Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-xIgk7Mw1S5DXTZSbKBgxlsQAn7XGIu7Mfy72lSVHKk/edit#gid=129993618 <comment><USER3> When I started my career in software engineering, I increased my salary 300% in one year as a result of ignoring taboos and talking to peers about what they were earning. Anecdote yes, but perhaps useful to some who look at these numbers and wonder if they could earn more. Chances are you could.

The taboo around talking about salaries is to the benefit of companies and who do actually have that information already. Negotiations in which one party has more information usually go better for that party. So it's good to see a new generation of engineers being comfortable talking about this, and in a very public way.

<comment><USER4> When I was a junior sysadmin in London I earned 26k;

If not for a senior engineer talking openly about salary I would not have had the guts to ask for a significant increase. At the time the very senior people in the company were earning 75-85k, and the mid-levels between 32-45k.

I was fortunate enough to be taught very well, I became senior in that company in a very short amount of time, but I never got the raise that the seniors got, but when I was looking at other companies, I knew what I was "worth" realistically. I'm eternally thankful for the internal culture at that company during that time, because I would not have had nearly the amount of confidence necessary to ask for such a (seemingly) large amount of money.

<comment><USER5> Orthogonal to your anecdote, tech salaries in London are ridiculously low :(

<comment><USER6> Welcome to Europe. European salaries in general are low. Take home pay too, and goods and services are much more expensive. It's important for people to realize this, that "free" healthcare, education, etc. are far from free.

<comment><USER7> Not all goods and services are more expensive, in my experience. I've been living in Cali (not bay area) for a couple of months now and the price of fresh fruit and veg in the shops is outrageous compared to UK. Bell peppers for example seem to cost two or three times as much, even though California is the top producing state in the US. Eating out in restaurants is definitely more expensive when you factor the tip in, whilst fast food is comparably priced. The only good that I've found to be noticeably cheaper is petrol.

<comment><USER8> _The only good that I 've found to be noticeably cheaper is petrol._

And that is because the vast majority of the price of petrol here in the UK is tax (in fact, multiple taxes). Successive UK governments have long used tax policy, on fuel and otherwise, to deter the use of wasteful, highly polluting vehicles. This has arguably been somewhat successful, though it will be a moot point within a generation in any case because eliminating petrol and diesel vehicles entirely is clearly the goal for several good reasons.

<comment><USER7> Not only that, but the US heavily subsidises fossil fuels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the main ways that employers keep salaries down is information asymmetry. A large business knows with certainty what salary their employees accept, and will have high quality statistical reports on what their competitors pay. Individuals especially near the start of their careers have much less information on what salary corporations may pay. The corporations use this information advantage to help in salary negotiations.

Efforts like this may have quality issues but do help to reduce the imformation disparity between corporations and employees.

<comment><USER10> This helps:

[https://www.levels.fyi/](https://www.levels.fyi/)

From my experience (I manage folks in one of those companies) it seems to be pretty accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know these people willingly shared this information in public, but, for whatever reason, this compilation makes me uncomfortable.

EDIT to clarify: what makes me uncomfortable about this is not the broad range of salaries. I don't find that surprising at all. It's gathering all this information together and associating it with people's names (and complete bios!) that bothers me. Some of them may find they want to delete those tweets later.

<comment><USER12> It includes people from all over the world. US skilled salaries are usually 2x+ (not just for tech, but also things like healthcare) salaries in Europe. Remember they have social safety nets and lower costs for things like education and healthcare, we do not.

Also this list has a very small sample size, and very few people from big tech, otherwise the pay would skew significantly higher.

<comment><USER13> The US has social safety nets.

Nearly half the federal budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And there are numerous other programs: unemployment, housing assistance, snap, etc.

There are also state and local programs as well as private charities.

<comment><USER14> Social security and Medicare are both social safety nets that one cannot take advantage of while they're working in most cases, and everything else you've mentioned either requires a person to be in extreme poverty or severely disabled.

Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits.

Mentioning them the way you have requires a very uncharitable interpretation of the previous posters point.

<comment><USER15> > Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take > advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits.

If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting[1]? And why do so many recent French presidents have abysmal approval ratings[2]?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_France#21st_century)

[2] Macron: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanuel_Macron_presidency)

Hollande: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approva...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approval_ratings)

Sarkozy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#Opinion_polling)

<comment><USER16> The approval rating doesn't seem to be much better than US Gov't[0].

Also, the US is also constantly protesting too. What do you think Black Lives Matter, the Google Walkout, the Amazon protests in NYC, the current and ongoing unrest surrounding ICE camps, and the teachers union strike in LA are?

0\. [https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress- public.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx)

<comment><USER15> But the GP was trying to point out how France is much better than the US. With a better system, I would expect less protests and better approval ratings.

<comment><USER16> And I am arguing that approval ratings and protests may not be highly correlated or have causational relationships with the amount of social services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my experience [https://www.levels.fyi](https://www.levels.fyi) provides much better information than random tweets. Not everyone works for a FAANG, but it's useful to know what their influence is in the market.

<comment><USER17> I wish there were just a little better filtering/sorting on their data. I want to know what people with my years of experience, in my metro area, in my specialization are making. You can kind of get some of that info, in certain forms. If their data (the data that is already publicly viewable on their website) were in a relational database I could write a query in about 60 seconds to pluck out what I want to know.

<comment><USER18> That level of breakdown would probably make deanonymization too easy.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html](https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html)

You can already view individual data points.

So to expand on the shortcomings: I can filter by metro area and years of experience. But the result is just the table of data points. The only sortable column is total compensation. There is no aggregate data.

What I really want to see is the histogram chart from the link below, but with the filtering results applied to it. It seems like the only thing you can do with the histogram they give you is select metro location.

[https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/San- Franci...](https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/San-Francisco- Bay-Area/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Contrarian view: salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all.

Disclosure advantages people who collude to apply political pressure (gang up) instead of appealing to principles or leveraging their skill and the value they bring. There is general social and economic harm to facilitating this behaviour.

Disclosure lowers all boats in that it causes mean-reversion in the sample, and reduces opportunity and incentive for people to apply themselves and succeed, and prevents valuable and exceptional people from joining the company because their salary expectations are not "to scale."

Disclosure absolves managers of the need to negotiate effectively, which means you get managers who can't negotiate, which is the worst possible outcome for a company, since what is their job again?

