[HN Gopher] On leaving Mapbox after 12 years ___________________________________________________________________ On leaving Mapbox after 12 years Author : gregoire Score : 175 points Date : 2022-06-20 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (trashmoon.com) (TXT) w3m dump (trashmoon.com) | tiffanyh wrote: | > A company like Mapbox hadn't ever unionized before, so it | seemed like an exciting _experiment_ | | Call me crazy, but taking such a drastic move as unionizing | shouldn't be trivialized into just being an "experiment". | | EDIT: why the downvotes? Why not simply reply with your thoughts | so that we can have a thoughtful discourse. | roguecoder wrote: | Unionizing isn't "drastic": it is the norm for most trades in | the United States. Any individual union is basically just you & | your coworkers crowd sourcing employment lawyers you wouldn't | afford individually. | | Until Boeing got taken over by finance people, the Boeing | engineering guild had spent decades being a book club. It is | only when things go wrong that unionization significantly | changes how we work. | tiffanyh wrote: | > "crowd sourcing employment lawyers" | | How is that _not_ drastic? | | You're own words are saying unionizing is to bring in lawyers | to be used against your employer. | | EDIT: to answer your question below since I can't reply. | | No, it's not drastic for a company to have lawyers. A company | needs to ensure they are staying regulatory compliant, not | breaking laws and de-risking company ... that's what the | lawyers are doing. | chipotle_coyote wrote: | "It's not drastic for a company to have lawyers" is | probably the point that was being made. It's _not_ drastic | for a company to have lawyers; it shouldn't be drastic for | a union--or in this case, a union organizing effort--to | have lawyers as well. | tiffanyh wrote: | If you feel like you have lawyer-up just to go to work, | that's probably a signal you shouldn't be working there. | roguecoder wrote: | If one party doesn't have a lawyer look over legal | contracts they are signing and the other party does, all | they are doing is putting themselves at a disadvantage in | a business relationship. | | I see why that is advantageous for companies that get to | employ workers at a disadvantage. I don't understand why | it would be good for workers. | jacobolus wrote: | So in other words your company should pay a team of legal | experts to fight against your interests, but if workers | try to hire an expert of their own they "shouldn't be | working there"? | roguecoder wrote: | They "de-risk" the company by making sure employees have as | little power as possible, as few protections as possible, | are as open to exploitation as possible, are paid as little | as possible, have as little job mobility as possible, and | have as little claim to their independent intellectual | property as they can legally enforce. | | That's what "derisk" means: it means the company is | protected from your interests. | roguecoder wrote: | The company has lawyers: is that drastic? | bambam24 wrote: | jenny91 wrote: | I'm saddened by what happened to Mapbox. It's such a recurring | pattern of organizational transformation: from a small "mission- | driven" group building cool shit that starts taking money (and | pressure from investors) and slowly erodes their past core | values, changing into a faceless money-making machine subservient | to some huge market or industry. In that process most of the | original opinionated crowd will slowly rotate out and the more | "career"/bureaucratic types will prevail and take over. | | Maybe unions and workers having more control could curb it? But | in such a late stage it sounds almost impossible to achieve. | | Cars are certainly a problem, but technology has by and far been | a great thing, and I would question whether the gaming is really | such a positive industry in the end either. | NelsonMinar wrote: | Unions and Mapbox is a very sore topic and now the subject of a | NLRB lawsuit for firing the union organizers. | https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/mapbox-sued-firing-union-... | | But the union drive came far too late to help the larger | problem. The big change happened in 2017 when Softbank invested | $164M into MapBox. In retrospect it was far too much money with | too many expectations. And with the ugly side effect of salting | the earth for any other map startups. It only got worse in 2021 | when MapBox's attempt to go public via a SPAC failed. They're | plodding along now but it's hard to see what a good final | outcome is going to be. | chx wrote: | This is not the first time I see Softbank as a net negative. | Too much money loosely controlled. Is there an example of | Softbank doing good? | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | > And with the ugly side effect of salting the earth for any | other map startups | | I'm unsure on that. Mapbox built a bunch of good tech (mostly | around vector tiles), open-sourced it, and then lost interest | in smaller customers in their rush for the petrodollar. | | This has been genuinely great for bootstrapped map | businesses. You can easily list a dozen who are using .mvt | tech right now and making a good living out of it. | | True, it wasn't good for Mapzen. But I can't weep too many | tears for something funded with Samsung Accelerator