The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ <comment><USER2> Back in the original dot-com bubble, I worked at a place that had the most amazing coffee machine I've ever seen. It was the size of a Coke machine and made ten thousand varieties of boutique coffee, most of which I'd never even heard of, all made to your specifications. It was incredible.

Then one day a guy came in with a hand cart, loaded the coffee machine on it, and rolled it away. A week later the layoffs started.

The lesson here isn't that there's something intangible or magic about free sodas or coffee. It's that when you _used to_ give out free sodas and coffee, and then you _stop_ , you're telling everyone in the company that business isn't as good as it used to be. Beverages are an easy thing for the bean- counters to get approval to cut, so when times get tough, they get cut first. But they're also a small line item, so while they're the first thing to get cut, they're usually not the last.

In other words, the free sodas are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When they die, it's time to get out if you don't want to die with them.

This is why, when I visit clients these days, I make a point of going with them to their break room to get some coffee before our meeting starts. If their beverage situation has been upgraded since my last visit, they're doing well. If it's been downgraded, I know to be on guard for bean-counters coming after my relationship with them.

<comment><USER3> I started putting my resume out when the free soda ended too. funny thing was my old boss got angry when I mentioned that as one of the reasons I wasn't happy any longer. He said they didn't take it away they just stop providing it. for the life of me I cannot tell what the difference is.

<comment><USER4> The boss didn't take away your wage, she just stopped providing it. Problem?

<comment><USER5> Classic! LOL.

This is worth a Dilbert strip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of a great blog post, _Goodbye Microsoft, Hello Facebook_ by Philip Su ([http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello- facebo...](http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebook/)):

 _We used to get Dove Bars and beers all the time. It felt like free food was on offer at least once a week, usually with a pretense of some small milestone to celebrate. Why did we cut stuff like this? (I know the boring fiscal reasons why. I'm asking the deeper why, as in, "Was it worth the savings? Is Microsoft better now that we've cut these costs?")

One day, a sign appeared on a soda fridge in RedWest saying something to the effect of, "Did you know that drinks cost Microsoft [ed: millions of dollars] a year? Sodas are your perk at work. Don't bring them home." This depressed me on too many levels to enumerate, but I'll toss out a few:

\- Someone had enough time to get these signs professionally printed and affixed to our fridges.

\- It was someone's salaried, 40-hour-a-week job to do things like this.

\- Someone thought soda smuggling was a big enough "problem" at Microsoft to draw attention to it._

<comment><USER7> Hm... more like: someone was smuggling sodas out of the building that were offered in good faith as an office perk. Frankly that would affect my morale more than even the removal would. What does it say about an office culture where that kind of petty thievery is tolerated? Honestly my feeling (and to be clear: like this whole subject this is subjective) would be that this response is not enough: better to name and shame the offenders.

<comment><USER8> Smuggling? Really? Why does Microsoft _care_ where I drink my soda? My brain doesn't turn off at 5pm: last night I was up until 3am, at home, figuring out some bug my change introduced. Yes, I drank an employer-provided Diet Mountain Dew that I brought home. No, my employer doesn't care. Perks are for _people_ , not _locations_ : as long as _I'm_ drinking the soda, Google doesn't care where I drink it.

<comment><USER9> What if you sold it?

That would be ridiculous right you could be thinking, programming and improving the product to get a better bonus in the end rather than sell soda off of craigslist or ebay.

But you see that is how they think about it. You are stealing it and could be doing <insert the worst possible thing>. That is what management might come to conclusion about.

Another perspective + a story. (Warning: getting a bit prejudiced here). I have heard of foreign H-1B workers (won't name a country will stop at a vague level of prejudice) stuff their backpacks with soda. Stay late, look around, see if anyone is looking start shoving soda cans to fill the backpack up as much as they can carry.

It wasn't that management was upset, you see, it was other co-workers that were disturbed by that. Why? Because they realize they are working with "that" person. That would be disturbing to me. Is the company not paying them enough. Are they a kleptomaniac. Did they grow up poor and learned to steal food. What else are they stealing? Are they sabotaging our product? Do I want them around? Questions like that.

They complain. How does management react. Well they could lay off so and so. But heck he is chugging along programming and we got him on H-1B sponsorship. Laying him off because of a soda issue is worse than just making everyone pay for soda and, in return we get to save couple of thousand dollars a year.

That is how I heard about* (from another party, so this might have been made up, I don't know, take it for what it is worth).

<comment><USER10> God damn that was depressing to read. I've seen various levels of cheapness but this takes the cake. Stuff like this makes me ashamed of being an Indian, really. Oh well..

And I don't think what you said was prejudiced either.

<comment><USER11> > I've seen various levels of cheapness but this takes the cake. Stuff like > this makes me ashamed of being an Indian, really.

Don't feel ashamed, this level of cheapness has nothing to do with your nationality.

My dad was a physician, born and raised in the US. He earned a good living, worked very hard (he never had fewer than 2 jobs the whole 3 decades I knew him), and saved money religiously. And he was very frugal as well: he never went into debt for anything, drove cars till well after they fell apart, had clothing that I know was older than I which he wore till the day he died.

One of his great loves, though, was to steal things from the hospitals he worked at. Anything that wasn't bolted down - office supplies, filing cabinets, tables, chairs, desk lamps. At one point, he was bringing home hard boiled eggs that he pocketed in the staff room, because obviously we couldn't afford food. Several times when we were doing remodeling at home, I got to keep a lookout for security while we snuck bags of construction waste into the dumpsters at work.

Now, you didn't know the guy so it might not be obvious, but this was all about not spending a cent more than he had to. So, don't feel ashamed because some of your fellow country men are taking soda from work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've seen such things happen, and I almost universally blame the founders and top level leadership when this kind of thing happens.

Dedicated CFOs and accounting types are simply doing their job. Their singular focus is often the bottom line and the company's financial health. It's not their job to maintain, foster, or enhance company culture. That is the job of the CEO.

In situations like this, it's the CEO's responsibility to make statements like "there are intangible benefits to free snacks and sodas. Small things like that help people that make money for the company stay focused longer and help them get through their day."

Help the accountants understand where the cost cutting boundaries are early, so you don't have to micromanage every decision they make later on. Over time they'll start to "get it" with your culture and they'll focus their attention on real problems like getting financing, making sure invoices are paid, setting up M&A deals, etc that they were hired to do.

<comment><USER13> I'd _strongly_ disagree that it's not the CFO's job to foster and enhance company culture. If your CFO is a cost-cutting machine, I hope he's not highly compensated. Any qualified first-year accountant can do that job.

It's a good CFO's job to make sure that resources are invested strategically. Indeed, it's every executive's job to work together towards a shared vision and goal. If someone is working towards a different goal, you're inviting unnecessary conflict. No one should need to be micromanaged - _at any point_ \- if they share the goal and the culture along with the rest of the employees.

<comment><USER12> When you bring in an outside CFO, chances are that you're getting a highly paid individual whose main incentive is to increase the valuation of your company to make it look good for an acquisition, increasing revenues substantially, or going public.

Cost cutting is just one tool in their toolbelt to work towards it. But it's the sharpest and most easily understood tool they have so that's why they will reach for it so often.

In an ideal world, you'll get a CFO that totally jives with you culturally, accepts a lower salary (or limited equity stake), and just handles all the paperwork. But such people will rarely carry the title of CFO.

<comment><USER13> > _"In an ideal world, you'll get a CFO that totally jives with you > culturally, accepts a lower salary (or limited equity stake), and just > handles all the paperwork."_

Again, I have to disagree. Ideally you get a proactive CFO who understands the value of the company culture, and works to encourage it. Yes, even if that costs more money. A paper pusher who stays out of your way does not approach the value of a good CFO who gets what the company is about and what they're trying to do.

Anyone who hires a paper-pushing-bean-counting CFO should not be surprised when that CFO tries to sacrifice long-term success for short-term balance sheet exhibition.

<comment><USER14> > Anyone who hires a paper-pushing-bean-counting CFO should not be surprised > when that CFO tries to sacrifice long-term success for short-term balance > sheet exhibition.

This is the point. You are not to be surprised, but as CEO be ready that your CFO will require guidance while doing otherwise useful things.

