Google Wave Creator Quits, Joins Facebook
srimadman found an interview with Wave creator Lars Rasmussen where he talks about his recent decision to join Facebook, leaving Google behind. Apparently getting personally pitched by Zuckerberg helped. He says, "I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens,' which is a pretty exciting thing." The article talks about Big vs Small companies, and notes that about 20% of Facebook's staff are former Googlers.
Are you kidding? User privacy (or the lack thereof) is their main revenue stream!
And why would these companies care, when users themselves don't?
Google has the company policy where 10% of every employee's hours are to be spent on projects of their choosing. They're known for providing their employees tons of flexibility to explore new ideas.
Lars is suggesting he is jumping ship to Facebook so he can have the freedom to see what happens. I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with money.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
His brother (the other guy who made google maps) will stay with google. So it seems that relations between the two internet companies, at least at the top, are not as hostile as they often are portrayed.
"Real-time message board for projects."
A few friends of mine have been using Wave for developing a game and game toolset, and its a weird mixture of wiki, message board, and group whiteboard, they usually discuss the latest project milestone on Skype while having running meeting minutes in a Wave. If someone can't make the meeting, they come along later and comment. There's long waves about everything from programming standards, to models and art assets, to release notes.
It's been so damn useful for project development that Google is planning to ship "Wave in a Box" so small teams like ours can deploy it on our own server, even after Google kills official support. And we will, we can't go back to wiki, it seems so damn archaic at this point.
"Joy is contagious," he said, peering into the microscope.
I stopped putting anything of consequence on Facebook (including pictures) over a year ago.
Too late! I've seen the pictures. I don't know who I feel more sorry for, you, your sister, or the dog.
What do you expect when businesses stopped being loyal to their employees? There used to be things like pension plans and long term job security. Now companies might match some portion of your 401k and at a slight downturn in the economy they might lay off hundreds or thousands so that their numbers look a little bit better. If they're willing to toss workers overboard for slight profit, workers are well within reason to toss their company overboard for their own slight profit. Give people a good reason to stay and you'll get loyal employees, otherwise you get what coming to you.