131–140 of 182 posts
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…
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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…
That's the problem though. From the outside, there's no way to know if you're going to end up in the "good" part of the company or not. Sure, you can do your best to screen the company, but it's not too hard in the short interview process to mask a lot of the warts. 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…
You're just giving yourself reasons to fail. Give yourself a reason to succeed.
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As a Mozilla employee, I find the culture pretty good. Certainly better than in any other place I've worked. I imagine that some other teams may have a different experience.
Good to know things are going fine for you now Yoric. I remember you were not he last one complaining a couple of years ago :)
Oh, yes, I do remember of a branch that used to deserve complaints. As you know, that branch doesn't exist anymore :)
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Would it be possible to crowdfund that role? People on youtube apparently earn a living by making videos in which they film themselves watching other youtube videos, so it ought to be possible :)
Maybe! I'm not sure I have the kind of skills needed to do such a thing.
I want to say from his past blog posts- Steve is a very thoughtful writer. And from all my online interactions in comments- a very respectful person. Knowing him (whatever little) things must be really frustrating for him to call Mozilla out in public. Rust is what it is- not because its an amazingly well designed language - lots of languages are very well designed Haskell, f#, Scala. But Rust has a very public devel…
I don't know how far Rust will go in adoption breadth and lifespan, but it's already clear that it's had a major impact on the community. Both personally and on HN, I've seen it drive a new cohort of people to take an interest in PL design, low-level languages and safety guarantees, and even kernel design theory. Talented people who have never previously gone in for C or C++ saw a chance to start in on those fields with Rust, to all of our benefit.
It's obvious to me that Steve (and the Rust team more generally) deserve a lot of credit for that. Their communication and community outreach have been unparalleled, and it's sparked great deal of interest and engagement that might otherwise have been missed.
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I'm genuinely interested, could you expand a bit on what the downsides / upsides would be?
The pros and cons are both related to a thing that many people don't think about when it comes to non-profits: money. A foundation's job is to administer money. The pros are that well, someone has to do that work. Collectivizing helps; a random person giving $10 once isn't worth the management overhead, but 10,000 people giving $10 (or whatever) means you have a more substantial chunk of money. Additionally, projects…
Thanks a lot for the explanation, I've never really understood how foundations work.
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That's the problem though. From the outside, there's no way to know if you're going to end up in the "good" part of the company or not. Sure, you can do your best to screen the company, but it's not too hard in the short interview process to mask a lot of the warts. 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…
But why is this a problem? You don't go to work there and then you are stuck for 20 years. You can learn in 3 months if it is viable and if not, assuming you are well credentialed and easily employable, move on. It's worth the chance if you've drunk the kool-aid otherwise. You're just giving yourself reasons to fail. Give yourself a reason to succeed.
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.
> he was one of those people making easy SV money Yet what I see most of the time is that organizations exploit employees' passion. The more you like your job, the less likely you will leave, so why bother paying you more? I had a moment of epiphany when my manager said to me in a 1-to-1: "You've been very passionate and doing great. Now $competitors are in town, so we will raise your pay by $a-double-digit-number %"…
I've always wondered how much value employers lose via this sort of error. 'Reactive' compensation absolutely does drive people away, for good reason. Retaining employees by matching outside offers is even worse; outside the very highest levels it fosters instability and encourages people to interview elsewhere.
So sure, your employer saved ($X annually * years without raise). But then they lost an experienced employee, likely to a competitor, had to go through a new search-and-training period, and quite possibly had their prior crappy salaries on Glassdoor driving away candidates.
I assume it's a net win sometimes, but I strongly suspect it's often a short-term tactic that ends up not only mistreating employees but losing money.