<comment><USER12> Exactly my point.

Should a CFO be singularly focused on bean counting to the detriment of company culture? No.

Is that often the reality when you bring in an outsider as CFO well after your company culture is established? Yes.

CEOs just need to be aware of this fact and work closely with any outsider who gets hired into a CFO position in their first 6 months on the job to make sure that all interests are aligned. It would be great to find someone up front that totally gets it and is willing to be a dedicated CFO, but I think such individuals are extremely hard to find.

The sad fact is, many CEOs only bring in a CFO when they're trying to find a way to cash out. Company culture usually takes a back seat at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My wife was a software engineer at a very big company (Fortune 50 / Dow Jones Industrial). At one point they decided to take the water coolers out of several buildings -- a move estimated to save half a million dollars a year. But one top-notch software engineer adds a lot more than that to the company's bottom line, so the move can very quickly become value-subtracting if it pushes someone over the edge to "I'm going to go to [competitor]" or "I'm going to go become a contractor".

Even if they don't leave, there's a morale penalty applied every day when someone walks past where there used to be refreshments, and has to keep walking another 30 feet to the water fountain or vending machine.

If there's one thing every company should understand about software, it's that top-notch people operating at high levels of morale are great for your bottom line. Being cheap about things like refreshments and office equipment ("you have to buy your own second monitor") is a morale killer.

<comment><USER16> It occurs to me that it's not just about morale and retention. Refreshment sites are also where people communicate. So I wonder how many dollars someone in the company was paying management consultants to foster better internal communication when someone else pulled out the water coolers!

<comment><USER17> The place I work understands this. We have a company-wide lunch every week (not every day), and the intention is to get people together who wouldn't ordinarily be talking.

It seems to work. I try to sit with new people then, rather than with my immediate cow-orkers, and I usually learn interesting things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The company I'm with now recently started implementing "cost cutting measures." Coffee is no longer free (.50 cents per cup). Annoying, but not really a huge deal. You can pay once a month and get it out of the way instead of having to keep quarters on hand.

The bigger issue, to me, is that management decided to stop using a cleaning service. The 30-employee workforce is now part of a cleaning rotation. So, once a week, we are all expected to stop what we're doing and spend 30 minutes to 2 hours cleaning something, depending on our assigned area.

How can that possibly be cost efficient? You derail the thought processes of all 30 of your employees for at least a half hour every week. 15+ man hours that your highly skilled employees could be using elsewhere. In the case of the half-dozen programmers here, it's even less efficient. It takes a lot of concentration for me to get into a mental state conducive to good programming. 30+ minutes of cleaning is enough to get me out of that programming "mode", and it is very difficult to regain that state of mind once lost.

I think that's at least part of the reason why these progammers were so up in arms about the soda machine: Because now they have to think about it. The company has introduced an annoyance and distraction (I'll admit, a trivial one) into their work day, for very little apparent effect on the company's bottom line.

<comment><USER19> > .50 cents per cup

Is that how it's supposed to be written, or did you just tell me you get coffee for half a cent?

(Serious question. English isn't my first language.)

<comment><USER20> No, it should be written $0.50 per cup or 50 cents per cup :)

Verizon Wireless had an issue with charging for wireless data like this a few years ago that made for a funny story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I once worked at a startup where the company gave an "across the board" 10% raise to the engineering team in a way that caused 3 key people to leave.

Essentially in a company meeting that reviews were being delayed for 3 months because of how crazy things were but there was an across the board raise of 10% to make us competitive. The catch, the raises took effect immediately but would not be paid until reviews were done, then everybody would get a lump sum catch up payment along with any increases from the raise.

The meeting dissolved into a huge mess where engineers kept asking "Why not give us the 10% raise now" and the VP Engineering got increasingly irate at the ingratitude without ever adequately explaining the delay.

I went after the meeting and asked the CFO what the hell was going on. Basically, changing all of payroll was a pain in the ass, had a fee of $25 per headcount, and it was going to take a week for our overworked accounting department to accomplish. So they didn't want to take the hit in accounting twice in such a short period of time. I went back and explained it to my team and things were all better.

Reasonable, and if the VP had just said that, all the engineers would have nodded and said "Good thinking!" but the damage had been done. 2 key developers resigned that same day and one two days later.

There are people in this industry who can send emails to their network and get a new, good job in the space of an afternoon. Don't do stupid crap to them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Its really weird. I feel like the business school experience for most people was like "look at a balance sheet, find costs to cut". The program I did, at a not very prestigious school (my employer paid) the focus was much more on the long term impact and trade offs of the decisions you make. So you think "Ok, we will save 10k, but what will we lose?" When the answer is "we will lose the happiness of our team" this becomes an obvious bad idea. As an employer this is such an easy way to make your employees happy and reward them for working super hard for you. Once you lose sight of that and look at it as a cost to cut you might as well just not run a business because you're missing the bigger picture.

<comment><USER23> Trick is, much of the business world is measured by (and thus optimized for) quantifiable short-term impact.

The short term positive impact of cutting out snacks is immediate and obvious. The costs are less obvious and longer term. Do enough long-term planning in a place like that and people start getting tired of long-term answers to short- term numbers not moving.

Further complicating this stuff: say a 'good' CFO saw the value in a snack budget and implemented one where it didn't exist before. How do you even measure the impact of the improved work that goes along with improved morale? How do you credit a manager for nixing a 'cut the snack budget' suggestion? How do you measure the negatives that were never incurred?

It's very easy to see 'cut snacks, saved 10k; 3 engineers got the wake-up call, grumbled about 'stuff like this' and left, 4 projects now behind".

It's pretty tricky to _ever_ say "this project is now on track because we added a food budget and put in a foosball table". [1]

[1] Which is why those items tend to be focused on as recruitment expenses. It's simply easier to measure/justify in that context.

Which is also why they tend to go away when the company reaches that size where further staffing is composed primarily of employees coming from jobs that _also_ do not have snacks and games, so their necessity for recruitment is basically gone.

<comment><USER24> Agree. Unless you're the only tech shop in town, I think the complimentary sodas in the kitchen going away is primarily a sign of a decision to not be competitive in the recruitment process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Benefits should be added slowly and if they must be taken away it should not be piecemeal. Few things offend people as a continuous loss of status.

Machevelli,the Prince (From obtaining a state by Wickedness!).. Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.

<comment><USER26> Machiavelli is underrated as a social psychologist. People just don't want to believe it's true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think that a lot of times these sorts of things come down to peoples inability to rationalize large numbers.

It reminds me of a story posted a while ago about the City of Boston moving from Microsoft products to Google Cloud products. One of the prime motivators of this move was claimed to be cost. Boston would save $280,000 in the move. $280,000 seems like a lot of money, a quarter million dollars. However, the story also quoted that there were 20,000 employees using the software. This means that the city would actually be saving $14 per year per employee, or a little more than a dollar per month.

If the employee spent more than a minute or two of paid time learning to use the new system, a year's worth of savings would be eliminated. Now, it's possible that the city would see efficiency improvements by using google apps, but that wasn't the reason claimed for the move. The reason claimed was that the switch would cost only $800,000 but save $280,000 per year. Within 3 years they would recover those costs and realize some savings.

When a new CFO comes in and sees that your 100 employees consume $50,000 worth of soda in a year, it looks like an easy place to recover a nice chunk of change. However, in reality the difference is a couple of dollars a day per employee. If those employees now end up going across the street to the coffee shop instead of getting free soda in the office you've just wiped out any gains.

The larger the organization gets, the bigger this feels. 1 employee spending $500/year on soda is not worth considering. 10 employees spending $5,000 per year on soda isn't really a big deal. 100 employees spending $50,000 on soda raises some eyebrows. 2,000 employees spending $1,000,000 on soda means it's going to get cut and someone's going to get a sweet bonus for cutting it.

<comment><USER21> Every one of these Windows/Office -> Linux/Cloud/Google analysis I've looked at included staff retraining and retrofitting costs. Not saying they aren't rosy estimates, but CIO's tend not to be complete idiots.

<comment><USER27> The costs of retraining and retrofitting was mentioned and bundled in at $800,000.

