CEO of Zomato doesn't believe in contributing to open source, are they serious? | Hacker News Reader

CEO of Zomato doesn't believe in contributing to open source, are they serious?

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Original Prompt:

Tech Team related. Why do you guys have to enforce 8.30am to 8pm sort of timing? Do you really expect a good developer to be able to be in the zone for 12 hours straight? I know there's no strict stay till 8pm rule, maybe even there is. But it is clearly frowned upon if a guy regularly leaves early.

Why do you guys not use team communication tools? People in tech team do not know what all is being worked on inside zomato itself. Agreed, one guy would have his own task to deal with but awareness of what all is going on at least in the tech team helps in increasing the feeling of being connected with the team.

The culture in tech team is toxic. Contributing to open source isn't even considered. In office hackathons, people are expected to work on zomato related things only. How do you expect great developers to want to work in such environment? Great developers almost always tend to have great side projects. With the kind of timings and environment that is being provided, this is simply not possible while being in Zomato tech team.

For me his response to contributing to Open Source (we don't have the spare developer resources) is more acceptable than his response to the concerns about employees being expected to work 12 hours a day ("Come talk to me in person", "we don't force anyone to work here.")

His comment doesn't imply that he doesn't believe in contributing, he just says that they don't have resources for it (currently). I bet the situation is same for many startups, which struggle in finding profitability.

Agreed. Most of the vitriol in the responses focus on the tone of the attitude of "If you don't like our conditions, you don't belong in the tech team and should leave." There's little of note here wrt. open source.

I agree, for the most part. Not every setup can be open sourced, and not everybody has the capacity to contribute frequently. I lead a small tech team of 4, and we are usually pretty busy. When we're using an open-source tool that we find a bug in or need additional functionality for, I do encourage the team to submit a pull request to the source so the world at large can benefit. At this stage in our company's growth, though, it's not realistic for us to dedicate large chunks of time to random open-source projects.

Also recommended reading:

https://np.reddit.com/r/india/comments/2yr7py/to_mr_deepinde...

tl;dr: he just lot many Zomato customers by doing this AMA.

Is time to contribute to open-source really a factor when deciding on place of employment? Seems overly idealistic and unreasonable for start-ups given the serious budget and time restrictions.

I don't understand the outrage in the submission's title.

beg your pardon, but they aren't startup anymore.(5 years above)

The real issue is this guy talking like people should be grateful for employment and that objections to crazy work hours are attitude problems. I don't know if this is a cultural thing, but I found that more off putting than that he lacks the human resources to contribute to OSS.

    [–]IndianDude-51
    How the baby girl?
    [–]deepigoyal[S]
    Who?
    [–]IndianDude-51
    Your daughter.
    [–]deepigoyal[S]
    Who?
    [–]isachinm
    Your wife's daughter.
    [–]deepigoyal[S]
    Who?

Fake account alert.

Reddit AMAs generally have verifications - https://twitter.com/redditindia/status/575475976454336512

Now that's what call as "Backfire". His Reddit AMA is filled with comments on this single comment about open source.

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