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
Explains why creating custom open source licenses harms collaboration and adoption, advocating for standardized licenses.
Discusses the philosophy that removing unnecessary features improves software by reducing complexity and cognitive load for users.
A GitHub employee shares a curated list of recommended books for hackers, geeks, and open source developers on technology and business.
A product manager shares twelve key responsibilities and daily activities based on their experience at GitHub, focusing on accountability, team leadership, and user advocacy.
A guide on managing difficult pull request discussions, focusing on setting ground rules, assigning roles, and maintaining productive collaboration.
Analysis of the US government's limited open source policy, arguing for broader adoption to modernize and increase transparency.
Argues that product design should focus on the core 80% of users, not power users or edge cases, to avoid feature creep and improve the out-of-box experience.
Explores how open source software acts like Yelp, shifting power from publishers to consumers by amplifying user feedback and demanding higher standards.
Explores six common strategies for using pull requests on GitHub, from quick merges to detailed reviews and collaborative workflows.
Explores the key benefits of open source software, including cost savings, higher quality, and enabling developers to focus on high-value work.
GitHub's internal use of its own platform for non-code collaboration highlights four key traits of modern, open-source-inspired collaboration tools.
Explains the importance of using systems that assign URLs to decisions and processes to preserve organizational knowledge and context.
Analyzes the three major challenges hindering government IT: change aversion, lack of technocratic leadership, and non-scalable processes.
Explores how enterprises can adopt open source development workflows, like public bug trackers and transparent collaboration, to improve software quality and efficiency.
A tutorial on adding an 'improve this content' button to GitHub Pages sites, enabling collaborative editing via GitHub's web interface.
How GitHub uses automated testing tools to help developers write more user-focused, less corporate-sounding blog posts.
A former Presidential Innovation Fellow shares five core principles for successful government IT projects, focusing on culture, user needs, and modern development.
Explores the 'Zen of GitHub,' a set of guiding principles that shape GitHub's engineering culture and decision-making processes.
A GitHub engineer shares 12 practical tips for tech companies to write more human, less corporate blog posts about product updates.
Explores how government IT procurement is evolving from waterfall to agile methods and aligning with open source development practices.
