There Is an Incubator Bubble—And It Will Pop - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/08/12/theres-an-incubator-bubble-and-it-will-pop/

<comment><USER2> An incubator bubble isn't a scary bubble.

Bubbles are scary when they fill one criteria - investment in the bottom of the pyramid is feeding the top, making the whole thing look more profitable than it is.

For example, in the tech bubble, the new companies were buying Sun servers, Oracle databases, and Yahoo! ads. This made Sun, Oracle, and Yahoo very profitable, which encouraged more tech investment. But that snake can't eat itself forever, and when investment slowed it all went bust.

Likewise, housing bubbles affect (effect?) so much of the economy they can't help but feed off themselves.

And in a classic Ponzi scheme, the mechanism is the same - the bottom feeds the top, so people think that there are outsize gains to be made. Those gains evaporate once new entrants slow.

Now, there's some new startups like Heroku who are "selling picks in a gold rush". But there's plenty of others like Groupon and AirBnB who are selling to the wider economy. The successful internet start-ups don't _usually_ feed off new entrants, so I don't think a really scary bubble can form.

That said, if a bunch of random airheads (who are these 60+ new incubators? top tier VC? bottom tier VC? government? universities? there will be winners and losers here) think they can attract the same talent as Paul Graham, and vet business and technology plans as successfully, they may stand to lose their shirts.

<comment><USER3> Off topic, but I think you'll appreciate this:

Affect is a verb (Housing bubbles affect so much of the economy), and effect is a noun (The effect of the housing bubbles is so much). My poor formula to remember that effect is a noun: Remember the term "after-effect"

<comment><USER4> Actually, either word is both a noun and a verb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, and they sell this guide for $149! I think "bubble" is misused here. For example, one talks about the "housing bubble" in China (currently a big problem there). What this means (in layman's terms, which is how I understand complicated economic stuff like this) is that the value of something has gone way up than normal due to some factor, which may or may not be artificial manipulation (since price of something is dynamically determined, the meaning of "higher than normal" is a bit complex).

Now, in the case of incubators, they report that there's a 3x increase 2 years. This may be healthy development filling a need or it may that there are a lot unnecessary incubators. You can't tell at this stage, since the optimum number of incubators determined by market conditions is hard to tell.

The more you think about the harder it seems to judge the success of incubators, but in the end it comes down to money earned: how much it invested - values of current holdings is one simple way of doing it, I think (although this doesn't take into account other criteria, such as attracting companies to a region, which may important for some incubators).

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this has anything to do with the Incubator Incubator <http://incubatorincubator.com/>

<comment><USER7> I almost wasn't sure if that was real or not till the front page changed to the guy with the big expression holding a white piece of paper with the words "CONTRACT" in large, dark, font. Well played.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems more like there is a bubble of people calling out other bubbles.

</comment><comment><USER9> "you need one of your alumni companies each year to achieve an exit in the $25 million range"

In the case of a company like WUFOO, YC & PG did a follow on round of ~$100k bringing YC's total equity stake to say 10% and with an exit of $35m YC made off with $3.5.

The point being the initial $15k investment is to gain access to great companies at the beginning so that investors can make follow on rounds in the best companies in the class. This is where the real money is made with incubators and how this differs from the privies bubble where VC's would invest $10m in an idea for a company with zero revenue. Looks like capital efficiency to me...

</comment><comment><USER10> There could be many reasons we're seeing a rise in the number of incubators, principally the cost of technology startups are falling (makes sense from a diversification standpoint to invest the same $$$ in 10 companies that you would in one) and as a investor/mentor you stand to reduce your capital risk if you have some say in the early stages of product development.

Investing in early stage is cheaper and riskier. Investing in later stages (when a company has traction/growth - VC/PE stages) becomes more expensive, but is less riskier. The incubator model has the advantage of managing some of that early stage risk that angel investors traditionally didn't control by having experienced entrepreneurs on-board/within a network and in a collegial environment.

Any successful model will attract competitors, so you now have more incubators. He's equating the rise in incubators as a sign of a bubble. It would only be a bubble if you had tons of incubators sitting on cash and not finding any place to invest it. His second mistake is equating failed incubators, that result from poor investment decisions/leadership, with some kind of market correction ("the bubble bursts").

</comment><comment><USER11> An incubator bubble isn't "scary," per se, but it can lead to inefficiencies in the tech sector over the long run. Given that acquisitions -- seldom IPOs -- are the end game for most of the new breed of startups, a bubble in the financing stages of the startup world would naturally make startups much pricier to the end-stage acquirers (Google, Facebook, et al.). The cost of buying a feature, team, or technology goes up over time.

You could make the argument that this creates wonderful incentives for the startup environment in general, thereby attracting much more talent to the space. But in large part, this talent is poached or drawn away from existing tech companies. Increasingly, you're even seeing talent bounce from one pre- exit startup (!) to another. In addition, there may come a point where the end-stage acquisition market dries up, because the price of acquisitions gets too high for positive payback/ROI on would-be-acquirers' balance sheets. Once that happens, the bubble officially pops.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the main take away is that the best will survive. Those who figure out the model, figure out what types of people and companies to accept, and figure out how to best get them off the ground.

The idea of trying the incubator model in other areas such as health care and clean tech is an interesting idea and I'm interested to see if it will have the same effect on start ups that are much more expensive to start.

After being in 3 different incubators (2 government run, and 1 private in the US) I've learned a great deal about what works and what doesn't. The government doesn't work. If the folks who run the incubator have no stake in the companies and no interest as to whether they'll eventually be successful other than bragging rights, they will work as little as possible to not get fired.

Now when the incubator is run as a start up itself, the whole incentive system changes for the better. They want to work just as hard as you to make sure everyone is successful. Go YC!

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think we're dealing with a bubble, at least not the bubble we've come to associate with epic disaster. Of course, there is hype aplenty, and instances like the Groupon IPO have shown that startup mania is becoming a bit overzealous, but this zeal very positively affects the business environment. By showing there is a _real interest and value in ideas_ , these incubators are setting a tangible example of how it pays to innovate and come up with unique solutions. Perhaps the reason why startups are outliers in this economy is because its one of the few sectors where innovation isn't being stifled by the old guard, instead, the gatekeepers of industry are setting a trend of investment and mentorship.

</comment><comment><USER14> Or you could just see it as an efficient accelerator (duh).

An accelerator that speeds up the the rate of 'new business' failure.

The upside is that resources can be pooled in to a pinpointed funnel of repeatable goals. The downside is the mechanics of the model is scalable, but the quality is not.

There are competitors in every market space, to think that this wouldn't happen to 'incubators' is insane.

This is not a bubble, its business.

Not to mention that what the economy needs are good performing companies, I tend to think incubators and accelerators provide this.

</comment><comment><USER15> "it's hard to imagine that today's tepid consumer and business markets have room to absorb all of the products and services offered by the hundreds of new startups that the incubators are now churning out each year."

I think he's overlooking the element of disruption here. While it's true that certain markets will need to expand to fit these new companies, many of these startups are entering markets with the hopes of exploiting inefficiencies in more traditional companies, or simply doing things better.

</comment><comment><USER16> _As far as I know there isn't a single example of an incubated company going public._

My understanding is that incubators are relatively new. It is not really reasonable to say the lack of IPOs indicate if incubators are successful or not...I believe the first yc class was like 6 years ago. LinkedIn, for example, took 9 years before it IPO'd.

<comment><USER17> Also, do they need to go public? YC has a handful of partners afaik and they had a bunch of exits in past couple of years.

What will YC gain from an IPO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are there any stats available that show the historic performance of YC or TechStars funded companies? I know YC has hit a number of homeruns in Heroku, and AirBnb, but what is their success rate? 10% 5%?

</comment><comment><USER19> Stop using the word bubble.

