I think it's been about a year since he gave his Python talk at Dropbox. I suppose they also used that opportunity to begin to recruit him.
Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
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Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#62It always strikes me as odd when something like this happens. Guido is still working nine-to-fives and Drew never has to work again. Can someone tell me why a brilliant person like Guido isn't worth a billion dollars? Have tons of fancy cars and a fancy house? Has to work for another company?
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#63I'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?
I've worked on the Dropbox client back in 2009 and I can tell you that Dropbox has spent considerable resources optimizing Python, so there is actual python-related work to be done.
As Rian Hunter mentions they've for example implemented a custom memory allocator: http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/14/6-lessons-from-dro... and that's just one part of it.
With a few hundred million installed machines or so, having Guido on board to make python work better for Dropbox-scale apps is a huge win for them (and python)!
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Guido apparently wrote a web-based code review tool for Google: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/11/google-mondrian.htm...
I heard that this tool was not well received at Google; anybody else hear this?
Git is not well received at Google either.
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Guido apparently wrote a web-based code review tool for Google: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/11/google-mondrian.htm...
I heard that this tool was not well received at Google; anybody else hear this?
When I was there, everyone I knew used it and sang its praises.
But it is a large company with a lot of teams. I am sure there were people somewhere who thought it was awful.
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Pretty sure someone like Guido is, at this point, not motivated by money. If there was a challenge he wanted to undertake at Google, I'm sure they'd give it to him already.
He probably wanted to participate in growing another new tech company that has a lot of potential. That's an opportunity Google would find hard to counter.
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#67Would someone like this be paid based on their fame and/or positive PR value, or would they be paid based on position just like everyone else? I've always wondered if these "programming celebrities" make substantially more just based on their personal brand, or if their personal brand just affords them the opportunity to have any job they so desire (but with the "standard" pay)
That would be up to them, wouldn't it? I mean, if you could get a job anywhere you wanted and money was the most important differentiator, there would be nothing stopping you from increasing your price until you had sufficiently decreased your options.
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#68[deleted]
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#69Would someone like this be paid based on their fame and/or positive PR value, or would they be paid based on position just like everyone else? I've always wondered if these "programming celebrities" make substantially more just based on their personal brand, or if their personal brand just affords them the opportunity to have any job they so desire (but with the "standard" pay)
I think most people treat it like hiring an executive, even if they're technically not one. They'll get significantly higher salary, equity, and bonuses.
Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum
#70It always strikes me as odd when something like this happens. Guido is still working nine-to-fives and Drew never has to work again. Can someone tell me why a brilliant person like Guido isn't worth a billion dollars? Have tons of fancy cars and a fancy house? Has to work for another company?
Because the stuff he built is open source?
I'm sure he gets paid a high salary for his work, but he's still an engineer, not a founder.
And maybe he likes working in an office?