15 ms·

I work on Copilot now, and I can say this guy is totally full of himself. Just because he contributed to the first prototype does not entitle him to claim creat

I work on Copilot now, and I can say this guy is totally full of himself. Just because he contributed to the first prototype does not entitle him to claim creation. He wasn’t even the first person inside Microsoft to use LLMs in an IDE completion experience. The work from prototype to product is an order of magnitude more than prototype alone.

SaintSeiya84 3y ago
[flagged]
mjr00 3y ago
Their profile does say "creator of GitHub Copilot, Dropbox Paper, MobileCoin, and Hackpad" which indicates a bit of an ego problem. Professional software is a team effort, and pretending to be the only person who worked on a project is a red flag. Most people would say lead developer rather than creator...
- treyfitty 3y ago
  Well, most interviews I’ve been a part of always emphasize “I wanna hear what YOU did, don’t talk about the team.” It kinda optimizes for embellishing ones contributions, and has almost become expected.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    The trick to effective min-maxing in social contexts is to make sure people can't tell you're min-maxing.
    - fizwhiz 3y ago
      What's min-maxing?
      - yazaddaruvala 3y ago
        Its a synonym for "optimizing" or "playing the game perfectly".
      - reaperman 3y ago
        Concept that comes from RPG's, or any sufficiently complex optimization problem where you have a limited number of total points to spend so you "min"-imize the least helpful stats and "max"-imize the most helpful. For a fighter character, you'd obviously max out strength, as well as constitution and dexterity. You'd minimize intelligence, charisma, and wisdom - not because they’re not helpful but because you only have a limited number of points to spend. In the context of: > The trick to effective min-maxing in social contexts is to make sure people can't tell you're min-maxing. It means that, while in interview situations there is an expectation that you say "I did this", in social situations you might get more benefit from seeming to be more humble and appear to withhold your accomplishments, perhaps doing it in a way where someone else fills the gaps for you, or it entices the other parties into doing a bit of digging on their own and perhaps find some well-placed bios online that look like they weren't written by you / at your behest which do your bragging for you. This avoids the situation where someone will say: "I work on Copilot now, and I can say this guy is totally full of himself." as other people respond "huh. yeah. that makes sense."
      - littlestymaar 3y ago
        2023 slang for “optmizing”, comes from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax
        maleldil 3y ago
        Not 2023, and not from the AI thing. It comes from RPGs, like what the sibling comment explained. It must be as old as D&D.
        littlestymaar 3y ago
        While it may have existed for a long time, it's gotten significantly more use in recent days in a non-RPG settings. Quick illustration from HN comment section[1]: - From 2010 to 2019: 40 occurrences in HN's comments - Compare that to over 70 for just the past two years. Basically, it's as if you said “Woke” wasn't a contemporary word, because it used to exist in a niche for a long time. [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=min-maxing&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    It's also part of the dog-and-pony show of self-promotion most companies make you do in order to justify promotion. Being Engineer 1 on a team of 6 that made GreatProductX is never enough. You always need to show what you single-handedly did. So all of a sudden, six different people claim to have "created GreatProductX".
    - nitwit005 3y ago
      No, at least seven people make the claim. You forgot about the managers claiming credit for their employee's efforts.
      - taylodl 3y ago
        It just couldn't have happened without the delivery managers, project managers, product managers, scrum masters, project controllers, business analysts... What a funny world we live in! :) Getting back to reality, ideas and prototypes are easy. Execution and delivery is hard.
  - cloverich 3y ago
    Thats not what that line of questioning means; they are trying to understand what your actual contributions were, and how well you can both explain and contextualize them. Embellishment is why we have such a heavy emphasis on coding interviews these days, sadly.
  - ReDeiPirati 3y ago
    This. What we see is nothing more than what the job market actually reward and incentives. This person is just playing that game to boost his personal brand. You may not like it, but if you don't play this game in the current job market you will have quite hard times.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - buildbot 3y ago
