MIT students open up about stress - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/16/mit-students-open-about-stress/dS61oA5tiKqjvVsJ5VZRAL/story.html <comment><USER4> MIT alum from the early 00s here. MIT was a stressful place. Much of that stress was self-imposed, and in an environment full of ambitious, intensively competitive over achievers, it can start to create a negative vibe. Turns out, this was good preparation for real life in the competitive fields that many of us chose.

The MIT administration at that time, to their credit, let students do pretty much whatever they wanted - take time off, re-take failed classes, reschedule exams, get special accommodations when needed, whatever. If you asked for help, they helped you. Lots of career admin and support staff who would bend over backwards to make miracles happen. I have never before or since encountered a more supportive administrative environment and it's that experience that will endear me to the Institute forever.

<comment><USER5> Do you know what the treatment of students with mental disorders was like?

I'm appalled at how schools like Harvard and Princeton [1] (my alma mater) treat students with psychological challenges (effectively kicking them out) and am wondering what MIT is like in that regard.

[1] I understand their logic that the student is a thread to their own health and other students' well being, but their heavy handedness is revolting to me.

<comment><USER6> > I'm appalled at how schools like Harvard and Princeton [1] (my alma mater) > treat students with psychological challenges (effectively kicking them out)

I'm currently at MIT now as a grad student. The notion that MIT is kicking out students who have mental health problems is a common refrain I hear from undergrads; the thought process being that MIT is trying to limit the on campus suicide rate by driving people out. I have even heard people say they suspect that medical shares psych records with the administration without their permission, which is completely untrue and illegal. I can't speak to whether MIT actually kicks people out for mental health issues (I doubt it) but the fact that this is even a commonly held belief is deeply troubling and counter productive.

I love MIT, but they need to get their shit together and be more transparent about their process in dealing with people who have mental health issues.

<comment><USER7> Those rumors around medical sharing psych records with the administration were around when I was there (undergrad, class of '05).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article perfectly summed up my experience at MIT.

As the article hints, the competitive nature of the student body is a double- edged sword - it helps push you further than you think you're capable of, but it can also push you beyond your breaking point. In a lot of cases, it's a fine line.

To any MIT students reading this:

1) You deserve to be there. Really.

2) You are not alone (read Pepper White's "The Idea Factory" if you don't believe me).

3) Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength.

4) Failing is not the end of the world.

5) Unless you are going to war or face a diagnosis of a terminal disease, everything else after MIT is easy. It gets better.

Please take care of yourselves. Take a break, decompress, have a little fun. The world is a better place with you all in it.

RIP Fes-Mike [http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N3/martinez.03o.html](http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N3/martinez.03o.html)

<comment><USER9> @Anechoic, I'm sorry for your loss.

<comment><USER8> Just for full disclosure, I wasn't close to Fes-Mike, but we lived in the same dorm (New House, I was New House 3, he was Spanish House 2 floors above my room), but we crossed paths a number of times in the halls and he always made time to wave and greet me. I was/am friends with people who were close to him, and the devastation they experienced when we all learned what happened was unforgettable. And to cap it off, some friends and I had to talk a classmate out of committing suicide a little while later.

Overall I enjoyed my experience at MIT, but there were a few soul crushing moments in my time.

<comment><USER9> _" I wasn't close to Fes-Mike, but we lived in the same dorm"_

close enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not just MIT, it's pretty much any college with a 4 year engineering program. Almost everyone of my classmates took at least an extra semester or summer classes. 2/3 of the Freshman class dropped out (most of them to business school). A few schools have switched over to 5 year programs. Not everyone is cut out for an engineering degree and that's perfectly fine. Yes it's hard, but when you find that one thing you fall in love with you never give it up... That's when you graduate.

<comment><USER11> engineering school environments can be very toxic. I think that for the most part it's possible to cover their amount of content in 4 standard years, but there needs to be changes in the structure of constant bewilderment and test taking

<comment><USER12> > engineering school environments can be very toxic

I still have very intense school-related nightmares from time to time, even though I'm now in my mid-30s. I decided to drop-out in my last year of CS school, but before that almost any joy of attending my school lectures or studying for its exams had been killed off inside of me (luckily enough for me I discovered PHP and Python during my student years in my free time, which gave me back the joy of building and discovering things).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Class of '03\. I certainly saw a lot of classmates under unhealthy levels of stress. But to add some counterpoint, it's _not_ universal.

I think the biggest source of the pain is not MIT itself, it's the way many high schools -- even "good" ones -- fail to prepare students. Learning for mastery is very different from studying for the test. You can get straight A's in high school just studying for the test, so unless some outside force or quirk of personality drives you to work for mastery, you never learn how.

That won't cut it at MIT. So a lot of people discover to their horror that they never actually learned how to master hard material, and they have catching up to do.

I felt well prepared, and I certainly wasn't the only one. Which is actually one of the sources of the stress: the students who are struggling can look around and see others who are not.

<comment><USER14> I think part of it is also the big fish, little pond --> little fish, big pond phenomenon. When high school teaches you to define yourself as intelligent, academic, and driven and then you're placed in an environment where everyone else has developed a similar set of character traits and amassed a similar collection of academic achievements, I think students suffer a bit of an identity crisis. All of the sudden very key components of one's character are the norm, and the transition is far from easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also went to a tech school with similar problems. Depression is an infection of the student's motivation and reason; it's a fixation with the thesis that one is destined to doom. I think the main problem here is that school admins often want to yank problem students for everybody's safety rather than effect policy change that improves livelihood. The latter requires being good at politics, and the leaders who are good at politics usually spend most their time raising money and opening opportunities for the students who aren't struggling. When the chancellor gets involved like this, the admins have failed horribly.

My senior year I took fewer classes and exercised 5x more than ever. I was the happiest I had ever been and had my only straight-A year. I'd advocate tech school admins adopt at least two changes:

1\. Professors rarely share stories of their own failures as well as stories of students who failed. The classes should cover not only the consequences of doing well (i.e the key ideas and contributors to the topic) but also the consequences of doing poorly. _Evidence and analysis of failure helps debunk convictions to hopelessness_

2\. "Work-life" balance can be very difficult to achieve in college for a variety of reasons. MIT requires students to pass a swim test, but this is hardly a mandate that students maintain a reliably supportive extracurricular (e.g. sports, art, community involvement etc). Pass-fail should be replaced and/or complimented with a requirement to commit weekly hours to an alternate activity so that students diversify themselves.

Pass-fail can help, but there's a ton of value in having brutally rigorous courses (even if they inspire inordinate competition). It's not useful to make the programs softer but rather make students aware of the realistic (and certainly non-gloomy) consequences of not getting As.

</comment><comment><USER16> i went to lse and the environment was supremely unsupportive. i think there are two fundamental problems with elite universities 1) because uni degree is a sorting/signalling function consumers have limited power. there is no other consumer product that i can think of where the consumer has a bad experience and that reflects on him not the producer's product 2) the misalignment of incentives, where profs towards research not teaching. i think the solution is to separate learning and signalling into two independent markets and allow market forces to act on them... there is definitley a zero-sum element to all this where people will always be stressed/over-worked as they compete, nonetheless i do think learning these university mathematics subjects can be made an order of magnitude more interesting/addictive.

<comment><USER17> Woah, fancy bumping into an ex-student - on HN no less. Do you have any survival advice? Something you wish your younger self knew? Exam season is approaching...

<comment><USER16> haha what's your degree? i was pure economics with a focus on econometrics..

<comment><USER17> Ah - I'm qualitative. Studying Government

<comment><USER16> i only did one essay module in my entire time at lse (psychology lol) and i hated having to learn all the references haha so no advice. how are you finding lse? it's funny how the most social place on campus is the library lol

what brings u to hn? u a programmer?

<comment><USER17> Nah, I wouldn't call myself a programmer. I'm just 'technically curious' and enjoy the conversation found on hn. I might try and find work in tech consulting or security later on. References can indeed be a bitch, although you can get away with just a name and date for the exams. I'm enjoying LSE - although studying here has meant very different things at different times. My first 4 or so terms were a bit too social and I'm now taking the work more seriously (and finding it's somewhat fun). I'm definitely in a bit of a work bubble at the moment, so the library is totally my social hub.

<comment><USER16> cool cool. yeah hn is great for a certain type of perspective on the world that it's hard to get elsewhere.. i suppose it's the hacker mentality lol

well this is kinda random but my best friend and i are looking to apply to yc, our idea is 'A new asset class: Human capital. By paying for a students university education who in return give back a percentage of their annual income (probably developing world) we allow investors to make long-term bets on specific industries and countries.

Anyway our first draft of our yc application is here , it will be great if you can take a look and give some feedback... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224487)

<comment><USER17> Yup I've given it a look-over. Coincidentally, a friend is also applying to YCombinator later this year so I'm aware of the process.