Seriously, why is this getting upvotes?</comment>


SMOB - Open & distributed semantic microblogging (integrates with Twitter) - <AUTHOR> http://smob.me/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a lightning presentation from today's SemTech 2010 that describes this in more detail: [http://www.slideshare.net/terraces/smob-a-framework-for- sema...](http://www.slideshare.net/terraces/smob-a-framework-for-semantic- microblogging)

</comment><comment><USER2> I found this little slide deck while trying to figure out what semantic microblogging is: [http://www.slideshare.net/bengee/semantic-microblogging- pres...](http://www.slideshare.net/bengee/semantic-microblogging-presentation)

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I wrong or is there no currently running example to found? Or does it not actually publish a blog itself?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's distributable, so right now you have to run it on a server yourself. There's a download link on the page: <http://code.google.com/p/smob/downloads/list>

I've been thinking of throwing the code up somewhere for people to try. Let me know if there would be interest in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How's it compared to other distributed m-blogging tools, say PubSubHubBlob and SatusNet?

<comment><AUTHOR> It actually builds RDF onto PubSubHubBub, so it integrates there as well: [http://apassant.net/blog/2010/04/18/sparql-pubsubhubbub- spar...](http://apassant.net/blog/2010/04/18/sparql-pubsubhubbub-sparqlpush)</comment></comment>


11th Commandment: Thou shalt not write for old browsers - <AUTHOR> http://run-node.com/11th-commandment-thou-shalt-not-write-for-older-browsers/

<comment><USER2> ...and your business loses customers that are browsing on their office computers.

Talking about IE5 is hardly relevant now. But IE8? Yes. IE7? Hopefully not but possibly.

Write for the browsers your users are using. Any decent analytics solution will be able to tell you what they are.</comment>


The last places on Earth with no internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/lists/the-last-places-on-earth-with-no-internet/ <comment><USER2> I'd add to the list parts of Michigan's upper peninsula. I always think I'm traveling back to the nineteen fifties when I visit up there. For some people that's a selling point of the place :<) .</comment>


Firing Frankness - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-13-firing-frankness-3d17e207d1cf <comment><USER3> Toward the end, he gives the backstory of how the breakup was brewing for a long time, and it seems very possible the CEO may have already made up his mind to fire him before the Palo Alto dinner.

So maybe frankness wasn't the cause. It's even possible they were interested in his perspective and wanted to get his honest opinion before they lost the opportunity. Or maybe they had nearly made a final decision but not quite and wanted this conversation to see if what they learned made a difference either way.

On a separate(?) topic, a lot of tech organizations seem to be fond of saying they want to hear all ideas and judge the ideas on their merits, but when you actually say something that goes against popular opinion or conventional thinking within the organization, people aren't open to it or are even hostile or dismissive. In my opinion, it's not as easy for humans to be objective and open-minded as we think.

<comment><USER4> > On a separate(?) topic, a lot of tech organizations seem to be fond of > saying they want to hear all ideas and judge the ideas on their merits, but > when you actually say something that goes against popular opinion or > conventional thinking within the organization, people aren't open to it or > are even hostile or dismissive

Another one I often hear is some variation of "present solutions not problems", often from developers and not just management. Except problems are easy to spot and solutions often require a substantial time investment to solve and present, time that won't be allocated unless problems are identified. Even if you spend your own time on the solution it will often be dismissed by people that don't see the problem in the first place, it's just "how we've always done it". It's basically a long winded way of telling people to stop complaining.

<comment><USER5> > ...present solutions not problems...

My favorite response to that is that understanding a problem is the first part of a solution. We had names for the sound barrier, smallpox, and moon landing problems long before we had solutions.

Also, don't hire problem solvers and then complain that they are good at spotting problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ha! Many years ago when I was in the military, in tech school in fact, one of the teachers (a sergeant, for what it's worth) flat out asked me to my face what I thought of him. Apparently I was telegraphing my feelings pretty well despite attempting to keep a completely neutral face. I asked, "off the record?" and he said "yep" and then I told him.

Whoops. There is no such thing as off the record. Lesson learned. Though in the end it worked out okay and I just got some mildly amused reprimands from my superiors about telling someone [whom everyone agreed was a jerk] that he was a jerk. I'm much better at keeping my flap shut now.

<comment><USER7> Dishonesty greases the world. I don't we could handle complete honesty from everyone. Not unless we structurally change society from the ground up.

<comment><USER8> "Dishonesty greases the world."

Dishonesty only greases things in the very short term. Longer term, that grease degrades and gets fouled with all manner of dirt, resulting in damage to the "greased" parts.

<comment><USER9> Hear, hear. I was dishonest for years in my personal life, to make things smooth in the short term. Finally things got so bad that I stopped caring about the consequences of honesty, and started saying what I really thought. It really turned things around. There's great power in communicating honestly, and bugger the consequences.

<comment><USER5> Love rejoices in the truth. But love is also ready to take it on the chin for others' benefit.

<comment><USER10> > _Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is > willing to see less._

\-- Rabbi J. Gordon

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I recall the moment's emotion: I felt I was performing a good deed, being > helpfully clear and honest,

I know this emotion well - it has led me to any number of problems. Some cases where in retrospect I was being a self-indulgent jerk ("What did you think of my performance/presentation/etc?") and some cases where I still feel I was not being harsh but was pointing out valid and relevant concerns, but from both I've learned to distrust this emotion. Perhaps saying what I think is good, perhaps not, but it should never feel _good_ to criticize.

<comment><USER12> > it should never feel _good_ to criticize.

Why not? I feel good when I help someone. I feel good when I have made a great project. I feel good when I made a good decision.

I feel good when I did something good.

Your sentence is true only if we consider a critic as a bad thing, which I certainly don't.

<comment><USER13> Model someone as in your ingroup. You associate actions happening to them as happening to yourself. Criticising them feels like criticizing yourself, ie admitting you've made some mistake. This could be: knowing you've made a mistake, but only just now discovering what it was (eg debugging) - but this isn't the critic, this is the correction. So the criticism must be informing someone they've made a mistake before telling them how to correct it. While correcting mistakes might feel good, finding out about them isn't.

Now model the person as in your outgroup. Same analysis but now you feel good when they feel bad. Pointing out flaws will feel good, independent of viability of correction. A real person will be somewhere in between ingroup and outgroup, how good you feel for criticising them should tell you where.

<comment><USER14> Finding out you've made a mistake doesn't always feel bad. If you've got a growth mindset, finding out you've made a mistake can often feel good, because you've uncovered an opportunity for growth. If you've got a fixed mindset, it feels bad because it's a judgment about your capabilities.

The trick is to hang around other people with the same sort of mindset. Growth-mindset people constantly make this error with fixed-mindset people, and alienate potential allies in the process. (Indeed, learning not to do this could be an important area for growth.) Fixed-mindset people tend not to make this particular error as much, because most people shy away from people who constantly make them feel bad. In the process they develop a sort of confirmation bias for their fixed mindset, though, because they don't come in contact with anyone who could point out where they might grow.

<comment><USER15> >Finding out you've made a mistake doesn't always feel bad.

Concur. Whenever a reader points out an error in my blog — whether of fact or attribution or spelling or grammar or syntax or punctuation — I take the time to thank them and ask for more of the same. Why? It only makes my blog better. I love being corrected.

<comment><USER13> I distinguish between recieving criticism and recieving correction. This is normally dichotomized as criticism and constructive criticism. I suppose when you write a blogpost, and many other tasks, you are implicitly assuming you've made some number of mistakes. Recieving correction then doesn't tell you new information regarding your mistakes, and furthermore makes your blog closer to being correct. This is particularly true given how easy a spelling or grammar error is to correct once you know it's exact nature. I think the situation changes when the criticism pertains to some dimension in which you didn't know you were failing, and worse still when the necessary correction will take a great deal of effort or is simply not apparent. I don't think most people would enjoy recieving such a criticism, even as it eventually makes them a better person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Early in my career, I figured that, the code speaks for itself. If it works, it works! Can't argue with that. That's one of the appealing things about working with machines. They're almost never "wrong", it's always something you can fix, do correctly, and ergo, win.

Later I learned, yes, a quick solution can be a good solution; but there can be more than one good solution, and in fact, others can be better. More maintainable, less verbose, so clear and simple there are obviously no errors. Abstractions in the right place and the right level. Modeling a business domain that stakeholders understand.

