The myth of America's missing software engineers - <AUTHOR> http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/08/05/immigration-h1b-visas-tech-jobs/?iid=HP_Highlight Interesting to see some mainstream media finally picking up on this. <comment><USER4> "It would make sense that an employer would try to offer a lower salary to an employee it helped move to the United States since that employee also gains the benefit of getting sponsored, but the analysis found the opposite."

This makes me want to punch the screen. It is ILLEGAL to pay an engineer on an H-1B less than the median salary for that position, precisely because people were worried that foreign labour would be used to undercut wages.

<comment><USER5> No, it isn't illegal.

By 'that position' do you mean the position being replaced, or the new position created in order to hire the H1B? And are you taking account of the market price of the additional skills that employee brings, or is that not relevant?

So here's just one loophole: companies find a lower-paid title, and base the 'prevailing wage' on beginning level employees. Now that the 'prevailing wage' is set, try to hire young people with advanced education, special skills, etc. Congratulations, you now have a legal way of paying about half of what a comparably experienced citizen would cost. Bonus: sponsorship does provide good leverage.

Consider H1B employees getting paid the prevailing wage. Is this how you compensate the best talent during a talent shortage? No. It implies you'd pay less if you were confident you could get away with it.

You can't honestly dispute that the program is being used to undercut wages. Legally.

<comment><USER4> I absolutely can.

I arrived in this country on an H-1B, and then I co-founded a company where I repeatedly examined the option of hiring employees on H-1Bs. It never, ever made sense to hire a foreign employee if there was a local one available, even though I have absolutely no bias towards hiring American citizens.

The only reason you'd hire an H-1B is if you were out of qualified American engineers, because it is _so_ _much_ _harder_ to hire foreigners.

The chief users of H-1Bs are big, boring companies that can't attract local talent at any price. And then they can't hang on to them, thanks to the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century act, which lets H-1B holders switch companies if they get a better offer. The purpose of the law was to prevent companies using immigration status to "trap" employees at lower wage. Because the immigration system _thought_ of that problem.

The argument that for the same price, you get a more-qualified applicant for a given lower-skilled position doesn't fly, because

a) the cost of an H-1B is far more than their salary; the legal fees run into tens of thousands of dollars before you even consider relocation. Foreign workers are much more expensive.

b) the pool of people willing to up and relocate from a foreign country to the US just isn't that big; the same market that applies to American engineers applies to foreign ones, and they are just as demanding.

c) once in America, the H-1B holders don't need to stick around if their salary is crappy, and they don't. See above.

The fundamental misunderstanding that a lot of people have about talent immigration is that they think there are hordes of unwashed foreigners beating down the doors to get in. They're not. Most people stay where they are. That's why you have to make it easier for them to get in, because _we need them more than they need us_.

<comment><USER6> It's used mostly by outsourcing companies:

Rank H1B Visa Sponsor Number of LCA * Average Salary

1 Infosys Limited 15,810 $75,062

2 Wipro 7,178 $76,920

3 Tata Consultancy Services 6,732 $64,350

4 IBM 6,190 $82,630

[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa- Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

Those aren't average salaries for a highly skilled worker in an expensive American city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I posted this in response to a comment the last time this came up. That article was killed, so I'm reposting:

 _Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech companies is that these companies want star programmers_

Maybe they should try paying like stars. What percentage of engineers that aren't founders or within the first five employees make over $300,000 a year? The money is in Silicon Valley, Google's 2011 net income was $299,874/employee [1], but the vast majority of engineers aren't going to be the ones to get it. How about paying a market wage, instead of offering a "free lunch" to people that cannot negotiate. I am not interested in playing video games at work, I have a house for that. Last I looked at it, the difference in pay between finance and stem jobs is enough to hire a personal chef to deliver lunch to you at work every day, and cook for you at home, and buy all the games you want, with a bunch of money left over. Apple and Google are both posting ~25% net profits because engineers are willing to work for peanuts, and a free lunch. On top of that, cost of living in the bay area is outrageous, we're talking $35,000/year for housing, unless you want to live like a college student.

An average (median) engineer should be making $200,000 a year, and the "rockstar" (>80th percentile) engineers that everybody is trying to hire for $85,000 and 0.5% of equity, should be making $350,000+. These are hard jobs that few people can do at all, and fewer can do well. Great engineers can create millions of dollars of value a year.

It seems that the industry has shifted focus, now that the collusion agreements have been squashed, toward importing cheap labor. This problem has been solved in other industries through partnerships and professional societies (e.g. in the legal industry, with large partnership firms and bar associations). In the interim, it seems like the best way to capture value is to build companies to flip in talent acquisitions, while planning to leave to do it again as soon as you're vested.

[1] Goldman Sachs 2011 net income was $162,913 per employee. Average pay was $367,057. It's harder to get data on Google, but it looks like the mid-career median salary is $141,000.

Google's Gross Profit (Total Revenue less Cost of Revenue) was $24.7B in 2011, and GS's was $24.5B. At the same time, Google had 32,467 employees to GS's 35,700. Yet, the Google net income was $9.7B compared to $4.4B on the GS side. The difference seems to be made up entirely by the difference in employee compensation.

<comment><USER8> Yep. This is how backwards our industry is. It wants to pay peanuts for rockstar coders, but doesn't realize that no one is _both_ dumb enough to work for snack food Tuesdays and smart enough to have a PhD in CS.

The problem is exasperated by these companies treating engineers like children. "Toss them another Mt. Dew, and they'll work another all-nighter."

With all the VC and buyout money out there, a true rockstar is going to be a founder or have serious equity in their company. They'd be an idiot for anything less.

<comment><USER9> So what are these Ph.D. engineers doing, then? Sitting at home with their degrees waiting for a big enough offer? I think not. They are employed somewhere, which means that actually they are not counterproof of a shortage.

Raising salary always comes up as the "answer" to the talent shortage, but it's a highly localized answer. Sure a company can fill all their openings by raising their salaries--they'll do it by recruiting currently-employed engineers from another company.

That doesn't "fill a hole" industry-wide. It just moves it to another company. If there are more holes than qualified engineers, there's a shortage.

To make the case that talent shortages are caused by low salaries, you'd need to show me a lot of people who are qualifed but currently willfully unemployed, waiting for the right offer. I'm not aware of many engineers who fit that description.

<comment><USER7> They aren't unemployed, they entered industries other than engineering, like finance, medicine, or law, because they expected higher pay there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> " _Bright.com, a California-based company that uses big data analysis to pair jobseekers with employers, released a report last month that showed that the supposed dearth of high-skilled engineers in the United States may be fiction after all._ "

Which would presumably be a useful result for Bright's business, if it is true, as it would mean that companies simply are not looking hard enough, which is Bright's business.

 _" In fact, Bright's analysis reveals that for the top 10 jobs where H-1B visas are requested, only three do not currently have enough qualified American jobseekers to satisfy demand._"

Ahh, so it isn't a fiction then. Hang on, just a minute ago they said it may be a fiction according to a report and now they say that nearly a third of those roles do not have enough people in the USA to fill them, according to the same report.

Hmmm. Could this possibly be an advert posing as an article? Is water wet? These and other exciting questions will be answered in a forthcoming study; "Look here's some numbers so give me all your money, you pitiful fools." Available soon for only $666.66. Reserve your copy now while stocks last.

<comment><USER5> In the place of analysis you have put a lot of snark which seems to be analysis.

