71–80 of 182 posts
This surprises me on so many different levels. To me, Rust is nearly the same thing as steveklabnik. Considering his level of engagement and enthusiasm I figured he was one of those people making easy SV money. Between this and Jess Frazelle (another household name) never getting a promotion shows how wrong this industry is.
That widespread perception could have been part of the problem.
This is a bummer on many levels, but also personally, a bit of a relief. For a while I was considering going all-in to try to get a role at Mozilla. I really believe in their mission, and I drink the kool-aid when it comes to the browser market getting gobbled up. What held me back at the time were the company reviews. The culture sounds toxic, and the management sounds incompetent, and there's no force of change tha…
Mozilla isn't a monolith. Like most medium and large organizations, your experience can vary greatly between teams and management chains. If Mozilla's mission and manifesto resonate with you, give it a shot. With Microsoft throwing their weight behind Chromium, we're the last bastion standing against a WebKit-derived monoculture. It's an impossible challenge, but it matters , and we've beaten the odds before. Current…
You could say this is true at any company, but it feels like more of a problem when comparing a company with lots of really good reviews/testimonials to one with very few good ones.
I think I'd have to have a close friend, or someone who I trust internally, to convince me of the quality of a particular team at this point, and I haven't got that. Also, I've moved off the career path, I think, that would be of value at Mozilla.
> Why’d he quit? ... he told me this: at each stage of a company’s growth, they have different needs. Those needs generally require different skills. What he enjoyed, and what he had the skills to do, was to take a tiny company and make it medium sized. Once a company was at that stage of growth, he was less interested and less good at taking them from there. This is an aspect that gets overlooked in many businesses…
What's most fascinating about the Hogwarts metaphor is that members of each house each bring some useful value, but the core values of each are often in conflict with the core values of the others.
At some point Mozilla went from being a heroic struggle that appealed to people who had a specific vision for the future of the internet, and turned into a status symbol like having Harvard on your résumé. This happens to any successful startup. A company that would never have appealed to a lot of workers suddenly becomes desirable (all else being equal) because of the status associated with it. Not to bash MBAs, but this is why I advise a "absolutely no MBAs" policy for startups.
MBA diplomas are simply status symbols and most people who have the degree joke about how easy it was to obtain and how much partying/networking they did while in school. They also graduate expecting to be placed in a leadership role due to the degree, even though young MBAs typically have little to no actual work experience or hard skills. I've seen overly confident MBAs nearly sink funding rounds for startups because they thought they were being clever with accounting and the investors saw right through it.
I'm surprised and disappointed to learn that Mozilla didn't value Steve's work enough. The documentation, especially the book [1] which he authored, is the gold standard that every software project should aspire to. As someone who learned the language recently, it's possible that I might have abandoned it if the documentation and learning materials hadn't been so good. I also thought his work in evangelizing Rust on…
Yeah. As someone working in Scala I honestly think I'm in the right language technically, but I wish we had even half the community spirit that Rust does, and Klabnik is a huge part of that.
This surprises me on so many different levels. To me, Rust is nearly the same thing as steveklabnik. Considering his level of engagement and enthusiasm I figured he was one of those people making easy SV money. Between this and Jess Frazelle (another household name) never getting a promotion shows how wrong this industry is.
Mozilla is actually the best-paying job I've ever had, if that tells you anything. And it was an okay salary. I've never been more financially secure. But I'd like some of that "easy SV money" :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why hint at it at all then? Without details it won't satisfy the curious nor help fix whatever problems there might be. As someone who still works for Mozilla out of conviction, this feels like an unnecessary low blow.
You talk as if you are _owed_ these explanations. You are not. I read the post as an explanation of his decision, with as much information as he was comfortable sharing. And since it's his post, his job and his _choice_ then that's all we get.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i think the point he's making in that post is he does have the time, and more importantly the passion and will to do so. the compensation he was receiving for having to work at a large org wasn't fair, and that's why he's changing directions.
Are there companies (outside of Mozilla) that would hire (or at least pay) someone like that to keep working on Rust and its documentation? These people are too important to not pay enough. I know it's perceived to be the price you pay if you work for a foundation like Mozilla (or open source software), but it's not fair. I've seen a guy who worked full time on open source have a Patreon, which had a few big sponsors…
Steve, thank you for your work on Rust. I can honestly say that your writing was the most important factor in getting me excited and into Rust. Your book is a pleasure to read, it's a gold standard. Overall, the quality of Rust's documentation is a beacon in the field, and I understand you've contributed much there. I'm sad (and a bit angry at Mozilla) that you didn't get the career recognition you deserved at Mozill…
This is a bummer on many levels, but also personally, a bit of a relief. For a while I was considering going all-in to try to get a role at Mozilla. I really believe in their mission, and I drink the kool-aid when it comes to the browser market getting gobbled up. What held me back at the time were the company reviews. The culture sounds toxic, and the management sounds incompetent, and there's no force of change tha…
Perhaps 2019 is the time to start the Rust Foundation, as mentioned by boats and others[0]. If so, you'd clearly be one of the founders. I would put my name into the ring for that as well, as we're now in somewhat similar circumstances. All it needs is some money, a lot for a pizza cook perhaps but a pittance by Silicon Valley standards.
Wherever our paths lead, I hope they continue to intersect!