news to me

[brainwane]

I am on Bluesky and sometimes I go look at denise 's feed there.

I remembered that a few years ago she had noticed that Tumblr had a particular job opening, and had speculated about what a person in that role might want to do with the platform.

https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3libfgunrhc2q

https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3libfqau4rk2q

I had not realized that she had applied for that job, and that she had done so partly because she is "very bored."

This feels like information other people who use Dreamwidth might like to know. I had not previously understood that the chief executive of this platform is bored with her current job, and that provides me with a perspective I'm a little uncomfortable with.

EDITED 17 FEB TO SAY (as I said below in a comment): I screwed up here. Yeah. I’ll write about my screw-up at more length later, but I want to at least note here that yeah, I really didn't go about this in a way that foregrounded "I have concerns but I want to share them in a way that is overall supportive of the site".

Comments

[jenett]

To put in context, if you read back in her recent feed - she's had some substantial health issues that limit the amount of time sitting up works (especially the last few weeks) again. This obviously can lead to boredom for all sorts of reasons that are not connected to what one does with one's time in better circumstances.

I do not have the brains to find the relevant posts (I believe either in dw_news or dw_biz), but D has talked in the past about how one of the ways they make the DW finances work is that both her job and Mark's for DW are part-time (Mark has another full-time job, and has had for basically the entire project, D's is limited by long-term health issues, and includes the business admin stuff which is necessary but almost entirely invisible to users.)

There are other paid employees, but with specific tasks - partly to make sure there's always a backup for security issues or other urgent needs. (And I think right now also all part time though I might be wrong there.)

And then there's the part about which parts of what could use some time a given person can do: D is not primarily a coder. DW as a project is still fighting a tremendous amount of technical debt, and there is ongoing long-term work about that, but it takes people with a specific set of skills to do some of it. (Especially since some of it involves things that were very specific to LiveJournal or that are no longer in common use.)

Some things, like two factor, I know D's talked (again, one of those two communities) about having both technical issues (figuring out how to integrate with the code) and other factors (what information that would mean DW would need to have about users, whether that information could then be demanded by governments, etc.) that are not just as simple as making the code go.

More importantly, none of that is very new, in terms of structure, from 3 years ago or 5 years ago, or even 8.

[brainwane]

jenett, what proportion of what you have said to me is things you think I did not know already? I respect that you may be trying to provide context for other people who come across this knowing less context. However, I do already know nearly everything you said. And it sounds like you think I am saying: if she is bored, there's coding work she could do. No, I'm not saying that.

There are other paid employees, but with specific tasks - partly to make sure there's always a backup for security issues or other urgent needs. (And I think right now also all part time though I might be wrong there.)

The Staff page does say there is a backup sysadmin on call, yes, and strongly implies he's part-time.

I could say more but I also want to check: are you open to someone criticizing Dreamwidth's business practices, and talking about what the owners could be doing better given their current constraints? If not then of course this line of conversation isn't going to be productive.

For instance: I was indeed already aware that there are long-term health issues that have kept Denise's work availability extremely low for several years, as she has mentioned, for instance, in explaining why the suggestions queue is backlogged. That is a reason I was surprised to see that she had applied for a job that would likely be a full-time job. I could speak further about the boredom stuff and so on, how your reading and mine might differ here, but I only want to do that if you are actually open to me trying to talk in a nuanced way about what strategic decisions Dreamwidth's owners could be making given the difficulties of Denise's availability and (sometimes) boredom.

[jenett]

I was pretty sure you had the context (but didn't know for certain) but did want to give context for other people who might not have it. I should have framed my comments better.

(I am, however, having a not-great time with some of my own chronic stuff, so it absolutely better for me to bow out of this conversation at this point, because I'm not confident I can continue it in a way that's useful. Apologies again for doing badly the first time.)

Wishing you well

[brainwane]

I totally get it and wish you well, with health stuff and more generally.

I also know this whole situation is fraught, given that you and I both know Denise personally. She and I have been friends in the past; I hope we still are, though I know she may be downgrading her opinion of me today.