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Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

586 points| dko | 13 years ago |techcrunch.com | reply

207 comments

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[+] untog|13 years ago|reply
"the adventure found at a nimble 250-person startup like Dropbox becomes more tempting"

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

[+] wensing|13 years ago|reply
I would argue that Dropbox isn't a startup anymore.

Once you've found a business model and start scaling your personnel (i.e. Steve Blank's "Company Building" stage), a startup is no longer a startup, IMO.

[+] lancashire|13 years ago|reply
I've always liked Steve Blank's definition:

"A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."

I would say Dropbox has found a repeatable and scalable business model.

[+] soofaloofa|13 years ago|reply
If you can hire Guido you are not a startup.
[+] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] famousactress|13 years ago|reply
On my more cynical days my observed definition from context clues would be:

"A company that isn't profitable, but isn't as unhappy about it as I would be yet."

[edit: Worth clarifying that I doubt Dropbox probably ever qualified under my definition... but that's fine. Who wants to be a startup? I'd rather start a company.]

[+] debacle|13 years ago|reply
Are you saying that a start-up can't have more than a certain number of employees?
[+] ErikAugust|13 years ago|reply
Nimble 250. I worked at places with 25 people that weren't close to anything I'd consider "nimble".
[+] michaelochurch|13 years ago|reply
Billion/million rule is the cutoff for "real startup".

It stops being a startup when, if acquired or IPO'd for $1 billion, a full-time entry-level engineer makes less than $1 million after taxes. For straight equity, that puts the cutoff around 0.2%. For options, it depends on the strike.

By 250, new employees are getting much less than that.

[+] mshafrir|13 years ago|reply
Not completely proven & scaled business model?
[+] bickfordb|13 years ago|reply
A company in a hyper growth mode?
[+] dpitkin|13 years ago|reply
Technically I believe any company that is less than 2 years old is a startup, they have a limited operating history. VC funded startups that are supposed to grow hyper fast but lots of statistics we see also count every new small business.
[+] spaghetti|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps companies that have existed for less than n years?
[+] bdesimone|13 years ago|reply
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?
[+] RenegadeHero|13 years ago|reply
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?
[+] citricsquid|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] staunch|13 years ago|reply
I think most people treat it like hiring an executive, even if they're technically not one. They'll get significantly higher salary, equity, and bonuses.
[+] 6ren|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] DigitalSea|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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? ;)

[+] krosaen|13 years ago|reply
I was always impressed by how much code Guido wrote at Google, he definitely isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.
[+] spaghetti|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] arocks|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] kibwen|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
No such blanket prohibition currently exists.
[+] packetslave|13 years ago|reply
Not aware of any prohibition against Python. The rule as I understand it is (not surprisingly) "use whichever of the supported languages best fits the goals and requirements of your project". If that's Python (and you can support your reasoning), use it.
[+] freyr|13 years ago|reply
Any idea why they would phase out Python? Internal promotion of Go, or problems with Python?
[+] natural219|13 years ago|reply 

    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?
[+] silentmars|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
The villains appear to be Bjarne Stroustrup and James Gosling - perhaps Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson as well.
[+] lispython|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] rdtsc|13 years ago|reply
Well that was pretty clearly stated at Pycon 2012. Someone asked Guido that question he answered pretty diplomatically that it was a "political decision" _but_ you could tell it was a issue he cared by the tone of his voice.
[+] ralph|13 years ago|reply
"couldn't let" is odd. Do you mean "get", IOW persuade Google to add Python.
[+] tomkit|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] Kilimanjaro|13 years ago|reply
Why Guido left? That's the question.
[+] aviswanathan|13 years ago|reply
Dang, Dropbox is stealing talent from every direction.
[+] nXqd|13 years ago|reply
They not only steal but steal at very good timing. Since Google will give their focus to javascript and go from now on :)
[+] spaghetti|13 years ago|reply
This is great Dropbox PR. Also I'd imagine DB Python developers are excited!
[+] gamebit07|13 years ago|reply
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?