
Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum - dko
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/dropbox-guido-van-rossum-python/
======
untog
" _the adventure found at a nimble 250-person startup like Dropbox becomes
more tempting_ "

What _is_ the definition of a startup these days, anyway?

~~~
ChuckMcM
I suspect a "startup" is any company that is serving a market that has yet to
prove it is viable. Many folks use that term to describe any privately held
company that is growing into something much larger.

~~~
nostrademons
Or a market that is known to be viable with a product that is not yet known to
be viable. I think most people would consider Tesla a startup, but cars have
been around for a century.

~~~
pretoriusB
Yes, but in their case it's "electric cars" which is a different market.

~~~
noiv
This market also exists for a century.

~~~
pretoriusB
You confuse "exists" with "matters to more than a thousand people".

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bdesimone
I'll be very interested to find out what role Guido will take up at dropbox.
When someone like Matz/ Guido/ etc gets hired, what do their job
responsibilities, for the community include exactly? Are language writer hires
such as this purely symbolic?

~~~
setheron
my thoughts exactly. I feel like it's a status symbol for a comapany. They are
most likely busy giving talks and lectures to do any actual work.

Maybe their value is in the odd meeting where they can voice some input. I've
never had the pleasure of being in the room with giants such as these so I
wouldn't know sadly.

~~~
ChuckMcM
There is a joke in Silicon Valley that one of the levels of success is "Your
new company issues a press release that you've been hired."

It goes something like:

You know you are successful in Silicon Valley when:

followed by silly things like "You are Time's Man of the Year" or "On Wired's
most Influential list" that sort of thing.

~~~
kyllo
I guess that's why it's called "Silicon Valley" rather than "Sense of Humor
Valley."

------
wheels
Kind of a quirky note, but now the creators of all of the most popular web
languages (Ruby, PHP and Python) have had a stint at YC companies:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2756314>

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/27/php-founder-rasmus-
lerdorf-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/27/php-founder-rasmus-lerdorf-
joins-group-payments-startup-wepay/)

~~~
justinator
Awww, Larry's in the corner, sobbing. It's OK, Larry, we still like you.

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RenegadeHero
It always strikes me as odd when something like this happens. Guido is still
working nine-to-fives and Drew never has to work again. Can someone tell me
why a brilliant person like Guido isn't worth a billion dollars? Have tons of
fancy cars and a fancy house? Has to work for another company?

~~~
enneff
Since when do language designers get rich? I can't think of a single person
who got rich through language design.

~~~
bjoyx
Stephen Wolfram

~~~
4ad
Mathematica is much more than a _language_. People buy Mathematica for system,
the language is just a small part of it. (And it's crap, just like MATLAB
language is crap, but the full product itself is massively useful).

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citricsquid
Would someone like this be paid based on their fame and/or positive PR value,
or would they be paid based on position just like everyone else? I've always
wondered if these "programming celebrities" make substantially more just based
on their personal brand, or if their personal brand just affords them the
opportunity to have any job they so desire (but with the "standard" pay)

~~~
napoleond
That would be up to them, wouldn't it? I mean, if you could get a job anywhere
you wanted and money was the most important differentiator, there would be
nothing stopping you from increasing your price until you had sufficiently
decreased your options.

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6ren
I've long held the theory that Dropbox's long-term secret plan is to host apps
- as they already have the data, this will effectively make them the fabled
"internet OS".

Having Guido on board to make python its systems language makes sense - and
would be enough to tempt him away from google.

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DigitalSea
Speechless. This is definitely one of the best decisions that Dropbox will
probably ever make. Not only will this mean that Dropbox can hire other
equally great Python developers, but as a company you can't get any more
humbling than, "hey we hired the guy who wrote the programming language this
site is based on and makes its money from"

Guido is an exceptional engineer as well, not just a guy who knows Python
really well. The dude is seriously one of the rare gems in the community.

~~~
SimHacker
All that, plus the fact that they hired him AWAY from Google.

Matz is one of the "rare gems" in the Ruby community. So doesn't that make
Guido one of the "rare eggs" in the Python community? ;)

~~~
tedchs
Your joke made me literally laugh out loud in the middle of a coffee shop.
Bravo, sir.

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krosaen
I was always impressed by how much code Guido wrote at Google, he definitely
isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

~~~
spaghetti
Wow if he really did contribute a lot (which I don't doubt at all) then how
did Google let him get away? I'd imagine his lifestyle there was pretty nice.

~~~
tonfa
What do you think Google could have done?

