5 ms·

In one of my previous jobs, my CTO asked me who I thought was the most important person in the company was. I wasn’t sure. He pointed to the lady who was respon

by akudha 4y ago

In one of my previous jobs, my CTO asked me who I thought was the most important person in the company was. I wasn’t sure. He pointed to the lady who was responsible for entering and maintaining data, on which the entire business was built upon. She was a quiet person, who did her job exceptionally well. Yet, most people didn’t know her or didn’t realize her importance. I am certain she wasn’t paid that well either. Point being, nobody is going to reward you, unless you ask for it. I once spent 4 years at a job, I did my job well. Didn’t get a single dollar raise. I didn’t ask, nobody cared either. Most I got was some praise in team meetings once in a while. The most disgusting part of the story is all hate and vitriol thrown at him. By people using his software for free, by people who are likely not even a tenth as good as he is - both as a person and as a programmer. All this in an industry with plenty of money. This is super depressing. I genuinely hope he gets to spend his future happy

nevernude 4y ago
But the thing is he DID ask for help, quite a few times and was only met with the hate and vitriol you mentioned. Depressing indeed.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Honestly, after seeing the message in the NPM logs I kind of figured he’d have a job soon.
- kilburn 4y ago
  You have to ask to the appropriate forum though, and that's what he got completely wrong. Getting npm to scream for help when a developer installs your package is equivalent to asking your peer for a raise. I'd say that over 99.999% of the people who saw that message, created memes about it, etc.. did not have a corporate credit card and the power to use it at their discretion. If you want money from corps, THOSE are the guys you need to find and ask money from.
  - newswasboring 4y ago
    How do you even ask a corporation for money? Cold emailing?
  - maccard 4y ago
    > I'd say that over 99.999% of the people who saw that message, created memes about it, etc.. did not have a corporate credit card and the power to use it at their discretion. If you want money from corps, THOSE are the guys you need to find and ask money from. So he should be cold emailing netflix, airbnb, linkedin purchasing managers?
    - prettyStandard 4y ago
      Maybe yeah. I'm not sure how relicensing works. But you might 1. relicense it for paid commercial use, and communicate that, I imagine you would go through a version change. 2. Save some important features/bugs for the license change 3. Email politely explaining, they are breaking the license. 4. Come to terms on price. So long as we detect you are using core-js on your Top 10000 site, please pay $$ per year.
    - MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
      If you look at “real” non-profits, there are a couple of key things that are largely missing from Open Source fundraising today. First is capital campaigns. A capital campaign is a campaign to raise a large amount of money towards a goal. E.g. “we need 3 million dollars by the end of the year for our building renovations.” Having a concrete target is more motivating that just asking for “whatever you can give” to “keep the lights on.” Second is cultivating relationships with (large) individual donors. It makes sense to track people who have donated to you, send them thank you cards, and take the biggest donors out to lunch. Then when you need money and you’re running your capital campaign, you can ask previous donors for larger contributions. It’s not cold-emailing, because you have a previous relationship with your donors. Today, open source funding looks more like begging with a sign—sitting in a prominent place and asking for a small amount of money from a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that, you can get enough to eat, but I’d like to see free and open source software try more sustainable and effective strategies.
fragmede 4y ago
What I'm really struggling with is how much this contrasts with the story for the developers of Dwarf Fortress, who don't get that same hate and vitro piled on them, and in fact, people throw money at them because they want the developers to have money. To the tune of like $9 million or something! Whereas this guy, pouring his heart into something useful and not for fun, gets all this hate shoveled his way? I really don't understand people.
- serverholic 4y ago
  one touches people's emotions, the other doesn't.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  If you look at the xkcd image again, he's near the bottom of the house of cards, whereas Dwarf fortress are at the surface
  - fragmede 4y ago
    https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ for any readers that didn't get the reference
    - unwind 4y ago
      This was in the OP, the article we're commenting on. Also, I never saw it as a house of cards, since the blocks have varying sizes they just look like abstract blocks to me. Interesting.
      - pcthrowaway 4y ago
        I think the idea is that pulling out that one tiny support can cause all the layers above it to fall apart. At the very least, it would destabilize them. Kind of like a house of cards
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I guarantee they got all kinds of hate and weirdness sent their way, too. Any game with a notable userbase does, including the commercial ones. Like, weird, personal, abusive shit from people who demonstrably (it's pretty clear from their "ideas") have no idea what they're talking about and evidently have unfortunate (for everyone else, anyway) amounts of free time on their hands. And I don't just mean "you monetized this in a way I dislike" or "boo, DRM" or "you had dozens of game-breaking bugs at launch" or whatever, which, maybe don't be a dick about it, but at least I get why those things upset people and, especially in the last case, why they might get a bit entitled-seeming about it, since they did part with money—no, it's over the tiniest, most trivial stuff, including, often, things that are the way they are for a very good reason and would piss off 100x as many people if the abusive jerk got his (or her, I guess... but realistically, it's just about always a "his") way. But no, this minor thing is wrong so you're incompetent and any idiot could do better and [some names they somehow came up with, sometimes with disturbing accuracy] who worked on that part should be fired immediately. JFC. They'll spam you with this crap, on every channel they can. And that's if you're not a woman prominent in the project. Then you get the creeper shit, too. There's no possible way the DF devs haven't seen their fair share of that. (though, sure, they were ultimately able to monetize it in a way that very few passion projects of that sort ever can, and certainly not utility open source libraries—that part of the story's way different)

by akudha 4y ago

nevernude 4y ago

But the thing is he DID ask for help, quite a few times and was only met with the hate and vitriol you mentioned. Depressing indeed.