    Their is still correct…
    - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
        It is and has been since roughly the 14th century. Although, it's apparently a subject of contention amongst grammarians (plural vs singular). https://www.etymonline.com/word/their https://www.etymonline.com/word/their
        NotYourLawyer 3y ago
        There are lots of things from 14th century English that are no longer used today. Language evolves. Singular “they” has been considered an error for a couple hundred years.
        lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
        I see you're on the singular side of the contention amongst grammarians (plural vs singular). I think you're wrong as do a lot of other people. The fact it's been used widely in this context for the past couple hundreds years proves you wrong.
        NotYourLawyer 3y ago
        > The fact it's been used widely in this context for the past couple hundreds years Citation needed.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  > Most people would say lead developer rather than creator... I think "creator" is entirely appropriate in this case based on the features that he contributed.
TheRealNGenius 3y ago
[dead]
adverbly 3y ago
> The work from prototype to product is an order of magnitude more than prototype alone. The risk from zero to prototype is an order of magnitude more than the risk from prototype to product.
- pleonasticity 3y ago
  What’s the risk in doing your job inside a large corporation?
  - adverbly 3y ago
    So bonuses and performance based compensation shouldn't be a thing?
    - blibble 3y ago
      by his own admission he received a bonus and a promotion
      - adverbly 3y ago
        20k and no promotion for de-risking copilot? Context: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries This dude is more than justified in being disappointed. The value added by de-risking a product of this size is massive.
      - sithlord 3y ago
        20k bonus is a joke of a bonus. probably like < 2-3% of the total comp?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tiffanyg 3y ago
    "Won't somebody think of the corporations?!" The older I get, and the more I work on aspects of trying to build businesses, products, and services, the more I lament the loss of a kind of service-oriented ethos that truly makes societies great and that seems to only be "refreshed" (in America, in particular) by the darkest of times*. Here, I think of the people who went through the first half of the 20th century in comparison to the MBAs and similarly naively "optimizing" agents elsewhere in important / controlling positions in current society. Game theory 'says' that anyone can choose D(efect)-heavy strategies, and in many environments, profit heavily, personally (aka, "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do..."). But, a society with too many such players is not long for this world. * Much as was said by a certain Founder about the "tree of liberty" - many of the Founders, including even TJ, who could be quite self-interested, understood that liberty requires responsibility and sacrifice ...
lisasays 3y ago
I work on Copilot now, and I can say this guy is totally full of himself. Thanks for the reality check, and Occam's Razor suggests this is (unfortunately) the most likely explanation for what we're reading. Sure, employees get taken advantage of, and screwed over by politics all the time. But something about going online and openly (and quit caustically) negging your employer while still on their payroll suggests that there's something seriously off about this guy. And that in any case, his synopsis of the situation is not to be taken at face value. Edit: Actually we don't have information about his current status with them. My mistake. Thanks to the commenter below for pointing that out.
- ncann 3y ago
  Wait he's still employed there? How is this not going to result in a HR call up later on? How can he possibly think this is a good idea? I was under the impression that he already moved on to another company and was just bashing his old employer, which is still a bad idea, but this is just weird.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Shh let me enjoy this boss battle
- 40four 3y ago
  Maybe, but he is in the comments here defending himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was something where all the heavy lifting was done by a couple people. That’s often the case. If it’s true, really doesn’t make me want to work at a huge company like that.
- deepspace 3y ago
  I was definitely getting ESR vibes when reading the Twitter thread, and was not surprised to see my suspicions confirmed here.
zormino 3y ago
In a later tweet, he even mentions there were 6 other people and they built on top of existing work. Doesn't really sound like he's within a mile of solely creating anything, no matter what spin he likes to apply.