It's great to have data for negotiating. I use a bunch of different data sources and options, and I also avoid organizations who say they "don't negotiate," because it means they literally just bully people.

Have at it.

<comment><USER20> > for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and > useful skills of all.

You're confusing the skill of adversarial negotiation with cooperative negotiation. _Cooperative_ negotiation is a critical business skill _within_ the company. You are all on the same team and should have the same goals.

Competitive negotiation is a good skill to have for _some_ external negotiations. If anything, being good at cooperative negotiation is far more important.

> Disclosure absolves managers of the need to negotiate effectively, which > means you get managers who can't negotiate, which is the worst possible > outcome for a company, since what is their job again?

Same as above. You're again confusing adversarial negotiation for cooperative negotiation.

> Disclosure lowers all boats in that it causes mean-reversion in the sample, > and reduces opportunity and incentive for people to apply themselves and > succeed

In every org I've seen with open salaries, I've seen the opposite. That it raises all boats because everyone demands to get paid the same as the highest salary on the team.

<comment><USER19> Negotiation _is_ price discovery. It is literally the empirical process of discovering the clearing price of an agreement based on deductive reason instead of the blind-man's-bluff bullying of a haggle. People on the privileged end of a power imbalance always think they're being co-operative, because they necessarily know they have the power and choose whether or not to co-operate. Negotiation is the art of managing power imbalances - <USER2> when someone is using leverage to get you to "co-operate," while essentially yelling "stop resisting!"

To clarify, there was no confusion.

When someone says, "take it or leave it," it's bullying. When someone says, "we're paying you this because this is what everyone else gets and that's fair because I'm telling you it is," that's also bullying.

A negotiated price is a function of the _true price_ at which parties arrive at a deal. How do you deal with liars? Find options that yield information about their intent. This is the real art. It's finding information oracles about their position independent of what they present. Some people are simple, most aren't.

In this sense, negotiation is the pursuit of truth.

<comment><USER20> That's what _adversarial_ negotiation is yes.

But cooperative negotiation is when both parties have the same information and the same goals but different constraints. Or they have the same information but different goals.

Then you work together to come up with a plan that meets both needs, but most likely each side must compromise a bit.

 _That_ is the negotiation skill that is most important in business, and that is _not_ the skill used when negotiating salaries in most cases.

Although as it turns out my last salary negotiation was in fact a cooperative negotiation, where I made an offer and was then told I asked too low and they offered me more than I asked for.

<comment><USER19> Not sure this view relates to any of the actual literature on negotiations outside of NVC (which is a cult), or any significant experience in negotiations. It is quite patronizing though. The game of putting a lack of virtuousness on others and transferring responsibility to others for the tone is not negotiation. I think psychologists call it gaslighting.

Telling the person you're negotiating with that they are just being confrontational is simple passive aggression.

After reading GTY, I recommend DeMesquita and Pfeffer, then, go back to Cialdini through a modern lens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wrong way of showing the data. Column order of the data should be Name Company Salary City ..... and so on. Irrelevant details should be towards right end so that people don't have to scroll to see the relevant data.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just check [https://levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi) also started out as a spreadsheet.

<comment><USER23> It only accounts for US salaries in dollars and those looking to relocate there. For those outside of the US, you're out of luck.

<comment><USER24> I think it has normalised the salaries to USD so that they can be compared easily. Many roles listing USD salaries are in locations outside of the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I always support disclosing salary information but I found it silly that the original tweet was prefaced with some greater goal of helping minorities or disadvantaged people. The subtext was clearly a flex to show how good developer salaries are in the USA, and by disguising it as doing some social good the tweet came off as distasteful.

A person in Nigeria is not being helped by the person in US disclosing their salary information.

<comment><USER26> When people in the US talk about disadvantaged minorities, they generally mean minorities in the US. And a bunch of white American male software engineers disclosing their salaries can definitely help black and female software engineers.

<comment><USER25> Are black and female software engineers in USA right now the demographic that really needs helping? Im not American, so I probably need clarification, but what is their current situation compared to white males in the same position at a company?

<comment><USER27> That's an interesting question. I'm personally aware of several large companies in my area which, due to diversity pressure, blatantly discriminate in favor of minorities and women.

The performance required from a white man in an interview for the same job is higher. That is to say that a white man will be openly discarded in favor of a minority/woman with a similar background when applying for the same job.

This is a common occurrence.

<comment><USER28> I'm at a 1000 person org and this is also how we hire. We have KPIs for "diversity" and the entire company gets a huge bonus when we meet all our targets, so there is a incentive all the way from the CEO to panel ICs.

<comment><USER29> Diversity goals don't necessarily imply discrimination against non-minorities. There are many completely reasonable ways to work toward such goals.

<comment><USER30> The comment you are replying to mentions more than a diversity goal. It mentions a financial incentive for hiring minorities. Can you give an example of how that would not create discrimination?

<comment><USER31> It could exist in a world where people start with systemic encouragement to _not_ hire minorities, and so the financial incentive to do so only manages to shift their practices enough to end the existing discriminatory habits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is this spreadsheet supposed to prove? It sounds like its either a ego- measuring contest of which company has the best salaries + compensation with position in a certain country (Hint: It's still FAAMNG in Silicon Valley) or it is a giant weird flexing spreadsheet to show that devs in developed countries are paid more that those in third-world countries (Even those who work remotely).

The compensation in somewhere like California is still high due to the cost of living such as the high rents, travel, childcare and most importantly healthcare which isn't free unlike some places like the UK it is but paid via taxes. This is why some people don't understand when they see a certain celebrity programmer on this spreadsheet that works for one of the FAAMNGs and is apparently 'paid less' in the UK but some lesser known devs in the US are 'paid more' in the same company.

Again it turns out that it depends on the country they are in and it seems to be similar to something called 'Purchasing Power Parity'.

<comment><USER3> It's useful to see what your peers are earning, especially for your next salary negotiation. And it's pretty obvious that if you don't live in SF, you shouldn't expect SF salaries.

<comment><USER32> This was always strange for me, and is a regular drunken debate between my roommates and I.

If a company operates in a global market, why should it pay dramatically different salaries in different cities? For example, our London engineers make like 70k to our 140. But we both work on the same product. We both make the _company_ the same amount of money.