If another company with a different business had posted - one with an incentive to say there is a shortage of high-skilled engineers, like most big companies hiring engineers - would you be implying their claims are false too? If not, you are being partial; if so, your method is just to say that whatever anyone says must be wrong because it was in their interest.

3 out of the top 10 jobs where H-1B requested does not equal a third of employees, and it isn't clear that those 3 do see a shortage.

Also, in case of a shortage in a specialized area, why do we assume that companies cannot ever do anything to train employees in that specialization themselves? If you need piles of Java programmers who know SOAP, get some Java programmers and let them train on SOAP.

If you are in the business of producing (say) cars, you have to make capital investments, including investments in human capital - why should software be a special snowflake?

<comment><USER10> Ok, without the snark, I am specifically saying that this is not journalism. It is an advert with suspect claims.

<comment><USER11> Would you at least concede that the H1B process is highly vulnerable to someone abusing it by re-titling jobs/requirements with a lawyer's help?

I'd agree the data/method/motivation is highly suspect.

<comment><USER10> With a lawyer's help, many things are possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to have dreams of moving out to the valley after I finished school, but after checking, rechecking, and then rechecking again the cost of living out there, I pretty much scrapped the idea. The Bay Area may be a cool place to live, but it's not a 250% housing-cost-increase cool to me. Moreover, the pay doesn't match that housing increase. Forget it. For that price I'll wait for somebody to offer a telecommuting position, move out to me (it's not SO BAD in Missouri), or move someplace less psycho crazy on the housing.

This story drives me crazy because the market is essentially in the favor of the engineers, but it feels to me like the big tech influencers are trying to tilt it back in their favor by shaping policy and changing the game.

Pro tip: If you bring in foreign engineers and pay them peanuts, they're not going to _be able to live in the Bay Area_ much less _want to_.

<comment><USER13> You will be renting, not buying. This means that they monthly housing cost differential will be more than made up for in the salary differential. The sad fact is that if you are not in the top slice of a particular subfield you are not going to be getting telecommuting options unless you get very lucky: by being in Missouri you both limit your opportunity to find the lucky break and limit your ability to get into the social/work networks that serve to bestow the "this guy rocks" credential. Your only option is probably to be a major contributor on a well-known open source project; this is not a bad thing to do in general, but you are limiting your options significantly. If you deign to lower your standard of living slightly for a short period of time you will be able to take a real chance at getting the opportunities you are looking for. You can always leave after doing a few years in the bay area.

You can't win if you don't play. If you are waiting on the sidelines for some magic opportunity to fall into your lap you are going to be waiting a very long time.

<comment><USER14> >You will be renting, not buying.

Exactly why the OP won't choose to move there. Why should he have to pay someone the privilege of living, and get none of that money back when/if they decide to leave? At least when you buy you get some equity.

<comment><USER15> Because renting is more flexible and often less expensive...

Imagine you loose your job in a crisis, you have to move/sell your house in a crashing market.

<comment><USER12> If you lose your job in a crisis, you also won't be able to pay your rent and you'll move/sublet your apartment. Losing your job pretty much screws you however you decide to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Qualified applicants" takes on a different meaning if you're looking for someone to crank out a CRUD app or write operating system kernels.

For example, we've been looking for an entry-level web developer for almost a year. They actually put "computer science degree" and "2 years experience" on the job ad. We found a pretty smart kid with an associates that blew the interview by mentioning he kept up with industry trends on Reddit - so our boss is afraid he's going to screw around online all day.

The sad part is, 3 of the other 4 developers in the department came from other areas in the same company, one in shipping and one in billing, and have almost no formal computer training and don't even know how to upgrade Firefox.

<comment><USER17> _blew the interview by mentioning he kept up with industry trends on Reddit_

..as opposed to not keeping up with industry trends at all? Sometimes, I feel like middle management in America is the problem.

<comment><USER18> That's a comment that probably merited further delving into.

There are some decent sub-reddits.

It's a totally different thing if he's following the programming subreddit than say the gonewild subreddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the article:

>To be sure, using data to argue about contentious policy issues should always prompt skepticism.

Death of journalism right there. Data be damned!

On a more serious note:

>"There is, indeed, a shortage of tech workers in the Bay Area."

That's because it's so darn expensive to live in the Bay Area, and almost impossible at the wages that tech companies generally want to pay for talent. They're knotting their own noose and standing on the chair, screaming that they'll kick it out from under them, really, for serial this time guys!, if they can't have cheap, underpaid talent to exploit.

<comment><USER20> You took that sentence out of context. This is the full paragraph:

> To be sure, using data to argue about contentious policy issues should > always prompt skepticism. It's too easy to focus on particular aspects of > any data analysis to prove one's point and overlook those items that may > raise more questions.

... which is a very valid point.

<comment><USER5> Since it's too easy to mess up, and all, the obvious solution is just not to use data.

It does literally say that using data "should always prompt skepticism" \- not conditionally on whether it was done right or not.

<comment><USER20> I really think you are misunderstanding that sentence. The author didn't mean what you think it means. His point was that it's not very difficult to come up with just the right data and statistics to support whatever idea you're trying to promote.

Data is basically worthless if you can't trust the methodology behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As someone occasionally involved in hiring, the important question isn't whether we have "enough" software engineers.

It's easy to fill seats.

The question is whether we have "good enough" software engineers. And, as long as we're trying to improve as a company, we'll always want better engineers.

<comment><USER22> You're 100% right. Why make it difficult for really smart people to immigrate to the US? Better engineers are always welcome at any company.

In any case, there's reason to believe many of educated immigrants will become entrepreneurs and create jobs themselves.

<comment><USER23> The problem is that you have no way of letting in just the "really smart people" and end up letting in a whole bunch of people who aren't better than the ones you already have, who will have trouble finding work when the next tech bubble pops. Tech is a highly cyclical industry, and it's shortsighted to start letting a bunch of people immigrate on every bubble cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My company (which, according to Glassdoor, is paying above-average tech salaries) recently started offering ~$100 _per lead_ for software engineering referrals. If the person ends up being hired, their referrer also gets a ~$2000 bonus. A recruiting firm that can truly locate these missing engineers would be making a killing in the marketplace right now.

<comment><USER19> Part of the problem is that the salaries are just too damn low right now. If you offer a competitive or even above-average salary that's _livable_ in the Bay Area then talent will beat a path to your door. Try to lowball or meet other offers and you'll be stuck without candidates.

<comment><USER25> I'm really interested in this. As a New Yorker, I don't find this principle. Is it superbly difficult to commute to the Bay Area from a less urban surrounding? In New York City, if you don't have the money to pay for an urban apartment you can live in the Bronx or Westchester and easily commute to the city.

<comment><USER19> If you expect talent to work crunch hours and give mind, body, and soul unquestionably then do you really think, at the end of the day, they should have to schlep out the suburbs because your stingy ass doesn't want to pay a living wage for the Bay Area? Even if that were the case, in order to qualify for the H-1B there have to be no qualified candidates in the US which means either you are doing something nobody is doing (unlikely) our your wage is too low for your market, even in the suburbs.

<comment><USER25> No, I don't think it's fair (to answer your central point), merely that it's doable. But I'm not trying to be difficult - I was actually asking if a commute is possible, not being rhetorical for a point. In New York City it is possible to commute, but I wouldn't want to work there and commute to the city from a suburb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's always an eye opener to look up companies at [http://www.h1bwage.com/](http://www.h1bwage.com/) and compare their salaries. Plenty of SF companies hire 'senior software engineers' in the range of 78K.