Let's compare Seldon to the financing structure of Make School (see: [https://www.makeschool.com/admissions](https://www.makeschool.com/admissions)). It seems to me that your idea has three unique selling points: 1) it can cover the cost of going to any university, 2) % repayments are lower and last much longer and 3) student repayments become a tradable asset class. This has pros and cons. Pros: students have total control about where they want to study, return can be much higher and more kids get an education. Cons: students are incentivized to make expensive choices, education is commoditized, return is much slower (you might not break even for decades) and 'human capital' (as an unavoidably opaque financial product) is high risk. I think your biggest obstacle will be overcoming volatility and opacity – you'll need to prove that the candidates you finance will provide good return on investment. What is it about Seldon that means they can offer a student loan a traditional Chinese bank cannot? Maybe adopt some of the strategies Make School and YCombinator use – a rigorous (and prestigious) application process, guidance, relationship building, sense of community, commercial nouse ect. I wouldn't sell the idea as a cold-hearted asset class at the start and I certainly would change the name – it undermines the true value of your project. Make human capital a little more…human? Besides, tradable asset classes only really emerge once a financial product is big and established enough to be traded.

Other points: • 2% seems too low? (I'm not a numbers guy) • This business would not work in the UK (~50% of students never pay back the full amount they borrow…so no financial incentive to use Seldon) • Top US schools usually cover all their students financing needs – so not too much of a market there unless you want to grab higher-risk candidates. (MBAs are the BIG exception – probably some good opportunities there). • Highlight who you both are - <USER2> past achievements and work (because it's good). • Take your private contact info off of the website (it's in the public domain, yo). • I like the basic idea – but you need to be more conscious about the fact you're dealing with 18 year olds and not, say, crude oil.

<comment><USER16> thanks xander this is great feedback. hit me up on facebook if u get the chance ([https://www.facebook.com/DrakeNicholas](https://www.facebook.com/DrakeNicholas)).. me and my friend actually spent 4hours last night completley redoing our application, answering the questions concisely has been really challenging/clarifying our thinking (but in a good way!), so what u saw is a little out of date...

nonetheless in addition to what you said i would point out one more advantage for students (probably the biggest one) which is repayments are dependent upon your situation (because it's a percentage of income) so if you're 'unlucky' and can't find a job or only a low-paying job you pay less - which is good if you are a risk-averse/poor student..

in terms of the cons, i actually think hte aggregated income streams are likely to be very stable.. despite it's equity structure we see it more as a fixed income product than a vc equity product (stable but lowish ~5% returns). the moral hazard is an interesting issue that we hadn't thought about much - <USER3> suspect the larger issue what not be in their university choice but rather their post university choices... currently faced with debts students would look to find a high paying job immediately, whereas with our instrument they might travle the world care free knowing they don't have to pay anything unless they get a job? in terms of becoming a tradable asset class that is very much a long-term potential. we could end up trying to be originators for asset backed securities but right now our thinking is it's better for us to actually invest the money ourselves and get returns ourselves. the opacity issue is interesting - opacity from whose perspective? it mihgt only be a problem if it's traded on markets right?

in terms of proving returns - at this stage we can collect data on graduate incomes and estimate returns but of course the proof will be in the pudding. our selection process for the students will almost entirely be delegated to the universities ie.. if you can get into the best university in india we'll fund you

i think the big positives which your analysis missed (and actually we're most excited about) is not the student side but the investor side in particular we think that long-run income streams are a much better proxy for country/industry success than betting on a specific company in that industry (what buffet calls trying to 'pick the winners'). for example suppose your bullish on chinese software as an industry... what is a better long-term bet? the very risky (although higher reward) vc bet of picking a particular chinese software company or sending 100 of the brightest chinese students to study computer science with the assumption that if the chinese software industry does well so will employees in that industry. furthermore, this will bring in a lot more capital to big risky capital-intensive projects and through tranching out the risk will enable much more investment and ultimatley innovation in our societies...

re: 2% yeah it may be without going into the numbers lol 2% requires average annual income to be 11x cost of university. in america if uni costs $30,000 that means we need incomes to be more than $300,000 which even with the fact we're hand picking the smartest students and the fact you have future economic growth (and inflation) over 35 years to help you out it doesn't seem like a good investment. in china though the cost of the best 4 year uniiversity (accomodation + tuition fees) ~$3,000-$4,000 so it seems very reasonable that average incomes coudl be 10x that (and we find that the data supports that)... obviously from an investors stand-point a higher than 2% interest rate is better but we're not sure how much students will accept so we're currently testing that (at the 2% level) with our chinese version of hte website and asking for interested students to email us..

i think it doesn't work in the uk because financing is readily available and cheap. in the us the story is a little different where if you don't qualify for free tuition (which the poorest students do) there can still be a credit constraining aspect to university choice... i think mbas and masters could be a real opportunity as you point out, because masters/mbas are more optional but can lead to a big iincrease in income for the student.

haha yeah we've reworked the who we are section, no point trying to be modest lol!!

haha yeah i forgot about that, i suppose adding my facebook just makes things worst right lol?

<comment><USER17> Take a look at Qifang ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qifang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qifang)) which was the efforts of another LSE student to tackle the Chinese student loan market.

<comment><USER16> yeah i managed to find some of his stuff on youtube... seems like it was pretty marginal idea with benefits being an aggregation of software streamlining of traditional lending + some career advice + job search functionality [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Ls_ZcQM80](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Ls_ZcQM80)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> MIT classes are individually quite hard, but I also find many MIT undergrads simply try to do way too much. Students frequently sign up for twice as many classes as one should, volunteer in two or three labs at once, or volunteer in three or more organizations. Success during high school and college admissions is largely based on quantity over depth, which is poor preparation for actual college and life.

P.S. I don't mean to blame the students for the consequences of these choices. I think the administration could help by providing a clear picture of success, and providing better services. I just think this is a source of stress outside of individual class difficulties.

</comment><comment><USER19> My buddies and I experienced similar situations, albeit not at MIT, but at a private US D1 University as we pursued our dreams of medical school.

Luckily we basically threw in the towel one day and said it wasn't worth the stress anymore. We learned the importance of Pareto's Principle, Parkinson's Law, and a good nights sleep.

The crazy thing is our grades remained unchanged.

These were great life lessons that we learned that I wouldn't trade for the world.

Although I chose not to pursue medical school, both my buddies are in their first years and they constantly witness similar experiences to the article above and our initial undergraduate experiences, regardless of the schools that their classmates graduated from - MIT included.

Meanwhile my friends are doing very well in graduate school and continue to have just as much time as during our undergraduate years.

I hate to say it, but if it wasn't MIT, it probably would have been something else for these kids.

Hard Work != Productivity

<comment><USER20> Work smarter, not harder.

Figuring it out though can be the difficult part.

<comment><USER21> Any specific advice you might have figured out?

<comment><USER20> Personally, take the sure thing over the big bet.

In baseball terms, round the bases with singles instead of always swinging for the home run.

Also, don't marry someone that you'll have to give everything you've ever earned to get out of your life.

It's hard to summarize all my life's experiences. I tried very hard to learn from my parent's and other's mistakes. I'm not a failure, but I'm not retirement wealthy either.

Best advice is read a lot of writeups on failed startups more than successful ones (if that's your goal). You learn more by seeing where people could have done better than by studying those that for the most part got lucky (yes they worked hard too, but sometimes timing, connections, location, etc. doesn't work out).

If you're looking toward just being successful in your career, that's a different line of study (how to win friends and influence people, etc.).

If you'd like to have an actual discussion, shoot me your email. I'd meet the criteria for failed startup founder (I'm on #7 or 8 right now, too lazy to go review how many failed I've had :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I attended Caltech, which is an equally high pressure school. But being around lots of smart and highly motivated people made for a great deal of fun, too. There were always interesting conversations to drop in on, and amazing projects people were working on just for fun.

Yes, we got pushed, hard. But it is amazing how much one can learn when pushed.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately the Caltech administration over the past four years hasn't made things easier. Banning benign traditions and kicking people out of their houses for no reason doesn't help with the stress levels.

<comment><USER22> I graduated over 35 years ago, and nothing stays the same. But I'd be sad if it was materially different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a topic I've thought a lot about ... here's a strawperson proposal that might incite some discussion, though it's by no means a panacea: [http://pgbovine.net/undergrad-course- limits.htm](http://pgbovine.net/undergrad-course-limits.htm)

<comment><USER16> i think this is a good proposal, zero-sum competitive dynamics means that people are always going to work really hard, but with your course limit idea at least those competitive dynamics won't be directed towards taking lots of modules...one problem is that universities feel like they need to compete with each other in terms of how difficult the modules are and how much they teach their students (even though employers don't really care)..

i think one solution ironically might be to have much less holidays.. right now in the uk the top universities (cambridge and oxford) have two 8 week terms of learning a year, which means all the extra-curricular, social life and academics are crammed in these very compressed periods of time... compare this to tsinghua university (in china) where terms are 17 weeks long and weirdly that means everything is more chilled out because things are more spread out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Do problem sets count for grades at MIT?

I did engineering at Oxford, where we had problem sets every week as well. I'd try hard, but not because there was a grade that counted. There would be a 2-on-1 tutorial for each set, and you really don't want to be the guy who didn't make an effort.

On the other hand, if something was simply too hard, we didn't let it stress us out either. I remember emailing a tutor at 2am once and telling him both students found it way too hard and needed more time. Got a response 5 mins later saying no prob.

As for impostor syndrome, you need a healthy confidence. Naturally there are people who are smarter than you, but equally when you're at a world class institution it's because someone decided you are world class. And they had a lot of people to choose from, most of who are doing quite well at less prestigious places. Where they learn the same stuff.