I've always thought it was just another bit of bullshit capitalist policy by companies. Another way to save a dime. My roommates argue about lower cost of living etc.

The ONLY argument I've been at all convinced by is if one imagies a co-op of several individual contributors that happen to be distributed. All provide equal value. Some live in Hanoi, some in San Francisco. They have a limited pool of income to distribute, and they decide they want to do so based on the metric of Comfort Of Living, which thus results in Hanoi employee taking home less so their SF colleagues can have an comfort of living.

But the clincher there is the extremely limited static income. That's the excuse I think companies make, but any time _I 've_ seen the financials, I've seen plenty of room to pay everyone fairly. If the company can't afford to give _everyone_ SF salaries, then how can you justify hiring _any_ SF engineers?

It smacks of classism, it smacks of corporate plutocracy.

<comment><USER33> > We both make the company the same amount of money.

This is a common mistake. Compensation isn't directly related to the value you produce. The value you produce for the company only sets an upper limit on long-term compensation.

Instead, your compensation reflects your opportunity cost of staying with the company. The company seeks to pay you the minimum amount required for you to continue working with them versus taking another job somewhere else.

Before you conclude that this is unfair, it's important to understand that you do the same thing in your own decision making. If your car mechanic told you their rates were doubling to be more in line with mechanic rates in wealthier countries, would you think that's fair? Or would you drive across town to a mechanic with more reasonable rates? Imagine if the mechanic said "I've seen the size of your house and your job at a big company, so I know you can afford it!"

Obviously you wouldn't arbitrarily overpay for something due to completely unrelated market rates in a different country. Obviously the size of your bank account shouldn't be permission for someone to overcharge you for services. Compensating employees is no different.

> I've always thought it was just another bit of bullshit capitalist policy by > companies. Another way to save a dime. My roommates argue about lower cost > of living etc.

Your second mistake is being upset or surprised when companies make decisions to save money. The entire purpose of a company is to generate more revenue than they spend, so of course they will make choices to efficiently allocate that capital. Again, you're no different with your own personal decision making.

Hypothetically, let's assume a company did institute a policy of equal pay at all offices. You would like to think that they'd choose the highest paid location an raise everyone's pay to match that, but no sane company at scale would make that decision. Instead, they'd probably index to the average compensation, bringing everyone's compensation toward the mean. Higher paid employees would receive a huge pay cut while low cost locales would see a huge pay raise. What do you expect to happen to the SF employees in this scenario? They will quit and take a job at a company down the street that will pay them market rate. What will happen to those employees in lower cost of living locations who were already choosing, voluntarily, to stay with the company? Nothing. They will stay in place, just like before.

Now that all of your SF employees have rightfully quit, the company will realize that their average "fair" compensation is unnecessarily high without SF salaries, so they can safely lower it to an average compensation for other locations. Again, the people in low cost of living locations rejoice while the people in high cost of living locations quit and take jobs that pay market rate.

Repeat this process for a few iterations and you're only left with employees in the low cost of living location.

The sooner you accept that engineering labor obeys the laws of supply and demand and that you're not paid according to the value you produce, the easier it is to understand while people are paid differently in different areas. Before you argue that people should be paid according to the value they produce, ask yourself if you'd be willing to pay money to the company if you accidentally produced negative value by introducing a major bug or if your team's product launch failed. Of course you wouldn't expect to be financially coupled to the risk and financial downside, which is why it's unreasonable to expect to be directly coupled to the financial upside.

<comment><USER32> Thank you for the deep dive.

I'm curious what the effect of a global market and the ability for, say, a software engineer, to work 100% remote have on the "car mechanic" argument. If car mechanics could universally work on my car from anywhere in the world, it seems to me they'd all be charging the same.

So yeah, either they'd all charge whatever the dude in SF is charging, or the dude in SF couldn't compete with the woman in hanoi's rate (she's happy to cut her rate cause her bread is cheaper at the market), and thus moves out of SF.

Which I also think is ok. Perhaps that would result in a lower cost of living for places like SF? Perhaps that would lead to a greater distribution of people across the planet?

<comment><USER34> (I'll take a stab at this, but my knowledge is rather limited on this one so take it with a grain of salt).

Markets are a mix of locality. Some markets have more global reach than others.

The car mechanic example is a mostly local one, with the car parts being shipped from somewhere else, maybe in the same country or outside, which might take some influence on the price. Operation cost is local (rent, labor, other supplies) and customers are local, so the prices on mechanic services are stable and location based.

Software engineering has more global reach. It can be done remotely, but the labor is a mix of local and global (learning online, but also local universities, conferences, meetups), which justifies the pay gap between a local to the company (excluding timezone and culture differences, which makes the process and supply size smaller). It's also hard to evaluate the quality of work (see difficulties in hiring, analyzing performance).

The strongest argument I see is the cost of comfort (made somewhere else on this thread). Wages are largely decided on what other companies are paying and remote is a fairly new thing, so it's still highly unstable.

Pricing on products are also notoriously difficult. Some apps have prices adjusted by region.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how many people are going to get fired for their tweets. I see some very famous names severely underpaid, curious if they are going to get a bump in their salary or get fired.

<comment><USER36> In the US, the National Labor Relations Act expressly forbids employers from preventing employees from discussing wages. So it's certainly not legal for a company to fire someone for their tweet, at least in the US.

<comment><USER37> Isn't it true that you can be fired in the US without being given a reason?

Incidentally, I've always thought this was one of the reasons US salaries are so high. Employees in the US are almost comparable to contractors in Europe (who are paid significantly more than permanent employees).

<comment><USER31> Yep [https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/can-you-get- fir...](https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/can-you-get-fired-for- sharing-your-salary-publicly/)

And hmm, that's an interesting comparison. Contractors in the US are also paid significantly more than employees.

<comment><USER38> >Contractors in the US are also paid significantly more than employees.

Not really surprising all other things being equal. Contractors are often not getting benefits which can be more than a quarter of the total comp package.

Furthermore, contractors are often assumed to be being paid on an as-needed basis with less downtime like training that are factors with full-time employees.

When I had clients, a had a pretty high effective daily rate. But that didn't really translate into outsized take-home pay because so much "free" work went into being able to charge that sometime high daily rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I would say this list must very unreliable, I have seen one guy whom I can confirm exaggerated his salary because he likes a lot of attention and speaks at events, and another one who stated their monthly salary instead of annual, both from Nairobi.