- pjot 3y ago
  > correction: + much of OpenAI eng, plus years of their bleeding edge research Pretty telling
  - defasdefbe 3y ago
    Also, the hundreds of GitHub employees who worked on GA. It was a dogfooding project internally before talented engineers in GitHub turned it into a commercially viable product.
AndyNemmity 3y ago
If he built the first prototype, I'd call him a creator of it. It had absolutely nothing to do with who was the first person inside of Microsoft to use LLMs in an IDE completion experience. I call everyone who builds the first thing the creator(s). This isn't uncommon or weird in my mind at all. He may be totally fully of himself, but I don't see any realistic argument that he isn't one of the creators.
- defasdefbe 3y ago
  He's not calling himself "one of the creators" though. He's calling himself the creator, which shits all over the hard work of OpenAI, "Albert" and more.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
orph 3y ago
Orilly? We had no PM, EM, or designer: I played all those roles for 1.5 years. I was one of the first to touch the OAI code model. Me and Albert developed the in-the-wild testing harness still in use today. We pulled all nighters to get GitHub approved for participation in the MSFT-OpenAI deal using those test results. Existing Microsoft AI teams worked to halt our work, pushing their own small, worse models instead of OpenAI's. I protoyped and lobbied for creation of the VScode extension. I invented and hacked the ghost text prototype into VScode, I invented the block based termination and implemented all the tree-sitter based logic needed to do it. Then I had to lobby up to Satya to get VScode to implement proper support in less than 6 months. I named it Copilot. I implemented GH auth, made the waitlist and onboarding. Helped design the e2e http/2 go server, after designing the fast.ly based precursor. Coordinated moving from OpenAI datacenter to Azure to improve Asia experience, and oversaw the cutover. I was Chief Architect. It was my baby. Sad if this is how they are spinning the story internally at GitHub today.
- belfalas 3y ago
  In your mind, what would be fair compensation?
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    Not the op, but looking at MSFT on levels.fyi at least the last level of Principal SDE (e.g. 67) would be the minimum I'd grade Copilot with. 68 or 69 would be more appropriate. I am specifically referring to the features he lists in his comment above. E.g. ghost text, block completion, and OpenAI integration. To add to his credit Copilot in VS proper still sucks, so I'd estimate original VS Code hack to have better skills than the whole (e.g. the sum of) VS proper Copilot extension team.
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    It depends on how revolutionary the product or service was. Not sure if any company still does this anymore, but the way Google rewarded and recognized the initial teams behind stuff like gmail and Google maps seems more fair. Based on the comments I’ve seen so far, i doubt that OP received much of either from GitHub / MS. Edit: I’m not saying that MS / GitHub is obligated to do anything more than it already has. From a PR perspective, it’s just far cheaper to give a fatter bonus and promotion to early contributors to a big product and publicize it. It will also encourage other employees to push instead of just cruising. Otherwise, now you have someone making a logical case for not working very hard for either GitHub or MS
rat9988 3y ago
What was his contribution to the project? Given the information you give us, he may be the creator of copilot. He may not have made the product, but might be his father, the one who did the crucial original work with most added value, even if it's only 5% of the work.
mr90210 3y ago
> He wasn’t even the first person inside Microsoft to use LLMs in an IDE completion experience It is you who is full of oneself, your attempt to belittle his contributions shows the kind of human you are. Stop hiding behind the keyboard and tell that to his face. Downvote at will.
candybar 3y ago
Sure but a lot of things don't happen without that one person pushing for it. If Alex is correct that he's the one who pushed for it to happen and created the momentum for this product feature to exist, despite many others actively pushing against it, that to me deserves a lot of credit. Now, I have no idea if that's true and to what extent it's true - it's common for ICs to be unaware of the work others have done behind the scenes to convince the right folks and unblock their work (not saying that this is what happened, just that it's not inconsistent with Alex's perception that he drove this himself) - but I'm not sure how anything you're saying disproves his version of the story. You could say that about just about every startup founder.