~~~
pyre
Figure out why he wanted to leave, and see if they could remedy it (e.g. more
money; different challenges; etc).

~~~
loganfrederick
Pretty sure someone like Guido is, at this point, not motivated by money. If
there was a challenge he wanted to undertake at Google, I'm sure they'd give
it to him already.

He probably wanted to participate in growing another new tech company that has
a lot of potential. That's an opportunity Google would find hard to counter.

~~~
pyre
Sorry, my statement was more generic. I wasn't trying to say that Guido is
motivated by money, just that these are common ways to get someone to stay if
that is indeed the issue that makes them want to leave.

On the issue of challenges, maybe Guido has more pull on this, but there were
recently some articles/discussion on HN about Google's hiring practices. They
might hire you based on your PhD in databases, and then have you writing shell
scripts for work because some randomized 'sorting hat' tells you what group
you end up in. It's possible that even Guido doesn't have enough pull at
Google to overcome this. :-\

~~~
codeka
If you want to move to another team at Google, it's really up to that team if
they want you. As long as they have budget for you, and they want you working
with them, then you're free to move.

The problem with new hires is that no other team has any idea whether you're
any good, so it take a bit of tenure to prove yourself and make yourself known
to others.

I'm quite sure Guido would be doing whatever he wanted at Google

~~~
pyre
The discussion I'm referring to represented ending up somewhere that you don't
want to be as a bit of a trap.

E.g. if Guido ends up writing shell scripts, but his real skill-set/passion is
for databases. It's quite possible for him to under-perform, and then that
performance used as a reason for the 'database team' to not take him.

------
arocks
A decade ago, Python being widely used in Google and the creator of Python
being employed by the company was a big endorsement for the language. Now
Python is quite mainstream. Actually, Guido was allowed to devote 50% of his
time at Google for Python. Hope the good work continues at Dropbox.

------
scottmp10
FWIW, Guido's role at Google wasn't specific to Python. He worked on real
product teams and contributed much more than his Python expertise.

The article seems to think that Dropbox hired him for his thorough knowledge
of Python, which probably had some role in the hiring decision, but I expect
that the primary motivation was to acquire an excellent engineer.

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kibwen
I wonder, will Dropbox still allocate 50% of Guido's time toward Python
development?

Further, donning our tinfoil hats, is it reasonable to suspect that Google is
phasing out the use of Python internally? I've heard rumors that Python is no
longer permitted for new projects within Google; hoping some Googlers here can
confirm or deny this.

~~~
brandon
No such blanket prohibition currently exists.

~~~
SimHacker
Are any of those words weasel words? "blanket"? "currently"?

~~~
koide
By themselves, no.

Now, it depends on if he actually knows more than what he stated. They could
be weasel words if he actually knows on some future date such a prohibition
will be made, or that they are currently prohibiting Python on some level.

My suspicion is that he was trying to be specific, not weasel-like.

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Sukotto
See also: <https://tech.dropbox.com/2012/12/welcome-guido/>

~~~
mark-r
"Some people only need to be introduced by their first name" - maybe so, but
it would have been nice for them to mention it at least once.

~~~
brian_cloutier
They did. They even linked to wikipedia pages on him twice.

~~~
callmevlad
I think the parent was referring to his full name. "Guido" appears 7 times on
that page, "Rossum" appears 0 times in text.

~~~
mark-r
Yes, I was referring to the "van Rossum" part of his name. Sorry for not being
clear.

------
natural219

        Python has been a backbone of Dropbox since its early days as it 
        allowed the startup to write code once but deploy it across platforms.
    

Can anybody elaborate on this? Is the argument that Python is cross-platform
because everybody uses GNU tools on every platform, or are there other reasons
why Python is more cross-platform than other languages?

~~~
njharman
No compile step. Python exists for a great many platforms.

Also true for several other "scripting" languages.

~~~
Luyt
But python code _is_ compiled (and saved as *.pyc files). The compiled code is
then executed by a VM, in the same way as Ruby, Java and C# and a lot of other
languages work.

Therefore, it is a bit stange to see people referring to Ruby or Python as
'scripting' languages. I'd call shell script a 'scripting' language, but not
Java or Python.

