
Douglas Crockford now at PayPal - petercooper
http://looksgoodworkswell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/welcome-crock.html
======
digitalzombie
LOL paypal. I wouldn't even want to put that on my resume.

They froze my account and kept my info (SSN and all). I had to subpeona them
to get them to tell me why my account is locked. Their reason was I was
associated to another person that owe them money. They won't tell me who this
person is.

I've asked them to just delete my info and I won't ever create another paypal
account and I have not done anything wrong. They stated no. I asked them if my
information will be encrypted they said it's SSL encrypted (wtf). A month
later their server got hacked.

They screwed so many people over that the person looking over your resume will
be like ugh this guy works for that horrible company. Next!

~~~
j79
Funny enough, I had a similar thought when I applied to eBay. The idea of
working for the parent company of PayPal turned me off (I hadn't used my
PayPal account in years after getting burned!)

However, since joining, I've met some amazing people (including Bill - He's a
wicked smart, cool guy!) and seen some of the projects in the pipeline. The
stuff they're working on is top-notch!

It may not be a "sexy" start up and PayPal's business practices may turn
people off (I know first hand!) but at the end of the day, you'll be doing
some cool stuff working with some amazing people (who know other amazing
people and so on and so on...)

Personally, I'm ecstatic Crockford has joined the company!

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fennecfoxen
PayPal? Wow. And, eh, I dunno, I'd prefer someplace more widely regarded as
ethical. You know, like AIG or Goldman Sachs. :)

~~~
eli
PayPal has some customer-unfriendly policies but are they really _unethical_?
I would assume the people working there are just as good and honest as at any
similar company.

~~~
phillmv
By customer unfriendly you mean "arbitrarily freeze people's money for
indefinite amounts of time without giving them any recourse in the matter". I
think that might strike some people as unethical.

~~~
flatline
I've read a lot of these accounts and some are truly egregious. PayPal should
definitely provide some better means of dealing with disputes, but I would
hazard a guess that 99% or more of such disputes are simple cases of fraud and
are dealt with appropriately. The lack of alternatives is the biggest issue I
see with PayPal, so they can sail along without having to address the issue.
Given that they are neither regulated as a bank, nor faced with any serious
competition, it seems, to my admittedly limited knowledge, that they do well
for the most part. While some of their actions may be deemed as unethical, I
don't think there is cause to paint the entire organization with such a wide
brush.

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magnars
So I guess the "Use for good, not evil" clause will finally be removed from
jsmin and jslint now.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
He gave IBM a special license to do evil with it. IBM complained that, whilst
they thought they were doing good things, they were not so sure there
customers would.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Crockford speaking about this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs&t=39m45s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs&t=39m45s)

~~~
btilly
What is fascinating about the description there is that IBM hasn't just asked
once - they've asked many times.

I'd be willing to bet that the cause is that IBM's lawyers are aware that the
most famous act of evil in the 20th century was committed by an IBM client,
using IBM equipment. No joke, that was how the Nazis kept track of the Jews.
And I'd be willing to bet that there are a lot of random dictators today who
are using IBM software to keep tabs on their populations as well.

So while the IBM license exemption sounds silly and amusing, there is a very
serious point behind it.

Incidentally this clause makes jsmin both not open source (discriminates
against fields of endeavor) and also puts it in Debian non-free (same reason).

------
mkopinsky
The idea of Douglas Crockford going through some generic new hire orientation
process amuses me.

~~~
wyclif
That was my thought exactly. "Doug, your LAPTOP and laptop accessory bag can
be picked up from the IT Lab." Yeah.

~~~
Michiel
"Doug, it's important that, when writing JavaScript, your use JSLint to verify
it. Do you know it? If you need any help, refer to our internal wiki."

~~~
mkopinsky
"Doug, opinions vary on the necessity or value of tools like JSLint. Consult
your team's technical lead for guidance on whether your team chooses to
enforce JSLint's strict guidelines."

------
stevewilhelm
> The IT Department welcome's you to eBay, Inc.

