Wednesday, September 30th, 2020
I just watched Roger's latest interview on YouTube, and I have some thoughts. In fact, I have many thoughts, but I'll just limit it to three. So this is going to be a trilogy, I suppose. Tonight I'd like to highlight one segment from the interview, and I want you to tell me in the comments what you think.
Let me add that the entire interview is worth a listen, and Omar is a fantastic interviewer. The crypto community is lucky to have people like Omar Bham and Joel Valenzuela asking these questions and educating their audiences who might not be too familiar with Bitcoin Cash.
In the clip I've pasted below, a viewer asks Roger about the future of BCH development funding. He wants to know is it going to be through donations, and if not, are there any other plans to fund development since it's so expensive?
But rather than answer the question being asked, Roger talks about how Amaury is always complaining about funding but he somehow just hired away one of his best developers:
"They literally successfully hired away one of Bitcoin.com's best developers there, and we have lots of fantastic developers but they hired away one of our guys recently who's going to leave us here in another 48 hours or something. This month is his last day. To go and work at ABC. So this is the guy that made gifts.bitcoin.com. He's behind that. If you've used the dividend payment tool. He's behind that. He's a guy that's done a lot of amazing things, and this is an example of ABC siphoning away talented people building on top of businesses that earn money within Bitcoin Cash's ecosystem, to go on to work on things that aren't earning money within Bitcoin Cash's ecosystem. I think that's a horrible misallocation of resources there, and I'm really disappointed to see Amaury busy doing that."
"Did you try to do a counter offer at all, or did you just say alright?"
"No we talked about it a bit too, and his view, and I think this is very common with software developers. I like the guy, I'm not going to give away his first name here. I really like the guy, I like him a lot, but i think he's a better software developer than a business developer. And from his point of view, he thinks that Bitcoin Cash has a better shot at becoming money for the world if there's this IFP to pay for developers to do more stuff, and I think he's overlooking the fact that it's going to shatter the community and a bunch of big holders are basically just going to say alright, see you later."
I know I'm probably not Roger's favorite person, but that doesn't mean I wish him any ill will. What I do wish, however, is that he would consider what his former employee said. Roger clearly likes the guy, and obviously considers him to be highly intelligent and all I know is if I worked with someone I thought was super sharp and we disagreed on something, I'd at least consider the possibility that I'm the one that's wrong. Roger has admitted to being wrong in the past, couldn't he be wrong again? This is what Roger said about the guy that built gifts.bitcoin.com and the SLP dividend payment tool:
"He thinks that Bitcoin Cash has a better shot at becoming money for the world if there's this IFP to pay for developers to do more stuff."
In conclusion, if Roger's so disappointed by the guy leaving, he could have always offered him more money to stay. Clearly ABC is using its resources to act in its best interest. The employee who switched to ABC is obviously doing what he thinks is in his best interest. Roger, are you 100% sure you're doing what's in your best interest?
Another reading would be that "ideologically driven" can just be a marketing line to pay below market rate ("You know, everyone here is super dedicated to bring p2p cash to the world, if you believe that you definitely will want to work here.