SaintSeiya84 3y ago

[flagged]

mjr00 3y ago

Their profile does say "creator of GitHub Copilot, Dropbox Paper, MobileCoin, and Hackpad" which indicates a bit of an ego problem. Professional software is a team effort, and pretending to be the only person who worked on a project is a red flag. Most people would say lead developer rather than creator...

treyfitty 3y ago
Well, most interviews I’ve been a part of always emphasize “I wanna hear what YOU did, don’t talk about the team.” It kinda optimizes for embellishing ones contributions, and has almost become expected.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  The trick to effective min-maxing in social contexts is to make sure people can't tell you're min-maxing.
  - fizwhiz 3y ago
    What's min-maxing?
    - yazaddaruvala 3y ago
      Its a synonym for "optimizing" or "playing the game perfectly".
    - reaperman 3y ago
      Concept that comes from RPG's, or any sufficiently complex optimization problem where you have a limited number of total points to spend so you "min"-imize the least helpful stats and "max"-imize the most helpful. For a fighter character, you'd obviously max out strength, as well as constitution and dexterity. You'd minimize intelligence, charisma, and wisdom - not because they’re not helpful but because you only have a limited number of points to spend. In the context of: > The trick to effective min-maxing in social contexts is to make sure people can't tell you're min-maxing. It means that, while in interview situations there is an expectation that you say "I did this", in social situations you might get more benefit from seeming to be more humble and appear to withhold your accomplishments, perhaps doing it in a way where someone else fills the gaps for you, or it entices the other parties into doing a bit of digging on their own and perhaps find some well-placed bios online that look like they weren't written by you / at your behest which do your bragging for you. This avoids the situation where someone will say: "I work on Copilot now, and I can say this guy is totally full of himself." as other people respond "huh. yeah. that makes sense."
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      2023 slang for “optmizing”, comes from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax
      - maleldil 3y ago
        Not 2023, and not from the AI thing. It comes from RPGs, like what the sibling comment explained. It must be as old as D&D.
        littlestymaar 3y ago
        While it may have existed for a long time, it's gotten significantly more use in recent days in a non-RPG settings. Quick illustration from HN comment section[1]: - From 2010 to 2019: 40 occurrences in HN's comments - Compare that to over 70 for just the past two years. Basically, it's as if you said “Woke” wasn't a contemporary word, because it used to exist in a niche for a long time. [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=min-maxing&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- ryandrake 3y ago
  It's also part of the dog-and-pony show of self-promotion most companies make you do in order to justify promotion. Being Engineer 1 on a team of 6 that made GreatProductX is never enough. You always need to show what you single-handedly did. So all of a sudden, six different people claim to have "created GreatProductX".
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    No, at least seven people make the claim. You forgot about the managers claiming credit for their employee's efforts.
    - taylodl 3y ago
      It just couldn't have happened without the delivery managers, project managers, product managers, scrum masters, project controllers, business analysts... What a funny world we live in! :) Getting back to reality, ideas and prototypes are easy. Execution and delivery is hard.
- cloverich 3y ago
  Thats not what that line of questioning means; they are trying to understand what your actual contributions were, and how well you can both explain and contextualize them. Embellishment is why we have such a heavy emphasis on coding interviews these days, sadly.
- ReDeiPirati 3y ago
  This. What we see is nothing more than what the job market actually reward and incentives. This person is just playing that game to boost his personal brand. You may not like it, but if you don't play this game in the current job market you will have quite hard times.
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
[flagged]
- buildbot 3y ago
  Their is still correct…
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
      It is and has been since roughly the 14th century. Although, it's apparently a subject of contention amongst grammarians (plural vs singular). https://www.etymonline.com/word/their https://www.etymonline.com/word/their
      - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
        There are lots of things from 14th century English that are no longer used today. Language evolves. Singular “they” has been considered an error for a couple hundred years.
        lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
        I see you're on the singular side of the contention amongst grammarians (plural vs singular). I think you're wrong as do a lot of other people. The fact it's been used widely in this context for the past couple hundreds years proves you wrong.
        NotYourLawyer 3y ago
        > The fact it's been used widely in this context for the past couple hundreds years Citation needed.
lostmsu 3y ago
> Most people would say lead developer rather than creator... I think "creator" is entirely appropriate in this case based on the features that he contributed.

TheRealNGenius 3y ago

[dead]

adverbly 3y ago

> The work from prototype to product is an order of magnitude more than prototype alone. The risk from zero to prototype is an order of magnitude more than the risk from prototype to product.

pleonasticity 3y ago
What’s the risk in doing your job inside a large corporation?
- adverbly 3y ago
  So bonuses and performance based compensation shouldn't be a thing?
  - blibble 3y ago
    by his own admission he received a bonus and a promotion
    - adverbly 3y ago
      20k and no promotion for de-risking copilot? Context: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries This dude is more than justified in being disappointed. The value added by de-risking a product of this size is massive.
    - sithlord 3y ago
      20k bonus is a joke of a bonus. probably like < 2-3% of the total comp?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tiffanyg 3y ago
  "Won't somebody think of the corporations?!" The older I get, and the more I work on aspects of trying to build businesses, products, and services, the more I lament the loss of a kind of service-oriented ethos that truly makes societies great and that seems to only be "refreshed" (in America, in particular) by the darkest of times*. Here, I think of the people who went through the first half of the 20th century in comparison to the MBAs and similarly naively "optimizing" agents elsewhere in important / controlling positions in current society. Game theory 'says' that anyone can choose D(efect)-heavy strategies, and in many environments, profit heavily, personally (aka, "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do..."). But, a society with too many such players is not long for this world. * Much as was said by a certain Founder about the "tree of liberty" - many of the Founders, including even TJ, who could be quite self-interested, understood that liberty requires responsibility and sacrifice ...

lisasays 3y ago

I work on Copilot now, and I can say this guy is totally full of himself. Thanks for the reality check, and Occam's Razor suggests this is (unfortunately) the most likely explanation for what we're reading. Sure, employees get taken advantage of, and screwed over by politics all the time. But something about going online and openly (and quit caustically) negging your employer while still on their payroll suggests that there's something seriously off about this guy. And that in any case, his synopsis of the situation is not to be taken at face value. Edit: Actually we don't have information about his current status with them. My mistake. Thanks to the commenter below for pointing that out.

