Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox

http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1278121913.html

by byrneseyeview • 16 years ago

106 95 16 years ago

SlyShy2• 16 years ago

Nice of him to make that clear, unnecessary as that was.

zedshaw11• 16 years ago

Actually, there was an entire thread just right now about it, and if you don't deal with the rumors right away they spread like herpes.

SlyShy2• 16 years ago

I read the thread. What I wrote was unclear though, sorry. What I meant was, it's stupid that you'd have to do that, because people shouldn't be starting rumor mills in the first place.

jrockway5• 16 years ago

My dream of having Zed come to an interview where the interviewers all have their feet up on the conference table is this much closer to coming true!

zedshaw11• 16 years ago

Oh that'd be funny as shit. Actually, I've gotten used to it. Seems to be just a damn stupid signifier that you're a start up guy.

jey• 16 years ago

Congrats on creating a new cultural tradition.

techiferous• 16 years ago

Or that you've got knee problems, like me. ;)

stuaxo• 16 years ago

Oh, BTW... meant to ask ages ago;

  the Trie thing looked awesome and I immediately started to think of wrong uses for it (e.g. XPath parsing)...

if you get time then python bindings would be nice :)

bonsaitree• 16 years ago

The aforementioned to be read in the voice of Bender.

jrockway5• 16 years ago

"I'm gonna go make my own interview room. With blackjack. And hookers."

alnayyir4• 16 years ago

>If you got something interesting that doesn't involve me being a system administrator

Is it me, or is this a running meme/problem for him?

zedshaw11• 16 years ago

No it's not you, I do get asked to be a sysadmin quite often. I have no idea why. It's not something I'm good at. I did for a short time in college to pay tuition a decade ago. I don't enjoy it. I never apply for it. For some bizarre reason, people ask if I want to be a sysadmin out of the blue. Drives me crazy.

starkfist3• 16 years ago

It's not that bizarre, you write software mainly used by systems administrators. I used to work with one of the guys who wrote apache, and now work with a guy who wrote most of one of the popular NOSQL engines. And they both work as systems administrators. Not "useradd" systems administrators (although they are technically in that part of the org chart) but more like what Google calls "SREs." Rather than explaining what it is, this guy's google groups post does a better job:

http://www.sage.org/lists/sage-members-archive/2005/msg02937...

If they just want you to add user accounts, that's weird. But SRE style jobs are where a lot of guys who write famous open source systems software end up.

from the google groups post: "Yes, sysadmin skills are essential here, however we also require a very strong skillset in development, automation, high-level systems architecture, networking, statistics and general problem-solving."

sounds like a description of zed!

pavs• 16 years ago

Just curious, what would be your ideal job? Assuming you want to work for someone and not just on your own projects.

mark_l_watson2• 16 years ago

Hello Zed. I find myself doing some sysadmin work, not by plan, but it happens that way. Something needs to be working right now, it is easiest to just do it, etc. Also, scaling and deployment issues come up, and best to just deal with stuff. The question is what fraction of time is spent on sysadmin vs. development. BTW, I look forward to checking out mongrel2, and I think using the AGPL + optional commercial licensing is a good plan.

milesf• 16 years ago

Sure hope Zed finishes http://learnpythonthehardway.com/ Such a great primer for pre-programmers.

nalbyuites• 16 years ago

Agree. Just starting to learn pre-programming - unlearning bad habits from school where every year we wrote the same bunch of programs, once in BASIC, Pascal, C etc. The only thing I had liked then was Logo. :)

n8agrin• 16 years ago

Would love to see him do something similar for c as well.

mkramlich3• 16 years ago

Zed, you totally have to write some great new rants now.

(Not related to Dropbox, not what I'm implying. Just that you should have more free time to write for a while, so we'd love to see the fruits of it.)

jrockway5• 16 years ago

I wish I could exchange Zed-rants for Yegge-rants.

stcredzero3• 16 years ago

This sounds like the start of another Magic the Gathering type game, only with startups.

heresy• 16 years ago

When are we getting a ZedCam?