Aeolun 4y ago
Honestly, after seeing the message in the NPM logs I kind of figured he’d have a job soon.
kilburn 4y ago
You have to ask to the appropriate forum though, and that's what he got completely wrong. Getting npm to scream for help when a developer installs your package is equivalent to asking your peer for a raise. I'd say that over 99.999% of the people who saw that message, created memes about it, etc.. did not have a corporate credit card and the power to use it at their discretion. If you want money from corps, THOSE are the guys you need to find and ask money from.
- newswasboring 4y ago
  How do you even ask a corporation for money? Cold emailing?
- maccard 4y ago
  > I'd say that over 99.999% of the people who saw that message, created memes about it, etc.. did not have a corporate credit card and the power to use it at their discretion. If you want money from corps, THOSE are the guys you need to find and ask money from. So he should be cold emailing netflix, airbnb, linkedin purchasing managers?
  - prettyStandard 4y ago
    Maybe yeah. I'm not sure how relicensing works. But you might 1. relicense it for paid commercial use, and communicate that, I imagine you would go through a version change. 2. Save some important features/bugs for the license change 3. Email politely explaining, they are breaking the license. 4. Come to terms on price. So long as we detect you are using core-js on your Top 10000 site, please pay $$ per year.
  - MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
    If you look at “real” non-profits, there are a couple of key things that are largely missing from Open Source fundraising today. First is capital campaigns. A capital campaign is a campaign to raise a large amount of money towards a goal. E.g. “we need 3 million dollars by the end of the year for our building renovations.” Having a concrete target is more motivating that just asking for “whatever you can give” to “keep the lights on.” Second is cultivating relationships with (large) individual donors. It makes sense to track people who have donated to you, send them thank you cards, and take the biggest donors out to lunch. Then when you need money and you’re running your capital campaign, you can ask previous donors for larger contributions. It’s not cold-emailing, because you have a previous relationship with your donors. Today, open source funding looks more like begging with a sign—sitting in a prominent place and asking for a small amount of money from a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that, you can get enough to eat, but I’d like to see free and open source software try more sustainable and effective strategies.

fragmede 4y ago

What I'm really struggling with is how much this contrasts with the story for the developers of Dwarf Fortress, who don't get that same hate and vitro piled on them, and in fact, people throw money at them because they want the developers to have money. To the tune of like $9 million or something! Whereas this guy, pouring his heart into something useful and not for fun, gets all this hate shoveled his way? I really don't understand people.

serverholic 4y ago
one touches people's emotions, the other doesn't.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
If you look at the xkcd image again, he's near the bottom of the house of cards, whereas Dwarf fortress are at the surface
- fragmede 4y ago
  https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ for any readers that didn't get the reference
  - unwind 4y ago
    This was in the OP, the article we're commenting on. Also, I never saw it as a house of cards, since the blocks have varying sizes they just look like abstract blocks to me. Interesting.
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      I think the idea is that pulling out that one tiny support can cause all the layers above it to fall apart. At the very least, it would destabilize them. Kind of like a house of cards
yamtaddle 4y ago
I guarantee they got all kinds of hate and weirdness sent their way, too. Any game with a notable userbase does, including the commercial ones. Like, weird, personal, abusive shit from people who demonstrably (it's pretty clear from their "ideas") have no idea what they're talking about and evidently have unfortunate (for everyone else, anyway) amounts of free time on their hands. And I don't just mean "you monetized this in a way I dislike" or "boo, DRM" or "you had dozens of game-breaking bugs at launch" or whatever, which, maybe don't be a dick about it, but at least I get why those things upset people and, especially in the last case, why they might get a bit entitled-seeming about it, since they did part with money—no, it's over the tiniest, most trivial stuff, including, often, things that are the way they are for a very good reason and would piss off 100x as many people if the abusive jerk got his (or her, I guess... but realistically, it's just about always a "his") way. But no, this minor thing is wrong so you're incompetent and any idiot could do better and [some names they somehow came up with, sometimes with disturbing accuracy] who worked on that part should be fired immediately. JFC. They'll spam you with this crap, on every channel they can. And that's if you're not a woman prominent in the project. Then you get the creeper shit, too. There's no possible way the DF devs haven't seen their fair share of that. (though, sure, they were ultimately able to monetize it in a way that very few passion projects of that sort ever can, and certainly not utility open source libraries—that part of the story's way different)