How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub

我是如何拒绝了微软30万美元年薪，去Github全职的

2008 is a leap year. That means that three hundred and sixty six days ago, almost to the minute, I was sitting alone in a booth at Zeke’s Sports Bar and Grill on 3rd Street in San Francisco. I wouldn’t normally hang out at a sports bar, let alone a sports bar in SOMA, but back then Thursday was “I Can Has Ruby” night. I guess back then “I can has ___” was also a reasonable moniker to attach to pretty much anything. ICHR was a semi-private meeting of like minded Ruby Hackers that generally and willingly devolved into late night drinking sessions. Normally these nights would fade away like my hangover the next morning, but this night was different. This was the night that GitHub was born.

2008是闰年。这意味着在366天前的此时此刻，我独自坐在旧金山第三街道的Zeke体育酒吧与烧烤店里。我通常不会来这种酒吧，更别说SOMA里的运动酒吧了，但当时周四晚是“I Can Has Ruby”。我感觉那时“I Can Has**”是任何事情都可以加上的噱头。ICHR是一个半私人性会议，志同道合的Ruby黑客们总是把它演变成通宵畅饮。正常来讲我会酩酊大醉，然后第二天早上忘记这些会议，但是这个晚上不一样。这晚Github诞生了。

I think I was sitting at the booth alone because I’d just ordered a fresh Fat Tire and needed a short break from the socializing that was happening over at the long tables in the dimly lit aft portion of the bar. On the fifth or sixth sip, Chris Wanstrath walked in. I have trouble remembering now if I’d even classify Chris and I as “friends” at the time. We knew each other through Ruby meetups and conferences, but only casually. Like a mutual “hey, I think your code is awesome” kind of thing. I’m not sure what made me do it, but I gestured him over to the booth and said “dude, check this out.” About a week earlier I’d started work on a project called Grit that allowed me to access Git repositories in an object oriented manner via Ruby code. Chris was one of only a handful of Rubyists at the time that was starting to become serious about Git. He sat down and I started showing him what I had. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to see that it had sparked something in Chris. Sensing this, I launched into my half-baked idea for some sort of website that acted as hub for coders to share their Git repositories. I even had a name: GitHub. I may be paraphrasing, but his response was along the lines of a very emphatic “I’m in. Let’s do it!”

我认为我正独自坐在席位上，是因为我刚刚点了一杯新鲜的胖轮胎并且需要从发生在昏暗酒吧长桌的社交活动中休息一下。在我喝第五口还是第六口时，Chris Wanstrath走了进来。即便现在如果我把我和Chris的关系定义为朋友，我仍然很难记起来。我们是通过Ruby聚会与会议认识的，但也只是打过照面。就像互相说：“嗨！我听说你的代码超棒！”这样的事情。我并不指导是什么驱使我做这个，但是我当时示意他到我的席位还说：亲爱的，来看看这个“。大约一周前，我开始从是一个名叫Grit的项目，这个项目允许我使用Ruby代码以面向对象的方式访问Git仓库。Chris是那时为数不多的对开始对Git变得严肃起的Ruby工程师。他坐了下来，我开始给他讲我有什么。我展示的并不多，但可以看到它触动了Chris的一些想法。感觉到这一点，我产生了一个自己并不成熟的关于用来给代码工程师们分享自己的Git仓库的作为中转站的某种网站的点子。我甚至有了个名字：Hithub。我可能还在解释，但是他给了我一个强调的回答：”我加入。一起做他吧！“

The next night, Friday, October 19, 2007 at 10:24pm Chris made the first commit to the GitHub repository and sealed in digital stone the beginning of our joint venture. There were, so far, no agreements of any kind regarding how things would proceed. Just two guys that decided to hack together on something that sounded cool.

第二天晚上，也就是2007年10月19日，星期五的下午10.24，Chris做了第一次承诺加入Github仓库并且密封在数字石头中作为我们联合创业的开始。然而到目前为止没有就任何事情讲如何进行达成协议。就只有两个人决定一起去破解一些很酷的事情。

Remember those amazing few minutes in Karate Kid where Daniel is training to become a martial arts expert? Remember the music? Well, you should probably go buy and listen to You’re The Best by Joe Esposito in iTunes because I’m about to hit you with a montage.

还记得在空手道孩子里Daniel正训练成为一个武术专家的惊艳片段吗？还记得那个音乐吗？好了，你或许应该去iTunes买然后听一下Joe Esposito的《You're The Best》，因为我打算给你展示一段蒙太奇了。

For the next three months Chris and I spent ridiculous hours planning and coding GitHub. I kept going with Grit and designed the UI. Chris built out the Rails app. We met in person every Saturday to make design decisions and try to figure out what the hell our pricing plan would look like. I remember one very rainy day we talked for a good two hours about various pricing strategies over some of the best Vietnamese egg rolls in the city. All of this we did while holding other engagements. I, for one, was employed full time at Powerset as a tools developer for the Ranking and Relevance team.