magic | money, much though they did hire one of the smartest teams in | the business - Softbank vs Samsung is not a battle I can | bring myself to care about. | | I 100% agree with you that Mapbox went too far, too fast. But | on balance I think their trajectory has (unintentionally) | been good for wider mapping tech. | slively wrote: | Here is the same story again. Sorry to hear about the inevitable | ending, but glad they got to experience a good work culture for a | time. At some point I hope we can shift the union discussion from | just benefits and wages (which are not the biggest problems for | SWE), to workers having a say in how a company operates. The idea | that investing money garners complete control of a company is not | healthy for the company or society at large. Workers risk more | for the company and know more about what makes it succeed. | reocha wrote: | Does anyone know why tech companies tend to be so hostile to | unions? I'm not sure if its due to the large amount of venture | capital invested or other reasons. | roguecoder wrote: | Because unions could increase wages, stop the scams companies | like to pull with options, and push back on under-staffed | expectations of the impossible. | | Companies benefit by taking as much of the profit for | themselves as possible, rather than doing right by their | workers. Some of that pressure comes from VCs or shareholders, | but even in private companies it takes a rare founder to put a | worker's interests ahead of their own. | pm90 wrote: | I get the impression that a lot of Software Devs buy into | libertarian philosophies. | | I think this is changing though. There's a lot of people | working in tech and with the kind of abuse that's been reported | (ahem, Amazon) we might see that change. | smm11 wrote: | incanus77 wrote: | Appropriate, since they haven't heard of you either. | mikl wrote: | Thanks for lettings us know. Your ignorance is inspiring. /s | donohoe wrote: | Is it fair to say that MapBox is moving into auto services? | | Or to put it another way, is it not a good idea for me to move to | a different provider for basic mapping services? | woevdbz wrote: | It sounds like OP wants to be a part of the kind of social change | that fundamentally cannot exist independently of politics but | trying to enact it without. | | A single company, especially one that is not generating | monopoly/oligopoly profits and is still dependent on funding, is | not really able to: unionizing creates a steep competitive | downside on the capital market that is not offset by enough | employee retention benefit to be worth it, and that alone creates | existential risk for the whole company. Long term, it simply | helps another competitor to come up without a union. | | Systemic problems need systemic solutions. It saddens me a bit | that people want social change so much but dislike politics so | much more that they take up the wrong fight, and then retreat to | something like making videogames, which frankly as an industry | has an even worse track record than tech in terms of respect for | its workers. | | I hope OP changes their perspective and fights a wider fight, | either on behalf of a party or of a larger union. | roguecoder wrote: | So your hypothesis is that VCs put their class interests ahead | of making money to such an extent that it is impossible to | exercise our legal rights without putting the companies we work | for in their political crosshairs? | | You may be right. It still seems like the easiest solution is | for all the startups to unionize so they don't have any choice: | they can either invest in unionized startups or they can stop | being VCs. | [deleted] | afandian wrote: | It's surely not that bleak (at least, not everywhere). And it | doesn't have to be remotely about 'politics'. | | My old employer made the leap to employee-owned and they seem | to be going from strength to strength. | https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust | woevdbz wrote: | Right, that works until you need more funding (unless you can | raise from employees, but that also has consequences and | limits). I'm guessing that Mapbox is angling for an | acquisition or more funding at some point. | afandian wrote: | Yes staying true to the rhetoric about 'making the world a | better place' does preclude certain future states. But that | rhetoric _can_ be true, actionable, and not incompatible | with profit. | | Just saying here's an anecdatum about a money-making | business that said the same kinds of things and is doing | very well for itself. | johnny313 wrote: | > _Here's some advice as a jaded start-up veteran: business | models and investment terms are kind of the only thing that | matter. Even if you're a lowly designer or engineer, you must | understand what your company needs to do to be sustainable._ | | This is a key observation. Every incredible team and | inspirational idea eventually has to make the unit economics | work. The longer it takes for a leadership team to realize this | and prioritize it, the more difficult it is for people (ICs and | managers) to internalize the changes that need to be made. Worst | of all is when the shift happens because runway is getting short, | and "get rich quick" projects become the focus instead of | building a good product. | | > _...you must understand what your company needs