ncann 3y ago
Wait he's still employed there? How is this not going to result in a HR call up later on? How can he possibly think this is a good idea? I was under the impression that he already moved on to another company and was just bashing his old employer, which is still a bad idea, but this is just weird.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Shh let me enjoy this boss battle
40four 3y ago
Maybe, but he is in the comments here defending himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was something where all the heavy lifting was done by a couple people. That’s often the case. If it’s true, really doesn’t make me want to work at a huge company like that.
deepspace 3y ago
I was definitely getting ESR vibes when reading the Twitter thread, and was not surprised to see my suspicions confirmed here.

zormino 3y ago

In a later tweet, he even mentions there were 6 other people and they built on top of existing work. Doesn't really sound like he's within a mile of solely creating anything, no matter what spin he likes to apply.

pjot 3y ago
> correction: + much of OpenAI eng, plus years of their bleeding edge research Pretty telling
- defasdefbe 3y ago
  Also, the hundreds of GitHub employees who worked on GA. It was a dogfooding project internally before talented engineers in GitHub turned it into a commercially viable product.

AndyNemmity 3y ago

If he built the first prototype, I'd call him a creator of it. It had absolutely nothing to do with who was the first person inside of Microsoft to use LLMs in an IDE completion experience. I call everyone who builds the first thing the creator(s). This isn't uncommon or weird in my mind at all. He may be totally fully of himself, but I don't see any realistic argument that he isn't one of the creators.

defasdefbe 3y ago
He's not calling himself "one of the creators" though. He's calling himself the creator, which shits all over the hard work of OpenAI, "Albert" and more.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

orph 3y ago

Orilly? We had no PM, EM, or designer: I played all those roles for 1.5 years. I was one of the first to touch the OAI code model. Me and Albert developed the in-the-wild testing harness still in use today. We pulled all nighters to get GitHub approved for participation in the MSFT-OpenAI deal using those test results. Existing Microsoft AI teams worked to halt our work, pushing their own small, worse models instead of OpenAI's. I protoyped and lobbied for creation of the VScode extension. I invented and hacked the ghost text prototype into VScode, I invented the block based termination and implemented all the tree-sitter based logic needed to do it. Then I had to lobby up to Satya to get VScode to implement proper support in less than 6 months. I named it Copilot. I implemented GH auth, made the waitlist and onboarding. Helped design the e2e http/2 go server, after designing the fast.ly based precursor. Coordinated moving from OpenAI datacenter to Azure to improve Asia experience, and oversaw the cutover. I was Chief Architect. It was my baby. Sad if this is how they are spinning the story internally at GitHub today.

belfalas 3y ago
In your mind, what would be fair compensation?
- lostmsu 3y ago
  Not the op, but looking at MSFT on levels.fyi at least the last level of Principal SDE (e.g. 67) would be the minimum I'd grade Copilot with. 68 or 69 would be more appropriate. I am specifically referring to the features he lists in his comment above. E.g. ghost text, block completion, and OpenAI integration. To add to his credit Copilot in VS proper still sucks, so I'd estimate original VS Code hack to have better skills than the whole (e.g. the sum of) VS proper Copilot extension team.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  It depends on how revolutionary the product or service was. Not sure if any company still does this anymore, but the way Google rewarded and recognized the initial teams behind stuff like gmail and Google maps seems more fair. Based on the comments I’ve seen so far, i doubt that OP received much of either from GitHub / MS. Edit: I’m not saying that MS / GitHub is obligated to do anything more than it already has. From a PR perspective, it’s just far cheaper to give a fatter bonus and promotion to early contributors to a big product and publicize it. It will also encourage other employees to push instead of just cruising. Otherwise, now you have someone making a logical case for not working very hard for either GitHub or MS

rat9988 3y ago

What was his contribution to the project? Given the information you give us, he may be the creator of copilot. He may not have made the product, but might be his father, the one who did the crucial original work with most added value, even if it's only 5% of the work.

mr90210 3y ago

> He wasn’t even the first person inside Microsoft to use LLMs in an IDE completion experience It is you who is full of oneself, your attempt to belittle his contributions shows the kind of human you are. Stop hiding behind the keyboard and tell that to his face. Downvote at will.

candybar 3y ago

Sure but a lot of things don't happen without that one person pushing for it. If Alex is correct that he's the one who pushed for it to happen and created the momentum for this product feature to exist, despite many others actively pushing against it, that to me deserves a lot of credit. Now, I have no idea if that's true and to what extent it's true - it's common for ICs to be unaware of the work others have done behind the scenes to convince the right folks and unblock their work (not saying that this is what happened, just that it's not inconsistent with Alex's perception that he drove this himself) - but I'm not sure how anything you're saying disproves his version of the story. You could say that about just about every startup founder.