</comment><comment><USER40> > Contractor / CEO / founder, $900k base, $1b equity

This one made me smile.

<comment><USER41> Good trolling on his part. New twitter account with no credible info about him to be found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am terribly underpaid.

<comment><USER43> Me too. I'm working at a FAANG company and apparently I could make 100k more. I was relocating for this job and I wasn't really prepared for the negotiation, totally screwed it up, and I think they gave me the minimum they could. Oh the bright side, it's still a good salary for me and I earn enough for two person to live comfortably.

<comment><USER44> I'm a little surprised at that. FAANGs tend to have fairly prescribed comp systems. There's flexibility around equity and signing bonuses, but if you told me that you were making (base+bonus) say $250k and someone at your level was making $350k, I'd be pretty surprised.

This reveals one of the challenges in these comparisons, by the way: _total_ comp can vary dramatically due not only to initial signing bonuses (which can result in a total comp "cliff") but also due to time-at-level: e.g. if you were just promoted to level n and your peer was at n for four years, your peer's net cash flow includes four previous n-sized RSU grants, whereas yours is 3x of n-1 grants.

Of course transparency is still good, but it's easy to misunderstand what causes a comp difference; in the case of the fast-promoted engineer they may appear to earn less per year despite having a steeper career trajectory than a slower peer.

<comment><USER45> You shouldn't be surprised at all. The higher up you go the wider the range is.

The range for a senior SDE at my company in my city is 250-400 (according to blind).

So you absolutely can have some people making $250k and others $350k for the same position at the same company.

Having said that.......by and large.....it's deserved. It is INTENDED to be merit-based.

But how fair is that merit-based system? Are people being shafted? Absolutely. International transfers. Those that don't negotiate well, or don't know their worth.

<comment><USER44> Well, again, if that's total annual comp, sure, for the reason I gave (vesting of previous grants biasing toward longer tenure at level, signing cliffs). But as a one-time manager at a FAANG, in my experience, the ranges for comp in terms of base+bonus are rarely that wide.

Anyway, I'm sure there are counter examples, but my point was that if you are at a FAANG making $250k and you find out someone at the same level is making $350k, it's unlikely to be merely that you didn't negotiate well enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Look like people with higher pay don't tweet about their salary ;)

<comment><USER47> I was thinking the same thing. If the original intent was to help underrepresented folks, now maybe they'll benchmark themselves against only this naive group willing to self report on twitter and continue to be paid less than the real average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> After looking at these numbers I realized Western Europe pays a bit better than I expected and US outside SV a bit worse :) The difference still seems to be there, but one part of that is USD/EUR being pretty high currently.

</comment><comment><USER49> Why this spreadsheet is not available for non-logged users?

I just tried to download it, but it still require me to sign up.[0,1]

[0] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27000699/google- spreadsh...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27000699/google-spreadsheet- direct-download-link-for-only-one-sheet-as-excel)

[1] [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-xIgk7Mw1S5DXTZSbKBg...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-xIgk7Mw1S5DXTZSbKBgxlsQAn7XGIu7Mfy72lSVHKk/export?format=xlsx&gid=129993618)

</comment><comment><USER47> This makes me stop to reflect on the question of how much money does one really need?

Surely at least enough to cover your basic needs like food and shelter. To be housing secure it seems reasonable to want to buy rather than just rent. It's wild that this is one of the hottest, highest paying industries, and most of the people in this thread working in SF couldn't afford to do so (by some napkin calculations it takes $333k a year in SF to afford to buy a house [1]).

I don't think most people fully appreciate how extreme of a change this new reality is. I think most would agree with my initial premise, that you should be able to be housing secure from your job. But they'd also say that $300k+ is an absurd amount of salary, surely you must just be very greedy if you think you need that much. And oh btw all market rate housing is evil, we should only build subsidized affordable housing.

So even though sf salaries are the highest in this list, almost all of these people still have a reasonable argument that they need to be paid more to meet their basic needs given the current situation.

[1] [https://sf.curbed.com/2018/5/16/17361746/salary-needed- buy-h...](https://sf.curbed.com/2018/5/16/17361746/salary-needed-buy-home- house-san-francisco-2018-california)?

<comment> kube-system Situations like this make me wonder how much money there is to be made by going remote.

<comment><USER50> I live in Germany and work for US companies, which is quite lucrative.

I only work a few months a year.

<comment><USER51> Are you a consultant? How specialized are you, and how do you find projects?

<comment><USER50> I'm blogging for 3 years now and wrote a book about React, so projects are mostly coming to me.

At the moment I try to make a living by blogging (mostly ghostwriting) less risk than software development, okay-ish pay and flexible work. I also got a teaching gig at a university here, teaching frontend and mobile development.

When I started, I found projects by simply looking online for offers and write emails to companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> francis-io In the UK we have ITJobsWatch[0] that seems to aggregate all the public job listings and organises by key word. It should give an idea of what the average person in that job is earning in each area, along with other correlated skills you might want to make sure you have.

[0] [https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/](https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Reading the tweets and those who have many years of experience (live in the US) and are not making what they should says they do not know how to get their best deal. Like any software dev who wants to maximize their salary should never stay at one job for more then a year or two. Job jumping and using recruiters to do so is a great way to give yourself a big boost with each new job you jump to. Staying put in one job for more then a year or two makes no sense in present time if your goal is to maximize your salary.

Im sure if there was a study it would show those who job jump are making a ton more then those who are loyal to a company.

<comment><USER53> _Like any software dev who wants to maximize their salary should never stay at one job for more then a year or two. Job jumping and using recruiters to do so is a great way to give yourself a big boost with each new job you jump to._

This is not true at FAANGs, where a large part of your compensation comes from multiple RSU grants vesting concurrently. Even if you never get a promotion or significant raise, your total compensation after 4 years will be much higher than when you started.

<comment><USER52> ah true and pardon my comment is geared towards working outside of the huge tech companies. Those working at those companies are most likely smart enough to know their worth and get their best deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Nice effort. Was this compiled manually, or by scraping Tweets?

<comment><USER55> Probably by using Twitter's API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm a mid-career software engineering manager in the Aerospace sector. Looking at the salaries on levels.fyi for companies like Uber (280k), I'm literally making less than half of that. Further, the most senior engineering managers I know never achieved anything near that level (probably closer to 175k).

