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Not to mention how badly he mismanaged the paid staff of the FSF which prompted them to unionize: https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 https

Not to mention how badly he mismanaged the paid staff of the FSF which prompted them to unionize: https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 I think, if anything, this is the strongest argument for why he should not be in a leadership position at the FSF.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
"Did not treat employees well" is a great reason for someone to not be a boss, but unfortunately that's not why he's demonized.
javagram 5y ago
This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? Does sound like a pretty terrible manager. An unpaid volunteer position on the board doesn’t really seem like the position where these problems would happen again. And they weren’t the reason he got in hot water - that was all related to a media firestorm over Minsky/Epstein.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  > This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? What would you consider an appropriate statute of limitations here?
  - javagram 5y ago
    Statute of limitations is a concept of criminal law, since none of the described actions are criminal it wouldn’t apply directly. I do find it questionable to dig up decades old actions that were apparently dealt with at the time by appropriately unionizing and fixing the situation, and say that means a person should never have even a volunteer job again.
atomicnumber3 5y ago
RE: that twitter thread. Wow. That's absurdly bad. Especially given that I suspect any software person there could easily go get a much higher paying corporate job without much trouble. I feel like a problem that plagues software worse than other industries is that BigTechCo can pay multiple times more than what I'll call "greater good" kinds of places like: * government * education, especially in high school * software freedom / open source / communal / etc types of places The one that I mourn the most is high school computer teachers. How many startups were started by people with only a year or so of college? How important is high school in choosing your career? How often is curiosity suppressed in high school when students try to go off the standard curriculum into material the teacher isn't familiar with, and think of how easy it is to do that in programming? But I digress. I want to call out an example of this kind of "clearly, obviously for the common good" done right: Let's Encrypt. I think their software people make ~200k the last time I looked? Which is pretty dang good. I think the main thing it might lack is the kind of comp you get to via equity in a startup or public company. But given LE isn't that kind of company, I don't think you can fault them too much for that. So while I wish LE devs were paid like senior google devs, 200k gets you pretty damn far anywhere but NYC and San Francisco.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago

"Did not treat employees well" is a great reason for someone to not be a boss, but unfortunately that's not why he's demonized.

javagram 5y ago

This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? Does sound like a pretty terrible manager. An unpaid volunteer position on the board doesn’t really seem like the position where these problems would happen again. And they weren’t the reason he got in hot water - that was all related to a media firestorm over Minsky/Epstein.

bigbillheck 5y ago
> This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? What would you consider an appropriate statute of limitations here?
- javagram 5y ago
  Statute of limitations is a concept of criminal law, since none of the described actions are criminal it wouldn’t apply directly. I do find it questionable to dig up decades old actions that were apparently dealt with at the time by appropriately unionizing and fixing the situation, and say that means a person should never have even a volunteer job again.

atomicnumber3 5y ago

RE: that twitter thread. Wow. That's absurdly bad. Especially given that I suspect any software person there could easily go get a much higher paying corporate job without much trouble. I feel like a problem that plagues software worse than other industries is that BigTechCo can pay multiple times more than what I'll call "greater good" kinds of places like: * government * education, especially in high school * software freedom / open source / communal / etc types of places The one that I mourn the most is high school computer teachers. How many startups were started by people with only a year or so of college? How important is high school in choosing your career? How often is curiosity suppressed in high school when students try to go off the standard curriculum into material the teacher isn't familiar with, and think of how easy it is to do that in programming? But I digress. I want to call out an example of this kind of "clearly, obviously for the common good" done right: Let's Encrypt. I think their software people make ~200k the last time I looked? Which is pretty dang good. I think the main thing it might lack is the kind of comp you get to via equity in a startup or public company. But given LE isn't that kind of company, I don't think you can fault them too much for that. So while I wish LE devs were paid like senior google devs, 200k gets you pretty damn far anywhere but NYC and San Francisco.