In the same way, just telling somebody "the truth" can get the message across. But it makes you the junior engineer of talking to people. As you grow in your career, you learn that there are many ways to communicate with the people around you. And different tones and patterns appeal to different people... or even to the same person at different times, based on mood or context.

You can learn (if you care) to work well with these complicated organic machines we call humans. And you can always get better and better at it, even when you already think you're doing the brave thing, the heroic thing, the right thing.

<comment><USER17> > In the same way, just telling somebody "the truth" can get the message > across. But it makes you the junior engineer of talking to people.

What a great explanation for HN, and for me. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Always keep in mind that HR is there to manage the company's "human resources"; they are not looking out for your best interest. They are acting on behalf of the company.

<comment><USER19> The corollary to this is - don't forget to take advantage of HR when its and your interests obviously align.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> His firing led to Be OS!

That was the the prime example of the better tech losing. I know most of us know about it but to actually use it was totally different. I couldn't get a low resolution video to play but on Be OS I could have 12 high resolution videos play at the same time move them around and if I unplug my computer I can boot up and the videos would all start back up right where they left off.

<comment><USER21> I was hoping Be OS would be the OS that Apple would pick when it failed at writing it's own new OS. But noooooo, they had to pick NeXT, and bring back Steve Jobs, and the rest is history. Apple is still about tech, to a degree. But not like the days when Apple was a great tech company. Now Apple seems to be more about fashion.

<comment><USER22> Having both a BeOS box and NeXTSTEP box at the time, I was pretty glad they picked NeXT. I love BeOS, but NeXTSTEP was the superior OS on the whole including development story. BeOS had some really great line items, but it had some big holes too. Be just didn't have the time to get it all done.

That being said, I do wish Haiku well because I get the feeling that it really could be great.

<comment><USER23> One of the big marks against BeOS in that fight was the lack of printer support. That sort of thing still mattered in 1996-1997.

I don't know. A BeOS-based MacOS would've been ready for prime time years before Mac OS X was. And one suspects the Finder would have been usable. But there would be no iPhone.

<comment><USER22> _A BeOS-based MacOS would've been ready for prime time years before Mac OS X was._

I'm not so sure. NeXTSTEP was pretty stable. I get the feeling that a lot of the delay had little to do with NeXTSTEP and much more to do with Apple and Adobe/Microsoft. Plus, the development environment was no where near as good on BeOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article's title is facetious because the author was a high level manager at Apple, the boss was the CEO, and HR was the VP of HR acting in a capacity as a trusted advisor, and it's not really about HR. I thought it was a good read.

Relatedly, I remember that the Macintosh-oriented press hinted that there was trouble brewing at Apple for a long time but they didn't want to come out and say, "Apple's management is slowly killing the company." This story suggests that Sculley would have cut off those reporters if they had.

Edit: at the time of writing, the submission title was "My boss asks me what I really think of him. HR advises me to tell the truth. I'm fired."

<comment><USER25> I had friends that worked at Apple during that time.

Everyone in the Valley knew Sculley was killing apple by installing a parasitic Midwest style management class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Sullivan puts his arm around my shoulder: "Jean-Louis, I'm proud of you…" > After half a decade in Cupertino, I know what this means: What I have done > is irreparable.

I don't follow his reasoning, here. What is it about Cupertino which immediately leads him to this conclusion?

<comment><USER27> For context: this is written by a Frenchmen from Paris who had moved to SV. Gasseé previously has written about his French/US cultural mis-understandings. Especially regarding being too blunt and assertive

<comment><USER26> Oh, OK. I was working with a French guy recently. I really liked that we could bluntly tell each other when we're full of shit. Didn't realize it's characteristic of French organizational behavior.

<comment><USER28> It's not typical French behavior, it's typical behavior everywhere but the US and Asia. Only there you are expected to lie all the time. In Europe you are better off telling the truth, even to your customers, not only the managers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > In 1985, after learning of Steve Jobs's plan to oust CEO John Sculley over > Memorial Day weekend while Sculley was in China, Gassée preemptively > informed the board of directors, which eventually led to Jobs's resignation > from Apple. [0]

Did HR tell him to do that too? This guy is quite the politician - playing the victim, sincerity card really well. I had to google to piece it together.

Good on him, what a master storyteller of self serving narratives.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Louis_Gass%C3%A9e](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e)

</comment><comment><USER30> I joined the Newton team in 1988 as an intern (and stayed for 8 years). It's interesting to hear with 30 more years of perspective JLG's story of the Steve Sakoman situation that resulted in that team's existence. At the time I had no inkling of the drama that must have occurred that resulted in the creation of a totally isolated team in that totally isolated building on Bubb Road. I did realize how lucky I was to be working there, though. :)

<comment><USER31> :-) Does explain that it eventually "failed", considering it didn't really have backing.

<comment><USER30> Oh, but it did — from John Sculley. Such a saga it was.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/12/business/marketer-s- dream...](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/12/business/marketer-s-dream- engineer-s-nightmare.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Never believe HR, they neither represent your interests nor are impartial, even if they'd like to appear impartial.

HR represents your employer interests. Period.

<comment><USER33> I see this repeated often enough where it is presented like some nefarious plot. While I think it is nominally true, I think a better way to think about it is to think of what HR's incentives and motivations are, and to realize there are many areas where your interests _do_ align with your employer's.

For example, a primary responsibility of HR is "keep the company from getting sued" when it comes to personnel matters. A really shitty HR department will interpret this as "sweep shit under the rug", but a good, competent HR department will handle things above board, according to established procedure. A good HR dept. does this not because they want to be nice, but they realize that the best long-term way to keep the company from being sued is to make sure complaints are handled above board.

In general, when evaluating how people will really act I think it's best to leave morality out of it, and instead realize where their incentives are coming from and try to align your goals with those incentives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Something I've noticed recently is people that say things like the author did here

>Just for crossing the street, I'm rewarded with an even fancier President (of Apple Products) title

I'm not saying this is happening more often, I just have been noticing it recently.

Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone or misunderstanding the situation. But, this seems in contrast to actual humility where someone is grateful for a raise or promotion but possibly feels undeserving or lucky. The author comes across to me as pretty detached from the struggles that the lion's share of the world experiences. I get that this article is about some high level corporate politics but it still seems tone deaf to me.

<comment><USER35> Typically in organizations this large, trouble makers are "promoted out" so as to minimize the damage they can do to the organization while minimizing the risk of any legal blow back from an outright firing. I think the author here understands what is happening to him and seems to be describing these events with a sense of melancholy or sadness about being removed from a project or product that he cared deeply about.

<comment><USER36> I agree. The author is clearly detached and saddened by events; any perceived "tone-deafness" probably has more to due with the individual reader's jealousy or envy of his station than with the overall story he's telling.

<comment><USER8> What is there to be envious about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's very obvious from the comments that no one is reading the article, and is just responding to the previous, crappier headline.

<comment><USER8> I read the article. The only thing I could think through most of it was "that sounds like a terrible place to work."

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Never do anything more than say hi/bye to HR.

</comment><comment><USER39> You want someone in the company backing you? Start an union.

</comment><comment><USER40> From reading the article it is pretty clear that the decision to let him go was already made months before. So what's the point?

An exec that cannot deal with (polite) disagreement is probably on the way downwards already himself. Of course you might hit a sensible spot with honesty by chance but even then it is hard to justify an otherwise successful employee.

<comment><USER25> I've wondered if Sullivan set up the bomb on Sculley, basically daring him to fire Jean-Louis. Sculley is a lose cannon that fires anyone that gives him needed feedback. Jean-Louis is important enough that firing him will bring that into sharp relief.

Sculley fires Jean-Louis, the resulting blowback doesn't convince Sculley of anything and Sculley is too dumb to know he needs to leave. So two years later the board is forced to can him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> With all that experience it's a wonder he fell for the oldest "does my bum look big in this" trick in the book.

</comment><comment><USER22> I guess the golden rule is true, when anyone from HR says "be honest" its basically a warning not a directive.