You also shouldn't worry about rank. Only one guy get the top prize, but everyone can understand the subject matter.

<comment><USER18> Depends on the class. They're usually less than tests but not insignificant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is an interesting comment from Andrew S. Tanenbaum(a famous author on Operating system and Networking)

Did you experience culture shock going from M.I.T. to Berkeley?

Oh my goodness. Yes. It was so strange to be in an environment with people having I.Q.'s below 150 and where it wasn't necessary to study 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week just to keep up.

Source: [http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html](http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html)

<comment><USER27> I like this other comment more..

"Nobody likes M.I.T. People respect it. I respect it. But like it? Does anyone like taking a drink from a fire hose? I am still in awe of the place."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Old VI-3 geezer from the late 70s, early 80s here - the time when the EECS faculty tried to handle their over-subscription problem by (unsuccessfully) imposing their own, separate admission requirements and flunking out a significant fraction of EECS wannabes into other majors. Had an advisor who tried to get me to join the Armed forces instead of stay in school. Watched the Dept deny tenure to the only EECS prof to actually teach us and treat us as human beings.

Certainly makes those calls/emails from the MIT full-time alumni fundraisers feel, well, surreal.

</comment><comment><USER29> I went to MIT, and graduated in 1992. A well-known saying at MIT is "work hard, play hard" \-- meaning that you're going to work like crazy to do well in class, and then when it comes to extracurriculars and sports, you're also going to work like crazy to win.

The positive side is that in such an atmosphere, you're always pushing yourself to the limits. You can learn a great deal, and you can accomplish a great deal.

The negative side is that it creates unhealthy expectations -- not necessarily from the MIT administration, but from the students themselves. If you're not acing your classes and running an extracurricular and also playing an instrument in your spare time and doing top-class research, then you're obviously a loser. If you're sleeping eight hours a night, then you're obviously a loser.

Anyone who goes to MIT (or another top-ranked university) is used to being _the_ top student, or one of a handful, to whom everyone points and says, "Wow, they're amazing." And so to go from always being at the top to feeling like you need superhuman abilities just to avoid being classified as a loser, is very tough.

I'm one of those students who consistently failed math tests during freshman year. I remember very well calling my parents, crying on the phone. This was the first time I had failed anything, and to fail a _math_ test of all things was just unheard of.

But then I went to the math department's tutoring room, and found that a huge number of other students, all of whom had been star performers in high school, had also failed. And suddenly I realized that MIT was hard for everyone, and that we were in a different place nowadays.

I was also fortunate to work on the student newspaper, where people talked openly about not necessarily getting terrific grades, or switching majors so that they could manage to graduate. Or just changing priorities, such that getting fantastic grades wasn't the be-all and end-all of being an MIT student. I ended up with a B average, helped in no small part by the humanities courses that I took. And you know what? I turned out OK, with a good career.

It's so, so easy for MIT students to be sucked into thinking that they're either superhuman overachievers or pathetic losers, and that their careers are over at the age of 19 because they flunked a course. For years, MIT has said that they worry about the students who feel this way, because some of them might end up hurting themselves or even taking their own lives.

But it's a tough balancing act to pull off. Because what's negative for some people, and causes so much trauma and damage to them, is a positive motivator for many others.

I'd like for MIT to start giving students a broader view of life. You don't have to be an amazing student to have a good career, family, or life. You can be a happy person and not be a billionaire startup founder. And you can even change your major to something less difficult, if it means being happier.

Really, when you leave college, you're just 21 years old. You have a long, long time to learn more things and change. And I hate to say it, but some of the people who were such stellar superhuman students ended up being the sorts of people you don't necessarily want to hang out with. Given the choice between being a nice person who enjoys life, and one who does groundbreaking research, I'd go for the former. I'm fairly sure that MIT doesn't make that sound like a reasonable, sensible, attainable, or even desirable option. Which is a shame.

</comment><comment><USER30> I went to normal landgrant university in ND (NDSU) and received a Computer Engineering degree. I can tell you, my experience holds many similarities. Learning to accept and grow from failure is a key component of an engineering education.

</comment><comment><USER31> "The Cost of Living" by Barry Schwartz has a whole chapter about education that seems to explain this kind of situation very well.

</comment><comment><USER32> I never attended MIT, nor any big name college, but I have first hand experience struggling with impostor syndrome that I had since leaving high school and never having failed at anything I set my mind to. It was immediately noticeable from the first university math lecture where I was amongst an entire class of people who grasped concepts I had never even come across at high school and struggled to understand - even though I had never struggled at anything before in my life. I'd coasted through high school and nery once had to apply myself at anything - except Phys Ed. which was more a toil of will power than enjoyment. The feeling lasted until probably 5 or so years ago (my early 30s) - in fact, it had been such a prominent part of my psyche during that part of my life that it hadn't crossed my mind that I'd moved on until just as I was reading this article.

Upon reflection, I think most of the feeling stemmed from my perception of how other people were handling themselves in a world I personally felt I was floundering in. They appeared to take everything in their stride, understanding everything while I understood nothing and spent many thousands of hours attempting to understand just to keep from failing academic life - forget trying to be top of my class as I was used to. Then I became a programmer, thinking that once I left university, I would be okay; at that point, I would have made it. But the feeling never went away as I continued to feel like I was floundering, while my peers appeared to breeze through concepts I had to work bloody hard to grasp. It took many years for it to dawn on me that I spent far too long looking at how other people _looked like_ they were handling it and comparing it to the actual struggles I was having. This has been dubbed the Facebook effect, where everyone else appears to have such a great life because that's what they show the world and you compare that to the struggles you have just to find time to shower, forget looking perfect.

I have come to believe that impostor syndrome is a symptom of the lack of authenticity in society. Nobody is real with each other and that largely is the cause of our inability to gauge how deserving we are of the positions we hold. Behind closed doors, everyone is floundering in different aspects of their lives. Some areas of life come easily to some, while others remain a constant struggle their entire lives - but what they show you is a tiny snippet - the snippet they _want_ to show you. As Baz Lurhman said in Sunscreen, "Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind, the race is long, and in the end it's only with yourself." It has only really been as I have come to see and understand this pervasive lack of authenticity in society that the impostor syndrome has gone away. I believe that eventually all people get there, they say that 40 is the age that you stop caring what other people think and start living for yourself. I think it goes deeper than this and isn't tied to an age. I think as soon as you hit the dawning realization that everything you see around you is no more than what those around you want to show you and that it's all a carefully sculpted illusion to make you believe what they want you to believe about them, their lives, their businesses etc. you will realize...

You are not an impostor. You are in the position you are in because someone sees or saw something in you that you haven't yet begun to see, understand or accept in yourself. They gave you the chance you asked for because they believed in you - even when you may not have believed in yourself. The impostor syndrome you are experiencing is an illusion. You may not understand that yet, you may not accept that yet, but trust me, as someone who spent a larger portion of my life battling it than not battling it, you will make it, you did deserve the chance you were given, you do deserve to be doing what you are doing. You _are already_ what you are struggling to realize and you don't need to fake it until you make it. Have heart, everyone has struggles, everyone has failures, everyone has successes. Don't give in to your insecurities, they are the beliefs instilled in you by _society 's failure to you_ \- they are all so busy faking it until they make it that it's leaving you comparing their fake with your reality.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think this happens in all the top Universities. I study in one myself and professors expect people to put in 20-25 hours per week for a course with 9 hours worth credit. And the reason given is that it gives us a competitive edge!

</comment><comment><USER34> I guess I should feel for these people since I'm in an academic slump myself - though not any equivalent of MIT or anything. But what do you expect when you willingly play in the big leagues of nerd status jockeying? If your self-worth was tied to being the best and brightest in class, you probably won't keep up with it at a place like that (I mean, do the math, it seems straightforward to me).

</comment><comment><USER35> "If everything's under control, you're going too slow." - Mario Andretti</comment>


Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis - <AUTHOR> http://varianceexplained.org/r/tidytext-gender-plots/ <comment><USER2> > I think this paints a somewhat dark picture of gender roles within typical > story plots. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- "she > screams", "she cries", or "she pleads." Men tend to be the aggressor: "he > kidnaps" or "he beats". Not all male-oriented terms are negative- many, like > "he saves"/"he rescues" are distinctly positive- but almost all are active > rather than receptive.

Got mathematical analysis, but terrible semantic interpretation.

There are only 3 really negative verbs for men ("murdered", "kills", "kidnaps"), and 3 distinctly positive ("saves", "defeats", "rescues"). "Beat" is ambiguous, personally I would more likely interpret it as "defeats" rather than "hit"/"punch". This is in no way a "dark" picture, and the only relevant conclusion is the one he briefly mentions in passing: women are described as more passive, men as more active.

<comment><USER3> The term aggressor is misplaced. The data shows how men as a general rule always play the antagonist and the disposable henchmen. The mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, cackling, and hand-rubbing villain is by definition male, and in the rare occasion a plot is different and switches the gender of the antagonist it also adds additional changes like poison and stabbing instead of guns and punching.

<comment><USER4> _mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, cackling, and hand-rubbing villain is by definition male_

Apart from the mustache (or maybe not) this is an apt description of the wicked witch trope of female villains. So I'm going to say, no?

