GitHub is having something of a civil war at the moment

It looks like all is not well inside GitHub at the moment, as two factions within the company are fighting over which direction to take it, and the fighting has resulted in a number of key executives departing. According to reports from both Business Insider and The Information on Thursday, many people within the company want to pursue more lucrative enterprise contracts, while others want to continue focusing on helping developers.

GitHub’s internal culture seems to be melting down. A struggle between factions is taking place, according to a report by The Information, which matches what several sources have told Business Insider. On the one side are top executives who want to grow the company’s revenues by landing big enterprise contracts, with all the suit-and-tie salesforce culture that typically requires. On the other are the employees who prefer GitHub’s roots as a quirky, “brogrammer” meritocracy where no one had managers and a days’ work involved coding while drinking a beer at your desk. Nine executives have jumped ship in recent months including, as we previously reported, VP of Engineering Susan Lally, who had been with the company 18 months. GitHub is a hugely popular service that lets programmers store their software projects, share their projects publicly, and get others to collaborate with them on it. It’s also increasingly the place where programmers show off their skills to prospective employers.