SV Icons: Thomas Dohmke, GitHub
Playing prioritization game
Thomas Dohmke is the CEO of Github; a software development platform engineers use to version control their code. This past week, we had an opportunity to meet Thomas in person.
Born in Germany, Thomas has always had an entrepreneurial and tinkerer mindset. In 2008, he quit his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering to pursue his ideas. And by 2009, Thomas found himself at the Apple developers conference, where he met his future co-founder during a connection in an airport in Munich. Something hit off. When Apple launched something called an ad-hoc distribution, they saw an opportunity and came up with a new service for developers to get crash reports and analyze test coverage. This product was a unique solution on the market - one of the first DevOps solutions for mobile developers. In short, Hockeyapp was acquired by Microsoft, and Thomas ended up moving to the US with his family for the first time.
A few themes came out during our discussion with him:
The challenges in the open source community and the role of the government, including managing open source projects by developers across different countries and job sponsorships
Github's acquisition by Microsoft and the synergy between the two companies.
Microsoft has one of the best global Sales teams out there, and since the acquisition, MSFT has grown its business in enterprise software.
Copilot, an incredibly powerful AI pair programmer, raises questions about the licensing implications of AI-written code and the future demand for SWE positions.
Steve Jobs quotes: “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do? 'And whenever the answer has been no for too many days, I know I need to change something.”
Despite a busy day full of meetings, Thomas was still very energized throughout the entire evening (he barely ate!). However, the honesty with which he shared his thoughts and opinions stood out the most. He openly shared his aspirations, values, and ideas. Daily, however, he has to prioritize and solve some of the company's biggest problems. To manage his stress, he re-listens to some of his favorite TV shows/audiobooks he has listened to many times before to ease his mind. What's essential to Thomas in his role is to make sure that when he does disagree on how to solve a challenge, he remains committed to solving the problem. He says commitment is often the most challenging part. Instead of saying, "I can do it," it is better to focus on "I can learn it." It is all about the rehearsals and putting in the effort (Rolling Stone, he noted, rehearsed even before their 100th performance). And in those moments, don't worry about what others say. Don't try to be someone else, either.
One of Thomas's dreams is to replicate Silicon Valley culture somewhere else. Indeed, Thomas mentioned how much he appreciates the openness around here. There is, he argues, no other place in the world that has reached this scale.
Editor: Jacky Lin
Contributor: Malika Aubakirova