 _Apple management is concerned that some engineers might elect to follow me, wherever I may land._

I would suppose that they looked back at 1985 and realized that Jean-Louis Gassée was popular with a lot of engineers. I wonder if John Sculley was ever popular in the same way and resented it. I look back at the navigator video with the newspaper and realize that he really didn't get the effects of a technology on how things would work.

</comment><comment><USER42> This reminds me of Leadership BS by Jeffrey Pfeffer. [1] And he gave a talk at Google about his book [2]

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-BS-Fixing-Workplaces- Caree...](https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-BS-Fixing-Workplaces- Careers/dp/0062383167)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFXcqSUi3EI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFXcqSUi3EI)

</comment><comment><USER43> I suspect when someone asks you to tell what they really think of them, the word really should come with an asterik.

<comment><USER44> If someone really wanted to know the answer they'd ask for responses anonymously. Since then people are free to answer without reprisal.

<comment><USER45> Even then, if they don't like the responses, they may seek the deanonymize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> When HR advises you to do something in particular, feign obliviousness while taking at least a day or two to consult yourself/friends/family/attorneys where applicable - Not coworkers!

HR serves the company, not the employee.

</comment><comment> a-dub ... and to think... if it hadn't been for this fateful night, half the world's smartphones wouldn't have that weird RPC mechanism...

</comment><comment><USER47> Did the CEO maybe have a hand in making HR set the guy up to test his loyalty? He seemed very loyal, but maybe to the wrong ideas/people.

</comment><comment><USER48> I find these interactions fascinating because from your own perspective it may seem like everything is kosher.

Little do you know you're a dead man.

<comment> a-dub creepy.

<comment> a-dub really creepy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It seems at least half of the comments here are responding to the original submission title (taken from the article subhead rather than the headline) with no context at all of this being Jean-Louis Gassée, John Sculley, and 28 years ago. I see the mods changed the title to the article's headline instead, which will likely cut down on the title-only responses, but it's still surprising to see just how many people clearly commented before clicking.

<comment><USER50> I clicked it and frankly the larger topic is more intersting than the specific incident of Apple in its low point. Everyone already knows past Apple made a bunch of dumb decisions. I think that may be another reason why that is a focus of discussion. Everyone has their own stories and has seen the larger problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This could also be an impedance mismatch between European and US cultures. When Europeans (especially Eastern Europeans) are asked to be candid, they often are, without much regard for the consequences. As an immigrant I fortunately learned this very early in the US leg of my career, and now I just reply with inoffensive platitudes even if the person does deserve harsher feedback. I'm sometimes candid with my reports. I'm _never_ 100% candid with my bosses, after a couple of near career-ending run-ins (which, when you're an H1-B as I was at the time, results in getting kicked out of the country within 2 weeks).

</comment><comment><USER52> Being fired in this situation is a gift. Move on and turn down options until you find one you have good reason to believe would be healthy.

Same goes for people all up and down the career or hierarchy ladders. If being charitably honest with thoughtful communication gets you fired, or if your honesty is subverted by the politics of your organization to be used to attribute something negative to you, just quit, take time away from working and get back on the job hunt in a few weeks or months. Sticking around would be too unacceptably bad for your health.

I've done this twice in my career, both times without significant savings to live on, and even with the financial pressure to get a job, it was way, way healthier to forego income and insurance than continuing to work in those unhealthy situations. I also found that recruiters seemed mostly fine with my reasons for a resume gap, most didn't even ask or care.

</comment><comment><USER53> "Soon, engineers are marching outside with placards that read Jean-Louis Don't Go."

How do you achieve that level of leadership and loyalty?

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't think this story is related to 'frankness'.

It's hard to be an executive, and hard to manage them, sometimes they have to go.

The only part that bothered me about this was the cringeworthy fake emotions about the firing. "I'm sorry but we have to 'separate you from Apple'".

That's the bit of California newspeak that drives me nuts.

We can be honest and cordial the same time, and in both directions - and - <USER2> we hav just a little bit of tolerance for those who are either a little to frank or a little to effusive, then everyone gets along.

</comment><comment><USER55> by Jean-Louis Gassée

<comment><USER56> Yeah, that's some important information missing from the headline. The comments so far suggest no one read the article and/or have no idea who the author is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Keep it anodyne, pretty much always. You can tell your spouse what you really think. Or better yet, your dog.

<comment><USER44> While I'd never condone being rude, combative, or unnecessarily offensive, I think there's a time and a place to make waves.

And while the person doing so often personally suffers the consequences, it is a healthy signal to an organization that those opinions could be shared by others.

If nobody ever heard anything counter to the group-think, the organization itself would very quickly become stuck by momentum.

<comment><USER57> > If nobody ever heard anything counter to the group-think, the organization > itself would very quickly become stuck by momentum.

Indeed, that's a great reason not to fire people when they're honest. And yet, here we are.

At least in SV tech companies, in my experience, people really get their feelings hurt over small amounts of honesty. More importantly, the conversations you'll have to have afterward and the way people will sit on it for months until it comes up in your review make it just not worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Maybe deliver criticism packaged in positive comments?

"You're the greatest boss I ever had. You taught me a lot... I admire you... I just disagree with you a bit on this...... "

</comment><comment><USER58> HR is there to protect the company. Not you.

<comment><USER59> Does anyone, even HR, have a belief contrary to this? This seems like one of those statements that everyone knows but thinks for some reason everyone else doesn't.

<comment><USER60> _Does anyone, even HR, have a belief contrary to this?_

I think probably most people believe that if they have a dispute with another employee that HR will resolve it in a "fair" way. But of course HR is only really thinking of which outcome is less likely to involve lawyers or a tribunal. Head on over to workplace.SE to see loads of this... if you can't bring a credible threat of a lawsuit HR will always side with your boss, no matter what he or she has done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> "Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving."

"Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment."

\- Dale Carnegie, How to win friends and influence people.

If you disagree with the quotes above. Be frank about it, I can take it.

<comment><USER61> I disagree with these quotes. You can be critical and understanding and forgiving at the same time. People just get their feelings hurt way too easily.

Criticism usually makes me think twice and reevaluate it if I feel it comes from a good place and is even somewhat reasonable. Most times the criticism isnt accurate enough to be useful or actionable...or the criticism is tone deaf.

<comment><USER53> You're fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Iron rule of the corporate world: if you have a problem with your boss, or with something the boss likes and supports, from his end it's not a problem that can't be solved with a pink slip.

If you value being able to feed your family, learn to love your boss and his ideas.

<comment><USER63> I feel like it used to be this way, but in tech these days it seems the rule is speak your mind. If you get fired for ruffling feathers and are at least halfway competent, there are plenty of companies willing to scoop you up and pay you more money to do something more aligned to what you want. Although you should have probably just that done in the first place, without the feather ruffling.

<comment><USER62> I hear this on Hackernews a lot, one of the myths of our age: "Any halfway decent programmer should be able to just waltz right into their dream job." Must be nice. So what dies that make me, despite all my study and effort?</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Am Not a Member of the American Psychological Association - <AUTHOR> http://www.chalquist.com/apa.html <comment><USER2> Educational. But I wonder how many US scientific bodies could be just as easily vivisected. E.g. I'm sure Physics, for example, is full of people with connections to defense, and we know that lots of top Mathematicians have worked for the NSA.

It does remind me of a story on NPR (about a book -- [http://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Unabomber-Education- American-T...](http://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Unabomber-Education-American- Terrorist/dp/0393020029)) detailing how a prominent psychology professor basically tortured a group of students over a period of years, concentrating special intensity for an awkward scholarship student, Theodore Kaczynski.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" I'm sure Physics, for example, is full of people with connections to defense, and we know that lots of top Mathematicians have worked for the NSA."_

Not to mention the strong historical Silicon Valley links to the "defense", prison, law-enforcement and intelligence industries.

One also has to ask what weight should be given to indirect cooperation with and enablement of said industries. If one is not working for a defense contractor, but a supplier of said contractor, or if one even takes money from or in any way benefits from these contractors or contractors of contractors, what's your culpability? Where do you draw the line?

