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.
175 articles from this blog
A former Product Manager shares nine key responsibilities of a Technical Program Manager, focusing on communication, coordination, and project tracking.
A GitHub engineer reflects on eight years of impactful projects, including GeoJSON rendering, government outreach, and GitHub Pages improvements.
A curated list of articles explaining GitHub's unique work culture, communication practices, and tips for new hires and interviewees.
A technical analysis of U.S. federal .gov domains, tracking changes in security, CMS usage, and open source adoption over a decade.
A tech enthusiast details their project to build a secure, private home network using prosumer hardware and custom configurations.
A blog's 10-year anniversary retrospective, listing its top 10 most-viewed posts on topics like open source, GitHub, and tech law.
A GitHub product manager argues that user safety and abuse prevention should be prioritized like security vulnerabilities, not dismissed as edge cases.
A guide for developers on seven essential trust and safety features to proactively build into products to prevent abuse and harassment.
Discusses the critical importance of budgeting for 'trust and safety' work to combat online abuse, framing it as a necessary 'internet tax' for tech platforms.
A GitHub Product Manager shares strategies for handling high volumes of GitHub notifications to stay focused and productive.
A GitHub engineer explains how communication tools shape software development, detailing principles like 'default to open' and practical tool usage at GitHub.
Explores automating open source community tasks like code review and issue management using CI tools and bots to scale projects efficiently.
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.
