Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#41

Post by mememememememe » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:29 PM UTC

setheron wrote: post #16

bdesimone wrote: post #2

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.

What does he do at Google exactly? I thought he was more like giving talk, optimizing Python and consulting Python engineers.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#42

Post by krosaen » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

krosaen wrote: post #7

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

He was a core member of the app engine team, wrote ndb[1] (the next generation datamodel library for their schema-less datastore), wrote the code review web app tool that was awesome, and a bunch of python infrastructure AFAIK.

[1] https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/ndb/

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#43

Post by kyllo » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #25

setheron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a joke in Silicon Valley that one of the levels of success is "Your new company issues a press release that you've been hired." It goes something like: You know you are successful in Silicon Valley when: followed by silly things like "You are Time's Man of the Year" or "On Wired's most Influential list" that sort of thing.

I guess that's why it's called "Silicon Valley" rather than "Sense of Humor Valley."

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#44

Post by m0th87 » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

theorique wrote: post #18

protomyth wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dunbar's number makes little sense for directly determining/classifying organizational sizes. Most of peoples' relationships lie outside of the organization they work for. You'd probably have little to no relationship with people in your organization way before you reach Dunbar's number.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#45

Post by michaelochurch » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:31 PM UTC

untog wrote: 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?

Billion/million rule is the cutoff for "real startup".

It stops being a startup when, if acquired or IPO'd for $1 billion, a full-time entry-level engineer makes less than $1 million after taxes. For straight equity, that puts the cutoff around 0.2%. For options, it depends on the strike.

By 250, new employees are getting much less than that.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#46

Post by pyre » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

tonfa wrote: post #26

spaghetti wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you think Google could have done?

Figure out why he wanted to leave, and see if they could remedy it (e.g. more money; different challenges; etc).

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#47

Post by Thrymr » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:33 PM UTC

natural219 wrote: post #35

Python has been a backbone of Dropbox since its early days as it allowed the startup to write code once but deploy it across platforms. Can anybody elaborate on this? Is the argument that Python is cross-platform because everybody uses GNU tools on every platform, or are there other reasons why Python is more cross-platform than other languages?

The "batteries included" philosophy and commitment to making CPython work on multiple platforms has gone a long way. I don't think it has much to do with GNU tools specifically.

An interview with Guido himself that discusses some of the multiplatform emphasis in the development of python: http://oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/frank/rossum_1099.html

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#48

Post by 6ren » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

I've long held the theory that Dropbox's long-term secret plan is to host apps - as they already have the data, this will effectively make them the fabled "internet OS".

Having Guido on board to make python its systems language makes sense - and would be enough to tempt him away from google.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#49

Post by aviswanathan » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

Dang, Dropbox is stealing talent from every direction.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#50

Post by j_baker » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

bdesimone wrote: post #2

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?

Having worked with Guido on App Engine, I believe I can answer this.

Just because someone wrote a language doesn't mean they have no other talents as engineers. I will say that apart from being a good language writer, he is also a good Engineer. For us having so much invested in Python, Guido has been an important part of App Engine. But even if that wasn't true (as it may be for Dropbox), having well-known programmers is an important way of marketing to other engineers, be they customers or potential hires.

TL;DR - App Engine got great use out of Guido while he worked with us, and I'm sure Dropbox will too.