Comment by csb6
11 hours ago
> Over the last few months, I’ve been reflecting deeply on the myriad ways in which AI is changing the world, and how it might change the world in the future. And I came to the conclusion that it’s vitally important that we navigate this strange adolescence of technology well, and that I should contribute to this cause more directly than I ever could as the CEO of Kandra Labs.
The compensation for a senior developer at Anthropic is also certainly much better than a FOSS nonprofit - I'm sure that had nothing to do with his reasoning.
Sad to see yet another longtime open source developer begin working for AI companies that disregard free software licenses for their training and enable the deluge of low quality AI pull requests that waste maintainers' time.
I worked in the FOSS space for roughly half a decade. Comments like this are easy to make and also add absolutely no value whatsoever. If you actually feel strongly about it, do the work yourself, no one is stopping you.
They are doing work, they're advocating for what they believe in. Consumers of FOSS deserve to have a voice too.
If you see complaining on forums and maintaining software as contributing the same kind of value, then oh boy do I have an enterprise-grade comment thread to sell you.
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It's easy to advocate for what you believe in by posting comments on HN. It's harder to advocate for what you believe in by taking a low-paying job in a FOSS company, which they presumably didn't do.
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I think the op was suggesting the contribute to FOSS rather than shaming people who have contributed greatly for not contributing more.
I have no qualms with him deciding to step away from developing Zulip or setting up a foundation. My qualms are with his choice to work for an AI company when someone of his experience could easily have found a job working somewhere else. Public figures should be subject to criticism of their ethical choices when they make bad ones.
I've known Tim personally for over a decade. I'm certain that he's not doing this because he wants more money.
> I'm certain that he's not doing this because he wants more money.
There are many reasons to change job. The pay is always one of them (if you don't work for money, it's not called a job, is it?).
> join Anthropic because of its remarkable commitment to the responsible development of AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.
Obviously, it's better to believe that what Anthropic is doing is good for humanity when you decide to go working for them. But it is at the very least debatable.
I was a part of the Zulip project as a contributor and have contributed > 100 commits to `zulip/zulip` and also admire Tim a ton. But, leaving you're life's work to work on "long-term benifit of humanity" at Anthropic doesn't sound right to me. I am guessing Tim isn't going to work on safety research or interpretability side of Anthropic, that's not his expertise. Hence, leaving Zulip to help build anthropic a new software is meh. There are labs who actually care about people and aren't pretentious like Anthropic. Nevertheless, wish him, alya and rest of the team all the best; they are genuinely nice people. I don't know if I'll have interest in sticking to the project anymore though (+ I am not sure about other core member's status like Anders -- that will affect my decision too).
> There are many reasons to change job. The pay is always one of them (if you don't work for money, it's not called a job, is it?).
Not at the same scale as this, but I've seen friends deliberately choose to get paid less, perhaps much less money, because they wanted to do something. Video games for example, does not pay well, but it may be your passion. Banking pays very well, but it's hard to find any significant emotional involvement.
You can probably argue that's what I did, but it's complicated because I'm hard work. I can't stand debt but I also don't like the feeling of not knowing how to spend all the money. I can say that it's surprisingly hard to get people who are hiring you to accept that (a) the number you put in their mandatory "previous salary" box is correct and yet (b) yes you did understand that they have fixed pay scales and can't possibly match that.
Yeah why else would a person choose to join an AI company right before an IPO worth trillions, almost guaranteeing any employer there to capture a massive multi-generational wealth defining bag, what €ould ₿¢ th¢ ₹ea$on I wonder?
If he thinks working for Anthropic is a good "cause" to devote his time to then that is also very disappointing. That would make him either very delusional as to the effects of Anthropic's work or naive in what he can achieve as their employee.