I am also reminded of "IBM and the Holocaust",[1] which is deserving of its own HN article.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> First, the history of the practice of psychology, and the ills it's transacted against humanity, is exceptionally telling.

The nugget though is buried in the tail of the piece:

 _Craig Chalquist, PhD is a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility._

That is: there _is_ an alternate organization.

More on PsySR here: [http://psysr.org/](http://psysr.org/)

That said, the more the public knows about the list of terribles here, and Edward Bernays in particular, the better.

I also very strongly recommend reading the works of Jerry Mander, an economics-trained advertising executive who paired up with Sierra Club organizer (and president) David Brower to create some of the first environmental advertising and outreach campaigns, co-founded Friends of the Earth (backed by ARCO CEO Robert O Anderson, ponder that), and has written a couple of highly worthwhile books, _Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television_ and _The Capitalism Papers_.

[http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780688082741-13](http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780688082741-13)

[http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781619021587-0](http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781619021587-0)

</comment><comment><USER4> As other comments have mentioned, if you criticize an organization by choosing bad actors who are members of that organization to criticize the whole organization, few organizations come out looking good. On my part, I'd like to hear more discussion of the Association for Psychological Science (APS),[1] an organization formed as a conscious effort to introduce more sound science into the practice of psychology.

The articled submitted here is from 2013 (excerpted from a 2013 publication, but posted on a website with a 2010 copyright notice). He tries to sum up the history of a large organization more than a century old with a few anecdotes. I wonder how the author, whose website[2] has links to some more recent writings, prioritizes his critique of the American Psychological Association now. (And by the way, what do you fellow participants here on Hacker News think of the author's website, from which the kind submission here was linked?)

[1] [http://www.psychologicalscience.org/](http://www.psychologicalscience.org/)

[2] [http://www.chalquist.com/](http://www.chalquist.com/)

<comment><USER5> > As other comments have mentioned, if you criticize an organization by > choosing bad actors who are members of that organization to criticize the > whole organization, few organizations come out looking good.

Yes, that's certainly true. But there's one important difference between the APA and scientific organizations -- scientific organizations can be shamed into following the evidence.

In psychology, if there's no theory to suit your fancy, you can invent one and gain a following, and your theory doesn't have to pass a reality test or forge a consensus -- indeed, psychology is overflowing with theories in open conflict. Here's an example: those who have very narrow personal focus and/or a lack of interest in relationships, might be described as having (a) Asperger Syndrome, or (b) Grit.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_\(personality_trait\))

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome)

For those who claim the described symptoms prove Asperger's, there has been much recent controversial activity asserting that it's a condition on the Autism spectrum. For those who claim the symptoms prove a person possesses Grit, there are now movements to empower and offer therapy to intensify this trait. But there's no effort to compare these views either to each other or to reality.

The described symptoms might represent a treatable mental illness, as the Asperger's advocates assert -- no one knows. They might represent a natural gift, one possessed by many successful people, and might even represent a positive evolutionary adaptation to a changing environment. No one can persuasively argue that view either, for lack of solid evidence, for lack of anything resembling science.

Bill Gates probably possesses Grit, and certainly has an Asperger's diagnosis -- assigned by someone who never interviewed him. Albert Einstein, the same. Thomas Jefferson. Many others -- all members of _both_ these opposing schools of thought.

In physics, Lee Smolin can criticize string theory ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics)) for (in effect) not really being a theory on the ground that it's untestable, and his views are widely read by people who don't see this as a challenge to physics -- quite the opposite. In psychology, critics have a much more difficult time because nothing is either demonstrably true or false. This is why two sequential chairs of the NIMH (Steve Hyman and Thomas Insel) have criticized their own profession's disregard for science, only to be (so far) shouted down by vested interests within the field.

The defense offered by the field's defenders can be concisely summarized -- no one really knows how science is defined, therefore one cannot persuasively describe something as unscientific. Shockingly, this is a view widely held among mental health workers. But this isn't a tenable view among physicists and other workers in scientific fields, who find that science's definition is very clear.

<comment><USER5> Some HN readers wonder why people don't simply demolish my psychology posts using evidence, instead of anonymously downvoting them (the preferred approach). The answer is simple: they can't -- the evidence is overwhelming that psychology is not a scientific enterprise. It's a matter of choosing which piece of evidence to present on a given day, from a wide array of possibilities.

<comment><USER6> There have been many threads where people have gone back and forth with you at length. "They're bitter and can't think of a valid response" is one possibility, but "they can't be bothered to launch into the same long conversation in response to basically the same comment" is another. It's bad form to simply declare that it's the former.

For the record, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your position though I think some of your arguments are not well founded, and I downvoted this comment and its parent.

<comment><USER5> > but "they can't be bothered to launch into the same long conversation in > response to basically the same comment" is another.

Several have tried to do just that, saying, for example, that I am wrong and that voting constitutes science, or that control groups aren't essential to serious human studies. While simultaneously downvoting, of course.

> For the record, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your position though I > think some of your arguments are not well founded, and I downvoted this > comment and its parent.

You are aware, are you not, that your being in disagreement with a legitimate viewpoint is not a valid reason to downvote, yes? That a post should contribute nothing to the conversation, or otherwise be egregiously at fault to deserve that remedy?

As to my views being "not well founded", if that were true, because I state my views so clearly it should be possible -- not to say easy -- to persuasively argue against them, demolish them with logic, by taking the high road. No one can do that, and no one has done that.

[http://arachnoid.com/science_of_mind](http://arachnoid.com/science_of_mind)

<comment><USER6> Sorry, very important typo - I downvoted the comment I replied to, and _not_ its parent. Perhaps someone with access (dang?) could confirm that, if there's any doubt.

 _" While simultaneously downvoting, of course."_

You have no way of knowing that it was the same people.

 _" You are aware, are you not, that your being in disagreement with a legitimate viewpoint is not a valid reason to downvote, yes? That a post should contribute nothing to the conversation, or otherwise be egregiously at fault to deserve that remedy?"_

I am aware. It is not crazy to believe that comments repeating the same points over and over are contributing nothing to the conversation. That said, as I mentioned above, I downvoted only the comment ranting about downvotes.

 _" No one can do that, and no one has done that."_

I believe I have done so in more than one instance; you ignore the points I make, accuse me of supporting positions expressed by others, demolish _those_ points (often effectively, sometimes relying on other bad reasoning), and declare victory. If you'd actually engage intellectually rather than rhetorically, it would be a more productive experience for everyone. As is, it's exhausting and unproductive, and has no bearing on the accuracy of either position - which is frustrating, because I would like to know if I'm wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After spending the last couple of years really diving deep into nutrition science[1] to save my own health, I've come to believe the almost every three- or four-letter organization has little to do with its stated purpose and much more to do with feeding itself and ensuring its own propagation, no matter how it has to do it (see, for instance, the American Association of Nutritionists and Dietetics' (AAND) relationship with CocaCola and PepsiCo or the American Diabetes Association's (ADA) relationship with AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals)[2]. Regulatory capture, as mentioned in TFA, is a popular method to protect the association.

In a previous age, these organizations played an important role in disseminating curated information to its members, with the assumption that it was curated for maximum benefit to those who would ultimately be treated. Today, the Internet has shown that the curation may not be as completely benevolent as we would have hoped as corporate interests subtly and not-so- subtley influence what gets propagated.

Unfortunately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to "fix" a heavily entrenched bureaucracy. Instead, I think the best we can hope for it to make them inconsequential. Fortunately, we now have the ability to do this, because we now have the raw information available with just a few clicks. In effect, the wisdom of crowds can overcome the edicts of the anointed[3].

The author of this article is taking a stand, saying that the TLA[4] associated with his field does not represent psychology as he sees it. I think this is a wonderful step, and I would trust him more as a psychologist as a result[5]. As more professionals eschew their self-serving organizations, health care will get better, because those that step away inevitably do so recognizing they have to become the curators of their own knowledge.

