“Third-party extensions and hacks are a part of the web, perhaps Tumblr should focus on building new features or its own official “app store” instead of whining about support and server issues.”
—Drew Olanoff of The Next Web has Jeremy Cutler’s back on Missing e.Now, Breathe.
A few minutes ago, I handed a letter of resignation to my manager. When all is said and done a month or so from now, I’ll have spent three years here, working on IBM’s Java Just-In-Time compiler.
Having spent much of my undergraduate and graduate education on some very technical concepts in computer engineering, it was natural for me to work here, applying my skills to an enterprise platform, targeted at obtaining performance in the execution of commercial software.
However, it has been some time since I realized that this was not my ideal placement. I’m not satisfied only with having interesting technical problems to solve. I don’t get enough motivation out of squeezing a few percentage points of performance gain from benchmark applications. I don’t get enough satisfaction working on a product several software layers away from the user’s experience. I don’t want to sit in a cubicle all day.
I want an open-concept office, a more sociable atmosphere and a hand in developing a product that is closer to its users. I don’t know if Missing e spoiled me in this way, but mostly I want to work on something that, at the end of the day, I can point out to a friend or family member and say “look what I did”.
I’ve had many really neat opportunities at IBM and got to play with some bleeding-edge processor technology. I’ve met some really intelligent people and worked with a great world-wide team. I’ve gained skills and experience that can be widely applied.
After I take some time to finish up the last bits of my Master’s thesis, I think it will be time to dive into something new and exciting.
Know someone that might want to hire me?
To anyone that uses the Missing e. tumblr extension.
I just wanted y’all to know that the guy that runs it is awesome.
Seriously. A cool dude. Support his product. Donate a little bit. Go to his tumblr and send him a thank you message.
That is all.
“When I asked Karp about this and told him that I find 'missing-e' to be a useful product that enhances my experience with Tumblr, he told me that people using the extension assume that the issues that creep up are not from the extension but are caused by Tumblr, adding unnecessary burden to their support staff. According to Karp, the 'missing-e' is one of many extensions, and not even the most popular one, that Tumblr is forced to support.”
—From Anthony De Rosa’s piece on/interview with David Karp and Tumblr. Question to Karp and Tumblr: If it’s a support issue first, why not just have Jeremy Cutler emphasize that the burden’s on him to support Missing e? Why chop off the entire arm when it appears a scratch is the problem? A disappointing take. (The piece covers other things as well, BTW.)
Dear Tumblr,
I feel it only right to tell you I will not be getting rid of missing e. It makes your site 100% better and easier to use, with functionality and usability that should be standard and provided, supported and developed by yourself.
If you had any sense whatsoever you would have fallen down on your knees grovelling and throwing large bags of cash at Jeremy Cutler, begging him to please come and improve your user experience.
You didn’t, more fool you, and now you have a significant percentage of your user-base telling you to kindly leave them be. These are our browsers. We shall do with them what we will. And this includes using well thought out and impressive add-ons.
If you just listened to what your users were telling you once in a while, you would not be in this position.
Ah well.
Kind regards
Sweetsyren
I wish Tumblr had two streams in its Dashboard…
The regular stream, plus a “Favourites” stream so I’d never miss any stuff from those people. But they rarely add features which users want… so maybe Jeremy can add something like this to Missing e please and thank you and please?
Jeremy Cutler of Missing-e, Genius of the Day
missinge.infraware.caSeriously, I owe this guy so much. When I’m on tumblr, which is 90% of my day, my eyes are blessed with his work. My dash is so pretty! It’s fantastic.