<comment><USER3> The wicked witch trope is named after the wicked witch of the west character, which don't do much leering or hand rubbing. There is a lot of cackling, possible some eye-rolling, but that's about it. An other famous witch villain is the white witch (Narnia), which has none of those attributes.

But lets look at a famous villain that has been portrait as both female and male roles and see how they differ. Moriarty is male in the TV show Sherlock ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN7DYPJLXkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN7DYPJLXkc)), and female in Elementary ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7i8cQontg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7i8cQontg)). Which character is show more as the typical villain, and which is portrait as more complex with redeeming values? If they keep the script identical with the exact same lines, what would happened if the genders was reversed for the two shows?

<comment><USER4> _The wicked witch trope is named after the wicked witch of the west character_

Yes, but the actual details of the trope go back much farther in time. The Fates of Norse and Greek mythology, the Three Witches in Macbeth, Baba Yaga from Slavic folklore. There is a long, long tradition of female characters with supernatural power, unsettling appearance and behaviour, and a tendency toward transgressing taboos such as cannibalism.

As for your Moriarty example, you're butting up against the TV industry's insistence on casting beautiful actresses in almost every role. This is a problem! If you replaced Natalie Dormer with a woman in her late 70s who's never had plastic surgeries you'd have a different comparison to think about.

<comment><USER3> The villain as plotted in current shows share roots in the older mystic stories but they also mirror current cultural values rather than past cultural values.

If for example we would have Hansel and Gretel, which is full of old symbolism about past cultural views of older women, it would be completely impossible to gender swap the antagonist. Interpreting a male antagonist in that story in current culture we would invoking feelings of pedophilia and not cannibalism, changing the story in a very radical way.

With current cultural values, stories generally cast female antagonists with a strong theme of betrayal. Even in the few cases of female henchmen like that one specific James Bond movie with female henchmen, we still see that arc. Male henchmen in other movies don't get such arcs, and is generally simply thrown in as an obstacle to be disposed of. Female henchmen are also generally not killed, which further limits the possibilities.

Last, the Sherlock version would not work with a late 70 old woman if they kept all other aspect of the character intact. Listen on the clip and try to imagine a old woman saying it. The character explicitly say they want to be seen as the classic villain, and as such it do not work unless its male. Even the wicked witch do not go around and say to the protagonist that _" I am the villain and you should hate me"_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People who have poor understanding of human nature will consider this an evidence of sexism.

Think for a minute about why "Fifty shades of grey" is popular among female readers.

If there are many stories are filled with males competing over resources and women (in the form of violent criminals kidnapping women and brave heroes rescuing them) then might it be that these kinds of stories are what people are looking for?

Try to imagine a story about a weak man who cannot defend himself against a gang of three women who kidnap him, only to get saved by his brave girlfriend, who upon rescuing him promises him to stay by his side for ever.

Just try it. Does it sound like an interesting story?

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, every single difference of any significance is often took to be sexist and (of course) wrong sexist.

Why are the top 100 chess players men? Sexism. Why are there more male than female programmers? Sexism. In non-romance movies, why are there more male leads? Sexism.

There is legitimate wrongful sexism, but they aren't usually found in first world countries.

It's as if we ever agreed there was a significant innate difference between the sexes (or races for that matter), the world would come crashing down and put us in the Stone Age.

<comment><USER7> Right - there's no wrongful sexism in first world countries and there is no difference in the messages males and females are given during their upbringing about how they should behave in society.

Also, family courts make perfectly fair decisions.

/s

<comment><USER6> > Right - there's no wrongful sexism in first world countries

I don't think you read my comment, because it disagrees with that statement.

<comment><USER7> You said:

"There is legitimate wrongful sexism, but they aren't usually found in first world countries."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reference at the end talking about comparing changes over time reminded me of a problem I've been kicking around. For this particular system that's not too hard, since you're putting each word on a one-dimensional femininity/masculinity scale, so you could plot a word on a line graph or something. But what do you do if you want to evaluate the changes of more complex relationships over time? Not just mapping words to a constant vector space, but modeling the relationships between words, such as clusters or word2vec representations. With something like word2vec you can take a bunch of words and project the vector space onto a plane so you can see the relative distances, but how do you express changes over time? You could show a bunch of planar projections for different instants in time, but it's hard to look at that and capture the changes.

So how do you visualize changes to these more complex interactions between data points, and also how do you mathematically quantify some of these changes? I'd really appreciate any advice on this. And sorry that this is kind of off topic for the article :)

<comment><USER9> I did something like this in a project for my former work at a research group, and it was very difficult to visualize due to the number of variables we needed to communicate in the visualization.

What we were trying to do was use word2vec to model changes in relationships between 700 proteins and one in particular, which is related to cancer/tumor growth. We created multiple word2vec models based on year windows of medical journals (so the 2003 model had input journals from 2000 - 2003).

To visualize the models we used a D3 force graph where the nodes were the 700 proteins and the edges were known discoveries of relationships between proteins that had years associated with them - as in X protein was discovered to be related to Y protein in 2007. The relationship data was curated by people, independently of the word2vec models. The size of each of the nodes was determined by the word2vec model for the particular year's similarity score between that protein and the cancer-related protein we were interested in.

To see the changes between years, we used a year slider which the force graph would respond to by animating the sizes of the nodes in line with the particular year model's similarity score for each protein. In addition, the color of the nodes represented changes in the models' similarities between the proteins - more green meant that the word2vec model's similarity score had increased compared to the previous year's model, and red meant it had decreased.

The visualization is useful, but it is a bit of a mess considering there are 700 . I'll message you the link and if anyone else want the link I can send it, but I'd rather not post it here since it's hosted on my college's CS department server and it's not equipped to deal with a lot of traffic.

Also if anyone has an idea of how else we might have done it I'd be interested to hear it.

Edit: Didn't realize HN doesn't have a PM feature - if there's another way to send it to you and you're interested let me know.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, that's helpful! And you can email me at <my HN username> at gmail.com.

I'm also curious if there are any ways to quantify, mathematically, the changes over time. There's the simple sum of the squares of the changes distance to get a sense of the "kinetic energy" of the system, but I'm wondering if there are some more clever analyses, especially something that can quantify localized changes versus global changes.

Edit: so are you running a separate word2vec thing for each year's dataset? If so, how to you map between them, because the orientation the word2vec mapping generates will be random, and I worry that trying to rotate the mappings to some common axis could obscure some of the data.

<comment><USER9> Sent! Yeah, we made a model for each year's dataset. In our case, we were only interested in the similarity between our target protein and the others, so we used the model's similarity measure between those in order to avoid problems with varying orientations between models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The gender is strongly correlated to the biological sex. The biological sex is, in turn, strongly correlated to physical strength, aggressivity and other traits.

I enjoyed the technical description, but the results didn't exactly shock me!

</comment><comment><USER11> > what verbs are used after "he" and "she", and therefore what roles male and > female characters tend to have within stories.

It might've been better had the author (and the Jane Austen article's author) used some NLP processing to see whether the pronoun was actually the subject of those verbs. But I'll grant that it's usually the case.

Also interesting: gender and the object of those verbs.

EDIT: after some research (that I should've done before posting), it's a remarkably effective technique and it seems only the most contorted sentences might get tripped up. English is nearly always Subject-Verb-Object.

<comment><USER12> Do you need NLP for that?

The forms he, she and they are used when a pronoun is the subject of a sentence. The forms him, her and them are used when a pronoun is the object of a sentence.

[https://www.englishgrammar.org/words-heshe-himher- hishers/](https://www.englishgrammar.org/words-heshe-himher-hishers/)

I would think looking at the verb that comes after he/she also doubles as a subject/object filter.

<comment><USER13> I agree that the nominative case endings and usual SVO order of English should prevent (nearly all) false positives.

(The only one I can think of is that comparatives are meant to take the nominative case, e.g. pedantically it's supposed to be "he" rather than "him" in "A man smarter than he would decline". However, this rather convoluted sentence structure is rare, even more unlikely in a plot summary rather than the full novel text, and almost always followed by the subjunctive rather than an indicative verb.)

My bigger concern was what doesn't get caught because it appears after a noun rather than a pronoun, or has an adverb in the way. I thought major dramatic plot points might be more likely to use the character's name rather than a pronoun, and so we might see fewer words like "murders", "defeats", etc. From the results it seems like those words are still present in large quantities, so perhaps I'm wrong.

I'd like to see it done with "they" too, partly as a control case and partly to see if any verbs are more common for individuals rather than groups (although the rise of impersonal "they" may hinder that aspect of the analysis).

<comment><USER11> > My bigger concern was what doesn't get caught because it appears after a > noun rather than a pronoun,

Yeah, some clever gender/name lookup would be a good idea, many subjects in plots are the characters' names. Maybe even more subject names than pronouns.

That said, it seems unlikely that there's a pronoun-substitution gender bias, so it would probably just yield more samples of the same trend.

<comment><USER12> What doesn't get caught is a super interesting question. (As is object genders too.) How often he occurs vs she is important. How long he is talked about vs how long she is talked about; I'm not certain about screenplay conventions, but usually the first sentence would name the character and some number of subsequent sentences might use she rather than repeat her name.

