Most developers use GitHub every day, and many can even attribute their first steps into the development world to the source code management functionality of GitHub. For the team behind the platform, nothing is more exciting than cultivating an open source community that helps make developers into innovators.

That’s why Keerthana “KK” Kumar, director of engineering at GitHub, is able to wake up with a smile on her face everyday to do what she loves — coaching engineering teams to build products that bring out the best work in other developers and, ultimately, make the world better.

In this episode of Decoded, host Sydney Lai sits down with KK to discuss her developer journey, from first using GitHub to eventually working for the company. They also chat about the history of GitHub within the developer community and what it is like to work at such a wonderfully quirky company.

Other discussion topics include:

• How GitHub became so prominent among those studying software development in the late-2000s.
• How development tools are being streamlined to make it easier for people to get up and running on their developer journey.
• How code storage and version management helped set the stage for more collaborative working environments in the developer community.
• How GitHub decides on the projects it works on to meld work cultures across various industries and make software development simpler.
• What KK believes GitHub is really good at.
• How GitHub tackles technical debt and other head-scratchers in the community.