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Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

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Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#111

My money was on Cloudflare to have hired them wholesale. Regardless, congratulations to everyone involved! This deal has got me thinking... whether a right way to "lay-off" a supremely talented bunch is to actually see if other companies are willing to offer them jobs? Kind of how player transfers happen in Football (soccer). Either the team goes to the newer company wholesale or you help find your engineers suitable…

In my experience, acqui-hires benefit the company far more than the employees who get moved to a different company. The first time I was acquihired, my compensation actually decreased because they kept my base salary and rewrote the bonus structure such that it was impossible to hit previous payouts. Meanwhile, my prior company received a large payment for the transfer of our team. Ironically, the new company was pay…

It's nearly always a bad thing for the employees involved. The company that sold you will receive a payment of about half a year of your salary conditional on you staying on for some time post transfer. They will contractually be covered against you quitting and being hired by the company to which you were sold for some period as wel. This puts you at a disadvantage in renegotiation since you already are on contract as far as they are concerned. and asking for a raise, not a fresh recruit negotiating for a starting salary, and your recruiting costs through one of the more expensive channels are not renegotiable. Furthermore. what could have been an obvious great match new employer for you as a free agent has been taken off the table.

If you are ever in a position where you find out your current employer is looking to sell your team, and assuming you have an easy marketable skillet. it might be best to quit ASAP.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#112

What I'm taking away from this, and the apparent infighting and legal/cred battles in the WASM scene it had surfaced, is to stay far, far away from WASM. Also, today I learned that staged discussions on HN are a thing, and even a practice so common it's got a nick name of "sock puppet". As if there weren't enough reasons to not follow the path of ever-increasing browser complexity, and fight to keep the web open. Tho…

Sock puppets have been around as long as web forums. The term and practice predates Hacker News.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#113

What I'm taking away from this, and the apparent infighting and legal/cred battles in the WASM scene it had surfaced, is to stay far, far away from WASM. Also, today I learned that staged discussions on HN are a thing, and even a practice so common it's got a nick name of "sock puppet". As if there weren't enough reasons to not follow the path of ever-increasing browser complexity, and fight to keep the web open. Tho…

To clarify one point, "sock puppet" accounts are an internet thing, they're not specific to HN. Usually a sock puppet discussion is one person controlling multiple accounts to make it look like there are people backing up and agreeing with their point.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#114
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I have 5 years professional experience and every time I'm looking for work people have always asked for at least 1 referral

Same but they didn't care if it was my last job or previous jobs. So as long as you don't burn bridges at every job it doesn't much matter.

This works if you didn't stay for a long time at your last job.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#115

What I'm taking away from this, and the apparent infighting and legal/cred battles in the WASM scene it had surfaced, is to stay far, far away from WASM. Also, today I learned that staged discussions on HN are a thing, and even a practice so common it's got a nick name of "sock puppet". As if there weren't enough reasons to not follow the path of ever-increasing browser complexity, and fight to keep the web open. Tho…

WASM is still catching up with Flash CrossBridge from 2011.

"Unreal Engine 3 Support for Adobe Flash Player - Unreal Tournament 3"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y

https://adobe-flash.github.io/crossbridge/

Luckily we are getting our plugins back, even in its present state.

https://platform.uno/

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor

And naturally Flash and Java applets,

https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpxflash.html

https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpj.html

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#116

My money was on Cloudflare to have hired them wholesale. Regardless, congratulations to everyone involved! This deal has got me thinking... whether a right way to "lay-off" a supremely talented bunch is to actually see if other companies are willing to offer them jobs? Kind of how player transfers happen in Football (soccer). Either the team goes to the newer company wholesale or you help find your engineers suitable…

Same.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But just to be clear: is not in Wasmer intent to own the Wasm trademarks (as stated in the Github issue). Then why register?

We registered the trademarks as part of other process that we were not super diligent with. We also course-corrected as soon as we realized of it, much before it came public a few weeks ago.

> We registered the trademarks as part of other process that we were not super diligent with

You accidentally attempted to register a trademark?

I have never heard of that. Either you are small enough that the non-trivial tediousness and cost of the process catches a lot of attention. Or you are large enough to have a general counsel overseeing a documented chain of approvals.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For $160k?

More for the helping the world part of things. Many people will give their all to causes they consider worthy for minimal personal gain. Not like they can't move to a regular corporate job after 10 years when they need to support a family.

such companies with salaries under average market level wont work well due to 1. corporate bureacracy - managers usually are undercompetent and tend to ignore personal matters so team members might bully eachother 2. idealistic people usually have a couple of nuts loose in their heads, combine two or more such persons and you get problem for entire team - linux's coc is one example. so nearly every org without really focused goal and means of it's following will go the mozilla way, the marissa meyer and such... it will happen every time if managerial part ignore specifics of programmer work.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#120
post #27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the acquihire you went through was poorly implemented, and the pay reduction disrespectful.

I think their more general point still stands, though; why would you expect a company trying to "sell" their employees to negotiate in the employees' best interests rather than that of the company itself?

The even more general point is, why would the owners even care about the company rather than themselves?
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