<comment><USER26> Base salary is almost meaningless, you have to consider total comp. You'll see the same seemingly low wages at finance firms that have h1b visa's, but in reality those people are making significantly more.

<comment><USER17> We're talking about software engineers here. Base salary is almost meaningless in most finance and some legal firms, but not at a 30-person software consulting firm.

I looked up companies that I once worked for on h1bwage and I know for a fact that my H1B co-workers were not enjoying large bonuses.

A visa application listing a bay area senior s/w engineer prevailing wage of 78K should be outright rejected. Yet, it was accepted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> An argument I've never seen made regarding H1B software engineer hiring: is better for the entire county in the long term for the US to import as many good software engineers as it can, or is it better to restrict supply?

If any good software engineer were allowed carte blanche emigration to the US, the US would have more of the world's top engineering talent, which may be a good thing overall even if it depresses wages. On the other hand, high wages may encourage more young US citizens to go into computer science--assuming they can hack it.

I wonder if this is just another nature vs nurture debate. If you presume that the world's supply of "smart people" is fixed, you want to import all of them and get them to procreate in the US. If you assume intelligence is growable, you want to focus on growing it domestically.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think wrong question is being asked. I think there are enough engineers, it is the quality of product people that is suffering. That often leads to balooning of engineering teams to crush the code run and make the product. So lack of engineers is a symptom not a problem. Speaking from my varied experience , YMMV.

2c.

<comment><USER29> I'm interested to hear more of this perspective. Are you saying that imagination on the product side is creating insurmountable technical debt?

<comment><USER28> What I am saying is that few product people have the vision of what is needed - and have the right vision of the end result. Most product people more of iterative meandering tourists with vague idea of the end result rather than captains that have exact understanding where they ought to be in a week - <USER2> per having a useful and usable progress that moves everyone measurably closer to successful product.

Maybe I ask too much of my product people, but that's the reality - there are only so many steve jobses out there. People like to believe they have the traits but often lack similar "from the early years" experience of being in the whole basics of production to managing part that jobs had.

So to sum it up, too much of _Wrong_ kind of technical debt. Sort of buying a ferrari when you need a house - because your wife will have a child soon ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think that engineers need to control enforcement of these policies and what the policies are automatically. Until law becomes an information technology you are not going to make any headway on everyone gaming the system and taking advantage of loopholes like hiring foreign workers because they are cheaper.

So we really need that but another aspect of this is just massive global inequality which to me is an amazing civil/humanitarian rights issue. Its amazing that everyone just accepts it.

I think when it comes down to it we should be bringing more brilliant people out of crappy oppressed resource starved countries into our wealth hogging country. But we shouldn't have to lie about the reasons for doing it or pay them less just because we can get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I always ask myself if the unemployed engineers are indeed employable. If so, then there is no shortage. If they just appear unemployable, then maybe. If they are not, then there is a shortage regardless of the simple numbers.

<comment><USER31> Is an unemployable engineer really an engineer at all?

<comment><USER32> Given that in this field of "engineering" you become unemployable for conventional salaried positions at around age 35-40, it's a less debatable point than you're positing, I think.

<comment><USER33> Absolutely.

Several years ago I was at a company and we were hiring for a position. One guy came in, who was maybe in his mid-50s. His technical skills were excellent, he could answer any question thrown at him in detail. Aside from that he was a normal, genial guy with a solid resume - we has passed on another guy with good tech knowledge but who did not act normal. I was desperate to have the position filled as people had quit and I was handling a large load.

Two managers said they didn't want to hire him. I really protested this - <USER3> had interviewed so many people and had finally found someone decent. I said he was perfect, what more could they want, what was wrong with him? I asked that last question repeatedly. Finally one said, "I think if we called him up in the middle of the night to fix a problem, he would be unhappy with that". Months later we hired a guy in his 20s, who had less technical talent.

That's the position companies are in. They pass over perfect candidates like this guy in his 50s, and then bemoan they can't find candidates.

These companies fund think tanks who have economists who tell us that value is determined by supply and demand, that if there is enough demand for something, the price for it will rise until a supply comes about. This is their philosophy, yet now they're saying there is a shortage of engineers. It is total BS. Engineers are being overworked and underpaid. People talk about high engineer salaries, they don't talk about how engineers have to pay for their own college degrees, do all that studying, then go to work, make a starting salary, then have death marches on projects etc.

Engineers are usually undercompensated for the work they do. The only exceptions to this are during tech bubbles (say 1999), but those only last for a short while. They're also made up for on the other side by tech slumps, where IT workers employable during normal times, but perhaps without a college degree, are out of work.

<comment><USER15> I don't believe in the "labor shortage should result in higher wages" argument. Usually we are talking about a baseline. If companies believed, they could make more profit by doubling the salary and thus maybe attracting more talent, they would do so.

Supply/demand is all the economics most people understand. But it's not just about the labor market, but what the company is doing with the labor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can not imagine anyone that's able to find a pinned shortcut to Visual Studio and double click it being without a job in the United States if I'm honest. It's hard for me to visualize what kind of total retards would get rejected on a regular basis. Could somebody find one of them for me? I would like to speak to somebody like that.

The only people I can imagine are PDP-11 assembly specialists nearing their 60s. And still I have a feeling there could just as well be even a screaming shortage for them.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've just watched the She++ documentary, literally 15 minutes ago. They say the US only graduates 30% of the IT workers needed every year, and even if a university like Stanford graduted _all_ their students in CS, it wouldn't be enough. What gives?

</comment><comment><USER36> Important factor is how many of the "qualified" candidates clear the interviews? The problem is not the lack of people to interview, it's the lack of people who clear interviews.

<comment><USER37> A lot of people assume that learning Java makes you qualify for the title of software engineer. Every time one of these articles pop up it gets flooded with comments from upset ITT tech graduates who are pissed that H1-bs are stealing their jobs.

<comment><USER38> If someone knows Java, and knows it well -- and all that that entails (good engineering practices like code organization, commenting, testing, optimizing if needed, security, corner cases) -- then why _wouldn 't_ they qualify for the title of software engineer?

Actually, my problem in this (non-Bay area) region of the country where I now live is that I _don 't_ have a ten-year Java history, and most managers here don't seem to believe that my background in C, Python, Lua, and JavaScript would allow me to pick it up in a very short period of time (and indeed, I've since picked it up for Android development, and it turned out that the Android API was harder for me to learn that Java itself).

<comment><USER37> There's a difference between someone who has ten years of experience and a guy who just finished a 2 year degree at a for-profit school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps the tiny HR detective pictured should try searching for qualified workers around newer computers, ones without floppy drives perhaps? Or maybe just search online?

</comment><comment><USER40> As a hiring manager outside the Bay Area (Tahoe), I can say that the hiring situation is worse than I have ever seen it.

</comment><comment><USER41> The trouble with this is that no centralized analysis can determine what "qualified" actually means; only an individual employer can determine that. So if they say there are no qualified engineers then that's the end of discussion.

Having more intelligent people in the US is a good thing.

<comment><USER42> _So if they say there are no qualified engineers then that 's the end of discussion._

You really believe that? You can't imagine that, hey maybe these companies _gasp_ lie so they won't have to pay market wages? That some C?O somewhere cares more about the bottom line than hiring qualified local engineers that they can't threaten with deportation?