Are there engineering positions in the aerospace sector that pay FAANG salaries?

</comment><comment><USER57> This doesn't seem particularly useful, as the data set is small, and biased toward those who are willing to report their salaries on twitter. Aside from the possibility that at least some of these reports misreport the actual salary, and likely over-state, it also seems likely that those who report salaries on twitter make above average relative to their peers.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'd be really curious to peer into the financial literacy across the wide range of salaries in here. I have no idea where my experience falls, but I feel like I goofed up for the first several years of my career and slowly built up better habits and understanding. "Luckily" I wasn't making 6 figures 3 years in so the bad habits were only so relatively bad ;-).

</comment><comment><USER59> Here's the repo for obtaining the tweets, if anyone's interested: [https://github.com/mathdroid/twitter-dev-salaries- scraper](https://github.com/mathdroid/twitter-dev-salaries-scraper)

</comment><comment><USER60> I doubt most of the big earners will disclose their salary. It seems to be going in a way where mostly people that are in a less than optimal situation are gonna disclose their salary, so the whole thing is underestimating the situation

<comment><USER61> I think also lots of people that are underpaid are scared to disclose. Fearing a "you only make this much?" reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Also check out [http://www.tellmewhatimworth.com](http://www.tellmewhatimworth.com)

It's a service where you get salary estimates from companies actually trying to hire for your skill set right now

</comment><comment><USER63> When are peeps going to stop dumping these data collections on google services?

So many datasets I'm interested in looking at, but they all require me to send data to google to look at.

</comment><comment><USER64> Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see much value to this "spreadsheet"? The data is unstructured, a cursory glance shows some very questionable outliers, and the number of emojis doesn't really inspire confidence.

What is the purpose of this list? Bragging rights? In which case, fine. But if it's anything else, the approach will need to be drastically refined. Collecting salary information on Twitter doesn't seem like a terribly reliable starting point. And it's impossible to compare, for instance, a US salary with a UK salary without a hell of a lot of context. 100K != 100K, even after currency conversion.

</comment><comment><USER65> Surprised how many people in SF make less than me (Atlanta) and have more experience. I thought it was basically unlivable there unless you're pulling in big money.

<comment><USER66> Unlivable claims are greatly exaggerated. You'll be with roommates or a very small apartment on less than $100k income, but otherwise you'll get along just fine. Usually it's people expecting a Midwest lifestyle of 3 kids, a huge yard, and 6 bedrooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This would be even more useful if it had after tax take home amount.

</comment><comment><USER68> Is there a code example to extract tweets from a hashtag like this one?

</comment><comment><USER69> Why download is disabled for the spreadsheet?

</comment><comment><USER70> These tweets are pretty rubbish, why would someone think that they should earn the same salary as someone else? Salaries should be different even in the same company, that way people are then encouraged to work and study harder and to better negotiate and know their value. But these tweets are even worse and it's comparing different companies and countries.

<comment><USER71> This is just a spreadsheet of tweets that share salary info, where do you see an implication that everyone should earn the same salary?

I believe this is intended to help people negotiate. Those of us who have a network of friends in tech get this information informally that way, but salary sharing like this gives people who don't have that network a starting point (albeit one riddled with selection bias and low sample size).

<comment><USER70> This is what the first tweet was about, it was talking about fixing inequality "especially for underrepresented groups like women and minorities"

I don't think it's helping clueless people to know what they could earn, these kind of information are available everywhere, such as Glassdoor, and they are anonymously published.

<comment><USER16> What's wrong with more data? Levels skews only to US based salaries while Glassdoor weighs older salaries excessively (thereby skewing lower).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Let's Build a cat in Swift 2 - <AUTHOR> http://dduan.net/post/2015/07/lets-build-a-cat-in-swift-2/

<comment><USER2> Why does the author use lets to make closures rather than functions here? I don't see anything that would require it.</comment>


YouTube Will Disable Comments on Nearly All Videos with Kids - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/youtube-comments-disabled-kids-videos-1203152191/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think this is really the wrong move on youtube's part. I bet there are at least ten thousand entirely appropriate comments to child videos for every one by a pedophile. To get rid of all the good ones to stop a few bad is simply wrong.

You know, sorting out the bad comments from the good ones is is just the sort of thing that ML would be good at. I think Google hasn't developed the software to do that because the problem wasn't costing them any money. Now it has, and maybe it will finally go ahead and do the right thing.</comment>


The Sneaky Plan to Subvert the Electoral College for the Next Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUX-frlNBJY <comment><USER2> NaPoVoInterCo is a terrible idea. The idea of states giving up even more sovereignty is silly bordering on ridiculous. CGP Grey has all the outward indications of being a smart person, but the blase way he approaches this subject is unsettling as i think it reflects how many of the "nominally smart" view this issue.

The term popular vote is very deceptive. If the only vote that mattered was the national election of the chief executive, it might be useful. But if voting is viewed holistically, as in local, state, and federal, there is no such thing as a popular vote. The vast majority of US citizens do not fully participate, and it is a large minority that participate in the national selection.

Further, many people love to point out Hillary gaining more popular votes in 2016, but they never seem to point out that this was almost solely due to California. Subtract California voters, and the competition's outcome makes perfect sense. This is precisely what the Electoral College was built to do. Just because 1 quarter of the entire nations social welfare beneficiaries decide to congregate in one place and all vote the same way does not mean they deserve to pick the president.

I have to wonder why the video didn't even touch the genesis of the NaPoVoInterCo. Just glancing at the map at the top of this link will tell you everything you need to know about both the politics and the purpose of this scheme: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)

This is a plan to turn the US into a one party state. This guy explains why that is not only a good thing, it is inevitable. After you read his piece, you should look up his net worth and where and how he lives: [https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/the-great-lesson- of...](https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/the-great-lesson-of- california-in-americas-new-civil-war-e52e2861f30)

I fear there are dark times ahead. At least CGP Grey will be very entertained as he watches us collapse from London, a city completely inoculated from demographic shift, political infighting, and terrible consequences for poor decisions.

<comment><USER3> So basically, what you're saying in a nutshell is that if you live in a rural area, your vote should count hundreds of times more than that of someone living in a heavily populated area. Sounds like a really good way to get to where we are today with congress.

How this stuff got into the constitution (or whatever) in the first place baffles me. The electoral college literally makes where you live determine how much your vote is worth. How is that not a huge violation of everything this country is supposed to stand for?

