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IPFS, Again

macwright.org

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Re: IPFS, Again

#31

Post by codingslave »

onion2k wrote: post #30
codingslave wrote: post #8

This might sound a bit weird, but when I look at the employee base of protocol labs (the makers of IPFS), the most impressive employees are the business people. Multiple Harvard Business School graduates, tons of Stanford degrees. For the technical people, some are impressive, but no where near the stature of the business people. No distinguished ex-FAANG engineers, no principal engineers from notable companies, a fe…

Something 20+ years of development experience has taught me is that developers vary a lot . People who went to Ivy League schools can be amazing and they can be awful, and the same is true for every other dev who went to a 'lesser' college or didn't get a degree at all. Certificates don't tell you much. Output is what matters. You should judge Protocol Labs on what they build rather than where their employees went to…

Sure output matters, I agree. I'm just saying, only ~one programmers working in their engineering has an impressive track record. And ofcourse, self taught developers at random companies can be amazing, but for a company "evolving the web" and 300 Million in the bank, they have hired almost no nationally recognized experts, and theyre greater developer base is not made up of people with 20 years experience. But rather a bunch of developers who have been coding for 2-3 years.

Re: IPFS, Again

#32

Post by pushpop »

codingslave wrote: post #8

This might sound a bit weird, but when I look at the employee base of protocol labs (the makers of IPFS), the most impressive employees are the business people. Multiple Harvard Business School graduates, tons of Stanford degrees. For the technical people, some are impressive, but no where near the stature of the business people. No distinguished ex-FAANG engineers, no principal engineers from notable companies, a fe…

This old trope again?

I’m a hiring manager for a pretty significant albeit non-FAANG IT firm and I’ve good and bad applicants from Google et al just like anywhere else. I’ve since come to the conclusion that many skilled engineers simply can’t be bothered to go through the hiring process that FAANG companies put you through just for a little prestige.

Plus in my experience, the different between skilled engineers is less than the different it makes hiring based on team fit. You can stick a dozen of the worlds most prestigious engineers in a room and still not produce anything better than if you put a dozen good engineers who are united in any a common vision and good team fit.

But don’t just take my word for it. Do a search on HN for comments from other managers - even ex-FAANG managers have, on occasions, echoed the same sentiment.

Re: IPFS, Again

#33

Post by Nursie »

codingslave wrote: post #8

This might sound a bit weird, but when I look at the employee base of protocol labs (the makers of IPFS), the most impressive employees are the business people. Multiple Harvard Business School graduates, tons of Stanford degrees. For the technical people, some are impressive, but no where near the stature of the business people. No distinguished ex-FAANG engineers, no principal engineers from notable companies, a fe…

They might well have great engineers, this view seems somewhat myopic. I've known principal engineers at big tech firms who weren't that great, and self-taught people with no degree at all who massively, massively outperformed the PHDs on the same team.

Your criteria are off.

Re: IPFS, Again

#34

Post by pushpop »

onion2k wrote: post #30
codingslave wrote: post #8

This might sound a bit weird, but when I look at the employee base of protocol labs (the makers of IPFS), the most impressive employees are the business people. Multiple Harvard Business School graduates, tons of Stanford degrees. For the technical people, some are impressive, but no where near the stature of the business people. No distinguished ex-FAANG engineers, no principal engineers from notable companies, a fe…

Something 20+ years of development experience has taught me is that developers vary a lot . People who went to Ivy League schools can be amazing and they can be awful, and the same is true for every other dev who went to a 'lesser' college or didn't get a degree at all. Certificates don't tell you much. Output is what matters. You should judge Protocol Labs on what they build rather than where their employees went to…

I don’t even look at qualifications any more when hiring senior engineers (junior is a different matter but I don’t make that the deciding factor) simply because some of my best engineers have turned out to be ones without a degree.

At the end of the day, a good hire is always going to be a role of the dice. The interview process should stack the odds in your favour but there’s never any guarantees. Which is why good management is so important. Good management can bring excellence out of average engineers and identify the dead weight before they become toxic to the team.

Re: IPFS, Again

#35

Post by WanderPanda »

Non-native speaker here, is the usage of "than" in "Your browser than uses DNS, a decentralized naming system, ..." actually correct? I happen to see this a lot and I am not sure if this is a spelling mistake when people want to write "then" or if it is actually intended.

Re: IPFS, Again

#36

Post by StreamBright »

janandonly wrote: post #3

Who is going to defend the free internet agains Azure, AWS and Google Cloud? They are the very opposite of a free and open internet where everyone can "run a website" on her own machine. It pains me to see a great idea like the Interplanetary File System still not working. I had similar experiences with IPFS and yes, we do need a project like this, only without the broken incentive structure attached to it. Why a "Fi…

The real threat to free internet is not Azure or AWS but things like AMP. You can still host your website even on a server in your basement.

IPFS is a great idea but it is very hard to implement something like this. It was tried before (hello Wuala) but no success. I am not sure if this idea can be implemented at all.

Re: IPFS, Again

#37

Post by Semaphor »

WanderPanda wrote: post #35

Non-native speaker here, is the usage of "than" in "Your browser than uses DNS, a decentralized naming system, ..." actually correct? I happen to see this a lot and I am not sure if this is a spelling mistake when people want to write "then" or if it is actually intended.

No.

> For journalistic integrity, this post hasn’t been edited or reviewed by anyone. Hence the typos.

Re: IPFS, Again

#38

Post by yoz-y »

WanderPanda wrote: post #35

Non-native speaker here, is the usage of "than" in "Your browser than uses DNS, a decentralized naming system, ..." actually correct? I happen to see this a lot and I am not sure if this is a spelling mistake when people want to write "then" or if it is actually intended.

It is a very common spelling mistake.

Re: IPFS, Again

#39

Post by pmlnr »

PureParadigm wrote: post #4
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #2

Unfortunately, a lot of the problems in this blog post can only be solved by squaring Zooko's Triangle[1]. Most refutations of Zooko's Triangle depend on some form of blockchain. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle

Just to give an example of a blockchain approach to this: Ethereum Name Service [1]. 1. https://ens.domains/

There was namecoin way before that, with .bit domains and failed to solve anything.

Re: IPFS, Again

#40

Post by bauerd »

codingslave wrote: post #8

This might sound a bit weird, but when I look at the employee base of protocol labs (the makers of IPFS), the most impressive employees are the business people. Multiple Harvard Business School graduates, tons of Stanford degrees. For the technical people, some are impressive, but no where near the stature of the business people. No distinguished ex-FAANG engineers, no principal engineers from notable companies, a fe…

Your argument is that IPFS would be a better product had they hired those distinguished ex-FAANG engineers instead of obscure developers? The article outlines mostly UX and product decision problems. It doesn't seem to me that their engineering teams are holding them back.
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