Brad is leaving SixApart/LiveJournal

[ibneko]

Oh dear.

http://brad.livejournal.com/2334177.html

Brad is leaving SixApart. There goes the person we trust.

Heading for google, I believe. And I think I understand how he feels - the lack of an active, challenging, "ahhhh, fuuuuck" panic, with alert, eager programmers was something I noticed while visiting SixApart last year. People were laid back - there was little of that forward "drive" that I find when working in small groups, trying to accomplish a single goal against a deadline.

I suspect he might not find Google to be that much better. It's hard to find that kind of energy when there's that many people - it gets dispersed and lost between the communication, meetings, protocols. Because there's someone else who can work slower, so you work slower to match them, and soon, everyone else is working slower.

Or maybe I'm just pulling BS out of a hat. I dunno.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Then again, I can't say I've encountered that tone of desperation at the places I've worked, other than for short spells when release time looms. Crunch mode's a lot of fun, but it's not sustainable for long periods. Enthusiasm, definitely - that was almost palpable at Trilobyte especially.

But agreed, unfortunate he's going. Like a few billion other LJers, I can't help but wonder if the recent spate of arbitrary, capricious journal deletions might have been the extra grain of sand that tipped the balance.

[ibneko.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, it's not really a tone of desperation, but more of a.. I dunno. Not sure how to describe it properly in words.

:\ Yeah. Wish I was closer to him, so I could probe for more information. (Ahhh~ if only I had played with the code more back in high school when LJ was still invite only and I ran my own server, offered some commits, and maybe did a better job with the Google Summer of Code project...)