So yeah, there's plenty more room for making this analysis scientific, and no reason to assume it's unbiased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting how thoroughly ingrained sexist concepts are in the language. Even a verb that's fairly active like 'resist' assumes a power relation in which they are in a worse position.

I'd like to see this done by country or year or language or genre.

<comment><USER15> Is it sexist if it's reflective of reality? Men commit more aggressive crimes than women by far.

<comment><USER16> Shhhhhh! Theres no room for reality in here, were pretending that gender is a made up sociological concept

<comment><USER17> To my knowledge, gender is thought of as a complex of at least two aspects: those differences between what is thought of as masculine and feminine, and the roles assigned to genders. In these cases, gender pertains to the ideas of gender identity and further gender expression. In other cases, gender is also thought of as including or being inextricably related to biological sex.

Gender isn't "made up" in the same way that words aren't "made up"; it is an aspect of society, but unlike words, gender is with some relation to observable physical biological expression, usually termed as 'sex'. But the concept of gender as I have seen it used is certainly depending on society, rather than physical sex.

Variations within sex (such as intersex) is another question and is unrelated to gender, as far as I know.

<comment><USER2> The problem with "gender" as a concept is that they hijacked existing words ("man" and "woman") that were previously used for "sex". This can be clearly seen by trying to define these words _without_ reference to sex - you can't except by defining them recursively ("men are people who identify as men"), in which case, I think a better choice would be to invent new words for this new concept.

<comment><USER17> Sex is to male and female as gender is to masculine and feminine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author failed to mention the context of the data chosen; specifically the dates. For example, rob vs. steal, would change depending on the century the work was created.

<comment><USER9> The author mentions in the second paragraph that the data comes from scraping Wikipedia articles' plot descriptions. So the plots might be old, but the descriptions (and language) were all written recently.

<comment><USER19> Hm. Wouldn't that have little bearing on the result? Can't really say "he poisons" when that wasn't the plot of the story.

<comment><USER20> But that's the point. "She poisons" is more likely to be the plot of the story than "he poisons."

<comment><USER21> There could be a bias in the summary writers too, in that they prefer "he murders" and "she poisons" for the same method of killing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Direct link to a scatter plot (x axis: quantity, y axis: gender):

[http://varianceexplained.org/figs/2017-04-27-tidytext- gender...](http://varianceexplained.org/figs/2017-04-27-tidytext-gender- plots/total_log_ratio_scatter-1.png)

</comment><comment><USER23> We did a similar analysis of gender stereotypes in the Wattpad online writing community last year: [https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM16/paper/view/...](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM16/paper/view/13112)

The conformity with existing stereotypes was pretty depressing, and they're perpetuated more or less equally be male and female authors.

</comment><comment><USER24> > _I think this paints a somewhat dark picture of gender roles within typical > story plots. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- "she > screams", "she cries", or "she pleads." Men tend to be the aggressor: "he > kidnaps" or "he beats"._

How's that different from actual real life beatings, murders and kidnappings?

Aren't men usually the aggressors?

<comment><USER25> > _It's interesting to compare this to an analysis from the Washington Post of > real murders in America. Based on this text analysis, a fictional murderer > is about 2.5X as likely to be male than female, but in America (and likely > elsewhere) murderers are about 9X more likely to be male than female. This > means female murderers may be overrepresented in fiction relative to > reality._

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd wager that much of this could be explained by the "masculine" verbs being used in relation to a protagonist more often, whereas the "feminine" verbs describe reactions to the actions of a protagonist.

</comment><comment><USER27> Related post from a week or two ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14156079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14156079)

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're finding some disonnence between 100K stories and your own interpretation of reality, you've really got to ask yourself where the problem might lie.

<comment><USER14> Because I should adjust my perception of reality to match fiction?

<comment><USER5> The kind of fiction that gets popular reflects _something_ about reality.

<comment><USER29> Probably a lot of what's been most popular is stuff that very few people on HN would appreciate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> HN : Social Issues :: general conversation : a vegan

<comment><USER31> That cuts so many ways... But more than ever, I see a great diversity of social outlooks on HN. Might be recent politics, but the result is the same. I love the sub arguments on lab meat, tech ethics, gender equality and representation, and vi vs emacs. Even when I do not agree, I find coherent and consistent alternate points of view useful in seeing the world.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does a computer read the OS from disk when booting up? - <AUTHOR> Whenever I read instructions like http://os.phil-opp.com/multiboot-kernel.html to load a minimal OS from scratch, I wonder how a computer finds the code for the OS to run. The OS resides on a file in the file system (/vmlinuz, or kernel.bin in the above link), and the file system is an OS construct requiring device drivers for hard disk, SSD, CDROM or USB depending on what the BIOS is configured for and a bunch of other things. Surely there's no way all those drivers fit in the boot sector of a drive? How is anything else past the boot sector ever read? <comment><AUTHOR> (Reproducing OP text to linkify links.)

Whenever I read instructions like [http://os.phil-opp.com/multiboot- kernel.html](http://os.phil-opp.com/multiboot-kernel.html) to load a minimal OS from scratch, I wonder how a computer finds the code for the OS to run. The OS resides on a file in the file system (/vmlinuz, or kernel.bin in the above link), and the file system is an OS construct requiring device drivers for hard disk, SSD, CDROM or USB depending on what the BIOS is configured for and a bunch of other things. Surely there's no way all those drivers fit in the boot sector of a drive? How is anything else ever read?

<comment><USER2> The BIOS traditionally has some kind of drivers for devices that are built into the system (in the PC architecture, add-on devices can extend the BIOS, so for example if you had a SCSI card, it would get a chance to have its own onboard ROM, which could be mapped into the system address space and also run initialization code during the system startup; that ROM could provide a basic SCSI driver that would allow you to boot from SCSI-attached storage devices).

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

For a post-DOS operating system, the main role of the option ROM is providing functionality, in the form of BIOS extensions, that allows the device supported by the option ROM to be used during the boot process. Then the operating system will need to have its own protected-mode drivers to use that hardware post-boot.

In the Linux world you often see multi-stage bootloaders, where you have a boot sector that knows how to load the next stage, which then knows how to load the next stage. Each stage can have more knowledge about things like filesystems than the previous stage. For some systems, you may indicate the absolute offset on a disk from which a file should be loaded (so that you can load it without knowing about the filesystem, assuming that it's stored contiguously). For example, LILO had a table of hardcoded disk offsets for images to boot, so if you moved where a kernel was physically stored, you were supposed to re-run the bootloader installer.

I was once familiar with how this worked on BIOS but I'm not familiar with the changes that UEFI has brought in. It might be useful to read

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface)

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for the pointers! You're my favorite comment for the day ([https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=akkartik&comments=...](https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=akkartik&comments=t))</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Workplace experiments? - <AUTHOR>

37 Signals, those blogging wunderkind, have been posting about <a href="http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/893-workplace-experiments">various workplace experiments</a>.
I especially like the unconventional hours bit, but it got me thinking-- what other workplace experiments are worth doing?
Office vs. open is pretty tough, since that requires changing your actual workspace, but many other things would be testable.
What ideas do you have on this? <comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, we have 3 devs, and are discussion 4 10-hour days vs. 2 16-hour days with each person staggering 1 extra work day.

Another thing is to specifically avoid interrupting each other except at times-- like, on the hour or something. Right now, it's very easy to interrupt every 5 minutes all day.

More?

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm planning on experimenting with 6-hour days for everyone at my next startup. My thinking is that people will get more effective work in a 6-hour day (knowing that they have an extra 2 hours to spend with their families, or goof off, or whatever) than in a standard 8-hour day.</comment>


Drugmaker Melinta, Co-Founded by Nobel Winner, Files Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-27/drug-maker-melinta-co-founded-by-nobel-winner-files-bankruptcy <comment><USER2> There is a post today about alternatives to antibiotics [1.]

I read a recent article [2.] about the state of the antibiotics companies. It was interesting and revealed how over-prescription, fear of over-prescription, and market economics have governed the fate of promising new drugs. Melinta Therapeutics, the company for this post's article, is another antibiotics company that is filing for bankruptcy.

[1.] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21886708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21886708)

[2.] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/25/health/antibiotics-new- re...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/25/health/antibiotics-new- resistance.html)</comment>


Trump fires CEO of TVA over replacing US tech workers with H1B workers - <AUTHOR> https://fox17.com/news/local/trump-fires-tennessee-valley-authority-chair-citing-hiring-of-foreign-workers <comment><USER2> I think the administration is solving the wrong problem here. If the TVA is using H1B just to save money, then they are violating the H1B program.

The administration should be cracking down on H1B violations.

<comment><USER3> By firing violators are they not 'cracking down on abuse'?

<comment><USER2> No, the CEO didn't violate any rules. The American contractors he hired did.

<comment><USER4> I would think they are going to go after the contractors as well. Criminal charges take more time. For example:

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/26/h-1b-prison-for- visa-...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/26/h-1b-prison-for-visa-fraud- in-case-involving-bay-area-workers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not going to take a side on the politics but I think every CEO would like clarity on what the rules are. Is the policy not to higher H1B workers for public entities? Let the government issue a clear policy and then hold people accountable. It would be tough to run an organization and have to guess at what is not countenanced.

<comment><USER6> Is the problem not knowing the policy?

