Supporting our team and community during COVID-19

Since GitHub's initial COVID-19 update on March 3, the situation has continued to evolve. The company's priority remains keeping employees safe while maintaining a dependable platform for developers worldwide. To that end, GitHub has taken additional measures to support its workforce and ensure service continuity.

Employee health and productivity

GitHub has always operated with a largely distributed team. Over the past two weeks, all employees who typically work from a GitHub office or coworking space have been asked to work from home unless their role requires them to be physically present. The company is providing the necessary tools and equipment for a productive remote setup.

Additional workplace policies have been adjusted to address the current circumstances:

  • Family leave: Employees who need time off to care for children or family members during school or dependent care closures will receive pay continuity.
  • Travel restrictions: All domestic and international business travel is suspended except for trips deemed critical to business continuity.
  • Hourly worker support: Vendors providing services in GitHub offices will continue to be paid during this period of reduced service demand.

These measures are intended to protect the health of the team so they can continue supporting the GitHub community.

Maintaining platform reliability

GitHub has contingency plans in place to sustain essential staffing and business functions. The company emphasizes its responsibility to remain a stable resource for developers and enterprise customers who depend on the platform.

  • Security and backups: Code stored on GitHub is replicated across a minimum of six servers with additional off-site backups. Data center infrastructure uses Tier 3+ sites and maintains hot-spare (N+1) redundancy for all storage and compute systems, as well as full (2N or higher) redundancy for critical components. Offsite operational run-books and an on-call rotation are maintained for all mission-critical services.
  • Support coverage: More than 80 percent of GitHub's Support Team works from home, providing the flexibility to continue delivering 24×5 support for Enterprise Cloud, Server, and Dotcom customers, and 24×7 support for Premium customers.

As COVID-19 related projects and global business continuity plans increasingly rely on GitHub, the company remains committed to prioritizing stability, health, and safety. GitHub also notes that several teams are working on efforts tied to the pandemic, with updates expected from the Social Impact Team's Open Source for Good program and its collaboration with OSS projects and public health organizations in the coming weeks.