Brad Fitzpatrick ([info]bradfitz) wrote in [info]news,
@ 2001-11-04 14:43:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Good news!
We've hired our first full-time employee, [info]avva! (nobody else is full time, not even myself....)

Anatoly will be helping with programming. He's already done a lot work on LiveJournal in the past but his real job got in the way. Now he's done with that job and will be hackin' for us.

The main thing Anatoly will be doing first is internationalizing the site. Speaking 3 languages, I don't think there's a better person for the job. Currently we don't understand or support any types of text encodings ... we treat everything as bytes, which is terrible. Anatoly will be reworking everything to translate to/from Unicode as necessary when posting/viewing. This'll let you view friend pages correctly when people are posting in multiple encodings but more important, it'll let us do things like export XML correctly. (Right now it's impossible to generate proper XML without knowing the source data's encoding.)

In addition to that big project, Anatoly will be taking a share of both my fun to-do items and boring to-do items so more gets done and I'm not so stressed.

More news later....

(Post a new comment)


[info]elfy
2001-11-04 02:58 pm UTC (link)
which languages other then english will come first?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]bradfitz
2001-11-04 03:10 pm UTC (link)
Really it's the infrastructure to support any language. Then all languages should come pretty much at the same time.

A previous site I made had active translators for 17 languages. Except our i18n support wasn't as deep as I'd like with LJ, hence the reason LJ isn't translated yet. We need better infrastructure.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]visions
2001-11-04 03:19 pm UTC (link)
freevote did active language translation (like babelfish style)? or did it just store the encodings for the other languages?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]bradfitz
2001-11-04 03:33 pm UTC (link)
Like gettext, almost.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]dormando
2001-11-04 03:04 pm UTC (link)
Is he going to be doing sysadmin stuff too, or just code work? 'cause if the code load were a lot lower, my sysadmin duities would be a lot simpler.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]visions
2001-11-04 03:17 pm UTC (link)
since you were hired for sysadmin work.. it would seem like that should be more of your focus...

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]dormando
2001-11-04 03:23 pm UTC (link)
if we have more time to go back and make the code more robust, my job gets easier.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]visions
2001-11-04 03:29 pm UTC (link)
yeah, stable code does wonders for sysadmins. i know exactly where you are coming from. back when i worked for ncsa they were always just dealing with admin issues instead of fixing the problems that caused the headaches. then a few of us got the bright idea to fix the issues with kerberos that were causing the headaches... and once those were fixed... there was no longer such a need for people to admin the machines, and some of the people were laid off... or jobs totally changed from admin to coding.

hopefully lj will reach a point that the site admins itself, and then the monotony of admin work could be forgotten and people could work on fun stuff... or further automation.

anyway, i wish you the best with whichever way the dice rolls on this.

as an aside, how does lj plan on handling paying someone that is not a citizen of the US? aren't there issues with that?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]bradfitz
2001-11-04 03:32 pm UTC (link)
There are forms and such. It's not too complicated.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]visions
2001-11-04 03:43 pm UTC (link)
ah. i thought it was more complicated in that due to tax laws and such... and i thought there was some sort of tarrif type tax when you paid an employee out of the US (due to economic differences in wages and such).

i dunno though, i've never been paid by a company in another nation.. so... :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]bradfitz
2001-11-04 03:46 pm UTC (link)
FreeVote employed a non-US citizen before, and I've been on the other side, working for a German company once ...

I forget all the details, but we're looking into it again.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]visions
2001-11-04 03:49 pm UTC (link)
ah. werd. just dont miss a step. the irs is bitchy, a friend of mine that was contracting in the bahamas got audited and it took him months to come up with everything they wanted.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]bradfitz
2001-11-04 03:54 pm UTC (link)
All our books/records be in order, yo. :P

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]edmcbride
2001-11-04 03:33 pm UTC (link)
Congrats on the new hire! good luck to you avva!

(Reply to this)


[info]myth
2001-11-04 03:54 pm UTC (link)
Thanks for addressing the internationalization issue ... it just goes to prove that you admin folks do, in fact, have some foresight. :)

(Reply to this)


[info]foobar
2001-11-04 04:45 pm UTC (link)
(nobody else is full time, not even myself....)

Um... doesn't [info]dormando work around 80 or 90 hours a week? I can't remember any week recently where he hasn't put in at least 40 hours a week, especially with all of the things that've been breaking recently.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]dormando
2001-11-04 05:05 pm UTC (link)
I kind of stopped putting in all of those hours.

although, if I'm going to be official part time, I should probably actually budget my time and work part time.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re:
[info]foobar
2001-11-04 05:14 pm UTC (link)
Makes sense, but if you only worked 20 hours a week consistently, LJ'd probably fall apart, or Brad and the rest would have to kick in a lot more effort most of the time.

Also, you have to remember, all of those times you rush in to fix things, spend time on the mailing list, look through code, even if you aren't actively on "work time" you're still working. I'm willing to bet most weeks you still pull well over full-time hours.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]killer69
2001-11-04 11:39 pm UTC (link)
I dig.

(Reply to this)

Congratulations!!
[info]sova
2001-11-05 03:24 am UTC (link)
Brad, this is probably the best decision you've made after actually deciding to create LJ. Anatoly is the most talented person I've ever met, I think, both in depth and diversity. He'll do miracles to LJ, I'm sure.

(Reply to this)


[info]idigital
2001-11-05 06:26 am UTC (link)
Yea', nice one Brad. And congratulations, Anatoly :)

(Reply to this)


[info]niko
2001-11-05 04:20 pm UTC (link)
<mr_burns>Excellent.</mr_burns>

(Reply to this)


[info]gaal
2001-11-08 02:14 pm UTC (link)
A full-time moose!

You're gonna do well, I'm sure.

(Reply to this)


[info]lalenalefay
2001-11-20 03:26 pm UTC (link)
YAY!!

(Reply to this)

(Reply from suspended user)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…