<comment><USER43> From experience, it's not "the companies" that are saying there's no qualified people. It's the engineers on the teams trying to hire people that interview those "qualified" people that send in their resume and then can't write FizzBuzz to save their life, have no idea how to even approach a design problem, knows all the buzzwords but can't explain what they mean, and have no idea how the Internet works at even the highest levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A century and a half ago, Karl Marx said the only force outside of nature which could create value was labor. This was not a new concept, but in line with what economists before such as Adam Smith had thought.

A counter-argument arose from what he may have called the "capitalist hegemons" that value arose through supply and demand and marginal utility. That if there was enough demand for something, prices would rise and a supply would come into being.

Yet nowadays these hegemons seem to be saying something different. There is a demand for IT talent. There are billions of people in the world, so it seems obvious that if you set hours at 40 a week and then raise the salary enough, eventually the demand will be filled.

The bottom line is they don't want to raise the salary.

It is possible other factors are in the way. If, to take one example, Pell Grants were higher and easier to get, maybe there would be more CS graduates. The opposite is happening with Pell Grants - they have been cut back, and are covering less college costs than they have in history.

This means less CS graduates. This means you'll have to pay more for the ones who come out, because less are coming out.

It's a strange contradictory thinking. Employers preach supply and demand, yet think it does not apply to their desire for engineers. Set hours at 40 a week and pay for them. If you want people to work more, you'll have to pay more.

There is not a shortage of engineers. There's just a flood of people who want a very accomplished, knowledgeable engineer, and want them to work on boring, brain-dead projects for 60 hours a week, and to pay them nothing and treat them like junk.

I have 10,000 jobs open right now. I need experts in Java, Python etc. I'll pay you minimum wage. You need to work 12 hours a day. See, I just added 10,000 new job openings to the shortage. How come I can't find anyone to fill these jobs?</comment>


IPhone Accounts For 50 Percent Of U.S. Mobile Web Traffic; Android At 5 Percent - <AUTHOR> http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-report-iphone-accounts-for-50-percent-of-u.s.-mobile-web-traffic-androi/ <comment><USER2> Actually, the iPhone does NOT generate 50% of US mobile traffic.

<http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=3383>

 _The 50% number refers to the Apple device's share of ad requests from smartphones. Smartphones as a group make up 33% of total U.S. ad requests so the iPhone's true share of US mobile web traffic is about 17%. Actually it's somewhat less than that as Ad Mob's iPhone numbers include requests from iPhone applications as well as browsing._

And that's not even considering the severe sample bias in only compiling data from sites that use AdMob's mobile ad service.

This is why blog journalism gets a bad rap -- repeating a claim they read on another site without actually reading the report they linked to.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article says that Android holds 5% of the total of the smartphones market, and iPhone accounts for 50% of the web traffic, but doesn't state its market share.

The title require some adjustment.</comment>


Silicon Valley's Dark Secret:  It's all about Age - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/silicon-valley%E2%80%99s-dark-secret-it%E2%80%99s-all-about-age/ <comment><USER2> If you're young and sharp, programming looks like paradise. It's more or less a meritocracy, there's a ton of personal freedom, and you get to spend your days doing creative, challenging work and getting paid fairly well. You may not have even had to slog through 4-5 years of college.

You'll start to see the downsides as you approach 40 though. Many programmers can't play the social games that management requires, there's a limited number of "architecture" slots, and you're suddenly competing neck & neck with people twenty years younger willing to work 60+ hours a week for half your salary. It's brutal but you've just got to knuckle down and do your best to keep up. Leverage your experience to learn new tech faster and _constantly_ work on moving yourself upmarket technically. You've been in a footrace all this time but you may not have noticed it until now.

<comment><USER3> > ompeting neck & neck with people twenty years younger willing to work 60+ > hours a week for half your salary

My probably naive question is, how come you earn twice as much in the first place? Shouldn't salaries reflect the value you provide to your employer, so that either 1) you don't earn as much because you're actually worth less than the 60+ hours working kid, or 2) you earn twice as much because the hours you do put in are worth more than the kid's hours?

I would hate to be out of a job at fifty because by some arbitrary convention I'm supposed to either earn twice what the kid earns, or alternatively be jobless. If I can't provide more value than the kid, then pay me as much as you'd pay him.

<comment><USER4> The variation in productivity between programmers is somewhere from 1 to 10 to 1 to 100 (although I like to point that for a certain level of problem difficulty there's a cutoff below which productivity is 0 (ADDED:) ... and then there are those who's contribution to the organization is negative, but that's a different problem...).

If it were the case that "salaries reflect the value you provide to your employe" we'd see some people making 10, 25, 50 times as much as "average" or below programmers. And I'm sure you can figure out a bunch of reasons why that would never fly in addition to the other replies to your query.

<comment><USER5> The question I have about these 100x (or 10x) productive programmers is why they wouldn't jump ship on employment and sell their 100x productivity on a project basis? Presumably they would make multiples of their salary if they are really multiply productive.

<comment><USER6> Some of us did. As a contractor, you certainly can earn a significant multiple of the hourly rate you would make as an employee in most companies. If you set up your own business and build your own stuff, then you have almost astronomical potential: the software development business has low barriers to entry, and the right idea can scale from a small team to serving thousands or millions of customers.

However, it's not as simple as that: you absolutely must have a broader set of skills to work effectively in these ways. There are many management and communication skills that you wouldn't need much working in a technical role as an employee that are quite simply essential to working independently, and more still if it's not just your own work to be organised but a whole team/company. Also, you are operating without the safety net that being an employee provides: you typically bear all of the risk if you're on a high- margin fixed-price contract that overruns by a year, or if you put your own money into starting a company and your idea just doesn't work out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To the extent that this reflects material reality, it suggests that there is an arbitrage opportunity for anyone who can get a babyfaced twenty-something to front for a team of 30+ year veterans with deep domain expertise and 10x productivity. All you have to do is have the consultant bios note their WoW habits and 7 weeks of professional experience with Merb and Cucumber testing.

<comment><USER8> Ah, yes, "Potemkin Consulting".

<comment><USER4> Not the best metaphor since it's not hiding that there's nothing behind the facade, rather there's something _superficially_ unacceptable behind it. Trojan Horse is not quite right (the experienced veterans are not going to leap out from behind the facade and ravage the hiring company :-) but something in that direction would be much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design"

As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a _single_ source that justifies this position? I'm not sure that any company I've worked for, of any size, really got more value from its middle managers than from the senior technical people it keeps trying to turn into middle managers.

The assumption that architecture/design is more important than front-line coding is also dubious. A good architect/designer is worth their weight in gold on a large project (just like a _good_ manager), and to be sure you probably need a fair bit of experience to be any good at all in that sort of role. But that just means the low end of the scale for that role is higher, it doesn't mean the high end of the scale for front-line coding jobs has to be lower. All the evidence I've ever seen still says an expensive, high-end front-line coder is disproportionately productive compared to a cheap, lower- end worker. You can have the best project management and the best design in the world, but if all the guys implementing it are chumps, your project is still going to suck.

Management error #2: "Even though you may be highly experienced and wise, employers aren't willing or able to pay an experienced worker twice or thrice what an entry-level worker earns."

That's because they're dumb... Maybe because they got too many technical people to do their management instead of people who are actually knowledgeable about and good at management? Project costs scale disproportionately with team size/structure. Developer productivity scales disproportionately with experience. How is it that so many companies can't do the basic arithemtic required to see the implications?

Management error #3: "This means keeping up-to-date with the latest trends in computing, programming techniques, and languages, and adapting to change."

