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Creator of Vue.js Evan You's perspective: "Working on a project" doesn't only mean pushing commits. It also means deciding what to do, syncing with committees,

by dsr12 5y ago

Creator of Vue.js Evan You's perspective: "Working on a project" doesn't only mean pushing commits. It also means deciding what to do, syncing with committees, running a team structure, thinking about how and where to get funding, and handling the mental pressure of "I'm responsible for this". https://twitter.com/youyuxi/status/1392088730438090756 https://twitter.com/youyuxi/status/1392088730438090756

ashtonkem 5y ago
I agree that there are a ton of non-code related things that a project leader should be doing, but the vast majority should be visible in some way. Mailing list discussions, roadmaps, code reviews, creating/triaging issues, etc. It should be pretty easy to get a representative picture of what a project leader did over a whole year.
thrdbndndn 5y ago
1. His language sounds like he knew Henry personally. I will take it with a grain of salt. But same applied to creator of the Babel, since he could have beef with Henry. 2. He said lots of circumstantial things about the matter. Namely: 130K isn't high for NYC; he could have and probably had better offer easily; he didn't need to maintain Babel but did, etc. All these are good but didn't answer the direct question, is he worth 130K for his work in the project. Even with the understanding that lots of work is in private, his public contribution in recent years seems to be way too low to not make people raise eyebrows. 3. Also, it's funny he said "is 130k too much for someone to maintain Babel" to the creator, who probably earned way less for creating Babel from scratch.
- EvanYou 5y ago
  I do know Henry personally and Henry actually consulted me when he was debating whether he should quit his job to work on Babel full time. We also occasionally talk about the burdens of OSS maintenance so I know first hand how hard he's been trying to keep Babel afloat. That said, a statement from the current most active paid contributor to Babel is probably more convincing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116357
  - gaoshan 5y ago
    The linked comment above is one that people interested should read. Especially people who only read the relatively inflammatory and context free initial tweet.
david_allison 5y ago
Evan You[0] has over 4x more contributions than Henry Zhu[1] this year. Evan's absolutely correct, there's a lot of 'invisible' community activity, but in my experience of OSS, it's typical to have a 'contribution' on GitHub every day, which is missing in the case of a Babel maintainer who's being paid $130k/y Let's compare to the other maintainers: [2][3][4][5][6]. Contribution counts aren't and shouldn't be everything, but they speak on a macro-scale. It's not an unreasonable expectation to review a PR a day. [0] https://github.com/yyx990803 https://github.com/yyx990803 (2,979 contributions) [1] https://github.com/hzoo https://github.com/hzoo (771 contributions) [2] https://github.com/existentialism https://github.com/existentialism (2,608 contributions) [3] https://github.com/JLHwung https://github.com/JLHwung (1,849 contributions) [4] https://github.com/loganfsmyth https://github.com/loganfsmyth (130 contributions) [5] https://github.com/nicolo-ribaudo https://github.com/nicolo-ribaudo (2,329 contributions) [6] https://github.com/xtuc https://github.com/xtuc (1,614 contributions)
- ianbanks 5y ago
  To add another data point, on the BabelJS Slack, in the last 12 months, @Henry (hzoo, based on the matching profile pictures) has posted 96 messages, and @nicolo-ribaudo 251. One can bring the messages up with these filters: "from:@Henry before:2021-05-12 after:2020-05-11" and "from:@nicolo-ribaudo before:2021-05-12 after:2020-05-11"
- 0x142857 5y ago
  contribution in general doesn't have to be "code" related.
- icholy 5y ago
  > it's typical to have a 'contribution' on GitHub every day What about long running feature branches that get squashed before merging?
- rk06 5y ago
  Evan's metric and henry's are not directly comparable. Someone on vue core team (perhaps evan himself) said internal group co-ordination and management is handled by other team members, most prominent among them being Chris Fritz[1] (before he stepped down) and Sarah Drasner[2]. This reduces managerial burden on Evan and gives him more energy & time to focus on technical challenges While Henry is the senior most member in babel team, so most of the management work is on him. which eats his time a lot more. [1] https://twitter.com/chrisvfritz https://twitter.com/chrisvfritz [2] https://twitter.com/sarah_edo/ https://twitter.com/sarah_edo/

by dsr12 5y ago

ashtonkem 5y ago

I agree that there are a ton of non-code related things that a project leader should be doing, but the vast majority should be visible in some way. Mailing list discussions, roadmaps, code reviews, creating/triaging issues, etc. It should be pretty easy to get a representative picture of what a project leader did over a whole year.