Or is the policy different depending on the political winds?

Two very different issues. If the policy is one way for one administration, and different for another, you're still in trouble. In fact, the policy can be one way for an administration, and then an election comes up and that administration needs some political points.

<comment><USER5> Well, if and when a new administration comes in, they can announce the new policy and then you have to abide by it. The new administration ought not to be able to punish you for the old policy.

My whole argument is premised on what ought to be. I don't disagree with you on what the case may actually be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is off the AP Newswire, here's the AP original with a bit more detail: [https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc](https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc)

<comment><USER8> According to the article linked, Trump wants the new CEO to make less than $500k/year. Yet, according to this article from 2019, the CFO, COO, general council & chief nuclear officer are all making well over that. Who the hell is going to take the CEO job? [https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2019/nov/15/...](https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2019/nov/15/tva- pays-record-amounts-top-executives/508316/)

<comment><USER4> Are you kidding? Most people make $50k not $500k. Lots of existing CEO's don't even make $500k.

<comment><USER9> They mean what qualified person is going to take that job. If you're qualified to run a company that size, you can make much more than $500k.

<comment><USER10> It is likely they will hire people who will only use the jobs as a stepping stone to private industry. They will take the low pay of government to prove their abilities, then jump to the private sector.

So long as it doesn't become a revolving door project with workers influenced by private companies by promises of future employment, then I think the whole practice is fine.

<comment><USER9> >They will take the low pay of government to prove their abilities, then jump to the private sector.

So the job of running a $10 billion dollar per year company that manages nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, and supplies power to millions of people is done by someone who hasn't yet proven they likely have the capability to do so?

This isn't a summer internship at the State Department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good. The TVA was created during the Great Depression to help the Tennessee Valley region develop (at the time one of the poorest parts of the US). Changes like this will help it get back to that original mission.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's always interesting when unsavoury politics is mixed with the difficult realities of such programs.

The neoliberal benefits of H1's make sense, but the context has to be clear.

I think it would also make sense if at least public agencies should be required to employ Americans, because the H1 program is not supposed to be for the purposes of 'saving money' and it's hard to fathom what kind of 'highly specialised expertise' is needed in governmental IT operations. Perhaps on a consultative basis.

If there are legit R&D needs, i.e. if they were designing new chips for NASA or whatever, fair enough ... but most of this is pretty squarely in the domain of 'off the shelf' IT work. Again - even then the benefits are possibly positive 'on the whole' for the economy, if not for the workers who otherwise did not get a job ... but it's public money ... I think it makes sense to hire locally and I don't think for a second Americans would have a problem with that.

Of all the things everyone likes to argue about (i.e. taxes, unemployment benefits) - I suggest there would be at least some easy consensus here.

<comment><USER13> > but it's public money ... I think it makes sense to hire locally and I don't > think for a second Americans would have a problem with that.

TVA is a government owned corporation, but it's fully self funded. So they're not spending public money other than insofar as TVA costs get passed to the electric bills of anyone whose local electric utility is purchasing electricity from TVA.

TVA has over 10k active employees and has only ever had 10 H1B employees (all hired between 2001 - 2008)[1]. And all of their H1B hires fell into either electrical engineering or product/financial risk analysis, and all located within Nashville, TN or Chattanooga, TN. Their usage of H1B employees seems far more indicative of localized hiring difficulty, rather than some pattern of H1B abuse. I've lived in both of those places, and they both have risen in popularity and desirability throughout the last decade. Having hired in Nashville before, people have become far more willing to relocate to Tennessee over the last few years. But that doesn't mean their was similar interest in relocating to TN for work 12-19 years ago when they filled these roles with H1B hires.

[1] [https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALL...](https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALLEY+AUTHORITY&year=&minsalary=&state=&worksite_city=&job_title=)

<comment><USER12> So that's a great point, it seems this is a bad application of crude politics, that said, in general I still believe my points stand. It would be nice to have more specificity and clarity on the issues as opposed to the arbitrary attention of the Tweeter in Chief on the campaign trail.

<comment><USER13> For sure! H1B as a whole tends to be abused, and your points are completely valid ones in general.

And my comment was about TVA's direct use of the H1B program - not use of an IT contractor that is _likely_ to be (ab)using the H1B program to staff the roles. That said, the IT contractors TVA is using for their IT outsourcing are used all over the federal government, even if through layers of subcontracting. So it's a bit frustrating that a TV ad triggered such a reactionary response from Trump in this isolated case but not in any other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All this bullshit over 10 positions, the last one filed on 2008 (12 years ago) and the first one filed on 2001? And for specialized jobs nonetheless.

[https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=Tennessee+Vall...](https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=Tennessee+Valley+Authority&year=&minsalary=&state=&worksite_city=&job_title=)

He fired the first poor bastard he found to rile up his base on the idea that he is protecting American jobs. This is not only absolutely stupid and unjustified. It also shows how petty are politics in this country.

<comment><USER15> Even if it's only ten. SFSU fired it's IT team and contracted out the whole lot a few years back. The IT team consisted of a variety of backgrounds in SF. Little moves like that are the cracks that bring down the quality of life for locals —the main beneficiaries being the uni administration team.

I am glad for every move that makes sense that doesn't undermine the stability of jobs for local workers who pay their fair share of taxes and add vitality to the local economy.

<comment><USER16> H1B workers and their employers pay all taxes, including things like SSA and Medicare FICA taxes that they may never get to use. They also pay a lot of extra fees that US employees don't, some of which are allocated to training US workers.

<comment><USER15> But why should US workers suffer this? Should Ford Mexico import Salvadoran workers to displace Mexican workers if it's cheaper?

<comment><USER16> Because this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somebody needs to tell him about the shit Disney tried to pull.

<comment><USER18> The TVA is federally owned. Disney is not.

<comment><USER17> Wannabe dictators won't let these small details get in the way.

<comment><USER18> Was it dictatorial when FDR set up the TVA in the first place, placing a huge chunk of the South's power grid under federal control?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow look at the misdirection in TVAs statement:

All TVA employees are U.S. based citizens. All jobs related to TVA's Information Technology department must be performed in the U.S. by individuals who may legally work in this country.

So all _employees_ are citizens. All _jobs_ (hello contractors) are by authorized individuals in the US.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALL...](https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALLEY+AUTHORITY) .. Looks like they don't have any latest hiring on H1B.

</comment><comment><USER21> It is easier to fire people of some federal agency that nobody knew about than tackling a serious health crisis.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, that was the easy part. Where's the funding going to come from to pay domestic workers?

<comment><USER23> It's illegal to pay H1Bs less than the prevailing wage.

<comment><USER24> Loopholes aside, what possible motivation could an employer have for bringing in an H1B than lower cost? The H1B worker is beholden to the employer and the increased supply of labor would necessarily decrease scarcity of that skill.

<comment><USER25> > what possible motivation could an employer have for bringing in an H1B than > lower cost

Skills for one. The way H1B was really meant to be used. I am not arguing TVA did this. But there ARE reasons to hire H1B workers other than cost. Case in point Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

<comment><USER23> This is exactly the stated purpose--and indeed the legal requirement--of H1B visas, to gain access to uniquely skilled workers that are not available through the local workforce.

It's supposed to be an essentially merit-based path to immigration, and if true, that would make it exactly the kind of program that Trump should 100% support.

To the extent that H1B accomplishes this objective of highly skilled labor at prevailing market wages, I think it's a useful program that has a place in the overall immigration system.

From a macroeconomic view, even when limited to bringing in skilled labor to fulfill a specific market shortage, this will still depress the prevailing wage in that market, which theoretically prevents the market from correcting when rising wages induce increased local supply.

Fundamentally something is broken with the wage market when real wages have not grown in decades. Partially this is a problem with the measurement not correctly accounting for significantly increased cost of [healthcare] benefits covered by the employer share. But I believe even when accounting for the full employer-side cost of wages, this number has not grown as expected, and low- wage work visas are part of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> you can do research on companies hiring h1b employees and salaries here. You can see some of the outsourcing companies paying very low. [https://h1bsalary.online/](https://h1bsalary.online/)

</comment><comment><USER26> While getting some US developers back on the job might be a good thing, taking steps to dismantle a government chartered public utility is not. This isn't about the 10 H1-B visas, this is low hanging political fruit that Trump will use to attempt privatization of the TVA.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for sharing the President's thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Now make it unprofitable for the Trump Organisation to do the same thing and we'll talk.

<comment><USER29> Trump Organization is private, the TVA isn't.

<comment><USER28> So government workers are more important than people working for private companies?

<comment><USER30> US Government workers receiving a salary paid for by US Citizen's Tax Dollars...

<comment><USER28> So the H1B deal saved the US taxpayer money and that's a bad thing?

<comment><USER30> At the cost of laying off US Taxpayers who had the job previously.

Yes, that's a bad thing when the business owner is the United States Federal Government.

<comment><USER28> The H1B people pay US tax as well, though, right? So there's still savings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's okay to hire illegals though, so you don't have that pesky H1B paperwork. Trump properties are doing this now, not a decade ago.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/us/undocumented- housekeep...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/us/undocumented-housekeeper- trump-golf-bedminster.html)

__ edit__ if someone's downvoting, maybe they could come out and indicate if (a) you can't detect sarcasm, (b) you approve of hiring illegals, or (c) you think Trump should be allowed to break the law while grandstanding on an old H1 question?

