Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

techcrunch.com

11–20 of 213 posts

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#11
post #5
post #4

" the adventure found at a nimble 250-person startup like Dropbox becomes more tempting " What is the definition of a startup these days, anyway?

Are you saying that a start-up can't have more than a certain number of employees?

At 250 people, you would think you're a business and no longer a startup. Once you pass Dunbar's number you probably are no longer a startup.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#12
A decade ago, Python being widely used in Google and the creator of Python being employed by the company was a big endorsement for the language. Now Python is quite mainstream. Actually, Guido was allowed to devote 50% of his time at Google for Python. Hope the good work continues at Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#13
post #7

I was always impressed by how much code Guido wrote at Google, he definitely isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

Wow if he really did contribute a lot (which I don't doubt at all) then how did Google let him get away? I'd imagine his lifestyle there was pretty nice.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#15
post #4

" the adventure found at a nimble 250-person startup like Dropbox becomes more tempting " What is the definition of a startup these days, anyway?

I would argue that Dropbox isn't a startup anymore.

Once you've found a business model and start scaling your personnel (i.e. Steve Blank's "Company Building" stage), a startup is no longer a startup, IMO.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#16

I'll be very interested to find out what role Guido will take up at dropbox. When someone like Matz/ Guido/ etc gets hired, what do their job responsibilities, for the community include exactly? Are language writer hires such as this purely symbolic?

my thoughts exactly. I feel like it's a status symbol for a comapany. They are most likely busy giving talks and lectures to do any actual work.

Maybe their value is in the odd meeting where they can voice some input. I've never had the pleasure of being in the room with giants such as these so I wouldn't know sadly.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#17
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that a start-up can't have more than a certain number of employees?

It's a genuine question. To my mind, a startup has a small number of employees and not very much money. This is hardly the first time I've heard of a company with >100 employees described as a startup, so I'm interested to know what people's definitions are.

People were tossing it around to describe a 400-person Twitter team in 2010 or 2011 (can't remember which).

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#18
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that a start-up can't have more than a certain number of employees?

At 250 people, you would think you're a business and no longer a startup. Once you pass Dunbar's number you probably are no longer a startup.

That's a reasonable upper bound. Once the company is big enough to the point where you don't remember everyone's name, it's past the startup point.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#19

I'll be very interested to find out what role Guido will take up at dropbox. When someone like Matz/ Guido/ etc gets hired, what do their job responsibilities, for the community include exactly? Are language writer hires such as this purely symbolic?

Guy Steele's work at Oracle (previously Sun) was in the area of language design, but companies at that scale can afford a dedicated R+D presence.
Post reply on HN