The Zcash Foundation employee retention concerns

General
#1

Zcash Foundation has lost another great leader. After making this post I learned that her departure was unrelated to Josh’s, which I cited below. Conratulations to Antonie and good luck with your new job!

It was pretty clear why Josh Cincinatti left. Can we discuss some the reasons why the Zcash Foundation keeps losing talent? I see two major problems (which I am now being told are not related to Antonie leaving).

  1. Can the relationship between the Zcash Foundation and ECC (Bootstrap) be improved?
  2. There are public comments from founding scientists behind zk-SNARKs showing clear frustration with transparent transactions dominating the network years after launch with no end to t2t usage in site.

I’m worried that an tension between ZF and Bootstrap combined with an impasse between some important parties on the future of Zcash transparent transactions will lead to more departures. The current environment is likely to scare away job applicants that care the most about privacy by default, specifically because ZF cannot force Bootstrap to cooperate in doing what the community desires (depreciate t addresses).

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#2

Antoine was a fantastic part of the foundation and stepped up to Josh’s job when he left. She didn’t leave due to some philosophical disagreement with the rest of the foundation, she has been with the foundation for years and simply wanted a change of pace.

I don’t appreciate your trying to leverage her departure as some sort of angle to push your own agenda.

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#3

Neither did Josh. His issue was with ECC

That is good to hear and I wish her the best. She will be missed.

I am sorry if you feel that way because I am not trying to leverage the situation. Retention is an important issue in any organization and it is obvious that there are more people that are unhappy with the status quo.

#4

Bullshit. You took Antonies departure (even made it the headline) from the Foundation as a clickbait opportunity to try and highlight a completely different subject you feel passionate about: T address network usage. There is literally zero correlation between the two events.

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#5

Retention is the related issue. I cited examples of problems that may relate to retention. I have not yet found a public statement from her so all I know is what you have just told me.

EDIT: Just found this Congratulations Antonie!

I am glad to hear that Antoine left for another reason and I wish her the best!

#6

I agree that @Tsupportisharmful seems to leverage this unrelated thing to push his own agenda. And I support the deprecation of t-addr eventually.

This one sentence proves the point clearly.

I do think the fact that ECC and ZF have been having a hard time finding new recruits is unfortunate. As an engineer myself, I understand the frustration of having to work in public and then getting attacked in public too.

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#7

T support and I chatted via DM. He agreed to change the headline.

I apologize if my earlier comments came off as a bit harsh, there are plenty of threads more appropriate to discuss T vs Z addresses, please use those.

This thread is now about his concerns regarding Foundation employee retention. Hopefully the Foundation can find a good replacement for Antonie soon.

#8

I appreciate the concern, but your post is rather off base.
I’m the main person who’s been arguing about transparent transactions as a philosophical point. In terms of ZFND, everyone has been focused on shipping Zebra and doing things with Zebra. They haven’t concerned themselves with the debate about community philosophy and positions about transparent transactions… And as a ZF board member, I haven’t asked them to take a position on transparent transactions because where their focus is now is more important. Moreover, the debate about transparent transactions should be independent of ECC and ZFND. We should resolve it as a community. A ZCAP vote, for example, seems necessary.

Beyond that: Antonie left because she had another opportunity to do exactly what she did so well at ZFND: set up an organization and get them running. Whereas ZFND as far as the operational concerns of a non-profit, is mostly up and running.

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