First order of business, get them to use punctuation correctly.

~~~
blake8086
The IT Department welcome's you to eBay, Inc.;

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
No No No!

    
    
        (function () {
            'use strict';
            The IT Department welcome's you to eBay, Inc.;
        }());

~~~
pstuart
"The IT Department welcomes you to eBay, Inc."

~~~
jarek
Is that Python?

~~~
pstuart
It's a string. I merely removed the errant apostrophe.

What's the point of good code if your data is bad?

------
benatkin
I believe it. He seems to have done quite well at Yahoo! so I'm not surprised
to hear about him going to another large company. I don't know too much about
eBay's development community but there's <http://ql.io/> so there's something.
I can imagine Crockford helping to grow it.

------
marco_salvatori
I'm really sorry to hear that. I'm afraid its going to be a cultural and
technical disappointment for him.

~~~
zafriedman
I can't imagine a bigger cultural disappointment than Yahoo! quite frankly.
Crock was probably the best thing about that entire organization. I've been
quietly thinking he should leave for awhile now, but haven't said anything on
the internet because seriously who am I to say what he should or shouldn't do.
We know he didn't lie about his college degree so I think the move away from
Yahoo! is smart.

~~~
lopatin
Yahoo may be losing users on some of their have-been web services, but to say
that the developer culture is one of the worst is the funniest thing I ever
heard. Yahoo is doing more for developers than almost any company out there.
Ever heard of YUI or Mojito? How about YQL, Hadoop, or YSlow? With so much
open source effort on their part, and the enormous success of some of those
mentioned, I don't really see how Yahoo is a "cultural" step down from PayPal,
especially when talking Javascript.

~~~
zafriedman
You make some decent points, but a guy like Doug can work wherever he wants so
while Yahoo! might release more open source packages than 99% of the shops out
there, you can't just throw out the other, better companies in the top 1% like
Google and Twitter who, in my opinion, release much better open source
software, software that I actually use. I agree that Yahoo! has over the years
done a respectable job in becoming a leader in open source JavaScript
development, but since Doug has had a huge hand in this, couldn't one argue
that he could bring that along with him wherever he goes? Furthermore, in some
of these other companies, at least his CEO won't be just pretending to know
what JSON is :)

~~~
dpark
> _much better open source software, software that I actually use_

Whether or not you use something doesn't determine whether it's high quality.
Yahoo definitely releases some quality OSS.

------
zg
Slightly worrying to see the conversation in the twitter widget between Bill
Scott and a Techcrunch editor about this story where he has to explain that
Java is not the same as JavaScript...

~~~
atomical
Common problem in the tech world. I have this conversation with every tech
recruiter I talk to.

~~~
ExpiredLink
I have seen programmers who worked in both languages but couldn't tell the
difference.

~~~
mkopinsky
Such programmers have actually worked in neither.

------
bstar77
Could you imagine having to work under Douglas and being required to have all
your js lint on strict settings?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
JSLint isn't that bad. Some people disagree with his opinions, but I quite
like them. I write all my code with JSLint on strict mode and, while I hate
how picky it is about whitespace, my code is nicer as a result.

------
DevMonkey
Wow, I thought he would have stuck around a lot longer. He seemed to really
like it there. Friday was my last day at Yahoo, it's unbelievable how many
people are leaving.

~~~
fruchtose
I'm not very surprised people are leaving. The company looks like it has lost
its direction, investors no longer take the company seriously, and the CEO
lied about his academic credentials. I would not want to be there when Yahoo
is sold for scrap.

------
petercooper
Title updated as I received confirmation from this post's author:
<https://twitter.com/#!/billwscott/status/201547332934828032>

------
subbu
Crockford working for an IT department! It would be interesting to see what
his views would be in a few months.

~~~
jaredsohn
I doubt he's working for the IT department; I'd assume he's working R&D. I'm
sure he also received a letter welcoming him from HR but that doesn't mean he
will be working in HR.

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eli
Neat. Their web UI could use some serious help.