Put another way, it's like we care more about land than we do about people. Wtf? It's We the People not We the Vast Tracts of Essentially Empty Land.

<comment><USER2> What is this country supposed to stand for? Leaning on that trope to buttress a subjective opinion is a paper thin argument. This country is not supposed to stand for one thing. The State system was intended to allow for multiple interpretations of religion, culture, and identity. The federal system was intended to keep the State system balanced and safe. The rural areas deserved more influence because their contribution to the long term continuity of the country was something that couldn't be measured by population alone.

Shocking to your sensibilities and education level though it may be, land has always been more important to stability, peace, and prosperity than individual people. It is only in hyper consumer states (like the US coastal cities) where people find themselves so immensely important that they thing the Individual is the highest value commodity in society. They are programmed to believe this from a very early age, as well a falsely assumed omniscience about values, ethics, and truth. The vast majority of humans on the planet are far more in touch with their actual value relative to the system as well as their capabilities in that system. This is why most humans pack up and leave when the system is against them on both counts, as opposed to digging in and fighting back.

None of this would be baffling (in terms of the Electoral College) if you took the time to read the primary sources regarding it. I can understand how it would be surprising and baffling if you are operating off of third hand, highly subjective editorializing.

<comment><USER3> No state is in any position to try to leave the union at this point for a variety of reasons. If we rule that out, what utility does "keeping underpopulated states happy" provide, exactly?

The state system wasn't really intended to do anything, rather it was a byproduct of the fact that the founding fathers had to appease the colonies into wanting to unite as a larger entity without losing their local identity. It was merely a concession.

So electoral votes are largely a legacy feature from a bygone era where we had to worry about states trying to leave the union over minor grievances.

Combine that with the fact that cities and coastal states in general brain- drain rural areas, and you realize it's probably a dumb idea to give the brain-drained regions of the country the most decision-making power. The electoral college does just that -- it selectively gives vastly more voting power to the less intelligent regions of the country.

That said, it would also be wrong (both morally, and in the ill-advised sense) to have a meritocracy where high intelligence means your vote counts more. Since intelligence largely tracks with socioeconomic status because of access to different opportunities, this devolves to your classic rich noblemen making all the decisions situation with its obvious pitfalls.

So if you are trying to come up with an effective and fair system for electing a leader, sticking with the popular vote makes a lot more sense than affirmative action for places where no one wants to live.

The stupidity behind the electoral college is reflected at the local level in the stupidity of the system that allows for gerrymandering -- if there were rules in place forcing political districts to all be equal in terms of the % of the total population of the state that they represent, politicians couldn't manipulate the map for partisan purposes (at least as much as they do now).

As for the founding fathers' intentions, who can say? There was nothing really special about them anyway, they were more a product of their time than anything else. Now we are stuck with their mess.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to use Google+ as your own private Scrapbook/Bookmarking Service - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/107797841320768724118/posts/ghXafbr4iqp Neat Google+ hack on how to use Google+ to save notes/ideas/drafts of posts/hyperlinks etc. to your own private area. <comment><AUTHOR> You can also use it to save voice memos from your mobile phone to Google+ - <USER2> your own private area.</comment>


Chrome to block insecure resources by default - <AUTHOR> http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/06/trying-to-end-mixed-scripting.html <comment><USER2> This would be fine, if only more third party resources were available over HTTPS at a reasonable cost.

For instance, I'd love to use Olark for occasional customer support queries, and the free plan would work great for now. Unfortunately, Olark doesn't offer SSL until their $49/month plan.

Similarly, Cloudmade's fantastic OpenStreetMap tileserver is only available over plain HTTP, period.

With this change, I would have to choose between great services like Olark or CloudMade and offering SSL everywhere on the site. I understand that select pages with mixed content could be subject to man-in-the-middle attacks, but surely that's a better risk profile than forcing me to run everything over HTTP, right?

<comment><USER3> Why is this getting downvoted?

It's a huge, common issue. For example, Yahoo's AJAX libraries serve via HTTP, and it doesn't work over HTTPS. See, for example [https://yui.yahooapis.com/combo?2.9.0/build/yahoo-dom- event/...](https://yui.yahooapis.com/combo?2.9.0/build/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo- dom-event.js&2.9.0/build/animation/animation-min.js)

<comment><USER4> Google's CDN has YUI over SSL:

<http://code.google.com/apis/libraries/devguide.html#yui>

<comment><USER3> This is true, but doesn't invalidate my point

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That will break the free Google Maps v2 embedded in HTTPS websites (as per <http://code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html#ssl>)

That aside, a good move. Seems Chrome team is the first browser team not affraid of stating openly, ``stick to standards and best practices, because we won't be piling hacks upon hacks for compatibility''. Yay :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Maps v2 has been deprecated so sites should update to v3 anyways.

<comment><USER6> You know, I'm sympathetic to this point and yet... I can't help feeling like this sort of thing really screws people who put up perfectly serviceable websites just 3 short years ago, who now need to go back and spend effort just to keep things working.

It's hard to say if the benefits in this particular case are worth it, but I'm becoming increasingly wary of "this old hotness is deprecated, everyone should upgrade to the new hotness!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a great step.

In the future, I hope to see browsers starting to help sites eliminate third- party scripts entirely. <script src="[http://elsewhere/>](http://elsewhere/>); makes your site's security depend on that of "elsewhere", and allows "elsewhere" to do anything the logged-in user can do; changing the URL to <https://elsewhere/> doesn't change that.

<comment><USER8> There's no way Chrome will do this until Google can find a different way to insert AdSense ads on third-party sites. Currently, third-party scripts are the best way to achieve this. iframes are inelegant, and telling webmasters to update the script every once in a while just isn't going to work.

But I do hope that something like this becomes one of the standard add-ons that we can install. I'll have to go check if NoScript has a similar option...

<comment><USER7> What makes an iframe inelegant? It seems like the correct way to handle advertisements or other third-party content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In an https page, why not rewrite http resources to https by default? Then it could omit the content if there is a cert error or if there is no ssl server there at all.