to do to be | sustainable. It very likely is different from what they're doing | now, and may come with unexpected ethical compromises._ | | This sounds like a difficult situation, but is certainly | something people should think about. Things can get weird when a | company is running out of money. | Brystephor wrote: | I interviewed at MapBox within the past year. The team I was | interviewing with gave a pretty bad outlook. Essentially it was | everyone had left and they're trying to keep the lights on until | they can hire enough to do new work. | | To be clear, I did receive an offer and passed. | xyzzy4747 wrote: | In my opinion you're hired somewhere to work there and be | productive, not to unionize. Workers who join companies and then | try to subvert the entire system are a cancer to the org. | toomuchtodo wrote: | You are free to not work at unionized orgs, and also vote no | when a vote is scheduled to unionize. | | Unionization is how employees get a seat at the table and a say | in the business they contribute their labor to, labor without | which the business could not exist. Comp and benefits are only | a component why organizing is important, in my opinion. | nightski wrote: | Honestly I've had plenty of influence at the various | workplaces I've been a part of. If a company is so | dysfunctional it doesn't even take what employees are saying | into account then I'm not convinced a union would help. Do | you have concrete examples of unions succeeding in software? | PuppyTailWags wrote: | Didn't the kickstarter folks successfully unionize to ban | monitoring software and no CoL downgrades in pay? | elil17 wrote: | Why does it have to be software-specific? It's a new-ish | field and American unions have been pretty disadvantaged | over the last few decades due to an increasingly | conservative judiciary and some nasty anti-union lawyers. | But you can't just ignore that unions got us weekends, | OSHA, and 8 hour days. Now there is enough wealth in | society to support three day weekends, and people are ready | to fight to distribute that wealth fairly. Why shouldn't | they? | nightski wrote: | Because as far as I know traditionally unions have | existed in jobs where humans are basically robots | (manufacturing, etc...). These jobs can be dangerous and | also each worker is very easily replaceable giving the | employer a huge upper hand. | | This is not the case in software at all. Skill levels can | vary dramatically and the more experience you have with | your company often the more valuable and harder to | replace you become. Software developers are expensive, | especially bad hires. This puts them in an advantageous | position. In sum we are - In demand, scarce, hard (or at | least expensive) to replace (skill & domain knowledge | vary considerably). The exact opposite of what a union | fixes. | roguecoder wrote: | That's a pretty new development, and not necessarily | true. Screen writing is pretty obviously creative, | collaborative work, and they've been represented by a | professional guild since 1933. | | I think it is more common for the umbrella union orgs to | focus on industries either with high barriers to entry | (like nursing) or huge employers, because they are going | company-by-company & it's just more efficient. On the | opposite end of the spectrum, trade unions are more | likely to serve people who change jobs ever couple of | years and where most of the learning happens on the job. | They tend to be run by & for people actually in the | profession and can cross company boundaries. | | Trade guilds will do things like specify minimum wages, | but most of their members end up paid more than that. | They'll specify minimum safety standards, but also | support people on specific job sites that want or need | additional protection to make that particular job safe. | It isn't the same kind of one-size-fits-all approach you | may be used to from Detroit auto plants. | | There are advantages for employers too: they know that | people in the guild are held to certain professional | standards, for example. When retirement programs or | health care are managed through the guild, workers can | take the benefits with them to their next job, and small | employers don't get taken for a ride. And employers can | benefit from the steady influx of newly-trained workers | who have been taught up to the standards the trade feels | are important to meet. | | Just look at the people in this thread who think it is | "drastic" to have a lawyer look at our employment | contracts: we may have individual leverage, but we aren't | necessarily able to use it to make our working conditions | better, or even to ensure the software we build is | reliable and safe. | [deleted] | slively wrote: | To say this person joined and then tried to subvert is a pretty | dishonest reading of this story. They worked on something for | 12 years and I'm sure there were many others similarly | invested. To spend such a significant portion of your life on | something and have basically no input on how it's run, | directed, etc... is not a good system. In my opinion the people | forming the union had much more invested in this company than | the people that just invested money. I'd say the handful of | people that insist on complete control for having invested | money are a cancer to the org and society at