thrdbndndn 5y ago

1. His language sounds like he knew Henry personally. I will take it with a grain of salt. But same applied to creator of the Babel, since he could have beef with Henry. 2. He said lots of circumstantial things about the matter. Namely: 130K isn't high for NYC; he could have and probably had better offer easily; he didn't need to maintain Babel but did, etc. All these are good but didn't answer the direct question, is he worth 130K for his work in the project. Even with the understanding that lots of work is in private, his public contribution in recent years seems to be way too low to not make people raise eyebrows. 3. Also, it's funny he said "is 130k too much for someone to maintain Babel" to the creator, who probably earned way less for creating Babel from scratch.

EvanYou 5y ago
I do know Henry personally and Henry actually consulted me when he was debating whether he should quit his job to work on Babel full time. We also occasionally talk about the burdens of OSS maintenance so I know first hand how hard he's been trying to keep Babel afloat. That said, a statement from the current most active paid contributor to Babel is probably more convincing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116357
- gaoshan 5y ago
  The linked comment above is one that people interested should read. Especially people who only read the relatively inflammatory and context free initial tweet.

david_allison 5y ago

Evan You[0] has over 4x more contributions than Henry Zhu[1] this year. Evan's absolutely correct, there's a lot of 'invisible' community activity, but in my experience of OSS, it's typical to have a 'contribution' on GitHub every day, which is missing in the case of a Babel maintainer who's being paid $130k/y Let's compare to the other maintainers: [2][3][4][5][6]. Contribution counts aren't and shouldn't be everything, but they speak on a macro-scale. It's not an unreasonable expectation to review a PR a day. [0] https://github.com/yyx990803 https://github.com/yyx990803 (2,979 contributions) [1] https://github.com/hzoo https://github.com/hzoo (771 contributions) [2] https://github.com/existentialism https://github.com/existentialism (2,608 contributions) [3] https://github.com/JLHwung https://github.com/JLHwung (1,849 contributions) [4] https://github.com/loganfsmyth https://github.com/loganfsmyth (130 contributions) [5] https://github.com/nicolo-ribaudo https://github.com/nicolo-ribaudo (2,329 contributions) [6] https://github.com/xtuc https://github.com/xtuc (1,614 contributions)

ianbanks 5y ago
To add another data point, on the BabelJS Slack, in the last 12 months, @Henry (hzoo, based on the matching profile pictures) has posted 96 messages, and @nicolo-ribaudo 251. One can bring the messages up with these filters: "from:@Henry before:2021-05-12 after:2020-05-11" and "from:@nicolo-ribaudo before:2021-05-12 after:2020-05-11"
0x142857 5y ago
contribution in general doesn't have to be "code" related.
icholy 5y ago
> it's typical to have a 'contribution' on GitHub every day What about long running feature branches that get squashed before merging?
rk06 5y ago
Evan's metric and henry's are not directly comparable. Someone on vue core team (perhaps evan himself) said internal group co-ordination and management is handled by other team members, most prominent among them being Chris Fritz[1] (before he stepped down) and Sarah Drasner[2]. This reduces managerial burden on Evan and gives him more energy & time to focus on technical challenges While Henry is the senior most member in babel team, so most of the management work is on him. which eats his time a lot more. [1] https://twitter.com/chrisvfritz https://twitter.com/chrisvfritz [2] https://twitter.com/sarah_edo/ https://twitter.com/sarah_edo/