Ben Balter writes about technology leadership, open source, and modern collaboration at scale. His essays blend engineering mindset with management, community building, remote work, and transparent communication—shaped by years of experience at GitHub and in public-sector tech.
183 articles from this blog
A guide for open source maintainers on how to build a welcoming community and effectively manage contributions to scale their projects.
Eight cultural rules for successful remote work, focusing on asynchronous communication and workflow norms, based on experience at GitHub.
Explains the differences between user blocking and muting, focusing on GitHub's unique approach and the limitations of these features on social platforms.
A GitHub community leader shares 10 key lessons on building and moderating healthy online communities, based on three years of platform trust and safety work.
A GitHub product lead shares resolutions for supporting open source communities, focusing on shared responsibility and maintainer etiquette.
GitHub's approach to helping open source maintainers build and scale safe, welcoming communities around their code.
Explores how lawyers can adopt open source workflows, tools, and philosophies to improve remote collaboration and legal practice.
Article argues engineers should focus on understanding user problems, not just building solutions, to create impactful products.
Discusses why Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) can be detrimental to open source projects by discouraging contributions and complicating the process.
A guide for open source maintainers explaining the fundamentals of open source licensing, including copyright, rights granted, and common license types.
Practical advice for open source maintainers on building and nurturing a community around their projects, from licensing to attracting contributors.
A software engineer outlines seven common antipatterns for prioritizing feature requests in software development projects.
A product manager shares seven key habits of developers who consistently ship great, user-centric features, focusing on communication and ownership.
How to use GitHub's protected branches feature to give non-code contributors issue management and moderation permissions without code commit access.
Explains why a project's README file should serve as its foundational document, defining core goals to guide development and manage scope.
Explores the concepts of 'bikeshedding' and 'honeypots' in software, introducing the idea of a 'bikeshed honeypot' to manage feedback.
A developer shares their customized Atom text editor setup for writing prose and Markdown, detailing essential packages and workflow tweaks.
A GitHub engineer shares eight key lessons for new hires, focusing on shipping early, learning workflows, and adapting to the company's unique culture.
A GitHub employee shares seven key habits and cultural traits that contribute to the effectiveness and success of employees at the company.
A guide to building great software products by absorbing complexity for users, focusing on core features, dogfooding, and optimizing for ideal use cases.