large. | roguecoder wrote: | There is a good chunk research indicating that when employees | share governance, it has a mild positive effect on | productivity & firm survival: | https://voxeu.org/article/worker-representation-worker- | welfa... | | There are many short term pressures on executives and finance | people. Sharing power with the people their decisions affect | leads to better outcomes for the business than when they use | their power over workers for short term gain. | xyzzy4747 wrote: | On the contrary I think it's a good system. If they want to | control the company they can buy 51% of the shares. Those | shares are valuable for a reason. | whimsicalism wrote: | If management doesn't want to negotiate with a majority of | workers, they are free to pick a different career path and | leave it to other professional managers. | slively wrote: | If the solution to a problem is have lots of money, it's a | solution for only a tiny portion of people, and not | generally applicable. | xyzzy4747 wrote: | Anyone can make their own company and their own shares | and it's practically free other than registration costs. | The people with the shares get to set all the rules. | That's generally how it works. Otherwise the shares would | be worthless. | slively wrote: | You are sidestepping a massive amount of factors that | allows somebody to create their own business. Even then, | a company grows on the backs of its employees, and there | quickly comes a time when a single person should not have | complete control because it's not just theirs anymore. | | I own shares in public companies and have basically zero | say in how they operate and those shares are worth quite | a bit. | | At this point it's clear these arguments are flippant and | not serious. I hope one day you can have a perspective on | these issues that is not so shallow. They are important | and you also should have a say in your workplace. Our | voices matter. | xyzzy4747 wrote: | Anyone who is willing can create a business, especially a | software one that has no upfront costs, and the owner | usually does most of the work to get it off the ground. | The owner gets complete say in how it's run until they | choose to relinquish or sell control or structure it | otherwise. | Dylan16807 wrote: | A company is a group effort and people can quit whenever | they want. The owner doesn't have complete say and | shouldn't have complete say, and it's good for employees | to talk to each other so that they can use their say | together. | pmyteh wrote: | The shares give you a claim on the profits. The rules are | a combination of the corporate bylaws and the law. The | latter does not let owners set all the rules: it imposes | health and safety restrictions, taxes, and (yes!) | unionisation rules. | | The people who make the _laws_ get to set all the rules. | The shares are valuable anyway, because an economic | interest in a profit making entity is valuable whether | you have perfect control or not. | mikkergp wrote: | One way conceptualize many companies is that they're just the | id of senior execs measuring their genitalia against one other, | why shouldn't workers get to participate? | xyzzy4747 wrote: | The workers can make their own company if the terms of their | employment don't make them happy. | roguecoder wrote: | Or they can organize, as is their legal right, and | renegotiate those terms together. | | Even if you aren't unionized, it is your right to get | together with your coworkers & advocate for better working | conditions. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Your belief system isn't congruent with US labor law. Why | leave when you can make your existing job better? | | Your other comment indicates they should have to amass 51% | of company shares. Ridiculous. Their ability to organize | and vote to do so comes from their labor rights, and is | precisely why they don't require capital (per labor law) to | have a say. | | Businesses can be built without capital. They cannot be | built without labor. | | https://www.laborlab.us/the_right_to_unionize | mikkergp wrote: | Again they could, but they would not be following the | example set by leadership. | whimsicalism wrote: | In my opinion, if you are starting a company in the US, you're | supposed to follow labor law. Founders who create a company and | then try to ignore the rules they signed up for are a cancer to | society. | Apocryphon wrote: | That employee had been at the company for a dozen years, it's | in the very title of the article. | danpalmer wrote: | I agree that union organisation work is not _work_, it's not | what people are paid to do, and it should therefore be done on | personal time. | | However, employers are in a position of significant power over | their employees, and unions represent a way to balance that | power. I think this is a broadly positive thing that I think | employees should be in favour of, and that I think the best | employers would also be in favour of. | roguecoder wrote: | IANAL, but my understanding is that it is illegal to treat | unionizing differently than other social activities. If a | company wants to ban unionizing on company time, they have to | ban all non-work related socializing. If people are allowed | to talk about movies & video games, they are also allowed to | talk about unions. | draw_down wrote: | elil17 wrote: | God forbid someone would want have a symmetric bargaining | relationship between a single workforce and a single employer. | draw_down wrote: | The only thing they actually mention _doing_ at the company | during all that time was the union drive. | | Did they create products? Features? Internal tools? Design | guides/system? Any actual work? Or just agitating for a union | that their coworkers clearly did not want? | incanus77 wrote: | Yes, _major_ contributor who touched many parts of the company | 's core technology. | | Source: I overlapped with them for the first 7 of those 12 | years, back to the <20 employee days. | awhitty wrote: | Saman worked on many things at Mapbox, most notably to me is | the interface for Studio [0], which continues to be an | impressive expression of a really advanced set of features for | map design. He also explicitly mentioned a stint as an | engineering manager at the company in the post- maybe you | didn't catch that? Or maybe you don't consider management to be | doing "actual work"? If you think the latter, maybe consider | organizing at your own workplace? | | [0] https://blog.mapbox.com/behind-mapbox-studios-new- | look-874c1... | mikl wrote: | > _Over the next few years, Mapbox tried to find success in a | variety of industries: journalism, social media, travel, ect. We | never hit numbers that were big enough for our investors. In the | process, we abandoned our focus on Open Source and Open data. | Then, as is the case with many mapping companies, Mapbox shifted | focus to the auto industry. My fear of loss of control fully | materialized at this point. I'm a lifelong bicycle commuter, and | I think cars are unequivocally bad._ | | I wish people better understood what taking VC money means: | trading control for money. While employees might _feel_ the | company is still theirs, that's only true to the extent that they | hold majority control of the board of directors. | | It's certainly possible to take VC money and keep your original | vision intact. But only if your original vision works well enough | to keep your shareholders happy. Failing that, the board will | push management to compromise with the ideals as much as needed | to get a return on investment. | brailsafe wrote: | Employees should never feel like the company is theirs. Unless | you have a real seat at the table, you should assume you have | no influence over the business. That's what being an employee | is (with no actual shares). You give up the risk by being an | employee, and your only negotiating power is leaving. | roguecoder wrote: | That sounds like you feel pretty helpless. Personally, I find | that I have numerous avenues of negotiating power, even | without unionization: | | 1. Do I recommend the company to my network? I can make it a | lot cheaper or more expensive to hire. | | 2. How do I spend my time? All my technical choices will make | certain changes easier down the line, and others harder. I | work hard to understand the business context & help those | choices serve our shared goals, but the emphasis there can be | on "shared". | | 3. How much do I streamline my own work? I can work | efficiently, or I can wait for that build to finish and that | PR to be approved and merged before I move on to the next | thing. This can be a particularly effective way to incentive | investment in a platform team & build tools, if I'm not | allowed to just fix them myself. | | 4. What do I collaborate on with my coworkers? We can pick | priorities we care about, and negotiate together for specific | improvements. I've gotten more vacation time, better | computers, bigger screens, paid on-calls and time to fix bugs | all just by talking with people about what's hard about our | work. | | 5. Insisting on pushing improvements to open source software | upstream if we are going to use the libraries at all. The | company could decide it wants to write everything entirely in | house, but as long as we are using open source software I | personally only make changes to it that we are going to push | back to the community. | | And I am sure there are more: those are just the ones I've | used recently. | secondcoming wrote: | It also means getting your monthly payslip. Not a minor thing. | julianeon wrote: | I sort of disagree - and I think most VC's would too. | | The point of VC funding is not to pay salaries, really. If | you squint it seems close enough, but it sets a terrible | precedent that most VC's wouldn't want: looking at venture | funding as how the company pays its bills. That's a natural | way to read your statement - but also counterproductive & | undesirable. | | The point of VC funding is to take a profitable business and | allow it to scale. Ideally the company could turn $1 into | $1.25, before funding; that is, ideally it's making money. It | should be able to pay _some_ bills. | | The VC funding is helping it to make more money, faster, and | shortening the loop from sales -> payment -> expansion. It's | helping it to leapfrog its competitors. That's what that | money should be doing. | | But what if it hasn't found product-market fit? Well, it's | still not good to look at the VC's as "where our money comes | from." That source is supposed to be customers, and you never | want the focus to stray too far from there. | blowski wrote: | > The point of VC funding is to take a profitable