I guess it isn’t that surprising. I bet the developers who write the software included in this distribution would love some of those millions, but being a guy with a brand and opinions is apparently more valuable to the investor class. Consistent with how they think about the workforce at their own companies, anyway.

(I normally read things like this as people paying tribute to the guy running the company getting the money, or wanting to be perceived as in favor of that company’s viewpoints. I don’t understand why anyone would want to pay tribute to DHH. Ignoring the ick, he’s not that important or powerful. There are a lot of SWEs who don’t know who he is, let alone the general public)

I don’t have a problem believing it. They have an infinite money supply (to date), the negative consequences of this are borne by other people, and they probably have plenty of leadership from other tech firms who are used to making narrow ROI arguments based on what benefits the company. Easy enough to imagine “hey, let’s unfuck our crawler!” getting dismissed at not a priority.

There are also enough engineers looking for jobs that companies can be picky and only hire the ones who seem agreeable and inoffensive, which reinforces the dynamic. “Idealistic” folks accumulate employment gaps that they have to explain or which cause AI ATS systems to auto reject their application before a human ever sees it, meanwhile management and hiring panels become increasingly corporate and less tolerant of difference because that’s who gets hired.

I don’t disagree with a lot of the advice here as a practical thing (e.g., having a scrubbed public image online, assuming that someone evaluating your job application will research you), but I also remember a time when you didn’t have to do that to work in the industry. A lot of the smartest, most creative folks in my CS program were also outspoken on (e.g.) privacy or civil rights in ways that could be tied to their real name, and it makes me kind of sad to think that they’d probably have to hide that today if they wanted to get hired as a new grad.