6 ms·

Forgive me, but... why should we care? It's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it. It's not humble and awe-inspiring. He announced it to the world on

Forgive me, but... why should we care? It's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it. It's not humble and awe-inspiring. He announced it to the world on twitter. I mean, it's nice of him, or whatever, but.. I don't care? Why should anyone care about this? I could write a long tyrade about how this could be useful if more companies did this, because yes, the employees would have an invested interest in this company; and la la la; but really, this is just Notch tooting his own horn about giving his money away. Congratulations. Yes, what you've done with Minecraft is absolutely amazing, and I love the game, but... very nice of you. Moving on. awaits the downvotes [edit: in seriousness, could someone tell me why the public, even the programming public, should care that Notch gave away his dividends? We're not told why he did it. He's not encouraging others to follow his example, he just did it and told everyone.]

scotty79 15y ago
Because it's unusual and smart brains crave unusual information?
- sukuriant 15y ago
  I mean more "why should anyone care?" It's really not that unusual, and honestly tastes more like gossip, to me :/ I'm not saying that it shouldn't be on HackerNews. If someone posted it and it's receiving upvotes, clearly it's worth being on HN. I just don't understand why it matters at all
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    I'll admit to just enjoying the gossip from fellow techies and entrepreneurs. Note that it was used as another excuse to discuss tax rates, lifestyle choices, and healthcare in the comments - things we are all interested in in the choice of where to live and where to work.
antoko 15y ago
Fine I'll bite, it is INTERESTING it is different it sparks debate and it gives life to a conversation about bonuses and compensation in our industry. Lots of people here are also founders (or plan to be) so form that perspective it is interesting to contemplate the effects of such a move on early employees, it isn't so different from talking about vesting for early employees in that regard, something which is also a common topic here. I'm not sure why you would choose to make this a personal thing about notch, HN (for me at least when it is at its "best") is a place to come for NEW and INTERESTING perspectives, this absolutely falls into that category - for a number of reasons. Your response seems to be "wow look at notch trying to draw attention to himself" the impression I have from the rest of the comments here isn't "wow look how generous notch is; he's so awesome" it seems to be more like "wow this is cool/different/unexpected I wonder how this will play out".
- sukuriant 15y ago
  And that makes the HN comments interesting, which I will agree with. It's the initial creation of the article I'm questioning, is all. I am absolutely not questioning that the resultant dialog isn't interesting; as I have read it, and that is interesting. I'm questioning the original article, which does not look like this dialog was the intended result. [edit: addendum] I also have nothing against Notch. If this were about where Page's, or Zuckerberg's, or any of the All Stars of our time's money was going, I imagine I'd have a similar response
  - antoko 15y ago
    So you're not actually questioning the act of giving away the money either? Your point of contention is "Why is he posting this?" ? That's actually quite an interesting line of inquiry. I'd suggest it probably helps raise his company's profile, it helps draw potential employees to his company, and, admittedly, it also probably makes him feel good about himself - and it should - he's doing a Good Thing (TM) he should be able to highlight that. It cost him $3MM why shouldn't it buy him some goodwill?
    - sukuriant 15y ago
VikingCoder 15y ago
Hugely successful boss decides to reward his employees. It's a tragedy that this is _newsworthy_. By spreading the news, maybe Notch hopes that other hugely successful business owners will consider following suit.
- sukuriant 15y ago
  Does he? What makes you think that? He posted in a tweet. I think you're putting words into his mouth

scotty79 15y ago

Because it's unusual and smart brains crave unusual information?

sukuriant 15y ago
I mean more "why should anyone care?" It's really not that unusual, and honestly tastes more like gossip, to me :/ I'm not saying that it shouldn't be on HackerNews. If someone posted it and it's receiving upvotes, clearly it's worth being on HN. I just don't understand why it matters at all
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  I'll admit to just enjoying the gossip from fellow techies and entrepreneurs. Note that it was used as another excuse to discuss tax rates, lifestyle choices, and healthcare in the comments - things we are all interested in in the choice of where to live and where to work.

antoko 15y ago

Fine I'll bite, it is INTERESTING it is different it sparks debate and it gives life to a conversation about bonuses and compensation in our industry. Lots of people here are also founders (or plan to be) so form that perspective it is interesting to contemplate the effects of such a move on early employees, it isn't so different from talking about vesting for early employees in that regard, something which is also a common topic here. I'm not sure why you would choose to make this a personal thing about notch, HN (for me at least when it is at its "best") is a place to come for NEW and INTERESTING perspectives, this absolutely falls into that category - for a number of reasons. Your response seems to be "wow look at notch trying to draw attention to himself" the impression I have from the rest of the comments here isn't "wow look how generous notch is; he's so awesome" it seems to be more like "wow this is cool/different/unexpected I wonder how this will play out".

sukuriant 15y ago
And that makes the HN comments interesting, which I will agree with. It's the initial creation of the article I'm questioning, is all. I am absolutely not questioning that the resultant dialog isn't interesting; as I have read it, and that is interesting. I'm questioning the original article, which does not look like this dialog was the intended result. [edit: addendum] I also have nothing against Notch. If this were about where Page's, or Zuckerberg's, or any of the All Stars of our time's money was going, I imagine I'd have a similar response
- antoko 15y ago
  So you're not actually questioning the act of giving away the money either? Your point of contention is "Why is he posting this?" ? That's actually quite an interesting line of inquiry. I'd suggest it probably helps raise his company's profile, it helps draw potential employees to his company, and, admittedly, it also probably makes him feel good about himself - and it should - he's doing a Good Thing (TM) he should be able to highlight that. It cost him $3MM why shouldn't it buy him some goodwill?
  - sukuriant 15y ago

VikingCoder 15y ago

Hugely successful boss decides to reward his employees. It's a tragedy that this is _newsworthy_. By spreading the news, maybe Notch hopes that other hugely successful business owners will consider following suit.

sukuriant 15y ago
Does he? What makes you think that? He posted in a tweet. I think you're putting words into his mouth