~~~
njharman
No compile __STEP __means there is a REPL, there is no waiting seconds,
minutes, hours while a compiler compiles and links code to native format, code
on arch 'A' can be run on arch 'B' without [re|cross]compiling it and a few
other less important things.

That there happens to be an PURELY optional for performance only pre-parsed
representation for the interpreter is immaterial.

------
silentmars
I like Google... And Dropbox is also good. I don't know how I'm supposed to
feel! HN always tells me who the villain in a story is. Someone please help!

~~~
wilfra
The villains appear to be Bjarne Stroustrup and James Gosling - perhaps Robert
Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson as well.

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lispython
I heard from a friend who talked with Guido this year, he couldn't let Google
add Python to Android and Chrome, this make him disappointed.

~~~
ralph
"couldn't let" is odd. Do you mean "get", IOW persuade Google to add Python.

~~~
lispython
Thanks, I mean "get".

------
tomkit
I think it's been about a year since he gave his Python talk at Dropbox. I
suppose they also used that opportunity to begin to recruit him.

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Kilimanjaro
Why Guido left? That's the question.

~~~
shadowmatter
Speaking as an ex-Googler, when I left, Python was largely relegated to glue
code, scripts, internal projects, and App Engine -- consumer-facing frontends
were written in Java, and backends in C++. He probably wanted to move to a
company where Python was more pervasive, and he felt like he could have more
of an impact, given that he _is_ the BDFL.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Why is Python being phased out?

~~~
shadowmatter
Python wasn't phased out of consumer-facing applications because it was never
in. Google has a lot of machines, but those machines receive a lot of traffic.
Efficiency matters, and byte-for-byte, cycle-for-cycle, Java is more efficient
than Python.

Don't ask me why Google didn't throw lots of resources at making Python more
efficient like they did with JS and V8. I often wonder that myself.

~~~
throwaway2048
they did throw a significant amount of resources at python with the creation
of unladen swallow. In the end i believe it was decided (due to GIL issues,
and other language design choices in python) that it was never going to match
up performance wise, so unladen swallow was canceled, and Google began to move
away from python.

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aviswanathan
Dang, Dropbox is stealing talent from every direction.

~~~
nXqd
They not only steal but steal at very good timing. Since Google will give
their focus to javascript and go from now on :)

~~~
eric_bullington
Go, yes. Javascript, I'm not so sure: <http://code.google.com/p/dart/>

~~~
Evbn
Compare Googles recentbJS publications with their recent Dart publications.

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spaghetti
This is great Dropbox PR. Also I'd imagine DB Python developers are excited!

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gamebit07
1\. Will GO replace Python?

2\. What seems to be happening to ndb.models in near future?

3\. Will Guido leaving Google affect webapp2 in any way?

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sjg007
It's more interesting that he left Google.

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cr4zy
Guido's last commit?

[http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/source/detail?r=f66cc90304...](http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/source/detail?r=f66cc9030489ea92a2e699a0f1a68a854f1d064c#)

~~~
briancurtin
Very doubtful. I would find it hard to believe that he hasn't committed code
in a week.

Anyway, most of what he was working on was AppEngine itself.

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tzury
Two comments:

IMHO, Python would have been in a far better place if Guido and his team would
have been getting paid to maintain and evolve Python, the language, rather
than apps and platforms based on Python. I think in the early days at Google
he was able to do so, later, appengine took most of his time.

Dropbox is still a startup - despite the substantial investments rounds -
since it is still relying on external money (investments) to grow.

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adulau
It's not uncommon to see staff from Google going to another small company and
then some months later, the company is acquired by Google...

~~~
spaghetti
I agree this is true for small companies. However Dropbox is not a small
company by most measures. Also pg's remarks about how you couldn't acquire
Dropbox or Airbnb for (some large dollar amount I forget) lead me to believe
Google won't be acquiring them.

I'd imagine Google wants to acquire them. However I doubt Drew Houston would
go that route.

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nXqd
Great news for Dropbox, I cannot wait to see what Guido will do for Dropbox.

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signa11
interesting (to say the least). does it mean that Go is taking prominence at
GOOG ?

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TommyDANGerous
Guido is a boss.

