161–170 of 182 posts
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Maybe! I'm not sure I have the kind of skills needed to do such a thing.
Maybe setting up a Patreon account and posting what you did each week is sufficient. That seems to work for the youtubers, and it's more audacious to ask money for watching youtube videos than writing docs and promoting Rust ;-)
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To borrow from the Harry Potter universe, early stage startups need Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, but then as the company grows more and more Hufflepuffs get hired, and sooner or later the company ends up on the radar of Slytherins, who are focused mostly on obtaining fame and renown, and who are more likely to have what muggles call "dark triad" personality traits. What's most fascinating about the Hogwarts metaphor i…
For what it's worth, I don't know if anyone here, me included, considers Mozilla a "status symbol" on the resume. It certainly is nowhere near FAANG in terms of inbound recruiter volume. People who want status symbols go to Google. (I chose Mozilla over large company offers a decade ago because the work seemed more interesting, knowing full well it was more of a gamble in terms of my career. I've never regretted the…
Mozilla sounds like your average PHB-led corporation. This is also one of the reasons I'm skeptical about Rust, since Mozilla is the backbone of Rust development. They don't strike me as an organisation that can shepherd a programming language long term and with their market share taking a nose dive they're bound to get even more desperate and cut non-essential projects or make new data-sharing partnerships. Anyways,…
Mozilla doesn't really "shepherd" Rust development. We've constructed the Rust project so that Mozilla cannot control it; decisions are made via consensus, and Mozilla employees make up ~10% of the overall Rust team. There's never been some sort of mandate to do something specific with Rust from upon high, and I don't expect there to ever be. If they tried, it wouldn't work!
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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…
One company that values documentation is Microsoft. There are technologies like Web Assembly/Blazor that could use an evangelist. Web Assembly within the framework of .NET Core+VS Code could be worth pushing.
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> 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.…
For the same $1.3k in SF, I could get a deluxe cardboard box by the side of the road. No thank you. And KC is google fiber as well, so I'm getting great internet for $50/mo.
I really think more tech companies should try KC or Austin. The cost of living is much lower, so more of people's salaries becomes spending money.
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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, en…
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Mozilla doesn't really "shepherd" Rust development. We've constructed the Rust project so that Mozilla cannot control it; decisions are made via consensus, and Mozilla employees make up ~10% of the overall Rust team. There's never been some sort of mandate to do something specific with Rust from upon high, and I don't expect there to ever be. If they tried, it wouldn't work!
I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure I fully agree. If you quit a position where you get paid full time to work on Rust because of reasons having to do with your working relationship, maybe MoCo doesn't control the project, but it clearly has an important influence.
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> 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.…
Probably not, but it's hard to convince your entire company to up and move. SF is not perfect, and there are big problems with it, but there are also lots of nice things about it and it's a known quantity. Personally I do want to leave soon, but to where is a big question with no obvious answer.
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> culture sounds toxic Is this an indirect reference to Brendan Eich's sacking or is it even worse?
Brendan Eich was never sacked by Mozilla (the company or the foundation). That said, it was the strong backlash from the community that impelled him to quit.