</comment><comment><USER32> From the AP report on this ([https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc](https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc))

> Trump acknowledged that he was made aware of the issue after seeing a > television ad produced by U.S. Tech Workers, a nonprofit that wants to limit > visas given to foreign technology workers, that aired in prime time on Fox > News.

It does seem truly scary that by far the easiest way to get the US president to do something is to put an ad on Fox News. If you can package your cause into one of his pet topics, you have a good chance of something getting done. A US president that is so easily manipulated is terrifying.

<comment><USER33> Yes, of course. Obviously the President of the US should have already been aware of the hiring practices of contractors at some regional utility provider.

<comment><USER34> I don't think the person you're replying to was implying the President should already be aware of the issues. Rather, that it's concerning that the best way to convince him to do anything is through a TV ad instead of a more appropriate means of communication.

<comment><USER33> Who cares how he learned about it? The President has hundreds, probably thousands of people asking him for stuff every day. He has teams of people who filter requests through the "appropriate means of communication."

Seriously, it's irrelevant. When he learned of a federally-controlled entity working against the best interests of Americans, he took action. That's really all that matters. I don't care if he saw a TV ad, a billboard, or any other unconventional means of communication with the US President.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Language 2.0 – Open-source, Machine Intelligent, an intriguing idea - <AUTHOR> Languages are broken. People speak different dialects, different tongues, different phrases. Machines don't understand them because they were invented a time before all of this existed.
We all try to solve this problem through translation, but it doesn't work very well. Even chat-bots suck! Aren't we going about this all wrong? Instead of trying to fit broken pieces in existing languages, just because we have a lot of people using them, why not just invent one that works for the modern world?
Before you laugh, let's just think about it for a second.
With technology, a language can be anything. It can be the way we program, it can be semantic, it can be spoken and contributed to by anyone. It can grow!
We create a global movement where everybody contributes to form a new kind of creative expression. Open-sourced, decentralized, not-for-profit.
Think about it, even the challenges are interesting.
1. What will be the advantages of this new language? Will it be more precise? Faster? More beautiful? More expressive? 2. How do we create a smart set of rules, that form the basis of language - Can we make this better? 3. How do we create a tool, that then translates any 1.0 language to our 2.0 version. 4. How do we teach and learn this new language and reach a critical mass that then adopts it?
My proposal is to create a steering committee that helps solve some of the tough challenges around it. I'm creating a mailing list, If you're interested, drop your details below.
https://goo.gl/forms/uwsl1UfqM675zi1I2
Cheers, //Sheran <comment><USER2> I was just thinking today that emoji are kind of like Chinese characters. It would be interesting to have a kind of emoji / esperanto type mashup.

The main innovation would be that it would be a language where you could read or write it before you knew how to speak or pronounce it. Each emoji could have a specific sound that your smartphone could tell you.

I think it would be appealing to people to be able to use a language without having to study / learn it first.</comment>


2000-2009: Microsoft's Decade of Shattered Dreams - <AUTHOR> http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/20002009-Microsofts-decade-of-shattered-dreams/1262204767?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bn+(Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN)&utm_content=Bloglines

<comment><USER2> If Microsoft trimmed the friction points (management/bloat) they would actually be rocking it. Look to the XBox team for inspiration. They've absolutely come out of nowhere, dominated, innovated (look at the tech behind xbox live), and even beat apple so far in the living room.

Have you guys ever checked out windows home server? Probably not. They don't promote it enough, but it's the best product they have made in ages. It's functionality pisses on Apple's Time Capsule and I love time capsule to death.

My guess in the next decade? Their core businesses get shaken up (office, windows, etc.) causing them to trim a LOT of this fat after the stock takes a rocking. They finally get the gut check they need and start pulling ahead in other areas (Bing, XBox/Entertainment, etc.)

<comment><USER3> The battle over the living room was firmly won by the wii. Households that have never had games consoles, now have a wii in the living room. I'd be willing to bet there are far more wii's in living rooms than any other console.

I think one reason the xbox looks like a great success is due to how badly the ps3 sucks, and how stupid Sony got. £300 for a games console is ridiculous, and basing it on a soon to be obsolete bluray standard is just more idiocy. They never seem to learn - minidisc, UMD etc - they always try to lock in these ridiculous new formats.

For me, the only innovator lately has been Nintendo. They have absolutely turned gaming on its head, and come out with some truly imaginative games that focus soley on fun and gameplay. They've captured amazing large new markets of gamers who have never played before.

The xBox is a good all round console, but it's just more of the same IMHO. I don't see much innovation going on there. I'm sure ms are pleased with xbox, but I wonder just how much money they've lost in total doing it. Maybe they'll break even in the next generation, or maybe Sony will realize just how stupid they've been. Maybe they'll go back to their playstation 1 roots.

<comment><USER4> _I'd be willing to bet there are far more wii's in living rooms than any other console._

And you would be correct. According to data from manufacturers [1], Nintendo has sold nearly twice as many Wiis as Microsoft has sold Xbox 360s.

        Wii       56 million (as of Sept. 30th)
        Xbox 360  34 million (as of Oct. 23rd)
        PS3       27 million (as of Sept. 30th)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_\(seventh_generation\))

<comment><USER5> Also note that Wii's are sold for a profit, unlike Xboxes and PS3's

<comment><USER4> While that might be the case, Microsoft and Sony obviously make up for selling at a loss through game revenue and subscriptions (Xbox Live, Playstation Network). I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft or Sony made more money per console than Nintendo after accounting for game revenue and subscriptions.

<comment><USER3> Very much doubt it.

Also note that a large number of wii games are 'in house' through Nintendo. So Nintendo makes larger margins on games than Sony or MS.

Even if you just measured the profit from the game 'wii sports' vs profit from xbox live subscriptions, I'd bet Nintendo trounced them.

As far as I'm aware, Sony and MS have to share a large amount of each games sale with publishers and game developers etc. Nintendo does most of that themselves for the big wii games, so they get far higher margins.

<comment><USER6> Don't forget the large number of game studios that Microsoft has under its umbrella, including ones that no one has heard of like, say, Bungie ;)

Interestingly, it seems as though the MBA's don't harass the game studios very much. Too bad MS management hasn't taken a lesson from them... but I guess that's what happens when you start bringing in "professional managers (tm)".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Back in 2003 or so, I was at a conference where a former Microsoft manager of some variety told me (paraphrased) that Microsoft's product strategies always revolved around selling more server licenses: Windows Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server. So all their product development was bent in that direction, causing some otherwise good ideas to miss hitting the customer need because there always had to be a tie-in to selling more licenses. Seems to explain a lot of the failures that are outlined in this piece.

OTOH, any company the size of Microsoft has a lot of failed ideas, or poorly executed ones. Not every idea is a home run; foul balls are part of the game.

<comment><USER8> In the early '90s I wrote some software in Microsoft C++ that was distributed as an executable. An IBMer MBA friend of mine was horrified that anyone could distribute as many copies of my program as they liked without each user having to buy a C++ compiler.

Almost 20 years on Microsoft sound like IBM did back in the day.

<comment><USER9> My parents started a software company out of their apartment in the early 80s that lasted about twenty years with a sole product, which was based entirely around a PC database / development environment. When I was cleaning out their office before they sold the apartment a couple years ago, I found a little cubbyhole next to my Mom's old desk.

It contained a stack of shrinkwrapped end-user software licenses for the long- dead database environment their product was based on, one for each of their 60-70 customers over the life of the company. Cost at least a half-million dollars total, and went right into the dumpster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This doesn't mention the elephant in the room - open source. 2000-2009 saw open source software become completely mainstream, probably best illustrated by the Firefox browser. Microsoft really failed to adapt to the rise of open source and the increasing developer mindshare which it commanded. Instead of trying to harness its potential and ride the wave their strategy was mostly one of antagonism and FUD.

<comment><USER11> IE vs Firefox is Microsoft vs Open source in a nutshell.

If not for Office they'd be a lot hotter water right now. Lock in is really nice when you've got it, even if your customers hate it.

Open Office still has a lot of rough edges, even after all those years, it's one of the few things that buys microsoft more time. If open office were to be ported to C, trimmed of it's bloat and made more compatible (ok, that would add some bloat back in) Ballmer would sleep a lot less good.

<comment><USER12> Office/ Groupware (Microsoft Exchange, Outlook) AND their development tool chain. Visual Studio with its fantastic compiler and debugger kicks GCC + GDB in the arse.

<comment><USER11> That may be but they don't support my platform of choice so I can't use them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Steve frickin' Ballmer... Does anyone believe that he'd still be CEO if Bill Gates hadn't anointed him as his successor? He's the Gordon Brown to Gates' Tony Blair. Microsoft is never going to be relevant until Ballmer and his horde of bean counting lackeys get the boot.

<comment><USER11> That's a beautiful analogy, with more than just a grain of truth to it.

Especially the Gates - Blair bit.

IBM managed to 'reinvent' itself after a very rough patch, maybe microsoft will manage to do that too but definitely not with the current leadership. To solve these issues you first have to be able to admit (maybe even publicly) that there are issues. Until then it's down.

