Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people • Hacker News Board

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#11

Post by mark_l_watson » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 6:44 PM UTC

Not surprising after reading what the CEOs of Oracle and Salesforce have been saying in the news lately.

I don't use Oracle (my customers tend to be budget conscious). Even without Oracle experience it makes some real sense to whenever possible use free software if the total costs of software development, deployment, and maintenance are less - assuming equivalent functionality, scalability, etc.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#12

Post by timmillwood » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 7:05 PM UTC

rabidsnail wrote: post #4

Reminder: Salesforce owns Heroku

This is the first thing I thought when I read it.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#13

Post by pjscott » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 7:14 PM UTC

rabidsnail wrote: post #4

Reminder: Salesforce owns Heroku

They do say, though, that the job is to "Design and implement major pieces of the salesforce.com core database infrastructure". That doesn't sound like they're talking about Heroku, at least not as the main reason for their hiring spree.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#14

Post by pjscott » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #7

This is why. Every time I launch MySQL client: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 1024604 Server version: 5.1.63-0ubuntu0.10.04.1-log (Ubuntu) Copyright (c) 2000, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

If you're sick of seeing that message, MariaDB is a non-Oracle fork of MySQL, and I hear good things about it.

http://mariadb.org/

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#15

Post by cs702 » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 8:22 PM UTC

With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in.

Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community.

--

[1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#16

Post by tlogan » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 8:40 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #15

With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in. Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community. -- [1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

And then Oracle will buy Salesforce... Larry did say something like that but he said that the price is too high.

Here is my predictions: Salesforce is will start investing into new technologies and building cool stuff. However, that will not look good on stock price because R&D costs will skyrocket - and our "efficient" stock market does not like long term visions. The stock price will collapse. The board will panic and Larry will "save the day".

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#17

Post by spidaman » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 8:42 PM UTC

kami8845 wrote: post #10

spidaman wrote: post #2

Salesforce spends a huge amount of money on licensing their horizontally scaled Oracle databases. I'd venture to guess this signals Benioff exploring a strategic bet to tell Ellison to fuck off once and for all.

Actually hiring 50 people sounds more like a decisive plan than "exploring a strategic bet".

The posting says they're hiring only 5 now, 40-50 next year;I inferred they're still in an exploratory phase because if they were all in, they'd be hiring more than 5 now. The posting doesn't say they're doing a migration but having worked on Oracle -> PostgreSQL migrations and sharded database infrastructures, it makes sense.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#18

Post by mikeevans » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 8:43 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #9

mmaunder wrote: post #7

This is why. Every time I launch MySQL client: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 1024604 Server version: 5.1.63-0ubuntu0.10.04.1-log (Ubuntu) Copyright (c) 2000, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

I don't get it...

All the Oracle stuff.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#19

Post by pbiggar » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 8:53 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #9

mmaunder wrote: post #7

This is why. Every time I launch MySQL client: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 1024604 Server version: 5.1.63-0ubuntu0.10.04.1-log (Ubuntu) Copyright (c) 2000, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

I don't get it...

I think he's saying that Oracle's aggressive branding of MySQL (and other Sun products) has alienated some people.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#20

Post by linuxhansl » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 8:56 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #15

With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in. Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community. -- [1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

Speaking of open source, Salesforce is also invested in HBase with at least one committer to the project.