I'm thinking of a use case of a typical not-ssl-mandatory online forum/wiki/whatever. There are going to be tons of historical img and script tags, either to local content or to other sites, that do not use https even when they could; when those links were set up years ago very few sites (other than ecommerce) took ssl seriously. The solutions are going through and changing links in the database, rewriting links in the app, or rewriting links in the web browser. Is there a compelling reason why rewriting links in the web browser is bad? There are five web browsers that people care about: Chrome, FF, IE, Safari, Opera (mostly mobile). There are thousands of webapps and at least tens of thousands of moderately popular sites that would have to rewrite content in the database or webapp in order to go ssl-only.

<comment><USER10> Yes there is a compelling reason: It's not the task of the browser to do this. With such an ugly hack you gain some short term benefits at large long term costs.

I guess about 15 years ago someone asked: "Why not let the browser try to interpret broken HTML instead of showing an error page?". The result is today's security nightmare, where it's impossible to reliable prevent script injection into HTML pages, because you can't just block the "official" way to insert a script, but also need to look into each of those ways how an HTML engine might interprete broken HTML.

<comment><USER9> Is it more of an ugly hack than forcing arbitrary sites to https based on a list that's partially hard-coded, partially user-specified, and partially added through an HSTS header in which case the entry also has a limited lifespan?

Ugly hacks to make the web even marginally more safe by encouraging or forcing use of https (in places it isn't explicitly specified) may be worthwhile. The thread's chrome hack alone reduces the usability of https, to the point of (I would guess) encouraging sites to use http and disable https so that visitors can actually see embedded content. Average web users know nothing of https, but if they happen across a site using https and embedded content doesn't show up, they'll blame the site. Certainly _that_ is not good. If this google hack is truly worth the pain, and even a small fraction of embedded content works with the uri changed from http to https, that's a benefit because it makes https more usable.

Would you think the same about simply changing the HSTS header so that sites could tell a browser to force loading all embedded <http://> content through <https://>?

It seems to me like Google's long-term goal is to encourage tls everywhere. If all sites that have user accounts (thus logins) are using https, and all content embedded on those sites has to be referenced over https (or another secure protocol), that's probably the bulk of the web.

So the long term costs (in the far future) are an irrelevant cruft of a hack that ends up doing nothing because there are no <http://> resource links anywhere. A hack which could, at that point, be removed with no impact whatsoever.

<comment><USER10> HSTS (even with the embedded list) only works if the website operator opts-in.

Just one example where your suggestion might break sites:

Let's assume a site hosts non-SSL content on www.example.com and SSL content on example.com. Now the site want's to default to SSL by changing most of the links and by automatically redirecting every non-SSL www.example.com request to a SSL secure.example.com.

For "traditional" browsers this approach would work fine: Even if non-SSL resources are linked users are redirected to the right place.

With the new Chrome approach chrome might block some of the content, but makes it clear why this was done. Users can also override this block (at least for now).

With your suggestion this page will break as the browser tries to access the SSL version at www.example.com, which might not exist, or which might not have a correct certificate.

Granted, this is just one example, and there are other cases where this approach might work fine. But the Web is just too complex to predict how such hacks will work out. I cannot think of a single such hack that did not create long term problems eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see mixed http/https in gmail a lot. I wonder if that will break it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That should be from loading images over http which will not trigger the warning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Am I alone in questioning this?

I'm all for serving anything requiring logins over HTTPS, and can accept the argument for anything requiring cookies.

But what about the performance improvements available by using shared, cached CDN resources? That doesn't really work over HTTPS, and the performance impact of missing out on that is substantial.

There are other cases too: I think it often makes sense to serve static content (eg images) via HTTP while having the HTML on HTTPS. Why should the browser block (or even alert) about this?

<comment><USER12> > But what about the performance improvements available by using shared, > cached CDN resources? That doesn't really work over HTTPS, and the > performance impact of missing out on that is substantial.

SSL resources are still cached, not sure what you're getting at.

> it often makes sense to serve static content (eg images) via HTTP while > having the HTML on HTTPS. Why should the browser block (or even alert) about > this?

I MITM your users and insert a huge image saying "You need to confirm your bank account details, please call this number now <insert my phone number>" (etc.)

<comment><USER3> _SSL resources are still cached, not sure what you're getting at._

Not unless they have the cache-control:public header.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome, looks like a good idea to me! It should also not be very destructive as most legitimate websites already try to eradicate mixed (secure|insecure) content.

</comment><comment><USER14> how will this affect facebook iframe apps? They load from a different origin, and the user is bound to receive a cross-domain error.

normally, the following would pass:

Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL <http://apps.facebook.com/my_app> from frame with URL <http://server-hosting- my-app.com>. Domains, protocols and ports must match.

will this blocked by Chrome in the future? if so, everyone running Chrome 14 onwards won't be able to play Farmville.

more info: if you load Farmville on Chrome, this comes up in the debug console (which still passes)

Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL <http://apps.facebook.com/cityville/?installed=1> from frame with URL [http://fb-0.cityville.zynga.com/flash.php?isOuterIframe=1...](http://fb-0.cityville.zynga.com/flash.php?isOuterIframe=1&installed=1&\[MORE) INFO HERE CUT OUT]. Domains, protocols and ports must match.

<comment><USER15> _Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL<http://apps.facebook.com/cityville/?installed=1> from frame with URL <http://fb-0.cityville.zynga.com/flash.php?isOuterIframe=1..>. INFO HERE CUT OUT]. Domains, protocols and ports must match._

That's always popped up in WebKit debuggers. I think everyone that's ever developed a Facebook app wastes 20 minutes learning that they can and should ignore it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well they already managed to get me to fixed one of those issues with their announcement ;p I had an embedded youtube video using http on an encrypted site. Just fixed it.

But this could break a lot of sites.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm still miffed at the chrome team for killing the rendering of local XML files.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you talking about? Chrome renders XML just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes please.</comment>


Ask HN: What publications (online or paper) do you pay for? - <AUTHOR>

Ask HN: What publications (online or paper) do you pay for? <comment><USER2> The Economist. I occasionally buy a copy of the Financial Times if I've got a long train ride, and maybe a copy of Bicisport, too:-)

</comment><comment><USER3> The New Yorker for fun reading. The Week for a light digest of the news. National Geographic for my wife. I'll likely subscribe to NYTimes when it goes behind the paywall.

Work provides the technical publications.

</comment><comment><USER4> none. as far as I can tell, the sort of thing I'm interested in is delivered faster, better, and in a more convenient format for free here online. I occasionally read the IEEE "computer" publications my girl leaves laying about the house, but those are mostly about things I don't care much about. Occasionally they talk about new networking tech.

