I don't think it's the absolute length of time, but rather the fact that the projects he was spearheading (Swift for Tensorflow/MLIR) are nowhere near production-ready (or at least they weren't the last time I checked).

2.5 years seems a very short amount of time to develop, launch and push adoption for low-level PL tooling (in an ecosystem that's not mature, but at least is reasonably developed). I would expect 5 years at a minimum.

I'm assuming they'll just die on the vine now?

MLIR has moved to the LLVM Foundation. Really solid project with a huge amount of momentum behind it.

I would assume the Swift/Tensorflow stuff will die, it was more of a thought experiment anyway…

Ah, I wasn't aware that MLIR was now under LLVM. I'm not heavily involved with the LLVM Foundation but the whole project seems to be stable and well run, so that makes me feel more comfortable about the future of MLIR.

Not true. My experience is that no body respects a developer staying in a company(excluding faang) over 5 years max. It is looked as incompetent.

Well, I mean Lattner was at the G in FAANG :)

For that level, I would consider it short - no?

For startups no, for classical jobs, at least here in Europe, yeah.

Depends what skills you have and how hot your market is. I know some people in big metro areas like London or Bucharest switching every year without problem as their skills are in high demand.

In German speaking countries that kind of job hoping isn't well seen, at all.

Anyone switching after an year means they barely made it after the six months probation time, so many employers will think twice about hiring them, unless they are in pressure to hire someone.

German speaking countries(apart from Switzerland) also don't pay their developers particularly well either as unlike US/UK/Eastern Europe they artificially cap salaries instead of letting the market dictate so of course they don't like people switching jobs as they have to pay more to stay competitive, even managing to convince their developers that €80k is a top salary while their counterparts in Warsaw and Bucharest make that or even more. German/Austrian devs are severely underpaid.

Also, unlike UK/US, they have this nasty habbit of not mentioning their salary range/hiring budget in job ads to low ball you during negotiations.

Well 80K can get you pretty far in Berlin, as opposed to SF. Rent is probably cheaper than Warsaw too.

Which companies in Bucharest or Warsaw pay 80.000€? Most companies in the entire EU don't pay that.

Swiss/London/NY based banks and finance companies.

80K is pocket change compared to what they would have to pay in their home markets for experienced devs.

Not many outside of finance though..

I look at it the other way around. They're probably talented enough to make it past probation, so their leaving was them deciding to leave, rather than not making it. That is, any investment you make in them, giving them slack to get up to speed in a codebase, you'll lose because they don't stick around.

He was also at Tesla for something like 6 months, I think.

I think the reason people wonder is that Lattner was at Apple for more than 10 years, so 2.5 years DOES look short.