109 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
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layout: post
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title: How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub
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---
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{{ page.title }}
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================
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<p class="meta">18 Oct 2008 - San Francisco</p>
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2008 is a leap year. That means that three hundred and sixty six days ago,
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almost to the minute, I was sitting alone in a booth at Zeke's Sports Bar and
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Grill on 3rd Street in San Francisco. I wouldn't normally hang out at a sports
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bar, let alone a sports bar in SOMA, but back then Thursday was "I Can Has Ruby"
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night. I guess back then "I can has _______" was also a reasonable moniker to
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attach to pretty much anything. ICHR was a semi-private meeting of like minded
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Ruby Hackers that generally and willingly devolved into late night drinking
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sessions. Normally these nights would fade away like my hangover the next
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morning, but this night was different. This was the night that
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[GitHub](http://github.com/) was born.
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I think I was sitting at the booth alone because I'd just ordered a fresh Fat
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Tire and needed a short break from the socializing that was happening over at
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the long tables in the dimly lit aft portion of the bar. On the fifth or sixth
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sip, Chris Wanstrath walked in. I have trouble remembering now if I'd even
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classify Chris and I as "friends" at the time. We knew each other through Ruby
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meetups and conferences, but only casually. Like a mutual "hey, I think your
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code is awesome" kind of thing. I'm not sure what made me do it, but I gestured
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him over to the booth and said "dude, check this out." About a week earlier I'd
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started work on a project called [Grit](http://github.com/mojombo/grit) that
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allowed me to access Git repositories in an object oriented manner via Ruby
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code. Chris was one of only a handful of Rubyists at the time that was starting
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to become serious about Git. He sat down and I started showing him what I had.
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It wasn't much, but it was enough to see that it had sparked something in Chris.
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Sensing this, I launched into my half-baked idea for some sort of website that
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acted as hub for coders to share their Git repositories. I even had a name:
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GitHub. I may be paraphrasing, but his response was along the lines of a very
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emphatic "I'm in. Let's do it!"
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The next night, Friday, October 19, 2007 at 10:24pm Chris made the first commit
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to the GitHub repository and sealed in digital stone the beginning of our joint
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venture. There were, so far, no agreements of any kind regarding how things
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would proceed. Just two guys that decided to hack together on something that
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sounded cool.
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Remember those amazing few minutes in Karate Kid where Daniel is training to
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become a martial arts expert? Remember the music? Well, you should probably go
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buy and listen to [You're The
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Best](http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=260417864&id=260417040&s=143441)
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by Joe Esposito in iTunes because I'm about to hit you with a montage.
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For the next three months Chris and I spent ridiculous hours planning and coding
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GitHub. I kept going with Grit and designed the UI. Chris built out the Rails
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app. We met in person every Saturday to make design decisions and try to figure
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out what the hell our pricing plan would look like. I remember one very rainy
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day we talked for a good two hours about various pricing strategies over some of
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the best Vietnamese egg rolls in the city. All of this we did while holding
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other engagements. I, for one, was employed full time at Powerset as a tools
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developer for the Ranking and Relevance team.
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In mid January, after three months of nights and weekends, we launched into
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private beta mode, sending invites to our friends. In mid February PJ Hyett
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joined in and made us three-strong. We publicly launched the site on April 10th.
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TechCrunch was not invited. At this point it was still just three 20-somethings
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without a single penny of outside investment.
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I was still working full time at Powerset on July 1, 2008 when we learned that
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Powerset had just been acquired by Microsoft for around $100 million. This was
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interesting timing. With the acquisition, I was going to be faced with a choice
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sooner than I had anticipated. I could either sign on as a Microsoft employee or
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quit and go GitHub full time. At 29 years old, I was the oldest of the three
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GitHubbers, and had accumulated a proportionally larger amount of debt and
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monthly expenditure. I was used to my six digit lifestyle. Further confounding
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the issue was the imminent return of my wife, Theresa, from her PhD fieldwork in
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Costa Rica. I would soon be transitioning from make-believe bachelor back to
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married man.
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To muddy the waters of decision even more, the Microsoft employment offer was
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juicy. Salary + $300k over three years juicy. That's enough money to make
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anybody think twice about anything. So I was faced with this: a safe job with
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lots of guaranteed money as a Microsoft man –or– a risky job with
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unknown amounts of money as an entrepreneur. I knew things with the other GitHub
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guys would become extremely strained if I stayed on at Powerset much longer.
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Having saved up some money and become freelancers some time ago, they had both
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started dedicating full time effort to GitHub. It was do or die time. Either
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pick GitHub and go for it, or make the safe choice and quit GitHub to make
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wheelbarrows full of cash at Microsoft.
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If you want a recipe for restless sleep, I can give you one. Add one part "what
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will my wife think" with 3,000 parts Benjamin Franklin; stir in a "beer anytime
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you damn well please" and top with a chance at financial independence.
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I've become pretty good at giving my employers the bad news that I'm leaving the
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company to go do something cooler. I broke the news to my boss at Powerset on
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the day the employment offer was due. I told him I was quitting to go work full
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time on GitHub. Like any great boss, he was bummed, but understanding. He didn't
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try to tempt me with a bigger bonus or anything. I think deep down he knew I was
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going to leave. I may have even received a larger incentive to stay than others,
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on account of my being a flight risk. Those Microsoft managers are crafty, I
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tell you. They've got retention bonuses down to a science. Well, except when you
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throw an entrepreneur, the singularity of the business world, into the mix.
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Everything goes wacky when you've got one of those around.
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In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to
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search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for
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myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be.
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When I'm old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say "wow, that was an
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adventure," not "wow, I sure felt safe."
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