I think the world deserves to know when Zed is taking a crap.

stcredzero3• 16 years ago

1st 6 words: could be considered witty. Words 7 to 19: complete turnaround! Lesson: know when to stop.

mml• 16 years ago

They tried to give him a pager

blasdel5• 16 years ago

So that's why you never got banned from news.yc — you had immunity :)

iamwil• 16 years ago

And here I was wondering where he had all this time to be doing Mongrel2, play guitar, work at dropbox, blog about shedding bikes, etc.

joshu• 16 years ago

Want to do a startup? I'm available

grandalf2• 16 years ago

I think heroku would be a good fit for Zed. Or maybe Railsmachine (if they want to step up the competition)

blaix• 16 years ago

Wow, I completely forgot railsmachine existed.

grandalf2• 16 years ago

They're doing a great job with their clients... and have a very strong group of sysadmins so if they thought Zed was a good fit he'd surely be able to focus on writing code.

shin_lao• 16 years ago

If you truly believe in Mongrel2, start your own company. Don't wait for the company that's going to truly open source it, it won't be the way you want it if it's not your company.

jshen• 16 years ago

yeah, stop working on Mongrel2 and get a business off the ground. Then maybe possibly one day when it's making money you can work on Mongrel2 again, your way.

dagw• 16 years ago

The problem with starting your own company is that you end up owning a company. That means you have to run a company which means you have less time to hack Mongrel2. I totally understand and respect wanting to get hired by a bigger company like the guy who developed Redis did. Basically being able to completely focus on your code without having to hunt for funding or worrying about where your next paycheck is coming from is a much better proposition for most people.

dnsworks• 16 years ago

How would you make a company around a webserver?

blasdel5• 16 years ago

Phusion is doing pretty OK.

There are still some companies left idling along from a group 10 years ago that sold commercial event-driven webservers / reverse-proxies / caches / load-balancers that were much better than Apache, but are heaps of shit compared to the nginx ecosystem.

bdr• 16 years ago

I heard they tried to make him be a sysadmin.

jeb2• 16 years ago

And that's the problem with Rockstar Programmers. They know they are rockstars, they know that they can get funding for their own product at a moments notice, they know that they can always go on a speaking tour.

You need them, but they don't need you, and they know it. So they walk in and want to do what they want to do, they have no intention of doing the shitty stuff. But work in a company has a lot of shitty stuff to be done.

The problem with Zed is that though he is a good developer, he's also a good writer and probably a good talker. Those last two are important to him, and when people work at companies, they should not be having two big side projects (writing and talking). It distracts from the work.

All the rockstar programmers of the last few years all seemed to have entered CTO roles, have started their own companies, or are important people in very big companies. Very few are still just slugging away at code at small startups.

This story is basically why you should not hire rockstar programmers. Hire normal people who depend on you for their income.

cracki• 16 years ago

Companies should hire drones. Companies shouldn't hire people with a life.

Is that your conclusion?

seigenblues• 16 years ago

"Hire normal people who depend on you for their income." yes! that's it! Be sure you're the one in control, ensuring your ability to treat them as less than human!

Sorry for the snark, but that last line may be pretty unintentionally revealing. employer/employee relations are a complex relationship which requires a delicate balance of power. Having the employee be entirely dependent on the employer is just as damaging (to both parties!) as having a keystone employee who knows he can't be replaced. I'd replace your last line with "Hire equals who you can treat as equals."

"Authority is solvent to humanity."

zedshaw11• 16 years ago

First off, you don't know me, so don't presume to know how I am to work with, or what kind of employee I am. In fact, what you wrote here is borderline slander, as you're basically telling people to not hire me. You and everyone else needs to quit that shit because I don't do it to you, and it does have a major impact on my life.

Second, who the hell are you to say I shouldn't have a life outside of your company? This is not a damn salt mine, or a factory. Programmers are hired based on their visible experience. The projects they do and the things they write are now a major deciding factor on whether they get jobs. To then tell someone that all of that stops because you're paying them a piddly little 100k/year compared to your massive ownership in the company is down right abusive.

Third, in the valley the trend of firing people at the drop of a hat because they aren't a "good fit" cuts both ways. If you show no loyalty to your employees then they owe you nothing. Expecting them to stick around and be loyal, but then fire their peers for having a bad day with no warning is completely unfair.