My point wasn't that they didn't do their calculations, nor do I mean to show bias towards MS or Google. My point was that the amount of savings they would realize ($280,000 per year) was so marginal when the number of affected employees were taken into account.

If I came up to you and said "I can give you a piece of software that will save you $1.17 per month, but I will have to sell it to you for $40", would that be a good deal?

Why is it that when you multiply those numbers by 20,000 that it all of a sudden becomes a good deal? Especially when you can't be 100% certain that your cost projections are perfectly accurate, being a bit too optimistic can wipe out any hope of any savings.

My point was just that because the numbers are big they look really important. But when you look at them spread across the workforce it looks different. Saving $280,000/year after 3 years is just fine. Saving $14/year after 3 years is fine too. One looks far more important than the other.

If the news story said that it would save them $1.17 per user per month after 34 months, would it have the same impact?

If a company says they spend 2 million dollars a year on free soda for staff, that sounds excessive. If they spend 2 million dollars per year on soda but they say that they spend 45 cents per day on average on soda per employee, does that have the same impact?

In the former, you don't have any point of reference 2 million dollars is a lot of money. In the latter you immediately consider things like how much the employee's wage is, how much electricity they use, how much water they use washing their hands after using the toilet. If you have someone using a Xerox copier that charges a few cents per copied page, now their copier usage is majorly competing with the cost of soda.

In the grand scheme of things though, a couple of dollars per day per employee, for professionals, can be pretty much ignored. But if you think of it instead of $1,000,000 per year, it's harder to ignore, even though it's the same thing.

<comment><USER21> Ok, I don't understand you point.

The original article was about taking some thing away from employees and saving a small amount of money and doing that having negative impacts morale way beyond the savings.

In this case the city is GIVING the employees something and saving a small amount of money.

Oates said: "This decision represents an important step forward for the City. We want to equip all city employees with easy-to-use tools that allow them be more productive and innovative in their jobs, as well as a system that can scale to keep up with the city's demands."[1]

[1][http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2267773/city-of-boston- dumps-...](http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2267773/city-of-boston-dumps- microsoft-software-for-google-apps)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's an understated point in this article- that once they get beyond a certain point, startups rely on the obliviousness of early employees to blind them from negative changes that surround them.

I mean, sure, the sodas were the wake up call that made engineers realise they wanted to leave. But the article seems to suggest that leaving the sodas free would solve the problem. Surely the core problem is that the company has changed, not that the engineers noticed it?

<comment><USER16> That struck me also. The mistake wasn't removing a perk per se, it was signaling that things had changed. But surely the employees would have noticed that sooner or later? So it seems there is a deeper problem, with no advice about how to address it.

<comment><USER29> Might be a far out idea, but I wonder if around this stage, bringing in an anthropologist to study the culture of the company and suggest ways how to preserve some of the characteristics that originally attracted the first engineers would help address this problem.

<comment><USER30> I worked for a company that brought in an organizational psychologist who tried to get a handle on what ways the company worked well and didn't work well. It seemed like an interesting exercise.

And then we were purchased by a company run by insecure petty tyrants who alternated between neglect and micro-management, so none of it mattered. Sigh.

<comment><USER29> Did you get at least any of that sweet equity that people say is one of the best points of tech sector to balance out your disappointment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I promise I'm not trying to troll here.

When I hear "free soda" I hear "free diabetes and heart disease". Free soda is the worst kind of encouragement to have your employees living a healthy lifestyle. I'd love to hear about a company who seeks to provide fresh local fruits and vegetables at its snack table.

I really don't mean to come off as a Debbie Downer, but soda is such a terrible scourge on society as a whole.

<comment><USER32> Yahoo! Ireland used to have free fruits, at least around 2006/2007.

I'm with you about the sodas. They are free at my work (with a loose rule of one per employee per day) and I always say to my fellow colleagues that it's terrible, sugar sugar sugar.

<comment><USER33> Not even sugar. High fructose GMO corn syrup that's subsidized by your tax dollars. Much worse than cane sugar.

<comment><USER32> Well not in my case I think as I'm in France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I noticed this at my first Silicon Valley job. When I joined, about a year after its acquisition, the kitchen was fully stocked and they had to ask people to take pizza home with them.

First the soda orders went from a variety to a few brands and the pantry which was always open, started getting locked. Then it was cut to just cold cuts in the fridge and you had to run once the pizza guy got there or you were hungry.

Attrition started soon after. It was apparent to all that our European parent corporation didn't quite understand how Silicon Valley worked. After about a year of everyone who could leaving (CEO, Dir of Eng, most of pre-acqu and post-acqui employees who weren't H1-Bs), the office ceased to exist.

Like the OP, I saw the cutting sodas as a sign. If they are going to nickel and dime on something that keeps people from having to take a 20 min break to quench their thirst, where will they stop?

</comment><comment><USER35> One of the key reasons why I decided to join my first employer was because they had amazing fruit baskets delivered every morning. It saved me from thinking about breakfast.

Top banks and law firms have everything either free or heavily subsidised under one roof, from multiple restaurants to gyms, so that you don't waste any time looking for those things and carry on working like a dog (but feel privileged doing so). Just don't calculate your hourly rate...

</comment><comment><USER36> People are totally irrational about free soda/snacks. If you gave them a $50/month raise (to cover the cost of soda and snacks), they'd be offended. If you put out soda and snacks, well you're just the most awesome employer ever!

<comment><USER37> If the snacks are provided by the company:

-I don't have to carry change/cash.

-I don't have to deal with a vending machine that will fail to give me what I want 2% of the time.

-If something that I want is not there, I can ask the boss to get it next time rather than hoping for a machine to be restocked (probably by a vendor that may or may not carry what I want).

-The price of soda/snacks never changes.

-If I ask my neighbor to grab a soda for me, there's no need for her or me to keep a mental account of gifts.

EDIT: Typing too fast; missed a word

<comment><USER38> I've never worked somewhere with "free non-lunchtime calories" (i.e. not tea and coffee). Wouldn't this encourage unhealthy consumption?

Rather like the "fixed monthly cost eat as much as you want 24/7" cafeterias in many US universities. I know, it's your own responsibility etc etc, but surely an abundance of free stuff will encourage over-consumption. Especially if you factor the psychological "if I don't eat it I'm getting stiffed" factor.

<comment><USER39> _"'We warn Nooglers, which are new employees, that they should expect to gain weight during their first six months,' Welle said today during the inaugural Wired.com Health Conference here."_

Yeah, Noogler weight gain is a known phenomenon: [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/17/google- employ...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/17/google-employees- eat-better)

<comment><USER40> For what it's worth, this can go both ways.

Since starting at Google I've managed to lose a good amount of weight due to increased availability of healthy(ish) snacks (free bananas and mandarins in the MK!) and the buffet style lunches.

<rambling>

How do the buffet style lunches help? Glad you asked.

When I have a plate of food in front of me, I eat everything that's on the plate. I may set out to do otherwise, and I'll even manage to avoid it in my first pass, but in the ensuing conversation over lunch I'll gradually nibble at the remains until everything is gone. However, if I simply take less food, there's nothing to nibble.

Now, I was also making an active effort to lose weight before this, and it requires a conscious choice to eat the healthier options made available to us (as there are plenty of unhealthy options). Compared to my previous gig, though, I've found it much easier to make good choices, diet wise, at Google.

</rambling>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Interesting that this was written in 2009. In 2009, that's when I snapped a picture in Charlie's which said "Googlers: badging today will allocate funds for your meal tomorrow": <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/10/17/badging/> \- they added ProxCard readers hooked to laptops in every cafe. "Badging in" would make it play the PING! noise from Gattaca (or a vuvuzela, but that's another story).

The food was still "free" [1] but things had definitely changed at high levels. This was just a small part of it. It's taken some time for the change to become evident on the outside world.

I wonder if this post is related to the things I was seeing at the time.

[1] As seen on HN: <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/>

</comment><comment><USER42> There is a classic quote by Machiavelli:

"People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge."

There is something in "small details" that make us just to feel humiliated. The kind of thing that is not serious enough to understand is needed "well, I get the company is in bad shape", but it feels like a personal offense "What?? I just got a word from my manager because I left yesterday 10 minutes earlier, when we have 'flexible hours'? F*ck you!" When I think about the times I've been most upset with my workplace, it's always for those stupid details. They fell like personal humiliations. And personal problems are way worse than profesional ones...