Paper is just so hard to deal with. I mean, I keep books, but periodicals are somehow more... disposable?

<comment><USER5> Congrats on meeting a girl who leaves IEEE laying about the house! Treat her well! ;-)

<comment><USER4> there really are easier ways to get a subscription, you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Times, occasionally The Guardian (paper versions as they're easier to scroll and have better picture quality than the web versions).

</comment><comment><USER7> Economist at 70% (student) discount/FT full blown corporate sub from my time there as a journalist

</comment><comment><USER8> None. Still thinking to Subscribe to Nature & Science (paper offline version)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Economist and Private Eye.

</comment><comment><USER10> lwn.net</comment>


The Computer Language Benchmarks Game – N-Body - <AUTHOR> https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/nbody.html <comment><USER2> Was there something in particular you wanted to share?</comment>


Projectlearn.io – Project Based Learning - <AUTHOR> Tutorials are great, but building projects is the best way to learn. Do project based learning and learn code the right way!<p>ProjectLearn.io provides a collection of programming tutorials in which learners build an application from  scratch. These are divided into different primary programming languages  and frameworks. Some have intermixed technologies and languages.
It's open-source on GitHub and anyone can contribute to this project! <comment><USER2> Is there an IRC/Slack/Discord channel somewhere for potential contributors to chat about ideas and what not? I like the idea, but I'd like to see some sort of score/point system. When you complete a project, you should get it reviewed somehow (which could be a way to get points as well...reviewing projects).

<comment><USER2> I know it appears that the site is more focused on delivering content from other sources focused on building projects out, but it would be nice to be able to submit projects that others can complete. The point system and ways to submit projects would be a great way to increase and initiate interaction with the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really cool!

Clickable — [https://projectLearn.io](https://projectLearn.io)</comment>


'I really want to find it before I die': why are we so fascinated by lost books? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/05/i-really-want-to-find-it-before-i-die-why-are-we-so-fascinated-by-lost-books <comment><USER2> My library correlates to my self. Most of the books therein either molded me, or were chosen because of how I was molded; it's a reflection of who I am. Already aware of how short my life can/may be (and even if long-lived), it can outlast me as a guide to my children as to who, deeply, their father is/was. Missing books means a piece of me is missing, that they will miss.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I've always felt a little the same way. Having started out in literature studies I've accumulated a bit of a collection.

Some of what I own correlate to me at different times in my life. Others are references to subjects that do not at all line up with my morals, thinking, or lifestyle— I keep them for the point of knowledge about something a little more foreign to me— including even some pseudoscience and occult / pop-occult works.

I have to sheepishly admit that I sometimes entertain the thought that I might be one of a selection of people who in the future might be last remaining protectorates of such libraries should the world ever turn on our public physical archives. It's lofty, probably naive, and pretty silly but I still feel better having them line my wall than I would feel without them. Moving is a bit of a bitch, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lost academic papers are more interesting to me, probably because I am an engineer and the papers I want have practical utliity to me.

One instance where I got lucky was tracking down a 1946 conference paper by famous turbulence researcher J. O. Hinze. The conference proceedings were unfortunately never published. After a lot of asking around Shell, where Hinze worked at the time, provided me with a copy. The paper was less interesting than tracking it down was, but still important enough to cite in my dissertation.

There's a more well cited paper at the same conference by G. Darrieus that my brother found with similar methods.

<comment><USER4> Is there a point in citing a paper that readers can not find for themselves?

<comment><USER5> Purely from principles, one might consider it important to credit people for the ideas that they contributed.

From a practical sense, it gives readers a way to find it for themselves -- contact the author that cited it.

<comment><USER4> > Purely from principles, one might consider it important to credit people for > the ideas that they contributed.

That makes good sense.

> From a practical sense, it gives readers a way to find it for themselves -- > contact the author that cited it.

Right, but in the case of a paper this old the author is most likely dead or extremely hard to reach. Maybe a standard part of any paper citing other papers should be a reference to an archived copy of the papers cited?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Library of Alexandria, the greatest library in antiquity, which by some estimates contained half a million scrolls, was destroyed.

The Catholic Church was responsible for the destruction of many writings they found to be somehow objectionable.

Almost all the great authors we know of from the ancient world had writings that were lost, and for some authors all we have are legends of how great their work was. Those are the ones I'd most be interested to find.

<comment><USER7> This list is always quite depressing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you do happen to find an old lost book, archive.org would be a great place to upload a copy. There are lots of interesting books I've found there.

</comment><comment><USER9> I lost my 'rationalist press' copy of Joseph McCabe's book "ten years in a monastery" in the UK, in the 1980s.

I found an identical copy (same emprint, same binding) in a bookshop in Dunedin around 2002/3.

Never give up looking.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the best stories on finding of lost books are those of the people who went searching for ancient bibles and apocrypha. What they found shed an unexpected light on the history of the religion. I recommend the Smithsonian documentary on the subject [1]

[1] [https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/bible- hunters/10033...](https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/bible- hunters/1003347)

</comment><comment><USER11> Not all of us are, I suggest.

<comment><USER12> My reaction too, and quite a visceral one. Does this kind of lazy projection actually work to make people care about whatever journalists feel like writing about?

<comment><USER13> I didn't realize this before I wrote some freelance journalism myself, but the author of a piece almost never writes the headline. It just seems to accrue one in the editorial process after you submit your draft, and you often don't know what it's called until you read the published version yourself. So criticizing a journalist for their headline is criticizing them for something they very likely had no part in.

<comment><USER14> Same here... I've done some writing for Infoworld and I was typically not the one who decided the (final) title. I would, of course, send along my working title, but it quite often got changed or outright replaced.

As far as I know the editor, or somebody, edits the title to be as appealing / click-worthy as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can live without finding a lost book. But yes, the concept does have a hook to it, especially in this age of everything remembered: to have lost ancient knowledge is like a little bit of collective brain damage.

[edit: fixed typo.]

</comment><comment><USER16> Uh, no.</comment>


Should you payoff your mortgage? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@stilloo123/dave-ramsey-dilemma-should-you-ever-payoff-your-mortgage-2e6875c60439 <comment><AUTHOR> Want to know what people think? Would be great to know both the arguments.</comment>