This is not an error in itself. On the contrary, IME most older developers who are genuinely interested in their field do keep up (and find it far easier to do so than their younger and less experienced colleagues, since the tech industry doesn't innovate nearly as fast as the PR guys would like to pretend: older guys have seen a lot of it before, and can quickly identify genuinely new things worthy of further exploration and put them in context).

However, the error is in drawing this sort of conclusion based on the statement above: "To be writing code for a living when you're 50, you will need to be a rock-star developer and be able to out-code the new kids on the block."

Almost _everyone_ who is keen enough to still be coding by that age will out- code the new kid with his trendy tools and methodologies _in his sleep_.

BTW, I'm not an "old guy" in programming terms, and there's no bitterness here. I'm just a guy who watches this sort of debate from the sidelines, wondering how so many supposedly smart management people can be so utterly, obviously, incredibily dumb for so long, and still not get it in 2010.

<comment><USER9> > "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design"

The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity. Management, architecture and design, on the other hand, are areas of software development where you need multiple complementary skills; technical ability, good communication, understanding of your customers and industry area, an ability to influence others, etc. People like that cannot easily be replaced, hence the higher price. In some cases technical guys appear to need those things too, but that's just because they're unofficially doing the job of an architect, manager or designer.

> Even though you may be highly experienced and wise, employers aren't willing > or able to pay an experienced worker twice or thrice what an entry-level > worker earns.

Define wise. That sounds a lot like "capable of being an architect/manager/designer". If you're capable but resisting the promotion then I'm suspicious of your claim to deserve more money.

I agree with you that an experienced coder will be more productive than a less experienced one. But I would also say that 20 years experience will never make up for a lack of natural ability. I've interviewed programmers with decades of experience who failed the most basic of our technical tests (think FizzBuzz). I'll bet for every old timer who's excellent and just wants to stay a coder, there are 5 who are just below average and have never been offered a promotion.

I see the issue more as a failure by the good experienced coders to differentiate themselves in the marketplace than a conspiracy against old people. If you've been doing something for 30 years but all you're selling is "5 years python experience" just like everyone else then why should I pay you more? Tell me why you're worth more. Convince me you're lack of promotion comes from a passion for your craft and not just down to a lack of ambition or ability.

<comment><USER6> > The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity.

I strongly disagree. The point of a commodity, in the economic sense I assume you meant, is that one item is just as good as another. You pay a certain amount of $$$, and you get a certain amount of Stuff.

IME, one piece of code implementing a particular requirement is very much _not_ the same as another. Assuming otherwise is the kind of naivety that leads managers to make the sort of mistakes we've been discussing.

> I see the issue more as a failure by the good experienced coders to > differentiate themselves in the marketplace than a conspiracy against old > people. [...] Tell me why you're worth more.

If you believe code is a commodity, you don't want to hear and won't believe the answer anyway.

<comment><USER10> I love that you're fighting the good fight, but to these people who run things, code is in fact a commodity and so is the person producing it. From the owner's perspective you buy coders low, you maximize their output and sell it high, accumulate the difference, and repeat. If you're a more liberal owner, you buy them free lunches and build up a "culture", let them wear sandals, send them to conferences, tell them they're not little units to be counted, but at the end of the day these pretty lies are just costs -- costs, which may or may not yield profit over the long run.

As a coder, and somebody who loves the craft and identifies strongly with it, I "disagree" with this relationship ( as much as that is possible, since nobody asked me to vote on it or anything ) and I think it is dehumanizing. But wishing it away or romanticizing what we do, avoiding the fact that we are commodities just like every other worker in a corporate enterprise is just a terrible strategy for overcoming it.

I like what the guys at <http://www.bettermeans.com> are doing with the open enterprise governance model. I don't want human activity to continue the process of commodification, and this is a big step taken to change course.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I understand the problem; it was "management error #2", I think. And I understand that discussing it here will have little real impact on the managers concerned. I got off that train personally and no longer work as anyone's employee.

I hope that my contributions to discussions like this will encourage others to do the same, and that maybe, if those people one day have employees of their own, they will be a little smarter than the managers of today and the industry will be better for it.

In the meantime, I don't see why we should place any faith in the established practices of managers who, as an industry, run more projects that fail than projects that succeed. Can you name any other industry where it would be considered acceptable by the market if over 50% of the products bought failed, even if the costs ran to millions? I sure can't, it's just that the management idiocy is so widespread in IT that the market seems resigned to the inevitability that whatever they pay for will be crap that doesn't work properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Possible solutions:

1) Join a good big company like Google where experience is not disrespected. It is natural for startups to prefer good and cheap young engineers.

2) Face the reality, develop and respect soft (management, talk, people, emotion) skills besides pure coding skills. It is a fantasy that coding skill is superior to other skills. Everything is engineering: your job is solving- problems, not mere coding.

3) Start your own company and work hard on it at least once in your career. If it fails, you learn valuable skills other engineers cannot compete.

4) Beat the average. Going extra miles to become better every year (if not every day). You will be surprised how far you can go. Most average engineers will never go outside their comfort zones, thus peaked after 5 years into the career path. It means: contributing to an open-source project; writing a blog; creating several web applications; Learning new skills (Machine Learning, Web Design).

</comment><comment><USER12> Counter-anecdote: I just got rejected from a startup because I was too inexperienced, despite having 4+ years of professional experience under my belt. They said there's no reason why I wouldn't be awesome, but I've just done too little for them to know for sure.

<comment><USER13> Your not the mid-30s programmer, your the mid-20s programmer. The drop off happen after your mid-40s.

<comment><USER4> As far as I can tell the drop off starts in the mid-30s and is very strong by 40 (which also just happens to be where one can file an age discrimination lawsuit which is nearly impossible for not being hired but much easier for being fired). And that's what I personally noticed in the D.C. area in the '90s due to fortunate genetics (until about 49 and 1/2 a few months ago when I started to get some gray hairs I was still frequently being mistaken for a lower 20-something college student): at a certain point it became a lot harder to find work until I got a clue and scrubbed my resume of all evidence of how old I was.

(One interview was very amusing where I slipped and started talking about working on PDP-11s and the guy exclaimed "How old are you?!?!!!".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is seriously noticeable in other places as well. For example Ottawa. The place is over flooding with vast quantities of old engineers from the likes of Nortel. They come into job interviews with most of their experience dedicate to archaic languages and platforms invented for and at Nortel.

They generally believe they are worth a lot and should be entitled to everything they had when Nortel was at its peak. Unfortunately, they don't have relevant skills and are generally outmatched by new grads in programming interviews.

I find it both sad and enlightening. Having been the young guy who interviewed a lot of these, I certainly feel like I have a good clue on how to avoid it (don't become a lifer at an big'ol company).

<comment><USER15> What relevant skills did they lack, specifically? Was it just the particular programming language you use, knowledge of how to design and architect systems, development methodology, algorithms...?

<comment><USER14> It was a slew of modern stuff..none of which, on its own, is particularly hard to learn, but between someone who had been doing something else for 20 years vs someone who had been doing it for 6 months...the 6 month guy was always more appealing.

I'm not just talking about stuff like NoSQL, but most had limited experience with relational databases. Not just a lack of knowledge around ruby/python but sometimes even java/c#. Web, css, javascript, mvc or any relevant high level pattern - forget about it.

So I guess, specifically, what they lacked with the general knowledge of web or mobile (what we largely hire for) paradigms, and then the entire technology stack (from view to storage) that accompanies it.

