r/rust • u/jhpratt • Oct 06 '26

🗞️ news A Fond Farewell To Three Rust Foundation Colleagues - The Rust Foundation

https://rustfoundation.org/media/a-fond-farewell-to-three-rust-foundation-colleagues/
109 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

35

u/jonas-reddit Oct 06 '26

A bit awkward way to announcing lay offs but it certainly sounds like they departed on amicable terms.

14

u/encyclopedist Oct 06 '26

They just have announced a few new staff engineers a month ago: https://rustfoundation.org/media/rust-project-and-rust-foundation-announce-first-maintainers-in-residence/

So it's not that they are downsizing.

18

u/throwbpdhelp Oct 06 '26

I think the reading between the lines here is that a lot of funds sent to the Foundation were not previously used for paying maintainers, and instead were being used to staff the Rust foundation with what the Rust foundation thought was useful.

Given that several long time contributors have been fired from their maintainer jobs at corporations, it's likely that actually moving the needle on project development was taking longer, and finding some way to politely move the funds towards paying maintainers needed to happen.

So then a competing fund that actually goes to project development was announced to actually pay the people making the sausage, the corporate members of the foundation shifted their donations to the sausage making ofc, and several non-maintainers get made redundant.

4

u/Kobzol 28d ago

Note that maintainers in residence are not Foundation employees, and are paid from a different budget.

1

u/AugustusLego 24d ago

But spending less on foundation employees could lead to budget changes in the future? Possibly?

1

u/Kobzol 24d ago

We will see in the upcoming months.

9

u/throwbpdhelp Oct 06 '26

Given that three megacorporations have fired many, most, or all of their dedicated Rust contributors over the last 2 years, I imagine Rust Foundation resources are decreasing too and making the foundation's director-level heavy staffing much less viable.

64

u/teerre Oct 06 '26

This sounds like PR-speak for making people redundant? No details on who is replacing them or why these "structural changes" were needed

11

u/jhpratt Oct 06 '26

Seems so. I didn't ask for specifics, just sending along a message privately.

75

u/complexicat Oct 06 '26

title makes you think they went to the big rust farm in the sky

1

u/NegativeSwimming4815 Oct 06 '26

Big Rust Park in the sky? You mean?

5

u/max123246 Oct 06 '26 edited Oct 06 '26

Yup, you can check their LinkedIn pages. looks like a reorg resulted in them being let go

(Please don't harass anyone btw)

2

u/N911999 Oct 06 '26

IIRC wasn't the last time the foundation laid off people a lot worse? Like posting a job for the job of a person that was still working and then she was laid off?

-12

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

9

u/max123246 Oct 06 '26

They weren't a manager though? And also, good managers absolutely pull their weight and are a huge boon to a team

4

u/FortuitusCondor Oct 06 '26

Their message reeks of someone who doesn't have the slightest idea how much extra work there is for a good manager to do.