Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thank u, next

words.steveklabnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 182 posts

Re: Thank u, next

#141

Post by insertcredit »

coleifer wrote: post #112

> I recently discovered I’m the lowest-paid person on my team This is probably what really is behind all this. The rest is just dressing up his hurt feelings.

I suspect you are more right than wrong. Reading between the lines, it is implied that Klabnik does not really have engineering chops at least not to the extent where he could command the "sweet SV $" he desires.

If he did, he wouldn't be the lowest-paid person on his team since this is a seller's market. Unfortunately for him, teaching and evangelizing (aka hype manufacturing) are looked down upon by serious engineering teams.

Re: Thank u, next

#142

Post by elliottwilliams »

coleifer wrote: post #112

> I recently discovered I’m the lowest-paid person on my team This is probably what really is behind all this. The rest is just dressing up his hurt feelings.

I've known Steve for a long time in the pgh tech scene, and not knowing the exact reasons for this transition, I will say money has never been top of mind for him.

Re: Thank u, next

#143

Post by pygy_ »

nindalf wrote: post #6

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…

Likewise...

I've been watching him from the sidelines since the shoes/hacketyhack days (a Ruby-based, cross-platform GUI toolkit and a programming environment for beginners built on the latter. He was leading those community-maintained projects after _why vanished from the Web in 2009).

He's been consistently excellent.

Before Rust, he also had a REST-based stint, writing about things like HATEOS.

A great loss for Rust, since he probably won't be able to dedicate as much time to it, and for Mozilla.

Of all companies, I would have expected the Mozilla Corporation to dearly value the work he was doing...

Re: Thank u, next

#144

Post by konschubert »

steveklabnik wrote: post #82
artursapek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think Mozilla was paying you less than your peers?

Mozilla overall pays less than your FAANGs or unicorns. Mozilla is in a pretty unique position here, and so I think doing so makes sense.

This doesn’t answer the question why you were earning less than your peers though?

Re: Thank u, next

#145

Post by steveklabnik »

konschubert wrote: post #144
steveklabnik wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla overall pays less than your FAANGs or unicorns. Mozilla is in a pretty unique position here, and so I think doing so makes sense.

This doesn’t answer the question why you were earning less than your peers though?

Oh. My peers are engineers, my job title was technical writer. Across the industry, writers make less than engineers do.

Re: Thank u, next

#146

Post by topspin »

Re Fuchsia: "They use a lot of Rust, and plan to use more."

When I look at Fuchsia source I don't see much Rust. There is Fargo, a Cargo wrapper that integrates Rust into the Fuchsia build system, but I don't see a lot of actual Rust code in the system.

What am I missing? I've cloned Topaz, Zircon and some other large Fuchsia repos, but I see only a smattering of Rust source.

Re: Thank u, next

#147

Post by rhexs »

insertcredit wrote: post #141
coleifer wrote: post #112

> I recently discovered I’m the lowest-paid person on my team This is probably what really is behind all this. The rest is just dressing up his hurt feelings.

I suspect you are more right than wrong. Reading between the lines, it is implied that Klabnik does not really have engineering chops at least not to the extent where he could command the "sweet SV $" he desires. If he did, he wouldn't be the lowest-paid person on his team since this is a seller's market. Unfortunately for him, teaching and evangelizing (aka hype manufacturing) are looked down upon by serious enginee…

I guess Steve should have been grinding leetcode problems for hundreds of hours instead of helping out with Rust in order to not be "looked down upon by serious engineering teams".

In all seriousness, had really good interactions with him in the Rust channel. Neat to see an author engage with the community and help out. Contributions, should they decrease, will be missed.

Re: Thank u, next

#148

Post by insertcredit »

rhexs wrote: post #147
insertcredit wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you are more right than wrong. Reading between the lines, it is implied that Klabnik does not really have engineering chops at least not to the extent where he could command the "sweet SV $" he desires. If he did, he wouldn't be the lowest-paid person on his team since this is a seller's market. Unfortunately for him, teaching and evangelizing (aka hype manufacturing) are looked down upon by serious enginee…

I guess Steve should have been grinding leetcode problems for hundreds of hours instead of helping out with Rust in order to not be "looked down upon by serious engineering teams". In all seriousness, had really good interactions with him in the Rust channel. Neat to see an author engage with the community and help out. Contributions, should they decrease, will be missed.

Nobody said anything about what Steve should have been doing. Given that money is the core issue in his post and he's mentioned sweet SV dollars in this thread, it doesn't hurt to note the prevailing attitude these days which (largely) favors engineering and 'show me the code'. Good engineers have tremendous leverage and can command extremely good salaries. Evangelizers not really and as I said they _are_ often looked down upon by engineers.

Looking at Steve's 177 'source' repositories @ Github and disregarding documentation and presentations, there is absolutely nothing that can be described as substantial engineering. Throwaway code, small sample projects and tiny tutorials and more often than not, skeletons and incomplete beginnings. Yes the Rust book is excellent but at the end of the day, nobody who is in the position to give out SV $$ really cares. Had Steve spent his years using Rust to solve hard problems, he'd have recruiters banging on his door 24/7 but the fact is that documentation and hype on HN and reddit is not a good recipe for a solid career.

I don't know Steve personally and I have no dog in the Rust race, merely expressing what I have personally experienced working in SV for over a decade.

Re: Thank u, next

#149

Post by steveklabnik »

topspin wrote: post #146

Re Fuchsia: "They use a lot of Rust, and plan to use more." When I look at Fuchsia source I don't see much Rust. There is Fargo, a Cargo wrapper that integrates Rust into the Fuchsia build system, but I don't see a lot of actual Rust code in the system. What am I missing? I've cloned Topaz, Zircon and some other large Fuchsia repos, but I see only a smattering of Rust source.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765780

Re: Thank u, next

#150

Post by kup0 »

I'm not a programmer (yet?) in any large sense. I've done some simple old-school web-dev including some JS, PHP, etc. and have only dabbled with other languages otherwise back in college and on my own.

I've read through a large portion of the Rust book and really appreciate how good it is. It's very clear and made me feel like I grasped quite a bit in a short time. Maybe someday I'll be writing or contributing to Rust projects.

Thank you Steve!

Post reply on HN