And the few who did have relevant experience, tended to be "experts"...certainly not able to go from html/css all the way to database design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's not just Silicon Valley's dark secret. It is pervasive in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article fails to mention the most important factor, even more important than the money. Often people who advance to the management rank have the political skill or fund raising skill superior to their technical expertise. They simply don't what experienced engineers around who can see right through their bluff.

For the same reason the executives advocate immigration, they want ever greater supply of slaves to be discarded just when they start to understand the real game.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't get why someone who is older should get/expect a higher salary, all things considered. To me, it seems like this should be a free market thing. And by free market I mean on a global basis. On the other hand, I am in my late 50s, and I don't think that I have ever suffered from age discrimination (but who knows).

Experience over the last 14 years as a consultant, working with a few very skilled people in Russia, Brazil, India, Vietnam, etc. has convinced me that salary or consulting fees should be based on value provided, not location, age, etc. I offer a 60% discount when I work remotely because frankly remote workers are not as effective as having everyone in one location and I see little difference between myself telecommuting in the USA or someone equally talented half way around the world, assuming that people are willing to time shift their work schedule as needed. Age does not have too much to do with it either, except that I find myself unwilling to work long-term more than a certain number of hours per week - and this is probably common with older workers.

<comment><USER19> Experience.

That experience means you don't have to pay for your worker to be spending half the day trawling google or api documentation to learn how to do x when they could be writing code.

You also pay for the code to be maintainable, well written, flexible, robust. An inexperienced programmer will write shitty code, no matter how good they think they are, regardless of the number of books they've read.

Finally you pay for experience within the same domain as your company's problems. I don't care if a guy's been programming since 12, there's a 99% chance they've never touched business software. They will not know the right questions to ask.

As for the 60% discount, if that's what gets you gigs, fair play.

But to offer it on principle? That's just bad business.

<comment><USER18> Hello Matt, I agree: experience factors heavily into value.

re: 60% discount just on principle: not the case. I have had a reasonable amount of customer feedback that they feel they get better value at the higher rate when I am on site. I would be curious if a good percentage of consultants are able to get the same rates regardless of working on site or remotely. One big win for me with my setup: I like to work early in the morning and often at night, and I like to hike during the day (I live in the mountains, 2.5 hours from the nearest International airport - fairly remote) and this allows me to work hard (and do a lot of writing) without burnout. That said, it is a lot of fun to work on site also, even if it cuts into my lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is anyone willing to think about the opposite hypothesis? Maybe programming really is a young person's game.

You don't see a lot of startups full of old programmers dominating their fields. You don't see a lot of old programmers creating awesome open source projects. Not even from those who retired and have plenty of time on their hands. Many of the programmers who created great things 30 years ago are in positions to name their projects now, but what they've achieved since is less than when they were young and limited. Math and physics (the fields generally most like cs) show the same pattern: throughout history, most great work done by people under 40. None of this can be attributed to discrimination.

Certainly old coders feel as sharp as ever, with knowledge and experience tacked on. But how one feels is a poor measure of anything. Measuring overall talent is hard, and controlling for everything else so as to measure talent by age is harder. I haven't heard of anyone seriously trying.

It's a scary thought. Can anyone disprove it?

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure we're at a point in the evolution of programming having been a viable career path for enough people yet to judge one way or another. There's not many people in their 60s who have been professional software developers most of their career, so you wouldn't (yet) see a large number of retired people "creating awesome open source projects".

IMV, the it was the tail of of the baby boomers who could have started doing programming in anything resembling what we might have today, and they wouldn't/couldn't have started until at least the late 70s/early 80s. When 'home computers' started becoming commonplace, 'programming' started to become an accepted vocation. Those people are now approaching or in their 50s, and still have another 10+ years to go before 'retirement'.

Frankly, I don't see that many 'awesome open source projects' compared to the total number of projects launched/opened. What I value more are 'awesome open source projects _maintained and kept current_ '. I don't see many of those around at all, by young _or_ old people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I thought that this was one of the better articles published via Tech Crunch lately. I would be interested in reading more articles from Vivek Wadhwa and highly encourage guest writers on Tech Crunch.

<comment><USER23> I personally found some of his previous articles on TC better than this one: <http://techcrunch.com/author/tcvivek/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So, we should be taking care of our own career growth? Shocker.

Yes, there will be a point where your salary will not grow. But that salary is usually higher than most other skilled professions. (Note: this is an assumption; if I'm wrong, _that_ would be interesting.)

My experience has seen very little "mastery" in programming; after about 5 years, most engineers hit about the same level of ability. (Note, I'm not saying you can't hit mastery of a particular thing, but that most don't do it.) Thus, there are only two kinds of programmers, skilled, and learning. If you don't gain differentiating skills after those extra years, why should you be paid for it?

Maybe this is the real "dark secret": most programmers don't know how to gain mastery of something useful to a business. Maybe this is what "we" should be worrying about, rather than hiring practices?

<comment><USER4> All that said (and a lot is certainly true (except you're leaving out the unskilled and/or unlearning types of programmers :-) ), it's _widely_ perceived that there is serious, unreasoning (aside from cheaper salaries, which is often a false economy) age discrimination in our field and that it's particularly strong in Silicon Valley. Doesn't matter if you're skilled and learning.

<comment><USER24> Most programmers definition of "highly skilled" is more like "proficient with a language", or framework, etc. A lot of people I know aim for "can use stuff" rather than "master this thing", which is mostly because, hey, it's technology, and there's always a new thing.

But there _are_ skills past simply becoming proficient in new tools. You could "master the tool", like knowing the details of the JVM memory model, and very importantly, be capable of identifying very hard problems that you can solve that those "young guns" can't.

It is incredibly rare for me to find an experienced programmer that can sell anything but their past "obsolete proficiencies" to me. Most of them sell me on the fact that they've simply been good with X+Y number of tools, where Y of them are now no longer relevant. But they never focused on developing deeper skills that might have relevance (big data problems, etc).

It's the constant shift of tools that adds a lot of this tension. Yes, we need to be able to pick up new ones (languages, frameworks, etc) quickly, but if broad proficiency is how we define mastery, this has little relevance to businesses.

I'm not saying this is easy. How do you unambiguously describe a programmer's skillset past the languages and frameworks they say they know, especially in a way that might be "future-proof"? ("I optimized my system to display 30 frames a second!" "Wow, my phone does that now...") Ultimately, if we can't clearly describe why people's experience is better, it will be hard to justify paying them more, once you become proficient with that particular toolset. Thus, I don't sense real age discrimination as much as a simple inability to sell the value of our experience.

Of course, some programmers are WAY more valuable than others, so this is a problem that isn't just about age and experience. Hiring practices sure haven't matured at all during my 10 years on the job. But, until the finance guy can see why a guy with 25 years of experience but with 3 years with tool X is more valuable than the guy with only 5 years of experience but all 5 with tool X, well, you're not gonna see the money flow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This vastly undervalues knowledge and experience. Maybe a graduate can compete in the day to day work of programming but over the long term of projects that extra knowledge and experience is going to help, assuming the senior programmer is constantly learning. It would be true to say programming in general isn't one of those professions where you can learn your craft and then spend a career applying it.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is just the typical youth Vs experience dilemma. Older programmers - assuming that they keep up with newfangled trends - probably have quite a cushy time compared to other types of engineer, such as electrical or mechanical.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think programmers should _plan_ to retire by 40. Subsequently

        live on passive income
        become a entrepreneur
        become govt employee

</comment><comment><USER28> It's really more about how long it's been since you learned new stuff. Lots of programmers in their 40s learned most of their skills writing Windows apps and, at least the ones I know, are very resistant to change. If you just looked at older programmers who are open-minded and still learning then the numbers might be different.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's that subset. Windows 3.0 was released in the middle of 1990 and it took a while for it to get red hot. Lots of programmers "in their 40s" should have "learned most of their skills" on earlier technology, e.g. UNIX and MS- DOS. Or mainframes.