</comment><comment><USER43> Why didn't he say anything? Why sit on a board if you're not going to offer advice?

<comment><USER44> Ha, I had the same thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Very bizarre to read these kinds of business stories. I was a business major and recall all the case studies regarding the unmeasurable, but vast, benefits to the company of providing ancillary benefits such as free gym membership, free child care and free drinks/snacks. Sure these things are measurable monetarily, but the increase in employee moral, employee retention, productivity and general PR over company culture are immeasurable. (Admittedly they are measurable to a degree, but so many variables can allow business people to end up with numbers that support their decisions)

I guess that is where academia collides with corporate politicking, as an MBA hired in a tech start-up it is easy to justify a 6 figure salary and stock options when you can show you are directly responsible for cost cutting of $x, rather than an MBA explaining they are responsible for $x increase in cost, but that company moral is up.

</comment><comment><USER46> As long as free fizzy drinks are considered sacred, engineers will never reach the income levels seen in the legal, medical and financial sectors. Employers will treat like adolescents those who behave like adolescents.

<comment><USER47> Other professions have perks analogous to free soda for engineers. For example, medical sector professionals go bonkers over free samples.

<comment><USER48> Well, that's a little more directly connected to their jobs.

It allows them to start a patient on a drug without friction, or to give a patient who's going through hard times a full course of treatment without him having to pay anything.

<comment><USER47> Then to validate the point, if company X stopped offering free samples, competitor Y would probably benefit by still offering free samples. Or, the medical professional could just buy the samples from company X with their own money because they are no longer free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> At my previous firm, cuts in these sorts of things was a rounding error in their balance sheet--completely immaterial. BUT it was viewed as an indirect signal to everyone to think frugally in your projects, work harder, and temper feelings of entitlement during difficult economic times. So I've always viewed these sorts of actions as a management technique, not necessarily a financial cost cutting one.

</comment><comment><USER50> One place I worked went in a few short years from having free fancy coffees, etc. (for developers in their skunkworks office) to departmental secretary sending out an email complaining about the rate of consumption of cheap ballpoint pens from the supply closet. (A quick check online confirmed that if the consumption was reduced to zero, it would save less than $20/yr -- hardly worth the alienation and bitterness it caused.)

At that company I coined a rule that once companies start to focus heavily on "branding", it's time to bail.

</comment><comment><USER51> The old discussion here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750>

<comment><USER52> That discussion seemed to be about server names? b^)

<comment><USER53> Naming servers something cute, witty or clever is a gold standard of freedom among engineers. When engineer perks (server naming, or free sodas/snacks/food, lax daily start-times, etc) are taken away, the good engineers will quit.

<comment><USER54> I'm not sure about that. If management won't let you name the servers after characters in your favorite sci-fi movie, then that is an indication that names matter (ns1 for DNS rather than gandolf or papa_smurf or whatever) and that management is playing the role of the adult while you are acting like a child.

If you want to name servers after fairy tale characters and you will have a tantrum if management won't let you, then you are not mature enough to work for a company. It's called growing-up and being responsible.

<comment><USER55> Engineers are the ones who will have to use the server names. When management starts insisting things be done a certain way that's called micromanagement and it's the biggest sign your company is about to fail.

And good engineers understand the value of memorable names, as well as the less tangible value of good corporate culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> As much as this story is meant to be about keeping staff happy and managing expectation. Actually what I think it really does a good job is illustrate that finance and hr teams are pretty bad at managing the complex cause and affect that balance sheet decisions make. How many times have you seen someone leave because they were turned down for a pay increase?. The company then has to pay 12%-18% of an increased annual salary in recruitment costs for a replacement - added to the costs spent for managers time during hiring.

</comment><comment><USER57> This reminds of the scene at the biggest virtualization companies and their great debacle of 2008. A certain VP was hired from one of the old order companies and the first order of business was cutting free dinners. Never mind the dinners were for folks that stayed late working crazy hours to finish the release. Next to go was the stuff in the kitchens. All said done there was a huge revolt, the VP went back to the company he came from. But the damage was already done, months later the CEO gets fired and that was the end of one of the best work cultures in the Bay. The exodus had already started.

At the end of day these are tiny costs when compared to the overall productivity of engineers. Yes, there are folks who will misuse it but those are a tiny fraction and cannot outweigh the positive effects. It shows that a company cares for it employees and is willing to go the extra mile.

</comment><comment><USER58> Well, at our place can sodas cost 85c, so they're making a cool profit from us instead of it being a perk!

But, I was wondering, how much soda did these guys drink? He says the cost was about $10k. Correcting for inflation (<http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/>) that's $10,838. Assuming 11.45 for a 24-pack ([http://www2.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?ec=BD_563-EC27726...](http://www2.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?ec=BD_563-EC27726-ProdID11338136&pos=0&whse=BD_563&topnav=bdoff&prodid=11338135&lang=en- US)), gives us 22,704 cans of coke. Assuming this was an annual expense and all 50 people in the company drank about the same, that's _37 cans of coke per person per month_! That's a lot of coke.

<comment><USER59> Eh, not really. Think about it, when the soda is free:

You drink a can in the morning, because if you're a soda drinker you're probably not a coffee drinker, so this is your morning caffeine hit. Then you'll have one at lunch, because you're eating. Sooner or later you'll get thirsty again, so you'll have one in the afternoon. Maybe two (since the afternoon is about twice as long as the morning). So, 3-4 cans of soda per day, multiplied by 20 working days in a month gives you 70 cans per month. Assume this is near the high end of a spectrum of soda-drinking behavior, and you'll get an average of around 37 per month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Tell the executives they're wasting money on free parking. From now on., all executives will be charged $20 a month (or $1 a day) for parking. The primo parking spaces will be $50 a month. Surely that is reasonable! And watch the executives go into an uproar. This might help them understand in a way they can relate to.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is something I think about a lot. Right now, our startup is just the co- founders and one intern, and we don't even have office space yet. But assuming we are successful and start growing, at some point we will have employees, office space, offices, etc. And what I find myself pondering is "how do we make sure we create the kind of culture and environment that we want to work in, and that other people will want to work in... and how do we preserve it as we grow?"

Now, you might say "Mindcrime, you're in a 2 person startup with no revenue yet, if you spend 2 seconds a year thinking about this stuff you're wasting time". But I think it's important for the founders to think hard about culture and work to start embedding that culture into the very DNA of the company, from the early days, and actively look for ways to resist the "culture decay" that @sgblank talks about in this post.

Assuming you have a founding team who retain a substantial degree of control over the firm as it grows (ala, say, Sergey and Larry, or Zuck) you wonder "is it possible to preserve the best part of what makes the company great, even if grows in size 10x, 100x, or more"?

</comment><comment><USER62> I've read that the same thing happened at TechTV. When the free food disappeared, it sent a signal, "Cash is tight. We're in trouble. Be worried."

</comment><comment><USER63> There's a saying that when a company starts cutting pens and station office availability, it's time to search for an exit. I'd say it's the same kind of mechanics here: It's not that soda is so valuable, it's that the company reached a level where every little thing starts to get scrutinize and needs justification, and there's no going back from then.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm always amused by how quickly drinks seem to go in order to save costs when the cost of drinks for an entire small department of developers is nothing compared to the salary of a single one of them, yearly.

Not to mention the whole "developers and loose change" not going together thing so we tend to value them as worth far more than we should.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've seen free snacks go away at one company - but it was during the company's first downsizing. The company was losing money. We engineers grumbled a bit but no one really faulted them for it.

The Support department set up a cash shop with far more variety of snacks than we had before.

</comment><comment><USER65> Where I work people still talk about 'the year they stopped giving away turkeys at Thanksgiving'. That was in 1986.

</comment><comment><USER66> I worked at a large consulting firm that went public a while back. As part of that process, they took away the candy bowls from the front office. Fast forward a few years after going public, benefits are cut to the bone. Vacation has been slashed in half.

Cutting costs (especially silly ones) is often a sucker's way to profitability. When people cut costs, they like to think they're being analytical. They often end up ignoring some indirect costs. A better model would include the expected cost in efficiency and human resources via departures and low morale.