在接下来的几个月，Chris与我用了破天荒的时长计划与编码Github。我保持这Grit项目并设计着UI。Chris则构建了Rails的APP。我们在每个周六都亲自开会，制定设计决策并视图弄清楚我对门的定价计划到底是什么回事。我记得有一天下大雨，我们花了两个小时讨论在这个城市中最好的越南春卷之上的各种定价策略。所有的我们做的这些时都同时处理着其他事情。我那时受雇于Powerset全职在排名与相关性团队内作为一名工具开发者。

In mid January, after three months of nights and weekends, we launched into private beta mode, sending invites to our friends. In mid February PJ Hyett joined in and made us three-strong. We publicly launched the site on April 10th. TechCrunch was not invited. At this point it was still just three 20-somethings without a single penny of outside investment.

经过三个月的日夜操劳，在一月中旬，我们推出了私人测试模式，还给我们的朋友们发送了邀请。二月中旬，PJ Hyett加入使我们变成了三巨头。4月10号，我们公开推出了网站。我们没邀请TechCrunch。在这个时间带你，它仍然是3个20多岁的小伙子做的没有一分钱外部投资的一些东西。

I was still working full time at Powerset on July 1, 2008 when we learned that Powerset had just been acquired by Microsoft for around $100 million. This was interesting timing. With the acquisition, I was going to be faced with a choice sooner than I had anticipated. I could either sign on as a Microsoft employee or quit and go GitHub full time. At 29 years old, I was the oldest of the three GitHubbers, and had accumulated a proportionally larger amount of debt and monthly expenditure. I was used to my six digit lifestyle. Further confounding the issue was the imminent return of my wife, Theresa, from her PhD fieldwork in Costa Rica. I would soon be transitioning from make-believe bachelor back to married man.

2008年7月1日，我仍全职在Powerset，那时我们知道Powerset刚刚被微软以大约1亿美元的价格收购。这是个有意思的时机。收购后，我不得不面临一个比我预想的更早的选择。我要么注册成为一名微软的员工，要么就辞职全职在Github。在29岁的年纪，我是三个GitHub创造者中最大的，并且累计了一个相当大的债务和每月支出。我已经习惯于我六位数的生活方式。使问题更加混乱的是，我的妻子Theresa，即将从Costa Rica的博士外勤工作中回来。我很快就要从假装单身汉变回已婚男人了。

To muddy the waters of decision even more, the Microsoft employment offer was juicy. Salary + $300k over three years juicy. That’s enough money to make anybody think twice about anything. So I was faced with this: a safe job with lots of guaranteed money as a Microsoft man –or– a risky job with unknown amounts of money as an entrepreneur. I knew things with the other GitHub guys would become extremely strained if I stayed on at Powerset much longer. Having saved up some money and become freelancers some time ago, they had both started dedicating full time effort to GitHub. It was do or die time. Either pick GitHub and go for it, or make the safe choice and quit GitHub to make wheelbarrows full of cash at Microsoft.

使我的决策情况变得更混乱的是，微软给的实在太多了。超过三年薪水加了近三十万。这笔钱足以让每个人都三思而后行。所以我面对着这样的选择：一份带着充裕资金且稳定的微软岗位，或者一份带着未知资金且充满风险的企业家。我知道要是我在Powerset呆的太久的话，Github那帮小伙子将过的额外紧张。前段时间，他们攒了一些钱并成为了自由工作者，都开始前身心投入Github。已经到了要么做，要么死的时间点了。要么选择Github并投入进来，要么走保险的路：辞去Github然后让婴儿车装满微软的现金。

If you want a recipe for restless sleep, I can give you one. Add one part “what will my wife think” with 3,000 parts Benjamin Franklin; stir in a “beer anytime you damn well please” and top with a chance at financial independence.

如果你想高枕无忧，我能给你一个诀窍。添加一部分带着3000块百元大钞的“我妻子会怎么想呢”；搅拌进“任何时候你都想喝的这该死的啤酒”，然后在经济独立时内心的选择就会上浮。

I’ve become pretty good at giving my employers the bad news that I’m leaving the company to go do something cooler. I broke the news to my boss at Powerset on the day the employment offer was due. I told him I was quitting to go work full time on GitHub. Like any great boss, he was bummed, but understanding. He didn’t try to tempt me with a bigger bonus or anything. I think deep down he knew I was going to leave. I may have even received a larger incentive to stay than others, on account of my being a flight risk. Those Microsoft managers are crafty, I tell you. They’ve got retention bonuses down to a science. Well, except when you throw an entrepreneur, the singularity of the business world, into the mix. Everything goes wacky when you’ve got one of those around.

我已经准备好了告诉我老板我将离职去做一些更酷的事情的坏消息了。在雇佣合同到期的那天，我告诉了我在Powerset的来办。我告诉他我打算辞职去全身心投入Github。像其它伟大的老板一样，他感到遗憾，但是表示理解。他并没尝试用更大的奖金或者什么来引诱我。我心里觉得他知道我已经决定要走了。基于我的离职风险，我可能会拿到比其他人更多的一个六人激励。我跟你讲，这些微软的经理非常狡猾。他们已经把保留激励发展成了一门科学。好吧，除非你把一个企业家与商业世界的奇点混为一谈，否则当你有他们中的任何一个时，任何事情都会变得奇怪。

In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”

最后，就像印第安纳·琼斯从未放弃寻找圣杯，我不能再拒绝为自己真正热爱的事情工作的机会，不管替代方案有多么安全。当我老死时，我希望回顾我的一生并说：”哇，那真是太冒险了“，而不是”噢，我那会确实感到安全“

后记：待修复重翻。https://www.cnblogs.com/wuyida/p/6300952.html