I'm something of an extreme in that I was forced by finances to quit college after my freshman year and am about to turn 50, so it was a dozen years into my career before I started programming Windows (Charles Petzold C SDK level ... which I suspect is also not the sort of Windows programming you're talking about).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." --Oscar Wilde

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's the real story:

First, the 'suits' want only 'fungible', 'compliant' workers.

Second, the 'suits' do NOT want any workers who might have some technical qualifications that might be powerful, compete with the suits, and scare the suits.

Third, likely highly experienced, older programmers can get good work via 'body shops' around DC.

Fourth, one common tech personnel policy is to hire people as young as possible, promote 1% into management, and fire the rest by 35. In this case, the person 35 would have been better off starting a grass mowing service at age 18 so that by age 35 they have had 17 years in the business, expanded to landscape architecture, have 12 employees, etc. Or generally a Ph.D. in EE will be better off at age 35 having just gotten an electrician's license and built a nice collection of local customers.

Generally, in a technical field, it's important to need a LICENSE.

Generally the big, secret economic opportunity now in the US is to exploit a 'geographical barrier to entry'. So do well in a Main Street business where anyone more than 100 miles away can't be a competitor and do well.

It can commonly be better for a person 18 just to join McDonald's, work hard, learn the business really well, work up to a manager of one McDonald's, manage also a second McDonald's for the same owner, and then have a heart to heart with a local banker about buying and running their own McDonald's. Build up to 10 McDonald's, run them WELL, and will have a better job than nearly anyone in a company a programmer might work for.

Fifth, a good programmer should start and own their own business. E.g., really good at Web site design and construction? Fine: Do such sites for companies in a radius of 50 miles. There, of course, need to meet face to face with the customer and, thus, have a geographical barrier to entry.

Sixth, have some deep technical qualifications, say, from grad school? Fine: There's nearly NO WAY anyone else will construct a good job for you. So, start and run your own business based on the deep knowledge you have.

<comment><USER30> Go find a better company to work for.

All of those issues are company-specific. Sadly, most companies have at least some of the problems.

And I find your McDonald's story insulting: talk to me after you run one a single McD's by yourself and then you'll be able to convince me that a programmer _should_ get paid more.

Dealing with people is hard. Dealing with short term employees is harder. Dealing with people who don't have skills to work higher up the employment chain is even harder. Doing it through two levels of surly middle management would give me an ulcer.

So are there multi-McD's owning entrepreneurs who make more money than me? Hell yes. And they deserve every penny. It's a harder than sitting down in an Aeron chair, staring at 30" monitor and trying not to drip the condensation from your iced coffee on your MacBook Pro.

<comment><USER29> When I was an MBA prof, one of my students was running a Wendy's, in Columbus! He explained some of the opportunity: Watch staffing CAREFULLY. To do this, more than once a day, watch the weather, various public events, say, a high school football game, or anything and everything else that can affect traffic, Then staff accordingly.

If are one person short on a shift, then lose revenue. One person long, then waste money. Getting the staffing right, for each shift, for the year, is a LOT of money -- add it up yourself.

Net, there's a LOT of difference between running a good fast food restaurant and not. So, someone who knows how to run 10 such restaurants can be getting annual cash income over $1 million a year, with a VERY stable job, where they can't be fired and where they can bring their children into the business. Go to a yacht club, and it is mostly such people you will find.

The blunt point is, in the US, some of the best opportunities remain just doing well in a Main Street business.

Then, if some computing expertise can help, still better. But, generally in the US, getting away from just owning a Main Street business is a risky career direction.

<comment><USER31> That's an information problem, though, right? A McD's manager uses information and domain knowledge they have to lever up efficiencies in the business. They're every bit as much of a knowledge worker as a software engineer.

Now imagine that you partner one of those with someone who has technical skills in data mining, expert systems, and real-time data feeds. They build a system that watches local events, checks the weather feed, looks at traffic, etc, and predicts likely sales and staffing needs. Heck, it could even call the employees in to work while the manager sits on his yacht.

This lets several marginally profitable McDonalds owners suddenly start living the high life on $1M/year. The software might cost say $100K, quite a reasonable price if it saves at least that much on employee costs. There are 12,000 McDonalds in the U.S. The software engineer and his McD's partner are now head of a company doing roughly $1.2B/year in revenue, and there are maybe 10,000 newly-minted millionaires out there.

Any experienced McDonald's managers looking for a technical cofounder?

<comment><USER29> Nice. Then sell to Wendy's, Burger King, Domino's, and Pizza Hut.

Buried in the middle should be a little integer linear programming for the scheduling!

The 'qualitative' stuff about the impact of weather, high school events, etc. would be more difficult, and it may be that something like an expert system would work -- typically there's not enough data for some clean statistical attack so that some _expert_ judgment might be essential.

Uh, the $1 million a year would be for someone owning 10 McD's, not just one!

Cute.

One potentially nice part of this could be the point of sales terminals: They may have been recording data on each Big Mack, fry, etc. along with time and date. Good data to have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I suppose programming as a particular profession may have this dark secret; I'm not a straight-up developer (meaning I'm an IT generalist who does develop but usually has some sort of hybrid job including mgmt).

However: I know lots of 50-something developers who have no problem maintaining employment and contracts. They are top-notch; their skills are current and their proven track record and accomplishments are what get them gigs. Companies want them because they're less of a risk -- instead of guessing whether the young guy will develop the right skills, they can take much less of a risk and get someone who's already proven himself.

<comment><USER33> Observing older programmers within my circle, they tend to master a few specialized skills that's hard to get from the hardcore and enthusiastic 20+.

There are a lot of subdomains within programming. Mastering things like Unix tools, patching certain web servers, knowing the kinks of specific RDBMS and/or filesystem, how to design batch processing, makes you a lot harder to be replaced by those 20+.

Not all 20+ guys are hacking on PyPy or Firefox. Most of them are Rails/PHP warriors. Competing against them is a lot easier if you master skills that can only be obtained by experience.

<comment><USER34> Don't rule out the embedded world either. Lots of gray hair there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Zuckerberg advocated age discrimination outright from the stage of startup camp 2007. Of course at his age, he doesn't know any better.

Here's a big secret, it isn't a struggle for older people to keep up with younger people. It is actually easier for me to pick new technology, or languages now than when I was a 20 year old programmer.... And I'm able to take responsibility for projects and order of magnitude more complex.

I always believed that when I got into the position of hiring people, I'd hire younger people because when I was younger the companies were all seemingly snobby about experience. But when I got into that position, I discovered that it was all about hiring people with presence, perception and perspective. Assuming the candidates can program, their ability to make good creative decisions is what determines productivity. Far more than experience sit any language. Any programming language can be learned in a short time... Perceptiveness is hard to teach.

These qualities themselves are too rare to waste time discriminating on age... These qualities, I think, are more common among older programmers, but there are more younger programmers interviewing....so I can't really say, and admit that is a prejudice. At any rate discrimination on any terms not related to doing the job is counter productive and stupid. I find someone with the qualities I'm looking for, I don't care about the age, or anything else.

