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Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

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Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#121
post #84

I wonder, will Dropbox still allocate 50% of Guido's time toward Python development? Further, donning our tinfoil hats, is it reasonable to suspect that Google is phasing out the use of Python internally? I've heard rumors that Python is no longer permitted for new projects within Google; hoping some Googlers here can confirm or deny this.

Not aware of any prohibition against Python. The rule as I understand it is (not surprisingly) "use whichever of the supported languages best fits the goals and requirements of your project". If that's Python (and you can support your reasoning), use it.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#122
post #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.

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#123
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?

Technically I believe any company that is less than 2 years old is a startup, they have a limited operating history. VC funded startups that are supposed to grow hyper fast but lots of statistics we see also count every new small business.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#124
post #101

Dang, Dropbox is stealing talent from every direction.

They not only steal but steal at very good timing. Since Google will give their focus to javascript and go from now on :)

Go, yes. Javascript, I'm not so sure: http://code.google.com/p/dart/

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#125
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly that Besides, Dropbox has already received some substantial investments, and have a healthy revenue

And soon enough offices abroad.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#126
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The advantage of calling out Dunbar's number is that it explains why there's an upper bound of some kind. But yes. 150 is far too high a number. I'd say it should be closer to 50. It makes me sad to link to this, since the PARC blog no longer hosts his images, but it's more than nothing: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/10/dunbar_group_co.html

I see your point, but there's more numbers when it comes to companies, there's a break at 7 or 8, and another one somewhere around 20. I might have fudged the numbers a littlebit, but they're both breaking points when a company needs to change its organisational structure: Starting with a flat, informal startup, at 7 or 8 is where people may feel their voice is not informally heard at (for instance) meetings, that needs to be addressed by a (slightly) more formal type of meeting. Somewhere around 20 there's a second break which is when you need to start thinking about an extra level of management (just one at first, of course). There's probably a few more that I don't know of and I would not be at all surprised if Dunbar's number is one of them.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage of calling out Dunbar's number is that it explains why there's an upper bound of some kind. But yes. 150 is far too high a number. I'd say it should be closer to 50. It makes me sad to link to this, since the PARC blog no longer hosts his images, but it's more than nothing: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/10/dunbar_group_co.html

I see your point, but there's more numbers when it comes to companies, there's a break at 7 or 8, and another one somewhere around 20. I might have fudged the numbers a littlebit, but they're both breaking points when a company needs to change its organisational structure: Starting with a flat, informal startup, at 7 or 8 is where people may feel their voice is not informally heard at (for instance) meetings, that ne…

That's what the last bit of the post I linked says, actually.

ETA: Oh, wait. His older post actually explains it better: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html

"In my opinion it is at 5 that the feeling of "team" really starts. At 5 to 8 people, you can have a meeting where everyone can speak out about what the entire group is doing, and everyone feels highly empowered. However, at 9 to 12 people this begins to break down -- not enough "attention" is given to everyone and meetings risk becoming either too noisy, too boring, too long, or some combination thereof. Although I've been unable to find the source, I've heard of some references to a study from the 1950s that says that the optimum size for a committee is 7. Likewise, it's fairly easy for us to see and agree that a dinner party starts to break down somewhere above 7 or 8 people, as do also tabletop games of both the strategic (I prefer 5) and role-playing varieties (I prefer 7). These size limits can be overcome, but require increased amounts of "grooming".

"The chasm that starts somewhere between 9 to 12 people can be especially daunting for a small business. As you grow past 12 or so employees, you must start specializing and having departments and direct reports; however, you are not quite large enough for this to be efficient, and thus much employee time that you put toward management tasks is wasted. Only as you approach and pass 25 people does having simple departments and managers begin to work again, as it starts to really make sense for department heads to spend significant time just communicating and coordinating (and as individual departments become large enough to once again allow for the dynamic exchange of ideas that had previously occurred in the original 5-9 member seed group).

"I've already noted the next chasm when you go beyond 80 people, which I think is the point that Dunbar's Number actually marks for a non-survival oriented group. Even at this lower point, the noise level created by required socialization becomes an issue, and filtering becomes essential. As you approach 150 this begins to be unmanageable. Once a company grows past 200 you are really starting to need middle-management, but often you can't afford it yet. Only when you get up past that, maybe at 350-500 people, does middle-management start really working, primarily because you've once again segmented your original departments, possibly again reducing them to Dunbar-sized groups."

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#129
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?

On my more cynical days my observed definition from context clues would be:

"A company that isn't profitable, but isn't as unhappy about it as I would be yet."

[edit: Worth clarifying that I doubt Dropbox probably ever qualified under my definition... but that's fine. Who wants to be a startup? I'd rather start a company.]

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an ex-Googler, when I left, Python was largely relegated to glue code, scripts, internal projects, and App Engine -- consumer-facing frontends were written in Java, and backends in C++. He probably wanted to move to a company where Python was more pervasive, and he felt like he could have more of an impact, given that he _is_ the BDFL.

Why is Python being phased out?

Python wasn't phased out of consumer-facing applications because it was never in. Google has a lot of machines, but those machines receive a lot of traffic. Efficiency matters, and byte-for-byte, cycle-for-cycle, Java is more efficient than Python.

Don't ask me why Google didn't throw lots of resources at making Python more efficient like they did with JS and V8. I often wonder that myself.

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