</comment><comment><USER67> I work for a small company, not a startup (I've been here 9 years), about 20 people. Yesterday we launched a website, today we got Pizza. I was happy. It cost the company £100 but it made all of us feel appreciated.

A couple of weeks ago I ask an owner how much he wanted for an old TV we had in the office, hoping that he would say just take it (the tv was 8 years old and not been used for about 3), he didn't, he wanted its ebay value. We agreed £30. That made me feel sad, less appreciated.

tldr; Small things can affect people in a big way.

<comment><USER68>
        > wanted old equipment for free
        > had to pay a nominal price for it instead
        > felt sad and less appreciated

Gotta say, your disappointment really isn't resonating with me. Sounds like quite a reasonable response on their part. People in management perform a constant balancing act with things like morale and expectations. Perhaps it wouldn't have been prudent to have you be seen to be getting "special treatment". Unless there were 19 similar old TVs to give to the rest of the team, then you can guarantee several people would have felt resentful about you getting yours for free.

<comment> qu4z-2 At my workplace it'd probably have been given for free, and I'm pretty sure none of my co-workers would resent the recipient. Come on, it's an 8 year-old TV. Everyone who wants a TV has a better one already. Are we really so petty?

<comment><USER69> A company can't just write off things that are in it's inventory. They can either be lost, destroyed, trashed or sold. If you sell them, it has to be at a reasonable market value or you're in trouble with the IRS. So it's not unreasonable to ask for the ebay value. Ask for a low ebay value if you're being nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I think part of the issue in a lot of these circumstances is irresponsible spending to start out with. If the people in charge are spending exorbitant amounts of money on snacks to begin with, that's partially a nice perk, but it's also short-sighted: Benefits are important, but setting expectations is, too.

I've worked in startups that made this mistake, and once you've been down that road a few times, you can tell when people didn't think enough before they started placing those early food and drink orders. There's a line to walk between nice perks unmaintainable/excessive spending.

Of course, if you do decide you've gone too far, the article's scenario can play out, whether it's coincidental or whether the cut actually is because of financial problems (in which case it's unlikely the snacks broke the company, but they certainly don't help in that regard, and they do make it that much harder to effectively manage budget cuts without incurring even more employee ire and attrition than absolutely necessary).

</comment><comment><USER71> I've been through this more than once.

Adding my experience to the data points of anecdote -- from working outside the Valley and in larger, more "traditional" corporations (albeit ones where sodas and at times meals were made free as perks -- either an historical legacy or a management practice gleaned from magazines and consultants).

When the soda stops being free (or meals, if you're so lucky, etc.), it's time to go.

If don't simply want to take this external advice, _listen_ for yourself to the explanations that are given when this is done. After absorbing a bit of that language and convolution and misdirection, if you don't want to go on your on accord and the basis of direct experience... well, some people do do all right. But, from my perspective, they don't tend to be people I enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a simple technical solution to this problem:

1\. Charge employees by volume for sodas.

2\. Reimburse them for their urine.

<comment><USER72> Unintended consequence of your technical solution: employees start chugging gallons of water.

(But yes, I LOL'd.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Foreshadowing aside, I neither expect nor care if my employer provides me with beverages. Not even coffee. If it's there, I'll probably take advantage of it from time to time, but it wouldn't actually influence my decision on where to work.

</comment><comment><USER74> Isn't this posted already at HN. Interesting to see so much discussion on a repost.

Link: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750>

</comment><comment><USER75> As a senior engineer who recently left a company undergoing a very ugly transformation, this strikes remarkably close to home. As with this case, the major pressure to change came not through the executives but rather the board.

I have strong aspirations of starting a company, but have seen too many examples of a board's personality being at odds with [what feels like] common sense business interests.

Anyone have any advice on ways to a) properly vet your investors and b) curb these situations down the line?

</comment><comment><USER76> I didn't know it was a normal thing for companies to just give out free food/soda to employees like this, moreso to complain about not having them. How common is this?

<comment><USER77> Are you asking how common the free food/soda is, or the feeling of entitlement to it? The former exists where there's competition for employees. The latter is a pre-existing but latent condition that comes out in proportion to the presence of the former.

Personally, I've never forgotten that I'm lucky to have "extra" benefits, and I've never started believing I'm owed them.

<comment><USER76> I guess I haven't thought about competition for employees - I've only tended to think of the situation as employees competing for jobs. Does competition for employees only tend to happen in places like SF?

<comment><USER77> It's also this way in Cambridge, MA. And probably other places where there's more demand for highly-skilled developers than there are candidates. Maybe in smaller cities that are trying to bootstrap a startup scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Steve Blank says its a sign of a company growing and you didn't notice. So that sounds natural and should be expected. So is he criticizing soda-jerking or not?

I would think if it were managed, with lots of communication about new benefits that reflect the changing company behavior (more execution-centric, less skunk works) and new work-hour expectations, then it can seem ok.

</comment><comment><USER79> It's funny, to me, that the guy will sit in a meeting with a bunch of executives and VCs, all making significantly more money than he is from the software he's writing, and the major complaint he has is that they're cutting off free soda.

<comment><USER80> His major complaint is that they scared away all the good talent.

<comment><USER79> Okay, I didn't make my point very well.

To put it another way, it's amusing that the software engineers make a big deal out of free food and drinks, when the people "above" them are getting massive pay checks from the software engineer's work.

It's no wonder we're getting another tech bubble when software engineers will sell themselves out for $5 worth of snacks.

<comment><USER81> I'll quite happily take the snacks if it means I can code in peace all day and not have to worry about finding funding, talking to investors, keeping the company running, etc. They're the ones with money on the line too, they probably deserve the "massive checks".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> But why does anyone bother counting such small money? Hell, we don't even use one or two cent coins in this country at all. The time and effort saved is much more than the nitpicking about a cent here or there.

</comment><comment><USER83> I left Cisco after the free soda's went away.

</comment><comment><USER84> We were a 6 person startup that hired a CFO and cut soda because our burn was too high and we hadn' t raised money in 3 years. We experienced that exact same meeting and resulting effect at our company. It probably seems strange that we would get a CFO this early, but our finances were a total mess and we had a co-founder who dipped so 4 years after the founding we were hamstrung when going out to raise money.

</comment><comment><USER85> Solution: Soda fountains instead of cans. Lets seem the take that thing home!

</comment><comment><USER86> I once was scolded for taking too much of what did eventually become the "managements" coffee.I was offered the ability to purchase packs so I could drink from that particular coffee machine, price tag: $60. The "others" were directed to another coffee machine, slightly inferior.

The fact that I worked more than 14 hour days, weekends, had to pay for my own cab fares home (because trained stopped at 23:45) and occasionally had to spend nights working on features to hit marketing deadlines. At one time they hired a freelancer who wasn't up to par so I had to do all of his + my stuff, four nights in a row. At some point all nighters was more common than non all nighters.

This is what happens when non devs take over and we become machines. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008178>

<comment><USER44> No, that's what happens when you are complicit in bad management taking advantage of you.

Saying that good companies, even software companies, can only be ran by software developers is a rather odd takeaway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> This seems to indicate to the power of _common knowledge_ (see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)> ) which is not the same thing as shared knowledge. Common knowledge means everyone knows that everyone knows (that everyone knows, to infinity) and that's _far_ more powerful.

The real crimes have nothing to do with soda. Some manager is hired from outside and is mandating daily status reports. Complain about _that_ and you get in trouble, or people think you're a slacker upset that he can no longer hide. Or, let's say that you find out that some newly-hired VP/NTWTFK (Non- Technical Who-The-Fuck-Knows) is outearning engineering old hands who took actual risk; it's unjust, but if you complain about it, you endanger not only your career but the careers of the people who gave you that information.

The thing about free soda is that you can complain about the loss of it without showing insecurity or political bias _because the change is in the common knowledge_.

Companies get away with much worse crimes than free-food reductions (which aren't even crimes at all if (a) they were never part of the promised employment deal and (b) times are legitimately tough) but because there's no way to hide that stuff, those end up being the touch-points for complaints.