Basically, I think your entire comment smacks of business douchebag who has no concept of worker's rights, fairness, or even basic capitalism.

jeb2• 16 years ago

Let me put it this way: You're a talented singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer. The company needs a person who plays bass. They could hire you as a bassist, but that's not where you belong. You're a rockstar. You belong in the front.

What I'm saying is not slander, it's the opposite. YOU are putting yourself in the wrong spot, because you should not be playing bass when you have all these other talents. You should form your own band and create your own vision.

Imagine you are casting a band and you put Carlos Santana as the guitarrist of Britney Spears. Sure, he's an excellent guitar player, but that's now where he belongs. He should not play guitar in Britneys band and dabble in experimental rock music, he should be focusing on his own thing.

That's what I mean - many companies simply need a cog. They need some small piece that will keep the machine turning smoothly. They need a pawn - and though you could stick a queen in there to do the job of the pawn, it's not where it belongs.

And when someone says the queen should not be used as a pawn, the queen should not be arguing that it should be a pawn.

outworlder• 16 years ago

"slugging away at code"?

You make it sound like you can only be "important" if you are not programming anymore. I say: go to hell.

I have never seen a manager winning a Nobel Prize - scientist are respected in our world, except in our field. Go figure.

I, for one, like to work for people who are smarter than I am. I believe many good programmers (here refered to as rockstars) feel the same. Therefore, they will not want to work for you and you can stop worrying about them.

NatX• 16 years ago

Rockstar programmers are not the problem, inexperienced, insecure middle-managers who feel threatened by the fact that they have no idea what the rockstar programmers are talking about half the time are.

Why don't you see your argument through to its most logical conclusion and say "only hire people who depend on you for their worker's visa?"

comechao• 16 years ago

You are talking bollocks, "rockstars" programmers changed the way that you are living now! You should hire people that are good on what they do, that are passionated and not that they go to work just to buy food!

stdlib• 16 years ago

LOL @ 'rockstar programmers'

Kid you need to get out of the house more.

chrismahan• 16 years ago

If I had the money I would hire Zed, cuz' he's smart and gets things done.

kngspook• 16 years ago

If I had the money, I would hire Zed because I think he would bring a lot more into play for me than just "slugging at code" for me.

I think he's smart enough to contribute strategically to the project and the direction it takes. I think he's knowledgable enough to teach me and other people in the group things we don't know. I think he's good enough to bring in other good people when we need to expand. And I think he'd just be an awesome, fun guy to be around.

Hiring a cog doesn't get me any of that. If I have to pay Zed two-three times what it costs me to hire a cog to get all those skills, I'd consider it a bargain. And I'm guessing he'd be pretty happy at that rate too.

bradleyland• 16 years ago

"If I had the money, I would hire Zed"

This phrase has appeared multiple times in response to comments on this story, but I think it misses the point entirely. The parent poster has a point at some level, but he delivers it with no tact.

The point is that you need more than money to hire really talented people. It sounds as if Zed left Dropbox because the problems he was solving there weren't the type of problems that he was passionate about solving. The pinhead, middle-manager response to this is to get pissed off and rant against hiring "rockstar" programmers, but that just shows how little they understand about what motivates really talented people.

I can't speak for Zed, but I know a few talented programmers myself. I've brought them in on projects and seen them hit the door in short order. The #1 reason was never money. Great coders are artists. Their greatest work will always be works of inspiration, not portraits they're paid to paint by narcissistic clients.

The bottom line is, if you want to hire talented people, set out to solve interesting problems, or build interesting projects. And don't be upset if the "rockstar" programmer you hired doesn't want to keep doing what you're doing. Go out and find someone who is interested in solving those problems and pay them what they deserve.

j_baker• 16 years ago

Dumb question time: what does it mean for Mongrel to not be truly open source? And why is it not already?

Avshalom• 16 years ago

As a guess I'd say getting it out there in front of enough people that Zed is no longer writing 99% of the code. Getting real community effort on improving it. Although he might just mean in context of the company not keeping any aspect of it proprietary.

zedshaw11• 16 years ago

Right now I'm the only guy working on it. I like starting my projects that way since I can lay down the playground for other people and avoid the bikeshedding. Once it gets stable I then write up documentation and start letting interested folks at the code to help me.

jacktang• 16 years ago

Zed is hate to be system admin?

Zed Shaw has Left Dropbox

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