because, essentially, that is the only way we can start improving!
Sigmetic is a toolkit for the data-driven software team. It collects data from your GitHub organization and provides a full picture of the habits and trends in your team by exposing various KPI metrics from the team’s performance. The founder believes that continuous improvement starts with insight.
Sigmetic
We already have a series of useful tools for monitoring the performance of our servers and infrastructure, but if we really want to secure the quality of the products we ship, we need to start applying the same effort on monitoring the team’s development processes. That’s what Sigmetic is all about!
Sigmetic – Target Market Size
Sigmetic is in the industry somewhere between a productivity tool and an analytics tool. We mostly consider this a productivity tool for development teams, and according to BusinessWire, “the business productivity software market is expected to register a CAGR of 12.6% during the forecast period 2019-2024.”
We believe that analytics tools used for team behavior and performance will have a significant role in the future. With the rise of Machine Learning, we also believe that performance prediction and estimates will be impactful – an area where we see Sigmetic fit in the future.
How was Sigmetic Started?
In Simon’s career as a freelance consultant, he noticed how teams seem to struggle with the same recurring issues: Code reviews that are taking forever, PRs that cannot get merged due to missing dependencies from other branches, an almost grotesque meantime to restore a bug and a missing overview of the lead time it takes to ship a new feature.
Simon initially spoke with the managers that he was working with at the time, and they were thrilled about the idea. They had but one important request – the ability to embed the KPIs on their already existing dashboards. After talking to managers in other companies, there seemed to be a general interest in the idea, and the ability to easily embed the KPIs seemed to be a shared request as well.
The initial research was overly qualitative and feedback only came from a small set of managers from companies that Simon Høiberg, founder of Sigmetic, had worked with earlier.
He created 3 prototypes of embeddable KPI Widgets and created a landing page. He also added the ability to sign up for early access, offering a forever-free-account. The landing page went public and Sigmetic got a lot of interest and sign-ups.
The building blocks that make up Sigmetic, are the various KPI Widgets that you find in the Widget Library. You can use these widgets to compose your own dashboards exactly the way it makes sense to you and your team.
Sigmetic Dashboard
Sigmetic connects to your GitHub account and collects data from the developer behavior. This enables you to visualize metrics such as commit trends, issue burnup, meantime to review, and much more. It provides a full picture of the habits and trends in your team, but it also enables you to narrow in on the potential bottlenecks that may hold your team back.
“I guess we pivoted very slightly from the initial idea of Sigmetic, which was more oriented about performance – today, Sigmetic focuses more on trends and behavior”, says Simon, owner of Sigmetic.
Founders of Sigmetic and team
Simon Høiberg is the founder and CEO of Sigmetic.
Simon Høiberg with graphic designer/UX consultant that’s been a part of Sigmetic
He has two permanent consultants that are involved on a freelance basis. But they are not a core part of the team, per say.
Sigmetic – Startup Launch
Sigmetic’s primary channel of communication and marketing has been Twitter. The startup runs ads through its ad-program, but the biggest source of acquisition has been through content marketing.
I’m deeply passionate about open-source, so we have open-sourced one of the most essential parts of the technology stack, Direflow, which is used to create embeddable micro-frontends, says Simon, founder of Sigmetic.
Direflow was started just before the development of Sigmetic and has been a part of the very first prototype. Additionally, they’ve published blogs about how they build various parts of the platform, and – in general – been very generous with sharing as much as they can. That part has been the biggest lead-generator, by far.
Getting proper feedback, in the beginning, was surprisingly difficult! A lot of users were keen on signing up before the initial launch, and a lot of users immediately churned without leaving any kind of comment or feedback. When reaching out on email, users were mostly unresponsive.
The team implemented a chat directly in the application that would forward the message to a designated Slack channel. That helped a lot. They also benefited from channels such as Reddit’s startup for finding beta-testers. But generally speaking, getting people into a conversation was a huge challenge.
