Comment by sctb

I don't know gdb very well, but I did get to chat with him a bit about what he was working on around the time of this article, which was mostly infrastructure grunt work, removing obstacles and procedural rough edges—basically anything to make the researchers and engineers as happy and productive as possible. It is so, so easy to undervalue that kind of work done by a totally brilliant and capable technologist. For an early stage startup it's gold. For a later stage startup it's gold.