business | and allow it to scale. | | There's a heck of a lot of VC money funding only the dream | of a profitable business. | joecot wrote: | Once a company takes VC funding or a buyout, or makes an IPO, | any ethical promise they've ever made is null and void. Later | when choices are made outside of their control, they wash their | hands and say it's not their fault. But the founders break | those promises at the time they take that money, when they | willingly gave up their control. And the point of VC funding is | always a buyout later, where all founder control will be lost | anyway. | | Once you take VC, the goal of the company is never to make the | world better or empower their employees. The goal is now solely | to make money, by any means it can. The funders will allow you | to do that ethically, at first. When you're not making their | return as fast as they'd like, which you never will, the ethics | go out the window. | sbussard wrote: | Key takeaway: investors ruin startups. | | It's that belief that still keeps me from going that route even | while working through a regular career for several years. If the | project succeeds, well you've already sold it to the people who | ru(i)n the world. Bootstrapping is so expensive but you diversify | power in tech. Don't sell out! | thinkingemote wrote: | There are some mapbox employees replying to comments here. I | think some appear to be defensive of their employer, but if there | are some who are in agreement with the article, I can't tell. | | It's hard to know one way or the other. Might be nice for | employees to identify themselves. | | Personally I was intrigued with the formation of the union and | knew that many of their employees were quite liberal: | | The company evolved from something called Development Seed - | basically a progressive humanitarian and development focused | company. It is different from most SV companies. And based on | open source and open data. Them stopping key open source projects | and charging for use of just their mapping JS library (not data | usage, any use of the code anywhere) was shocking. | | I'd love to hear from an original principled humanitarian | employee on what happened to the company and/or them. Maybe money | is better. Maybe they left? | | We don't hear much about the union at all. We assume from the | usual SV unions that it was all about identity, inclusion and | diversity but perhaps it was more about this conflict of their | humanitarian roots and money. | tarkin2 wrote: | It sounded like unionisation was an attempt at pushing back the | ills of VC funding, especially taking back some control of the | company's direction, rather than concentrating on fairer pay and | working conditions. I support unions but I'm not sure I support | them controlling the direction of the company: most of the time | the business people, frankly, know best about profitability. | | The whole story reinforced the idea that if you build a company | with value but no profits eventually you either abandon it as a | business or give control to VCs, and if you had any emotional or | political investment in the company you will be disappointed. | jenny91 wrote: | Maybe there is a middle ground? Surely VCs will fight tooth- | and-nail against it since it's clearly taking away control (and | some ability to extract profit) from them. | | For instance in some countries with stronger unions and better | labor conditions the union often has a board seat and so can | advocate and don't have by any means control over the directio | of the company. | tarkin2 wrote: | Yeah definitely. My comment came from my understanding of | what the author wanted the union to do rather than how unions | could operate. | | As an aside, I'm slightly skeptical about unions in the US. | The US's economic model seems to be based around innovation | and unions arguably make making decisions slower and more | difficult. | | If you look at Germany's economic model, one with very strong | employee protection, it seems largely based on pre existing | industries. Yet the US's seems more based on innovation and | failing fast. And German political culture seems more | consensual compared to US political culture. | | Of course, this doesn't mean I don't think unions are | possible or a good idea in the US--for certain industries I | think they could alleviate the US's problems--but I just | doubt they'll readily get government backing, support or | favorable legislation in the short term. | jenny91 wrote: | I agree, too strict labor regulations around e.g. | firing/letting employess go certainly would hinder some of | the innovation hapening in the US and especially tech. | Though maybe there is a flavor of unions that recognizes | this and pushes for other things e.g. proper treatment of | contractors, or osme slight input in direction, etc? | | I think the US is screwed for unions mostly because to | unionize you basically have to join one of the existing | huge unions none of which are run very democratically or | transparently; as well as the huge anti-union sentiment and | misrepresentation of what unions could be. But those things | are nigh impossible to change... | nraynaud wrote: | there is this deeply unsettling thing about innovation: | it's historically been driven by people who did not need | to work and had free time to explore. | | That