Thank u, next • Hacker News Board

Re: Thank u, next

#151

Post by notabot » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #140

notabot wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 %"…

> "we will raise your pay by $a-double-digit-number %" ... "I will start looking for my next job tomorrow" 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.…

> I've always wondered how much value employers lose via this sort of error.

I suspect nobody can come up with a number that would convince everyone in the chain in a large organization. If that could be done, I wouldn't end up in this situation in the first place.

Re: Thank u, next

#152

Post by jcranmer » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

fabrice_d wrote: post #98

callahad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mozilla Corp keep painting themselves as the only bearers of the Mozilla Manifesto values. But the reality is that MoCo has done so many missteps that they have lost all credibility there. You are still relying on the same and only end user product as in 2004 and drink the coolaid of Mitchell's talks twice a year at the all hands. You are losing against chromium because gecko was never made a platform for others to u…

> the only other gecko product, FirefoxOS.

Thunderbird still has more users than FirefoxOS ever did.

At a technological failure, the more-or-less passive decision to abandon any embedding story for Gecko is probably Mozilla's single biggest fault. (I say more-or-less passive because the transition to Gecko 2.0 necessitated adjusting embedding hooks, and the original intent was that it would be temporary until a new embedding story could be worked out. The direct embedding was then abandoned in favor XULRunner, itself abandoned in favor of webapprt, itself abandoned in favor of... nothing, so far as I know).

Re: Thank u, next

#153

Post by hnbroseph » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

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.

never let the content get in the way of a good sneering, i guess.

Re: Thank u, next

#154

Post by Phlarp » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

ironmagma wrote: post #102

Phlarp wrote: post #39

Why is it that nonprofit tech organizations see such value in maintaining a San Francisco office location (looking at you Mozilla and EFF) only to lowball employees on compensation? Surely the perception of having a trendy location can't be worth more than market salaries in the pursuit of talent? Are there other benefits to the location besides perception?

> Are there other benefits to the location besides perception? Definitely. Access to talent pool, networking opportunities, easy customer research, marketing, and so much more.

It really seems like a double gut-punch from my perspective. I was approached by a recruiter representing EFF when I graduated (state school in the midwest) and while 75K for a fresh grad seemed like reasonable compensation for a non-profit, when I viewed that in the context of both a cut for the recruiting body shop and the high cost of living in SF for both a company and individual that it was a farcical proposal.

Would the fight for digital liberties really be _that_ encumbered by a location in Kansas City, Austin, Atlanta, or even a generic Valley office park?

Re: Thank u, next

#155

Post by insertcredit » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #145

konschubert wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you asked your engineer peers how they would feel if you were paid an equivalent salary, I am confident some of them would admit that they would not like it. Privately, I think most of them would definitely not like it but would probably refrain from publicly admitting as much.

Which to me is the crux of the matter. If I was your manager at Mozilla and looking to maintain team cohesion and minimize talent loss, engineers would always come first. In my experience it is very common for managers with an engineering background to think that anyone can be a technical writer. Same for evangelizers. People do it for free if they like the technology that they are using. These are not strong bargaining foundations.

Re: Thank u, next

#156

Post by steveklabnik » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

Uhhrrr wrote: post #139

The title comes off as kind of an F you.

I understand that intentions don't always matter, but if you read the lyrics to the song, I think it's more the opposite.

Re: Thank u, next

#157

Post by Sharlin » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #86

yanslookup wrote: post #26

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.

> To me, Rust is nearly the same thing as steveklabnik. I thought it was designed by Graydon Hoare?

How is that relevant? GP literally used the words "to me". To anyone who has become acquainted with Rust in the past few years, steveklabnik is a much more familiar name than Graydon, who hasn't been actively involved in Rust development in a long time.

Re: Thank u, next

#158

Post by lenocinor » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

I feel fairly certain, Steve, that I wouldn't have learned Rust without you writing the docs and having you contribute here on HN. Thanks! You're amazing.

Re: Thank u, next

#159

Post by realcr » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

Hi Steve, I looked at the title and I had this gut feeling of what the post is going to contain. It was a real bummer to hear about your leaving Mozilla. You did some serious job with Rust. My first contact with the Rust language was through your posts here. There was a feeling that you are virtually everywhere on the Internet where someone mentions Rust. Always very helpful with your writings. On the other hand, I'm happy for you and hope that you can find a place where your work is appreciated and well compensated.

Your post makes me a bit worried with what's going on with Mozilla, and also for the future of the Rust language. I have mixed feelings about Mozilla myself. Some people mentioned in the comments something about a Rust Foundation. I will definitely be happy to chip in if it's in the plan.

Thank you for everything, and good luck wherever you go next (:

Re: Thank u, next

#160

Post by lmm » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #87

lmm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also thought his work in evangelizing Rust on HN, Reddit and a million other places was hugely important, and a big part of why there's a lot of positive buzz around the language. 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.

Agreed. BTW, have you looked Scala/Rust interop? Both languages are ML-style languages, so they are close in spirit.

> BTW, have you looked Scala/Rust interop?

It doesn't look easy (there's no Rust ABI that preserves safety properties) and I'm not convinced there would be any benefit. The main reasons you'd want to write Rust rather than Scala would be faster app startup (and even then, scala-native or scalajs are options) or some realtime requirement that you couldn't meet with even carefully tuned Scala due to GC pauses (not a case that I'm convinced actually exists in the real world). In either of those cases a mixed Scala/Rust project would have the same issues as a pure-Scala one. Most things that scripting languages use native libraries for already have native-to-JVM implementations (e.g. media formats) and I'd sooner use a Java library than worry about an interop-to-Rust boundary. If Rust becomes the de facto standard for video codecs then I can eventually see maybe making occasional use of some ffmpeg-equivalent via JNI, but any such library would probably expose a C-ABI interface and be used through that rather than supporting any higher-level interop. (I suspect Rust is constrained by what LLVM offers in terms of stable interfaces).