You can't complain about the new stack-ranking system without seeming insecure-- so executives can divide-and-conquer along those lines (we're firing 5% each year in a "low performer" witch hunt, but the top 15% get bonuses!)-- but the loss of free food is a more socially acceptable and universal grudge.

I actually like the fact that when Douchetember 11th happens, these trivial perks get phased out as well. If the executive shitfucks knew how to rob a company, they'd keep the free soda while turning the crank slowly on the robberies that actually matter (meaner performance review systems, equity clawbacks and cliffing).

Imagine what would happen if a large company kept its trivial perks but still disempowered engineers, gradually, over time. It might manage to hold a "best company out there" reputation 10 years beyond actually deserving it. Not that I know of any companies like that, but just imagine how effective it might be and how much executive robbery (at the expense of clueless talent) could go on.

<comment><USER88>
      > I actually like the fact that when Douchetember 11th happens

Is that a national holiday in VC-istan where former employees go home and grind their axes?

<comment><USER87> It's a national holiday on which incompetent execs are flown into high levels of existing companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Old trick. This is taught as a way to get people to leave by themselves. Often followed by contracts not being renewed, and people moved into hours they don't like or into roles they don't like.

Those people leave by themselves, then the firings happen... and stock goes up, targets are met... BONUSES ALL ROUND! Woo! (Or merger/new investment/whatever needs a up+right graph).

<comment><USER90> Good staff can get new jobs. So they leave first.

You're left with people who are duffers, and possibly doing harm to the company. Or with people who have many years with the company and who will be expensive to layoff with redundancy payments.

<comment><USER91> No, you have it all wrong.

Firstly, I'm sure the work policy you signed off has tons of rules. Most of them are never enforced. Now, you enforce them stringently.

Awwww.. People you didn't like now have cause for you to fire them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Very insightful!</comment>


Basic Information Regarding Tin Whiskers (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/background/index.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Since lead-free electronics have become the norm with standards like RoHS, tin whiskers have become a real problem. This is why aero/astro electronics are still leaded!

</comment><comment><USER2> It's pretty amazing that we do not understand the physics/chemistry behind them at all. Sometimes the universe still stumps NASA!</comment>


Show HN: An URL shortener for mobile apps - <AUTHOR> https://monkey.li <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HackerNews,

We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Instead of imagining, we preferred to act. So, we created MonkeyLINK.

MonkeyLINK is an url shortener and influencer campaign tracker for mobile apps. You can create a project and get your short link in a second. Share it on social media or anywhere you want. We collect all statistics for you.

Also, we have an automatic landing page creator for mobile apps. Here is sample landing page created automatically for Tinder:

[https://app.mnky.li/tinder](https://app.mnky.li/tinder)</comment>


To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity - <AUTHOR> https://thebulwark.com/to-make-police-accountable-end-qualified-immunity/ <comment><USER2> Crimes should be charged more seriously, not less, when they're committed by police. This is only reasonable - any crime committed by an on-duty officer is inherently more harmful that the same crime committed by a civilian, because in addition to the damage of the actual crime, the officer's commission of it also does harm to the public trust in the police and our society.

Beyond that, the police should be held to a higher standard because we as a society acknowledge that they are trained well enough to walk around with guns and the ability to deprive people of their freedom (even those who are innocent - if you're locked in a cell and later not charged, you don't get that time you spent in a cell back). We should be able to charge Chauvin with first degree murder despite a lack of premeditation, because he was trained to know not to do precisely what he did. If I kneel on a guy's neck and kill him unintentionally it's manslaughter, but if a cop does it, it should be worse because that cop should be expected to know that doing so is not an acceptable form of restraint.

<comment><USER3> So many double standards.

A police officer is allowed to "panic and fear for their life" and shoot me as a result. I, as a private citizen, am expected to remain cool, calm and composed in the face of multiple guns in my face.

Even more mundane things: if I break a law, "ignorance is no excuse". When cops arrest photographers for shooting in public spaces, I have literally heard government officials explain it away as "We cannot expect our police officers to be constitutional lawyers".

<comment><USER4> A police officer may be required to put his life on the line tens of times a year. A private citizen may have his life on the line maybe once or twice in their entire lifetime.

Violent crime is a scourge on America, with 15,292 homicides last year, not including non fatal shootings and/or other violent crime. As part of their job, police officers are called to deal with hardened criminals. There is a high level of risk involved. Can we stop for a second and be a tad grateful to the people that keep our neighborhoods reasonably safe?

'You've got a split second to decide whether the suspect is reaching for a gun or not. Make a mistake one way and we'll send condolences to your family, make a mistake another way and we'll throw you in jail for two decades. Make the right choice, and we'll throw another one your way next week'. Who in their right mind would take that kind of a deal? And if nobody in their right mind would do, who's going to keep the tough guys from imposing their own rule at gun point?

<comment><USER5> The occupation of police officer in the US is roughly as dangerous as being a construction worker. Police aren't even in the top 10 most dangerous occupations [1]. So this type of fear is not really justified and probably contributes to the problem.

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most- dangero...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangerous- jobs-us-where-fatal-injuries-happen-most-often/38832907/)

<comment><USER6> Considering the number of occupations that is not really a good number.

<comment><USER7> considering the comparison to a well known and broad job description -construction worker, the list being used for this top 10 number does not have a large number of occupations. and considering that you clearly undersdand that, your comment is pushing a false narrative using misinformation. and considering that this forum is not a place for calling people losers and purposely dense clowns, i won't.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, no joke. There are several hundred occupations in the original report: [https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0326.htm](https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0326.htm)

They likely picked the most dangerous ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am european, and police in the US really is something else: the mindset, the culture, the engagements. There needs to be a nation-wide police reformation.

<comment><USER9> We should start by repealing the 2nd amendment. It is a bad law. Edit: This along with arm confiscation would limit force in police interactions and thus lower aggression.

<comment><USER10> > We should start by repealing the 2nd amendment

How should people protect their houses/shops when armed criminals try to rob your place?

<comment><USER9> Call the police and have insurance.

<comment><USER10> What should you do till the police don't come and who will help you out till you get the insurance payout which is not a guarantee.

<comment><USER9> Well I didn't say you couldn't fight. My proposal includes confiscation. Assume very aggressive pursuit of criminals with an unlicensed firearms. Like multi-county dragnet with blocked roads. Like we get O(100) cops for one gun. Most criminals will just probably keep it to cold arms.

<comment><USER10> How exactly are you going to fight armed criminals with just your hands or a knife?

Confiscation from lawful gun owners, why, what crime did they commit?

<comment><USER9> People with guns lose fights too. Cold Arms are easier to assess and much easier to run from. Who said anything about a crime that's like asking in the current regime cocaine users what crime did they commit. I'm not suggesting arresting them. I want their weapons. They aren't using them to defend against tyranny so what good are they.

<comment><USER10> People can lose if they are armed or not armed so that is not valid argument for not taking up arms.

> They aren't using them to defend against tyranny so what good are they.

They are using it to protect their homes and stores from rioters so they are atleast doing something.

Its very easy to say take away their weapons but you dont provide a realistic solution for defending life and property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another suggestion: Bolster social programs that is being hamfisted through the justice system, necessitating larger police forces who don't have deescelation training and are not legally obligated to know the law they enforce.

Police don't need to bust someone for drugs if we have robust social programs that adequately address poverty and addiction.

Police don't need to harass homeless people if we have robust social programs that adequately address homelessness.

Police don't need to deal with severely mentally ill people who are unpredictable and potentially dangerous if we have robust social programs that adequately address the mental healthcare crisis in this country.

<comment><USER12> > Bolster social programs

I think you are actually talking about dismantling more than half of the existing criminal statutes. I agree that we should do it, but there's a reason it hasn't been done before: there are still a ton of citizens who believe the only way to deter crime/poverty is a bigger stick, not swapping a stick for a carrot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Police officers, given that they have the power of life or death over others' lives, should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one. Apparently, this is still extremely controversial in America, where our culture insists that it be the opposite way: hold police to a lower standard, let them steal, beat, rape, and murder almost at will. In a sick society like this, one shouldn't wonder why the masses are cheering on the burning of police stations and courthouses. In a society like this, police are just the biggest gang and frankly, any action against them is defensible ethically, if not legally.