So when you hear a health care provider is not a member of an organization you would expect them to be, instead of immediately considering it a black mark on their score card, take some time to learn why. You may find they are a better provider for it.

1\. Sometimes, it is really hard to use the word nutrition and science together. There is some, but most of it is complete garbage compiled at incredible cost.

2\. Sponsorship alone is not a problem, but it's a _very_ dangerous line to walk. Sponsorship that conflicts with the core values of your organization is always a problem. Ask yourself: how strongly would the ADA be pushing for a true cure for diabetes, knowing 1) it would stop having a reason to exist and 2) its major sponsors would take a massive hit in profits? Is it surprising "managing" is the new word for how we treat illnesses?

3\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzPnnDDCIjo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzPnnDDCIjo)

4\. "Three letter acronym"

5\. Stepping away is not the only option. There is, for example, a strong group (Dietitians for Professional Integrity) working to change the AAND internally. I hope they succeed. [http://integritydietitians.org/](http://integritydietitians.org/)

<comment><USER8> TL;DR: he who pays the piper calls the tune.

I am not convinced that the world of "organic" and "natural" is any better. A lot of that stuff is about using fear mongering to create a manufactured and scientifically baseless division between a higher priced tier of food for yuppies and a lower priced tier for the riff raff. I've heard it called "food gentrification." It's all about market segmentation and charging more to those who can be propagandized into paying it. Bernays would be proud.

Eco-ideology is also used heavily to prevent the construction of new housing and infrastructure to artificially limit supply to the benefit of banks and existing property owners.

My level of trust in pretty much _any_ letter agency or social/political movement is low across the board. Nearly anything with a soapbox seems to be a front for something that reduces to political propaganda or wallet emptying. Right or left, religious or secular, green or whatever, it doesn't seem to matter. Nothing is true; everything is an advertisement.

IMHO we live in a world where the law is do your own primary research or be exploited. No exceptions. I am not sure if it was ever different or if people are just becoming more aware.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Nearly anything with a soapbox seems to be a front for something that reduces to political propaganda or wallet emptying. Right or left, religious or secular, green or whatever, it doesn't seem to matter. Nothing is true; everything is an advertisement."_

This seems to be an incredibly disempowering perspective.

<comment><USER8> I don't see it that way. I see it as a simple recognition of a reality and a call to engage in primary research and reasoning from first principles.

It is herds and movements that are disempowering.

It's still possible to organize too. People should organize on concrete issues and leave the ideology (levers for mass manipulation) at the door. That way it's a lot harder to leverage group identity signifiers and mythological elements to manipulate large numbers of people while masking ones real agenda. For example, we might create an agency whose goal is to reduce CO2 emissions. That's it. No other bandwagons are implied.

Don't get me wrong. I _do_ see the universality of manipulation as a serious social pathology. I just don't know what to do about it in a world where people have to get paid. Seems to me that if money is required to make things happen, only things that are motivated by money or that serve the agendas of those with it will happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" It is herds and movements that are disempowering."_

The Civil Rights movement.

The labor movement.

The environmental movement.

The suffragette movement.

The abolitionist movement.

The free speech movement.

The list can go on and on.

Whatever else you could say about these movements, agree or disagree with their aims or effects, its difficult to give credence to the view that they weren't effective or empowering to their members or that their goals could have been achieved without organization.

<comment><USER5> >> "It is herds and movements that are disempowering."

> The Civil Rights movement.

> The labor movement.

> The environmental movement.

> The suffragette movement.

> The abolitionist movement.

> The free speech movement.

> The list can go on and on.

Indeed it does, and some will argue that, with some noteworthy exceptions, your list, and other similar lists, proves the point being made by the OP. Most public movements only postpone what they protest against -- the labor movement stands as a classic case.

> Whatever else you could say about these movements, agree or disagree with > their aims or effects, its difficult to give credence to the view that they > weren't effective or empowering to their members or that their goals could > have been achieved without organization.

From a scientific standpoint, we cannot say whether these movements were causes or effects. By the time people were rightly condemning slave ownership on any scale in the U.S., Great Britain had abandoned slavery decades before, and many civilized people in the U.S. and elsewhere saw slavery's abandonment as inevitable.

As to the labor movement, historically it described an arc between ineffectiveness and corruption -- between a promise of a solution, to becoming a bigger problem than the issue it claimed to address.

As to free speech -- well, I see this as a classic example of modern government's basic strategy, which is to find out what people are going to do anyway, order them to do it, then try to take credit for the outcome.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's right to doubt that these movements at least accelerated improvements.

I am sure the South would happily have held slaves for much longer than it did. I remember when I was a kid car manufacturers claimed they would go bankrupt if they had to install catalytic filters. Only the pressure from the environmental movement build up the momentum for requiring those filters. Without the labor movement we would probably still work 12 hours six days a week.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Without the labor movement we would probably still work 12 hours six days a week."_

Unfortunately, many in the technology field still do, and worse. Many on this very forum advocate working much longer hours in their attempts to get rich quick through the startup lottery.

At the same time, they rabidly belittle unions, membership in which would probably be the only thing short of becoming an independent consultant that could allow them to work relatively sane hours.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$40,000 USD Funding, No Equity - Startup Chile Uncovered - <AUTHOR> http://niallohiggins.com/2011/11/11/40k-usd-funding-no-equity-startup-chile-uncovered/

<comment><USER2> Very well said. I'm a fellow participant in the program, having been here in Chile for four months. These insights are spot on.</comment>


Programming Depression - <AUTHOR>

Hello Peeps,
I just have a weird sincere question regarding being  a new developer.  I finished school 3 mos ago and have been working for a company as a Jr. Dev for almost 9 months.  As far as the company expectation I'm meeting my deadlines and everyone likes me.  Where I struggle is I feel like I'm not even close to contributing as much a my co-workers(although they have all been coding 8+ yrs me 3mos +school which I did learn nothing barely functional).  I feel like I spend much time on problems that it might only take another co-worker 20 mins and takes me 2 hrs to figure out and fix.  I love programming so much that things like this is making me depressed.  Prior to my education I had no programming experience but a few IT gigs which no programming was used.  Question? Is it normal to feel this way as a newbie or Am I being hard on myself?  Also I think sometimes the type of software has a peculiar type of business logic which is not easy nor fond.  Sometimes I think learning all this business logic is making me discouraged because I'm not really into it..(So this makes programming the logic and understanding it hard.)    The weird part is everyone seems to be okay with my work but I don't..
My solution to get out of funk:
Either take another gig that is Associate Programmer somewhere else with different product and client.
Go into a hybrid helddesk or network analyst role that includes programming.
Start some small home projects in the type of technology we use at work and post them on Github.(To grow and learn as well as be inspired)
Totally leave development and do something else..(program on side as hobby) <comment><USER2> Dude, don't worry - the 8 years experienced guys were in the exact same position 7.7 years ago!

I've just hired a new developer and he's forever apologising for 'taking so long'. I just try to reassure him that I know he's learning, and that's good - I want him to question what he's doing and does take the time to solve problems correctly.

90% of the programming problems I personally come up against, I've seen before and so I know the answer near instantly; but thats just through years of experience. Take the time to enjoy what you do and you'll begin to appreciate that you're getting the time to learn as you work, and don't hesitate to ask the experienced guys for a hand; they'll love the fact that they're the gurus.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it's normal. Low productivity for a newbie is pretty standard. Even if your programming chops are fantastic, you come into a new job knowing nothing about the domain they are programming in, which may be very complex and have a long history, and nothing about the tools, the code, the architecture, and so on, which may (and often does) suck. I am seeing this right now with a new hire where I work. She's competent, but just drowning in all the stuff she has to learn. I was here when our system was and designed and built, and I did a lot of the designing and building myself, so I have a deep understanding of how it works, an understanding that I think would be incredibly hard to come by second-hand. It can take years to become fluent in a big system.

</comment><comment><USER4> Comparing yourself to people that have 8 years of experience is silly.

Think about this: You go to a school to learn about music, but you don't actually learn any instrument, just music theory. You then pick up a guitar for 3 months and go play in a club. Dave Mustaine (Megadeth) walks in and shreds it. You feel depressed.

