Except as pointed out in the article, the massive increase in spending was fairly frivolous. They spent crazy money on a new huge office, threw big parties, and sent their employees traveling everywhere. They also doubled their headcount, when I think we can all agree that they haven't had a surge in volume or features that merits that many new employees.
There's no reason that GitHub couldn't be run profitably if they weren't just out there burning VC money as quickly as possible.
It may have just been a coincidence. I believe they brought major features online two or three weeks after the HN-hatefest against them started, hardly enough time.
I'd also like to point out that Github was probably the most important change in OSS software by a wide margin. People easily forget comfort they've grown accustomed to, but it's worth to take a trip into the past from time to time: https://sourceforge.net/projects/avogadro/?source=frontpage&...
(and that's today's sourceforge – they didn't do much, but 10 years ago it was definitely even worse)
They built a replica of the Oval Office as their lobby. I don't think it lasted more than a year. It's all gone now, and not a spec of the original Oval Office is there anymore. It's an open seating area for coffee...
New features doesn't generally scale linearly with employee count (due to required communication paths, etc.) That said, I actually do think there's been an uptick in useful new features from GitHub this year. We use Phabricator at Khan Academy, and many aspects of Phab that were superior last year when I joined KA are now in line with GitHub's offering.
Phabricator definitely has a superior sense of humor. (If anyone reading this hasn't checked out their website, I highly recommend it)
I was, of course, not trying to say that Phab was regressing but rather that GitHub had picked up the pace. There have absolutely been good improvements to Phab this year too!
In the case of Phabricator, I wonder if that sense of humor works against them. The first time I followed a link to their site and read the description[1], I was convinced that it was a joke poking fun at how ridiculous overwrought do-everything enterprise systems tend to be.
There's no reason that GitHub couldn't be run profitably if they weren't just out there burning VC money as quickly as possible.