Tom Preston-Werner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tom Preston-Werner
Preston-Werner in July 2013
Title President of GitHub
Website
tom.preston-werner.com

Tom Preston-Werner is a software developer and entrepreneur. He is the President of GitHub,[1][2] a hosting service for software projects, which he co-founded in 2008 with Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett.[3][4] Preston-Werner is also the creator of the avatar service Gravatar.[1]

Early life and education

The son of a special education teacher and an engineer, Preston-Werner grew up in Dubuque, Iowa.[2] As a boy, he was a “classic engineer-in-training,”[2] studying the How Things Work book series, ripping apart gears lying around the house, and hacking the family’s TRS-80 PC.[2] He graduated from Dubuque Senior High School and moved to California to study physics at Harvey Mudd College.[2] Two years into it, he dropped out, realizing he preferred computer programming over mathematics, which was at the core of his physics studies.[5]

Career

In 2004, Preston-Werner founded Gravatar, a service for providing globally unique avatars that follow users from site to site. The company grew to about 32,000 users in 2007,[6] when Preston-Werner sold the company to Automattic.[7]

Preston-Werner moved to San Francisco in 2005 to work at Powerset, a natural language search engine.[8] In San Francisco, he met Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett at a Ruby developer meet-up.[3] In 2008, the three of them, along with Scott Chacon, founded GitHub.[9] Shortly thereafter, Powerset was acquired by Microsoft, and Preston-Werner left the company to focus on GitHub.[2]

GitHub co-founder and President

As a software developer at Powerset, Preston-Werner was frustrated by the lack of tools for collaborating on pieces of code with other developers.[9] This frustration was shared by Wanstrath and Hyett.[9] The team started Web-based GitHub as a place to share and collaborate on code.[9]

Preston-Werner is known for advocating a distributed work environment in which employees join projects based on their interests and can switch roles depending on the project.[10][11] The company has no managers and favors the title of PRP (Primary Responsible Person), GitHub’s own acronym.[11] He told The New York Times that

The efficiency of large groups working together is very low in large enterprises. We want to change that…Companies should exist to optimize happiness, not money. Profits follow.[12]

Preston-Werner has said he wants GitHub to expand beyond software into other areas of collaboration.[12] Architects, musicians, city governments, builders and others are currently using GitHub to share and collaborate on projects beyond software code.[11][13]

Personal life

Preston-Werner began programming when he was eight years old and has said he sometimes "goes on 16-hour coding binges" without caffeine.[14] He lives in San Francisco with his family.[15]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Tom Preston-Werner". Bloomberg Link. Bloomberg. Retrieved May 24, 2013. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Bourne, Will (February 27, 2013). "2 Reasons to Keep an Eye on GitHub". Inc. Retrieved May 24, 2013. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Interview with Chris Wanstrath (Github)". Web site. Does What. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  4. ↑ "PJ Hyett". Profile. CrunchBase. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  5. ↑ Werner, Tom. "Updated Croppr & Stats". Blog. Gravatar Blog. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  6. ↑ Aamoth, Doug (17 October 2007). "Automattic Acquires Gravatar". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  7. ↑ Preston-Werner, Tom. "Rejected Bio from The Setup". Blog post. Tom Preston-Werner. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  8. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 McMillan, Robert (21 February 2012). "Lord of the Files: How GitHub Tamed Free Software (And More)". Wired. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  9. ↑ Baer, Drake (16 April 2013). "GitHub's Code for Workplace Happiness". Fast Company. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  10. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Silverman, Rachel Emma (6 August 2013). "Some Tech Firms Ask: Who Needs Managers?". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  11. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Hardy, Quentin (28 December 2012). "Dreams of 'Open' Everything". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  12. ↑ Howard, Alex (8 March 2013). "GitHub gains new prominence as the use of open source within governments grows". O'Reilly Radar. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  13. ↑ Mott, Nathaniel (21 June 2013). "PandoMonthly San Francisco with GitHub CEO Tom Preston-Werner, the full interview". Pando Daily. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
  14. ↑ Newcomb, Steve. "Powerset - Interview with Tom Preston-Werner". Blog post. Blognewcomb.com. Retrieved 10 October 2013. 
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