Makes no sense right? Don't give up, but realize that it's going to take more than 3 months of practice to be good at this (or just about anything really).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback Maxdemarzi.. Your right I think it just gets frustrating when I'm starring into the eternal sea of abstraction not knowing if the bug is somewhere in session manager, datalayer, or hate to say it sometimes UI..The someone comes along and says it over here in xxx after looking at it for minutes.. but.. You are right though I can not compare myself to them....

<comment><USER5> Bug hunting is the slowest skill to develop, because it takes thousands of similar cases and the experience finding them to know where to look. The reason someone with 8 years experience can spot them almost instantly is because they have seen thousands of mutations of database, Toolkit, UI and self inflicted bugs, they learn over time to spot the fingerprints, that provide the trail to investigate. I think it is peculiar that we as an industry put juniors on bug hunting as some of the first assignments, when it has been noted by many that debugging is one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of development. I think Brian Kernighan's quote is appropriate here:

 _Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it._</comment></comment></comment>


Restaurants call for 'Great American Takeout Day' to boost revenue during crisis - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/i/events/1242563098700996608 <comment><USER2> I am increasingly becoming more disenchanted and annoyed by the restaurant industry. Maybe many of them have to shut down. They don't seem like viable sustainable operations if they can't handle a couple of weeks of non-revenue.

Perhaps we could do with less restaurants and come up with a better system. Restaurants have always been a loss making venture..at least for the first five years...most fold after a couple of years. Running it on shoe string budgets and crowdsourcing funds or bail outs is not the answer.

Perhaps home cooking gigs where someone will come home and cook for you will become the new model. Or ghost kitchens. Or take outs. Much as people like to deride McDonald's, there is a reason they have endured for decades and are still profitable. They nailed work flow to an art form. Meanwhile..FF to present times: most restaurateurs and chefs consider cooking to be 'an art' and 'a passion'..an unfortunate side effect of cooking shows on tv and travel shows.

Consider this for example: [https://www.mercurynews.com/coronavirus-emergency- measure-ma...](https://www.mercurynews.com/coronavirus-emergency-measure- makes-it-easier-for-restaurants-to-sell-alcohol-and-for-you-to-get-it)

[..] You'll be able to get that margarita to go under a temporary measure taken by the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC).

California restaurants may now sell "beer, wine, and pre-mixed drinks or cocktails," for pick-up or delivery as long as it has "a secure lid or cap" (without a hole for sipping or a straw) and is sold with food. The state has also lifted its ban on alcohol sold at drive-through windows.

It's one of a number of steps taken by the agency to ease the pain on restaurants and retailers hurt by the downturn in traffic caused by the coronavirus and shelter-in-place order, made statewide Friday night by Gov. Gavin Newsom.[..]

[..] ABC said it has "carefully considered the public's health, safety, and welfare in providing this relief" and was acting on Newsom's emergency order "to support the alcoholic beverage industry in its efforts to assist California in slowing the spread of the virus while assisting the industry in dealing with the economic challenges it is facing as a result."[..]

I rest my case.

P.S: especially this [..] The state has also lifted its ban on alcohol sold at drive-through windows.[..]

<comment><USER3> I think you greatly overestimate the margins on restaurants. The death of many small businesses due to cash flow problems was predicted.</comment></comment>


Cyprus is going to have it's first hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://hackcyprus.com/ In short, the first ever weekend-long hackathon in Cyprus. We're excited about it and you should be too. Sun, sea, surf and code. Hacking meets the cradle of Western civilisation. <comment><USER2> Cyprus is in desperate need of such initiatives!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wohooo..Hack Cyprus:)</comment>


Ask HN: What are the biggest benefits of copyright for society? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> The fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that it allows people to make a profit from their work, be that recorded video, audio, a written computer program, or any other kind of intellectual property.

If there was no such thing as copyright, if you recorded a music track and gave it to somebody, they could legally sell it themselves to other people, and undercut you or just give it away for free. (of course people still do on a person-to-person basis, but this would make it completely legal for even a movie theatre to show hollywood movies without paying any rights)

Why is creators being able to make money in this way from their creations good for society? Well, previously, the method to make money from art before copyright was the patronage system, which involved wealthy individuals sponsoring an artist to create things on their behalf, with varying levels of interference in the process. This worked to some extent, but the fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody sponsors a small amount for a product then it will be better for most people, rather than catering to the specific tastes of a single wealthy individual.

You see this kind of thing happening nowadays with platforms like patreon - <USER2> is possible to earn a living from a relatively small subset of the people that actually consume your content, and even while giving it away for free, simply because those people have a desire to see more of the same stuff. The problem with patreon is that it has to overcome a little bit of a tradgedy of the commons problem, whereby stopping your own individual contribution is unlikely to have much of an impact on the quality of art produced. Nonetheless, it seems to have found it's niche, and is only growing.

What about if nobody pays for art? There are plenty of parts of our culture that nobody got any money for. Often things created by relatively nameless folk expecting nothing in return but the love of creating are some of our greatest cultural works, be them folk songs or open-source software.

While I speak mainly about art and music in this piece, any kind of intellectual property that can be copyright works in mostly the same way. There is relatively little that is different in the grand scheme of things between monetising a song and monetising a coputer program - both are practically impossible to do without allowing the user to share it futher without your control.

<comment><AUTHOR> > but the fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody > sponsors a small amount for a product then it will be better for most > people, rather than catering to the specific tastes of a single wealthy > individual.

Doesn't it work the other way around currently? Instead of sharing the intellectual property for the better of the most people we lock the property in the hands of a few. Probably as the time goes the wealthy will accumulate all of the IP in their hands eventually.

<comment><USER3> It's not about ownership, but about the content of the IP itself. The wealthy can only concentrate IP by making things that work for the majority of people.

Wheras previously, things were often super eclectic and weird, to suit the tastes of a particular individual.

Whether things that work for the majority of people results in lower quality art is an open debate. Personally I believe that it does end up with worse results, but the thinking behind copyright as it is implemented right now is that it is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Best case: There's an open source Quran app & site, done by people whose primary motivation is to use their tech skills as an act of worship. The more people use it, the more they benefit. The more people fork it, the more divine favor they get. A lot of people donate to the project, even though the team has no problem with server costs, etc.

But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build, and sell it.

I think the base idea is that it's _unfair_ for one person to spend years on a product and someone else to sell it. It's _unfair_ for the people who have donated to the team that has built it.

The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing.

<comment><USER5> >> But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build, and sell it.

You absolutely can. You can absolutely rename it, re-brand it and sell it for whatever you like. Your interpretation is exactly at odds with the expressed wish of the GNU Project. (see [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html))

The GPL is about software freedom, not price.

[As an aside I've heard arguments that it's "unethical" to sell a GPL program. Which is absurd since it gives the buyer more choices, not fewer. If I choose to compile a GPL program into a binary, and provide it to the market in a useful form (with source code of course), the market can then absolutely choose to pay me to do that. Red Hat is a multi billion dollar company built on completely this premise. To declare that "unethical" is like saying that selling food is unethical because everyone could just grow their own (ignoring the value added by picking, distribution etc.) The conclusion being that value is added at many points in the supply chain, not just the first one, and people are certainly free to pay for that value.]

>> I think the base idea is that it's unfair for one person to spend years on a product and someone else to sell it. It's unfair for the people who have donated to the team that has built it.

The team (or individual) that creates the product absolutely determines the license for that product. By _choosing_ the GPL license they are _explicitly_ allowing people to rebrand it and sell it. So, no, it's not unfair to do what _they_ have explicitly allowed you to do. By suggesting it is "unfair" you are asserting that either you are not aware of the actual provisions of the GPL, or the authors were too lazy to select a license that matched their actual intentions.

If you want to prevent people from selling the work, then don't use GPL, instead use a license that prevents people from selling your work.

>> The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing.

The license will absolutely determine how interested people are in contributing to your project. Of course, as you have shown, that doesn't stop contributors from being very unhappy when they think a license "means" something, and it turns out it doesn't. That is on the contributor though, not the project author.