I remember IBM passing out little flashlights with 'I've seen the light', and they really had.

Microsoft is at least a decade away from a moment like that.

Give google another 10 years to figure out how to kill office and they probably will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That is simply incredible. I didn't realize that Microsoft had come up with so many good ideas and then abandoned them. If they had come up with good implementations of each of those ideas and stuck with them they would have easily had a monopoly on most of computing.

<comment><USER15> I'm not a Microsoft hater at all and contrary to some others I think they have been an innovative company (e.g. VB, XMLHTTPRequest, Linq, ...). But Wilcox's list of "visionary" Microsoft innovation is weird.

I mean just because they did something before Apple did it doesn't mean they invented it, nor that they were particularly visionary. Most of the items on that list were talking points at the time and many wanted to do them in the .com bubble years. What Microsoft was talking about then was just part of the general "vision hyper-inflation" of the time.

Hailstorm was a concept for an XML Web Services platform. Yes it was supposed to support API access to things like address books among many other things, but presenting this as the predecessor to Facebook is a stretch to say the least. Facebook started out as a web site, not as a platform. Turning that on its head is not visionary. It's an old blueprint for certain failure.

And the tablet PC a precursor to the iPhone? Excuse me but the iPhone is a phone. It's primarily a communication device on which people play some games as well, and a very small minority does one or two other things with it. Is everything with a touch screen now a would be iPhone?

And then there's the NTFS successor. As far as I remember it was not planned to be a distributed file system or some kind of virtualized cloud/cluster thing. It was supposed to be a file system that had database-like features like a rich data model, and it used SQL Server technology. Scaling out was not the vision but that's exactly the point of "cloud" storage.

Microsoft as the largest OS vendor completely missed the boat on virtualization, which is probably the most important OS trend in the past 10 years. Ok, they took the next boat, but the fact that it's not even mentioned is telling.

And then there is Office collaboration. What a horrible mess. There's nothing even remotly usable. They piled on useless features in Office but stuff like editing a Word file in a group, something really obvious, is so horribly broken and has been forever. That's an anti vision.

So no, they haven't just been bad at executing. Their visions were either of me-too quality or the kind of failed platform grandstanding that IBM was known for.

That said, they have created some solid high quality stuff in the past 10 years as well. Windows is a good solid OS. .NET is a good solid development platform and C# hasn't stalled as Java has. They have opened up Office file formats and invented a sane alternative to PDF. It's good engineering work and a little bit visionary in some places.

<comment><USER16> > Facebook started out as a web site, not as a platform. Turning that on its > head is not visionary. It's an old blueprint for certain failure.

Wave? [edit for clarification: isn't that a platform first? not that we know it's a success, of course]

<comment><USER15> I haven't had an opportunity to try Wave yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not sure if the .NET dynamic languages (IronPython, IronRuby, etc) came before the JVM dynamic languages (Jython, JRuby, etc), but it also seems like Microsoft let the .NET languages languish and missed out on a opportunity to bring a lot of the dynamic language programmers into the .NET fold. Meanwhile the the JVM has experienced a rebirth with the vibrant JVM language communities.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure what makes you think Microsoft have let .NET languish.

The .NET runtime and languages have been updated regularly with significant changes and improvements, and Microsoft themselves support C#, VB.NET and F# as "first-class" languages, as well as developing IronPython and IronRuby and working on the Dynamic Language Runtime project to ease dynamic language implementation. All of these equal or better Sun's support of Java.

There are also quite a few non-Microsoft languages based on .NET including IronScheme and Boo. .NET's CLR also supports tail-call optimisation, something the JVM doesn't.

<comment><USER19> The CLR may support tail-call optimization, but that's not much. You can have support for TCO in a JVM language, it's just that interoperability with Java suffers.

When comparing the CLR to the JVM, I'm only jealous of one feature of the CLR ... stack-allocated objects.

On the other hand, saying that .NET's support for multiple languages is "equal or better" then that of the JVM is just flat wrong.

The CLR doesn't optimize call-sites where the called method is virtual. This is alleviated somewhat by the semantics of C# (all methods are non-virtual by default), but for dynamic languages it's a disaster. The JVM on the other hand does this ever since Java 1.3 (when hotspot was added as an option).

And the DLR is a cool framework for language designers, but it's one layer above the CLR, and it's just code extracted from the IronPython implementation. And related to speed, if you compare Jython with IronPython, Jython does a lot better right now, although it's not the most active language-implementation on the JVM.

The upcoming InvokeDynamic for the JVM will really kick ass for dynamic invocations ... the JVM will allow one to make calls without knowing the type of the object used in single dispatch ... and those call-sites will be optimized (like method-inlining) just as with a normal "invoke_interface".

And then there's the little things that make your life easier on the JVM ... for example it's easier to generate .class files, or .jar files ... along with debugging symbols. And the JVM is truly multi-platform.

You mentioned tail-calls ... well, the tail-calls in Mono have always been broken and unusable and there's no fix on the horizon. Also speaking of Mono, the GC is not generational and does not defragment the heap. IMHO, it's a low quality implementation that's only optimized for C#.

<comment><USER18> Interesting, I'll bow to your greater experience that Java bytecote is better as a target than CIL..

That said, I think that my core point still stands, _even if_ the CLR isn't _yet_ quite as good as the JVM: Microsoft are hardly letting .NET languish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hackers often blame MBAs, management, and hierarchy for technological mishaps.

As often did I. But it turns out that managing people is hard. It is amazing to me that an organization that is Microsoft's size can decide and execute on anything at all, much less on the number of things that it actually does.

Cutting five layers of management, which is already few for an organization that's Microsoft's size, is really a recipe for chaos.

<comment><USER21> _It is amazing to me that an organization that is Microsoft's size can decide and execute on anything at all._

 _Cutting five layers of management, which is already few for an organization that's Microsoft's size, is really a recipe for chaos._

I'd say Microsoft's barely navigable size might have a lot to do with those 5+ layers of middle management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure passing on Youtube and Yahoo were bad decisions for Microsoft as stated by the article.

As far as Youtube is concerned, AFAIK it still hasn't been profitable for Google and would have likely bled more red ink with Microsoft in higher bandwidth charges, or alternatively, MS might have tried monetizing sooner slowing Youtube's growth. It's doubtful purchasing Yahoo in this economic climate would have been a big winner either.

I also don't really buy the article's description of the Xbox business defying the data and business common sense. For a long time, Microsoft has wanted to be in the living room, purchasing WebTV in 1997. If anything, it's an example of how Microsoft has succeeded in the past; constantly improving upon it's past mistakes and not giving up as quickly as other companies might. The original XBox wasn't all that successful, but they did some smart moves with the 360, getting it out earlier than the PS3, providing good tools and support to their development community, and realizing that good networking support at the OS level to allow seamless multiplayer experiences was going to be a game changer for this generation of consoles.

<comment><USER23> As far as YouTube's bandwidth bill goes, it is probably low, as discussed a couple months back:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=886109>

I wouldn't deny that the Microsoft seems to be improving the Xbox from the customer's point of view... but I think the larger point is that the Xbox program is in the red.

There was already a convergent device for the living room. It's a computer with an HDMI cable and a wireless keyboard, or maybe a wireless tablet. Packaging it as a console with funky controllers is not a game changer, no matter how many games come out for it.

<comment><USER24> The thrust of that article is that YouTube's bandwidth bill _at Google_ is zero, because of Google's dark fiber / peering. If MS had bought them the bill might be astronomical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Microsofts biggest problem is that _"they just have no taste"_ to qoute Steve Jobs.

Taste is what the enduser sees. Endusers don't care about strategy, proprietary technology, bottomlines, acquisitions, tie-ins, and what have you.

The big problem here is that having good taste is like being a good hacker - you have to be one to spot one. And since Microsoft doesn't seem to have many people with taste they don't recognize it when they see it. This is why Microsoft isn't doing well on the web - it's easy to switch to a competitor if a site doesn't just work right away, and many Microsoft offerings don't. They're clunky, hard to navigate and often have a hidden agenda thought up by a MBA. This is also the primary reason that Apple is doing so well: Their CEO has taste.

Endusers just want shiny stuff that works.

</comment><comment><USER26> This article lists missed opportunities for market penetration when MS had technology ready.

I think the article is a bit harsh, even hostile. The criteria _Most every technology decision must be justified by some data point. No company spends on research like Microsoft_ is not unlike the criticism leveled at Google by that departing designer. Large companies need operate this way.

The heart of the challenge is what transformations are necessary for a seriously successful company to stay vital. IBM went through a catastrophic point and came out due to some very astute business leadership. MS is more technologically focused.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sorry this article is borderline ridiculous. Comparing for example, Amazon S3 to NTFS is like comparing an online storage platform used for building web services on top of, to a local file system used for storing files on desktops. Oh wait.

Seems to me like its a hurried piece of negative PR in part of a much larger war. Probably a response to the "Top 9 products Google killed" story somewhere else on the internets.

<comment><USER19> Actually that comparison is not so ridiculous.

Customers want storage, lots of it. One way to do it is to provide the technology to make that storage cheap and easy to maintain. Another way to have cheap/maintainable storage is by using an external provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The MBAs (and lawyers) will do the same to GOOG. Correction: are doing the same to GOOG.</comment>