means that innovators probably come with slackers, | because they are secure in their standing. | pm90 wrote: | Im not sure that "Unions slow innovation" is true. | | As a counter: in tech, its the workers that generate a | significant amount of value by writing software and | building products. Giving them more control and a seat at | the table can be useful in encouraging long term | investments in lieu of extreme short term thinking that VCs | typically promote. | tschellenbach wrote: | VC funding enables the high salaries in tech. You can definitely | be bootstrapped and work 4 days a week, you'll just have a hard | time earning your current salary. | fny wrote: | Once all of this unwinds, tech pay is going to get really ugly. | mulligan wrote: | VC funding enables the high salaries in _startups_ and that is | because those startups are competing for talent against high | margin, highly profitable other companies which can afford to | pay very well. | Nextgrid wrote: | Those startups are competing with other startups and | ultimately VC money. | | There's significantly more tech talent out there than the | business problems that can be solved profitably with said | talent. | | When the VC money runs out and the "growth & engagement" | engineering playgrounds close up shop we're going to see a | massive readjustment. We're in the beginning of it now. | jamiequint wrote: | prescriptivist wrote: | A lot of negative sentiment about Mapbox in this thread. I have | been prototyping a (native) app powered by Mapbox -- would it be | a bad idea to hitch oneself to their ecosystem? | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | Don't hitch yourself irrevocably to their SaaS. Make sure that, | if your app becomes successful, you can swap out for Maplibre | (the open-source fork of Mapbox GL) and an alternative provider | such as Thunderforest, Geofabrik, Stadia or Maptiler. Mapbox | have a lot going for them, but your app's success shouldn't be | dependent on one company's tariff. | iamleppert wrote: | Blame your leadership for creating such a bloated company that | the only thing to satiate investors was to sell out completely to | auto companies. I interviewed at Mapbox at one time, a ridiculous | 3-day interview at their SF office where lots of PM's and | managers were buzzing around hosting meetings, giving the | perception of getting stuff done when in fact it was even clear | to me, an outsider, that nothing was being accomplished. I found | the product to be lacking and the team to be outsized for the | quality and depth of the product. The core business appeared very | weak and on VC life-support. | urschrei wrote: | I can't speak to the organizational problems you saw, but when | you consider the quality of software that Mapbox was producing | before the failed union drive - Mapbox GL JS, Rasterio, Shapely | - what you're saying is nonsensical. The latter two libraries | have of course left Mapbox, along with their creator, and | continue to see high-quality new features, but Mapbox GL JS is | still so much better than anything else that I continue to use | and pay for it, even though my friends and acquaintances were | the people who quit after Mapbox management torpedoed the union | drive (note: I'm relying on the current NLRB complaint against | Mapbox here: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/20-CA-283393) and I hope | that one day I'll have an alternative. | urschrei wrote: | Oh and I forgot to add that Vladimir Agafonkin and Morgan | Herlocker's JS libraries (earcut, rbush, delaunator, turf, | polylabel) have dragged state of the art spatial analysis | into the browser to an extent that won't be equalled again in | the foreseeable future. Just a ridiculously deep bench. | deadmansshoes wrote: | Shapely was around long before Mapbox, and Rasterio too. Both | are based on stalwarts of the open source geospatial world - | GEOS and GDAL. | | Vector tiles, Mapbox GL, and Mapbox styling, and numerous | other libraries however did grow out of Mapbox - the amount | of geospatial developer talent they hoovered up must have | made it pretty amazing to work at for a time. | urschrei wrote: | I am not claiming otherwise, having been a Shapely user | since...2012? I'm talking about the work done by Sean et al | while they were at Mapbox. | trgn wrote: | Mapbox has had an incredible influence on geo software | development for the web. | | Hats off to everybody who made it happen. | mourner wrote: | With this much saltiness, it's not hard to guess the result of | that interview :) | chipotle_coyote wrote: | It's possible to interview at a company and decide that it's | not for you, and frankly I wish I'd done that more often over | the years. I used to be more inclined to ignore the little | voice saying "aren't these warning signs?", accepted the | offer anyway, and quickly realized the little voice had | absolutely been right. | ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 wrote: | > where lots of PM's and managers were buzzing around hosting | meetings, giving the perception of getting stuff done when in | fact it was even clear to me, an outsider, that nothing was | being accomplished | | How could you possibly come to this conclusion while on an | interview loop? Did you sit in on all these meetings? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-20 23:00 UTC)