</comment><comment><USER14> We ask cops to be part social worker, part solider, part lawyer, part investigator, part paramedic - and we pay them a salary for just one of those professions at best. Law enforcement is a small part of the job many days.

It's time to create mission specialist in large police forces with depth in these areas and to deploy them as teams of 2-4. Yes, there will be shortages in coverage and that is okay.

<comment><USER15> "We" didn't ask them to be any of these things, especially soldiers - this is power that they actively pushed for, there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police began in full swing - just a post-9/11 power opportunism and the need to find jobs for discharged soldiers.

Mission specialists always existed, they're called detectives.

<comment><USER12> > there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police > began

I would argue we started the militarization of police in the 1970s-1980s when NYC was a festering hotbed of crime and when Miami drug dealers were shooting automatic weapons during turf wars (which was when we started Civil Asset Forfeiture... which allowed police/prosecutors to essentially steal assets from civilians without a criminal conviction).

We gave surplus DoD weapons to police for cheap after 9/11 and judges started rubber-stamping no-knock warrants around 2001, but I don't think that was the only inflection point.

<comment><USER15> Not the only, but 1970s-1980s had a real crime emergency, the 2000s didn't nearly as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure about this. Maybe qualified immunity should be reduced in scope, but I don't know about doing away with it. A police officer that tasers a violent suspect should be immune from prosecution if that suspect falls and hits their head, or has a heart attack. I don't see a way that police could do their jobs without some version of qualified immunity.

I think that at least part of solution lies in better training on use of force, massively increase training on deescalation techniques, better psychological screening and continuous followups, full-time body cams that don't turn off and are tamper resistant with appropriate logging of metadata to detect misuse-- to the extent that if a complaint is made against an officer and the camera is mysteriously not functional, the disciplinary burden should be moved to favor the complaint. And probably other things too-- this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of reforms.

<comment><USER17> I think that might be the logical end goal: Remove police from street policing, and let communities police themselves.

<comment><USER12> > let communities police themselves

This happened in the wild west and didn't work out so well.

<comment><USER18> At least, we should reinstate requirements that police should come from their own communities...

<comment><USER12> That might be an improvement in many places, but it would probably create problems for San Francisco and San Jose, where cost of living is largely unsustainable for people who make starting police salaries unless they lucked into a family house.

We sometimes forget that officers get to choose where they want to work and will migrate to the best place for them. The ratio between housing costs and salary (among other quality of life factors) is pretty important to lots of officers and we may end up lowering the quality of officers by only restricting the pool of eligible employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How about focussing more on teaching police officers to learn how to be calm and composed as much as possible instead of going on the offensive too quickly. Yes, there are times when you will "fear for your life" and have to act with force but far too often our police officers are casual in going on the offense. In many cases, it is just a case of being pissed off because the guy/gal they pulled over is rude or verbally abusive or is not complying to a request. Can you take a deep breath and agree that it is part of your job to deal with idiots/crackheads/vulgar people as well and learn how to deal with them without always flashing your gun or tasers ?

One thing the police do where I live is to do community get togethers to get to know the actual people. It helps to reduce anxiety and stress. Yes I live in a "nice" neighborhood so it is easy for me to say may be. But can we not try similar police and public get togethers in the "not so nice" neighborhoods ? Is it not even worth a try ?

Also, be more strict in getting rid of bad apples which I believe this article touches upon a bit. This specific police officer had a history of violence and he should have been under more scrutiny that he was.

Until the respect is mutually created between police and public, no law on the books can prevent these types of unfortunate incidents.

<comment><USER3> > How about focussing more on teaching police officers to learn how to be calm > and composed as much as possible instead of going on the offensive too > quickly.

Most police departments do. In the area I work as a paramedic, they certainly are trained in de-escalation.

I also know that some of them just... don't... care.

I've been dealing with mental health patients, got them calmed down, got a plan for dealing with their issues. And then had a cop march back over (who was on scene, saw the initial incident, the de-escalation), and start shouting at the patient over the destruction of property. The patient's property. "Who the fuck do you expect to clean up that broken glass? Selfish asshole. I should make _you_ get on your knees and clean it".

End result? The patient who was compliant and willing to go for evaluation in the back of my ambulance needed to be sedated and narrowly avoided being tased. In the grand scheme of things, worse things have happened. But this was a situation actively under control. And a situation this officer, and only this officer, actively worked to make worse.

That incident resulted in a complaint, though I have no idea what the resolution was.

<comment><USER19> But that is the problem then right ? Conduct like that should have consequences and today there is none. Cops should not abuse anyone even verbally, period. That is their job to handle, descalate as much as possible. Yes there are many good ones but I feel like there are many bad apples too and it is not just a few anymore. It is the culture and mindset of "how dare you challenge my authority or disrespect me".

I personally have come up against one cop like that many years ago and funny thing is that I was actually trying to be compliant. He was just on his own high horse and had made up his mind that I was drunk and forced me to take the breath analyzer test. I remember specifically him asking me in a pissed off condescending way "So you are telling me that this machine is going to show 0 reading??" and I was brave enough to say "yes sir since I didn't have any alcohol for last few days at least". I guess I was lucky he didn't do more. But man, he was pissed when he pulled me over for supposedly tailgating him/his partner (It was 2 AM at night and I was coming home from a long drive and was a bit tired and may have gotten a bit closer than reasonable to his car from behind). He punished me hard for that. We went to court. He argued that I seemed drunk and all I could do was like WTF. The point is that he could have easily pulled me over and just asked me "sir is everything ok since you got closer to my vehicle. " I anyway said "Officer I am sorry that I didn't realize as I am coming from a long drive but I am now prompt and aware". His whole premise was he had assumed I must be high/drunk since it was late at night. That is a bad cop to me.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely it's the problem. It should have consequences. And often, not only does it not, but there is a non-negligible group of police who will "defend their brother" over "doing what is right".

There are bad apples in Fire and EMS. We are not perfect. But Fire is proud of a heritage cultivated over many long years of honor and trust, and when someone in the Fire Service abuses that trust (be it theft, assault, otherwise), the "thin red line" doesn't fold in to defend him against all insult, real or imagined, but instead ostracize him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Malpractice insurance and touchy premiums, fuck up, and you can't afford to be a cop and a dept can't afford to hire you.

</comment><comment><USER15> Or at least make it actually qualified.

</comment><comment><USER21> Was there a higher voted story about the same thing which just disappeared?

Or should we discuss some Javascript framework instead?

</comment><comment><USER22> The root problem is not the cops. Well, the abusive cops seriously aggravate the problem. And the police is the enforcement arm of the system.

But the root cause is the economic system on which America is built, and which it enforces throughout the world with its military, and enforces domestically with its militarized police.

Predatory capitalism has run its course for the past 500 years. It's all about extracting from the poor, and feeding it to the rich, the well connected, and the powerful. In this case, the rich are the white wealthy Americans, and they have been at the top of the ladder for the past 300 years in America.

America needs a new economic system.

What's the point of making $15/hour, or $30,000/year, when your rent costs you $15,000/year, or 50% of your gross income? You barely have any money left over for other mandatory necessities.

Meanwhile, the oligarchs that owns the stock market and Wall Street, and Fortune 1000 companies, lives lofty lives, and Bezos is about to become the world's first Trillionaire. And if they fail, and screw up the economy for everyone else, then well, they'll just get another bailout. The poor ends up paying for it, since costs go up for everyone.

But in an alternate universe, Floyd was arrested because he was suspected of using a fake $20 bill. But somehow, he drives a Mercedes Benz SUV, which is a rather fancy vehicle for someone to be driving, who's suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill.

The rents are too high. The cost of living is too high.

The wealth distribution is not even. And what we have right now in America, is run-away capitalism, where the rich takes all the money. And the poor, the destitute, and especially the minorities continue to suffer.

This fosters a society where poor people are destitute, And they resort to unlawful things, and the larger society mandates tougher cops and tougher predatory criminal laws. Which feeds ever more on itself, in a vicious cycle, until something finally breaks. And that's what we have this week, with the death of Floyd, and the nationwide protests.

If you can solve the economic system, then maybe, you can get cops who are not afraid of minorities. But to be honest, I have little hope of either issues ever being solved.

