Xobni Blog

There are some strange sentiments in the announcement on http://www.xobni.com/blog/2008/07/23/xobni-is-growing-adding-technical-teeth-and-saying-goodbye-to-a-good-friend/

"And while we are sad to see Gabor go, his departure is a big opportunity for Xobni." It's spin to present the loss of a technical founder as an opportunity. The fact that they couldn't keep him in a CTO role, distinct from a VP of Engineering role, speaks volumes. And it's an insult to characterize it as an "opportunity."

The blog entry goes on to list requirements for the new VP "The right person will:

champion our engineering ethos, [CTO]
deliver a fantastic product, [product manager]
on-time. [product manager]
be an able manager [vp engineering]
who excels at rapid company growth. [vp engineering]
know how to ship desktop software [product manager]
know how to add or remove process [CEO]

This is probably at least three people: a VP of engineering, a CTO, and a product manager. And I think the last is more properly the province of the CEO. Their detailed position description at http://www.scribd.com/doc/4062717/Xobni-VP-Engineering has this sentence:
"they must contribute as an architect, but still get their hands dirty coding." Those skills don't normally come in a package with an excellent manager who understands process and rapid company growth. This is the VP Eng vs. CTO split in a rapidly growing technology driven company.

See below a list of OSS from YC companies.

This is clearly not the only way of giving back to the community. What about all the contributions they make to the projects they use. I believe scribd has stretched rails to limits beyond any other site and has made contributions from it. Adam from heroku just discussed a patch he submitted to rails too. The list goes on, I'm sure.

Also, you sound like you have used iPaper, a free service provided by Scribd. Perhaps you should consider an amicable request for an open version of iPaper (since that is obviously why you made this post) rather than calling YC companies parasites.
On a related note, I would be interested to hear what parts of your company's product you have opened.

I'll build a list:

http://blog.reddit.com/2008/06/reddit-goes-open-source.html

http://portal.insoshi.com/

http://ycombinator.com/seriesaa.html

http://www.webmin.com/index8.html

http://opensource.heroku.com/

http://trac.youos.com/

http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=linux

http://www.xobni.com/about/opensource

http://appjet.com/app/150996096/source

antirez - your points are valid. This page is intended to show that Xobni is a fun place to work. Let me address 1-4.

1. I can't say exactly what we're doing at Xobni yet except for "We're making email suck less" :-) The work here is at the intersection of Machine Learning, NLP, systems programming, and UI stuff.

2. The salaries we offer are very competitive - more than at most competitors. We want people to be happy and not have to worry about money in SF (an expensive city).

3. San Francisco is beautiful. From the Xobni office, it's 10 meters to shopping, 2 blocks to Union Square, 4 blocks to world-class museums, 30 minutes to the ocean, and 4 hours to skiing. Hard to beat that.

We actually give people three displays (not two).

Sounds good? http://www.xobni.com/jobs.php

Hi there.

Xobni for Gmail is in Beta right now and although it does not do exactly what you are asking, Xobni does have a recommendation engine that does help to solve this pain point. Once you start an email to someone, Xobni will identify and recommend the people you often email with that person - so, although there is no specific list you can select, Xobni takes a lot of the guesswork out for you.

If you are interested in getting into the Xobni for Gmail beta, go here - http://www.xobni.com/waitinglist/gmailbeta/ and enter the following media code for priority access: XOBNI-BRITTON

The idea of tacking your name onto software seems to be gaining ground lately. Until recently, every FaceBook page had "A Mark Zuckerberg production" on the bottom, though he didn't really share the credit with the rest of the team. I guess that makes him much more Roger Waters than Mike Portnoy. The nonprofit I spent much of college working on has a list of all the team members that make it happen (http://www.fictionalley.org/houseelves.html). And Xobni has full bios for everyone on the team (http://www.xobni.com/team).