In summary, if you are going to care about what happens to your work after contributing, then please make sure you understand the actual license that project is using and don't just assume terms that are not in effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question seems somewhat biased, why is copyright assumed to be strictly beneficial? Of course it has benefits, but surely it can't have only benefits. Isn't a more honest question to ask: "What is the impact of copyright on society"?

<comment><USER7> I think the point was that copyright is typically discussed in terms of its negative impacts. I, for instance, have never seen any discourse about the benefits of copyright.

The benefits seem obvious but there's still a place, in my opinion, for this topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The benefits seem obvious

They don't exist until I find them on Wikipedia

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a good start imho: [http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html](http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Having the assurance that a work is protected encourages developers and > publishers to create more works

Why is that though? Would the progress just stop without such "protection"?

<comment><USER9> Because people want to be rewarded by their work. If you remove the incentives, a great number of people will stop producing art.

<comment><USER4> Many artists don't need the incentives, but having other people easily claim and use it is a big turn off.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 5 - <AUTHOR> https://smile.amazon.com/Art-Computer-Programming-Fascicle-Preliminaries/dp/0134671791 <comment><USER2> Interesting general tidbits from [http://carmenere.ucsd.edu/drichert/reference_docs/Mathematic...](http://carmenere.ucsd.edu/drichert/reference_docs/Mathematical_Writing- Knuth.pdf):

"First he showed us a letter from Bob Floyd. The letter opened by saying 'Don, Please stop using so many exclamation points!' and closed with at least five exclamation points. After receiving this letter he looked in The Art of Computer Programming and found about two exclamation points per page. (Among the other biographical tidbits we learned at this class were that Don went to secretarial school, types 80 words per minute, and once knew two kinds of shorthand.)

...

Upon receiving a question from the audience concerning how many times he actually rewrites something, Don told us (part of) his usual rewrite sequence: His first copy is written in pencil. Some people compose at a terminal, but Don says, "The speed at which I write by hand is almost perfectly synchronized with the speed at which I think. I type faster than I think so I have to stop, and that interrupts the flow.

...

Don, obviously a fan of rewriting in general, told us that he knows of many computer programs that were improved by scrapping everything after six months and starting from scratch. He said that this exact approach was used at Burroughs on their Algol compiler in 1960 and the result was what Don considers to be one of the best computer programs he has ever seen.

...

The last part of class was spent discussing the font used in the coming book: Euler. The Euler typeface was designed by Hermann Zapf ("probably the greatest living type designer") and is an especially appropriate font to use in a book that is all about Euler's work. "

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll have to dive in this one more. First pass thoughts:

I love the implication that he thinks slower than 80 wpm. Sounds absurdly unlikely.

I also love the idea of throwing it away. Never fully been brave enough to do that, though. Nor have I ever seen it done. Getting closer as I get older. By coming up with a language for what I'm doing, I'm free to throw out how I've done it, so long as I honor the language I left behind. (Curious if this is the gem of dsl stuff. Just another way of saying to focus on the api.)

The shorthand, of course, complicates this. Does he do the first pass in shorthand? Even a mix of long and shorthand? That increases the writing speed considerably.

<comment><USER3> I don't think he's saying he literally thinks slower than 80 WPM. I interpret this to mean the rate at which he writes his thoughts down matches the amount of time it takes him to think of what he wants to write next or how he wants to phrase the next sentence. When I am writing research papers there are long pauses between sentences as I think of what I want to say next or how I want to phrase the sentence. That doesn't mean there are long pauses between sentences in my thoughts throughout the day.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see the distinction you are making. I get that it is not a constant stream of words at that rate, but you still described thinking at roughly eighty words a minute. Right?

And I have no clue how that actually stacks up. Eighty looks like a small number, but that is more than this whole post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's his 25th annual Christmas celebration, at Stanford yesterday: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kd7xE- HqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kd7xE-HqA)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have volume 1 and I found it hard to get into. I think it presupposes a few concepts that my university skipped - eg, the correct way to approach writing a computer science proof (it comes up really early on in the exercises).

I often wonder what else comp sci students learned that us software engineering students did not. All I know for sure is that we did a ton more testing, architecture, hardware, math, and requirements. I think we did more applied programming too, based on trying to work with comp sci students who write custom sorting algorithms instead of thinking to type .sort(). We did not learn a ton of algorithms though

<comment><USER6> Almost no schools, even great ones, teach informal (professional) proofs, even in CS and pure math. They expect you to learn by osmosis.

<comment><USER7> Interested in proofs and proving? Read _Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs_ by Richard A. De Millo (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Richard J. Lipton and Alan J. Perlis (Yale University) given at POPL3. [https://ucsd-pl.github.io/cse-130-230/fa18/papers/demillo- so...](https://ucsd-pl.github.io/cse-130-230/fa18/papers/demillo-social- processes.ipdf)

The peer review process often seems to fail when proofs are involved-- reviewers often skip over the proofs because reading and checking is hard work.

<comment><USER8> FYI, that link gave me a 404. I found what appears to be the same paper here: [https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf](https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Three questions to ask before you pre-order an iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/national/2010/03/12/the-apple-ipad-three-unanswered-questions/

<comment><USER2> His complaints:

(1) You don't know how it will _feel_ (It's Apple so that's pretty much the one thing that is guaranteed to be fine)

(2) You don't know which iPhone apps will run correctly (get over it, the software will be buggy and under-featured for the first 6 months, but the web browser will work great and that's all that really matters. Remember iPhone OS 1.0?)

(3) How much will iPad-only apps cost? (A good question. My guess: another race to the bottom)

</comment><comment><USER3> Based on the discussions I've had with other iPhone developers the one problem you won't have is a lack of "designed for iPad" apps.

There will be a lag as Apple isn't allowing "garden-variety" developers to submit iPad apps before they are tested on real hardware (and no we don't get our hands on any before anyone else) so expect there to be a couple of weeks before the flood hits the app store.

The other item I'll comment on is app cost. Given that the iPad version of "Pages" will be about $10 (and from what we've seen it's definitely at the high-end of the quality scale) I wouldn't expect a significant difference in price compared to existing (quality) iPhone apps. This may change with time however.

<comment><USER4> I wish, wish, WISH there would be a $5 price floor for "designed for iPad" apps! That would lead to a much more sustainable software ecosystem, and if someone wants to do a simple app they can design for iPhone, and there can be free "designed for iPad" for software that monetizes another way.

Too many developers are like NBA general managers and need someone to save them from themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about just 1 question: What are you gonna do with it?

I'm not buying it, because I can't think of a single thing I'd use it for. Microsoft's Courier, OTOH, has the potential to replace all my note-taking, diagramming etc.

<comment><USER6> I can't even use it as a raw media consumption device since no flash = no youtube or hulu...and I'm sure as the sun is hot I can't play Blue Rays, divx, xvid files on it. Basically the only thing I could do with it is game and read books...and there are far better options for both.

<comment><USER7> Check out solutions like StreamToMe in the app store. <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/streamtome/id325327899?mt=8>

It pairs with a small server program that does on-the-fly transcoding and streaming. I've been using for months on my iPhone and I can't wait to move up to a larger screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's what it may feel like: to big to replace your iPhone or iPod, no keyboard or mouse so it won't replace your laptop. A "three-handled family credenza" with no place in your life.

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.xconomy.com/national/2010/03/12/the-apple-ipad- th...](http://www.xconomy.com/national/2010/03/12/the-apple-ipad-three- unanswered-questions/?single_page=true)

For those of you who don't feel like clicking to 3 separate pages just to read three questions...

</comment><comment><USER10> I set my alarm and pre-ordered mine at 5:30 this morning.

I rationalized it by convincing myself that I need a second iPhone OS device for testing a game that I'm writing, one that has a compass and accelerometers. GPS would be nice, but for now I can just hard-code a static location across town for Player 2.

That leaves a choice between an entry-level iPad at $500 or buying a second 3GS for $800, so it was an easy decision.</comment>