</comment><comment><USER23> Verso has also made the ebook edition of Alex Vitale's excellent "The End of Policing" free:

[https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of- policing](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing)

TLDR: any society which refuses to provide social democratic floors to people will increasingly rely on violence to maintain its social order. You can't expect policing to be the primary means with which we deal with things like the housing and healthcare crisis without disastrous consequences.

<comment><USER12> > You can't expect policing to be the primary means with which we deal with > things like ...

I don't buy this argument because it removes agency from law enforcement officers, who -- as a class of people -- very highly buy into the concept of free will.

Right now, police departments have a significant amount of moral hazard. They are expected to behave in a very legal and upright manner, but not all do and those who don't are very rarely held legally or civilly liable. I think doing something like removing qualified immunity (or at the very least just giving DAs tools and directives to prosecute more egregious use of force problems) or putting more of the police officers' wealth at risk (by tying their retirement programs to the funds which pay out for violations of civilian rights).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The textualism of the conservative justices is primarily just a rational instrument for unwinding the liberal reforms of the Warren court.</comment>


How online shopping and cheap prices are turning Americans into hoarders - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/567985/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> OK, I admit, I haven't read TFA and I'm not sure I can be arsed to read it now... but just going off the title, I'm struck by the seeming disparity between that and another article we saw about a week or two ago, titled something like "Americans own less stuff than ever, and that's worrying" (or something to that effect).

So wait, are we owning less stuff, or hoarding increasing amounts of stuff???</comment>


Show HN: Parlor – Customer Collaboration Platform - <AUTHOR> Howdy HN!
First off, I have to say I've been looking forward to this day for a long time!  Over 3000 days ago I joined HN with the goal of eventually posting a "Show HN" for a startup I co-founded.  Today, I get to finally do that with Parlor! I owe a ton to this community and truly believe I've learned something from HN just about every day since.  Any feedback you have on Parlor would be greatly appreciated - even what you hate about it! (I mean you can't really build a platform like ours if you're averse to feedback.)
Parlor is what we call a customer collaboration platform, and it's designed to transform the way software teams engage their users in order to refine their products, validate their development efforts, and build longer lasting relationships with their users. Through Parlor, these software teams can validate the impact of all of the potential new feature ideas they're considering building, by previewing them directly inside of their products, all without first having to write a single line of code.
Parlor: https://teamparlor.com/
DEMOS for GOOD - let us demo Parlor to you and we'll donate $25 to the charity of your choice.  We'll donate $25 to another charity of your choice if you give us 1 piece of actionable feedback or advice. (Why start a company if you can't experiment with fun ways to drive growth?)
Thanks!
Jason <comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer any questions you have about Parlor!</comment>


Steps for Founders Hiring a Tech Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> https://dsdoes.com/3-steps-for-founders-hiring-a-tech-co-founder-5efdaef63d52 <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure I read an early draft of this article. I made a few suggestions and one of them ended up as a direct quote attributed to me in the article.</comment>


Lisp Books living again in Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://juliangamble.com/blog/2012/07/13/amazing-lisp-books-living-again-in-clojure/

<comment><USER2> I don't believe enough praise can be given to "The Little Schemer" (and the series). This book is wonderful at teaching recursion and is extremely entertaining. I've run by only a few books that can teach a programming skill like this without the need of a computer. Grab a pen/pencil, some paper and this series of books. Then take some time to just do it. It's more fun than sudoku, seriously. Again, you don't need to execute anything in a REPL. Your brain, that book and piece of paper is your loop.

(this space reserved for jelly stains)

</comment><comment><USER3> Would love to see the same thing for Racket. Anyone else have this are want to start it?

</comment><comment><USER4> No Land of Lisp?

<comment><USER2> Love that book! When I first started looking into Clojure, and Lisp in general, this book was announced. I had it on day one of its release. It's a really fun and informative read and deserves more readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> this isn't about lisp books, this is about examples in lisp books translated to clojure.</comment>


Lightyear One solar car sets record for world's most aerodynamic car - <AUTHOR> https://thedriven.io/2019/10/30/lightyear-one-solar-car-sets-record-for-worlds-most-aerodynamic-car/ <comment><USER2> The fastback design [1] seems to be a nod to classic Citroën models like the DS and the CX, which were also famous for their low coefficient drag[2][3]

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_DS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_DS)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_CX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_CX)

<comment><USER3> I don't think those Citroen's would really be well classified as fast backs. Eg: classic mustang[0], vs mustang fastback[1], where the roof sweeps to the rear window.

The first thing I thought of w this car though is kammback[2] design.

[0] [https://img.pistonheads.com/LargeSize/ford/mustang/ford- must...](https://img.pistonheads.com/LargeSize/ford/mustang/ford- mustang-S3840720-1.jpg)

[1] [https://cdn.barrett- jackson.com/staging/carlist/items/Fullsi...](https://cdn.barrett- jackson.com/staging/carlist/items/Fullsize/Cars/125338/125338_Side_Profile_Web.jpg)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammback?wprov=sfti1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammback?wprov=sfti1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks very similar to the Volkswagen xl1 [0], even has a similar bar across the front. If you believe Wikipedia, the xl1 also had a much better drag coefficient of 0.186 [1].

[0] [https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15112331/2014-volkswag...](https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15112331/2014-volkswagen- xl1-first-drive-review/)

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car#2011_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car#2011_model)

<comment><USER5> VW was a 2 seater, this is 5

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It has seemed inevitable since the volt's door handles that eventually all electric vehicle designs are going to converge to a nearly uniform teardrop form.

<comment><USER7> The teardrop is the ideal aerodynamic form, and electric vehicles, and BEVs need to maximize aerodynamic efficiency to maximize range, which is still quite limited compared to internal combustion vehicles on even the best BEVs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _During several weeks of tweaking different configurations of the Lightyear One at the Turin facility, the Dutch carmaker scored a record 0.20 drag coefficient for the vehicle making it the most aerodynamic 5-seater car there is._

Doesn't this imply that the title is inaccurate?

<comment><USER9> It is accurate as long as you consider it a production car, so it would be the most aerodynamic car in production at the moment. It all depends - the title for most aerodynamic would stay with the 1996 GM EV1, which by the way had a kind of similar look.

Then there are cars like the Fiat Turbina from 1954 with a drag coefficient of 0.14: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzDYBigP6Tw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzDYBigP6Tw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No golf ball divets?

<comment><USER11> They're waiting until they have a _driver_</comment></comment>


Patreon's Future (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://kyefox.substack.com/p/patreons-future-venture-capital-is <comment><AUTHOR> I gave this a little refresh in light of the news about Patreon getting into microloans.</comment>


Transplantees Find Catharsis in Holding Their Old Hearts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/heart-to-heart-transplants-therapy/537504/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I find it very beautiful and interesting about how relationship between soul and flesh.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd totally keep my heart in a jar on the bookshelf, or embalmed and framed, hanging from the wall.

<comment><USER4> I'd cuddle with it for good bye and throw it away, but I'm sure my dad would cover it in silver and keep it on a bookshelf as well. He does that with insects he finds pretty, weird guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is off topic, I stopped reading any publication that forces me to agree to adtargeting. They are in a stark violation of the GDPR. There's no option to opt out.

<comment><USER6> "Alternatively, you may select "Set My Preferences" to accept (or reject) specific categories of data processing."

And the privacy settings button appears prominently in the bottom right of the screen allowing you to change your settings at any time.

The Atlantic appears to be doing things right. Curiously though, if you disable ad personalisation, you get no ads. I'd be fine with supporting The Atlantic through advertising, when not being tracked.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, scroll didn't work for me. Now I see the options on the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They can leave them in San Francisco

<comment><USER8> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A fun, emoji-based voting app for iPhone called Treeo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/treeo/welcome-to-treeo-f70b305a6bfe <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, Treeo is an app I've been working on with a friend for almost 2 years. It's a digital version of the popular "celeb voting" party game that's been around popular culture (movies, TV shows, YouTube) for over 20 years, but is expanded out to let users vote on anything.

I know consumer apps aren't really popular on HN, but I've been a part of this community for a very long time and always like to Show HN my latest projects.

I'd love to answer any questions!</comment>