Why Are You Still Working?

Someone asked me yesterday how my new job at Plotly was going. I said, “Well, I think,” and they then asked why I took the job instead of retiring or going back to teaching full-time. Part of my answer was, “I still have a child to put through college,” but the other part was that I hate leaving things half-done. My generation proved that open source software works—that we can create reliable computing infrastructure at scale by giving things away. What we didn’t do was prove we can do this sustainably, i.e., that programmers can make as good a living from being generous as they can from building things that erode privacy, amplify hate, and foster monopolies. What I’m looking forward to most in my new role is helping to figure that out.