The HR system in America is completely broken. Part of the reason is that nobody knows how to measure developer productivity on a corporate level. I've seen youngsters who put out huge amounts of buggy code praised which youngsters putting out slow, carefully designed code were told to emulate the "rock star"--- but it was painfully obvious that the rock star was slowing the project down by causing damage everyone ewes was spending a lot of time repairing.

Meanwhile, i once had a "recruiter" refuse to send my resume on a java position because the previous java shop I'd worked at had used oracle 8 and this new shop "is really looking for oracle 9 experience.". -- it doesn't matter what version of oracle when your job is to write code to process the data delivered by the db connector. But the company listed oracle 9 and she, who knew nothing about programming, felt she needed to screen out those who were unqualified. She was unqualified to do her job.

Almost never have I been on an interviewed where they actually checked to see if I was qualified competently. And universally the ones who did, didn't ask me to write code for them. Again, correlation is not causation.

But what we have is cargo cult HR - confusing experience with competence. It probably took 20 years to be a great machinist and you got valuable every years. You get more valuable every year programming, but you don't measure that value by whether someone knows erlang or haskal. Either one will do, even if your codebase is in erlang.

For me starting startup was one of those burn-the-boats decisions. I was a victim of age discrimination, after being hired, in face, I was let go for my age. Of course they wouldn't tell me that, and they wouldn't tell me why, but the said they'd give me a sterling recommendation. It was obviously age... And I vowed to never need that recommendation because I was damn certain I'd never leave my livelihood in the hands of another idiot who knew nothing about technology but thought he could manage programmers or a startup. I was happy to see that startup fail..... And so far, I haven't failed.

Age discrimination happens, and it is one of the profoundly broken things about our industry. When I started, i saw a lot of it happening to younger programmers. I saw zuckerberg advocate it public ally against older programmers.

But it is counter productive.... And a sign of being a bad work environment.

I suggest everyone take into account the age of the people at companies you interview at. Even if you are 20, if they don't have a single engineer in their late 30s, beware.

<comment><USER36> _Almost never have I been on an interviewed where they actually checked to see if I was qualified competently. And universally the ones who did, didn't ask me to write code for them._

What they did the companies who actually checked your competence ask you?

<comment><USER35> That was a side point, not really fully expressed. But part of the point I was trying to make is that there's no secret interview question and no trick questions. The best ones have been interviews where we talked about a problem they were working on. The best interview question is to tell the prospect about what the company is doing and the assumptions behind it, and see what questions they ask, and then go from there. Ask them about a hobby, ask them about anything that interests them. The important thing is to get them talking. In doing so you can find out how they think. Don't ask trick algorithm questions. (Got asked one of them 6 times in a row once because it was apparently the fad that year. )

Ask them how they like to work, do they like big projects or small ones? Do they like to work alone or in groups? What kind of reference material they like to keep handy. All of these can be phrased as sort of "how can we best support you as an employee" questions, but they will tell you a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is not about age itself, it all about _motivated, young software developers who will accept minimum wage_.

It is almost the same story as with foreign laborers, who will accept almost any terms, that are slightly better than at their home, and they already got motivation and taken risks.

Young, inexperienced people are much easy to manipulate and control, due to their naivety, lack of market understanding and inexperience.

The same practices are used on campuses, where some professors agitate students to get a part-time jobs or a test-task, with very low, or even no payments et all, while they're collecting the result and creating products for profit.

</comment><comment><USER29> Age discrimination is standard: The subordinate is supposed to be younger. Period.

<comment> daniel-cussen I remember hearing about a Korean company that changed a CEO for a younger one, and they fired everybody who was older than the new CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Also over the past 10 years, venture capital in Silicon Valley lost money.

Generally the venture partners do not know how to build significant businesses. Look at their backgrounds and see why. Compare with people doing significant work in technology for, say, the US DoD.

<comment><USER4> While I don't agree with your general point those are things with have always been true. For the last 10 year period I can't exactly blame the venture partners for SarBox ending the IPO exit (as another article has noted, in the last ten years there have been fewer > $100 million exits than there are VC firms). Add in the dot.com crash which started a bit before SarBox and the Great Recession and it's no surprise the industry has lost money. Or that we have every expectation it will continue to as it radically shrinks. The great 1958-2002 VC experiment is _over_.

<comment><USER29> I can't judge the impact of SarbOx.

My guess is that the IPO market remains open for a solid company -- good market position, plenty of revenue and earnings, good record of earnings. But there have not been very many such companies built, even private where SarbOx doesn't apply.

My take is that we need to do better at building solid companies. I'm trying. I know some people I'd like to have on my Board, but I don't see any in a venture firm. Sorry 'bout that.

This should be "the best of times" due to a 1 TB Seagate drive for $60, an Asus mobo with a dual core AMD for $100, plenty of GbE, fantastic 'framework' software -- I'm using .NET and find Visual Basic .NET to be fine. I use the compiler just via command line and think it's fine.

The US just needs to do MUCH better at building significant new companies. I've heard that SarbOx costs about $1 million a year for a company to follow it. For a significant company, okay.

Just how VCs are going to get an exit with Facebook and Twitter I don't know.

There is a Great Recession out there, but I sense that there is also a LOT of cash 'on the sidelines'.

<comment><USER4> SarBox is considered to be the last nail in the coffin, not the sole cause of seems to be the effective end of the US IPO. The numbers speak for themselves, although of course a return of more than a couple of handfuls or so of IPOs per year would change that (less than that when you just count tech firms).

I've heard it costs something more like $2.6 million, but it's going to be company specific and the cost might have come down as people and accounting firms got experience. However the pure $$$ cost is only a portion of its total expense, it's also a time and attention sink and it _significantly_ increases the liability (including as I recall criminal) exposure of some of the company's officers. Plus it costs a LOT of time (a year or more), money and attention upfront to get your company SarBox compliant for an IPO, and too much of it is insane stuff that does _nothing_ to improve your real business.

If you remember your chemistry, look at it as raising the activation energy needed for a reaction.

Agreed this should be "the best of times", but you're still talking about fairly small scale and limited domain areas. As I keep harping on, where's the next FPGA like thing going to come from? The only really big "new thing" hardware based startups I know about are Tesla and Space X and they were funded by a single angel. Who got his money from co-founding PayPal, which was a _perfect_ fit for eBay to acquire, which is a prior to SarBox public company.

I don't really know about Twitter (but it's _tiny_ in terms of people and revenue, all out of whack with its impact), but Facebook has clearly made a decision to stay private for whatever reasons. It could go public, investigating why they've decided not to might be worthwhile.

The cash on the sidelines is a good and big question. Some say it's not so much at net, i.e. companies are keeping it to make sure they can service their debt (unfortunately debt is massively tax advantaged compared to stock based capital), others say (and this is clearly related to the first point) that it's being held in reserve for the Dark Times To Come. Or at least fear of such.

There have been too damn many 2,500 page pieces of unread monster legislation passed with no end necessarily in sight (let's say that confidence in what the Republicans might _try_ to accomplish when they get one or both houses of the Congress back is not exactly high) ... in times of _colossal_ uncertainty keeping reserves can mean the difference between your company's survival and death.

E.g. will the insane file a 1099 for any corporate recipient of $600 or more per year insanity be repealed? If you're a small business (< 500 employees, half the economy), well, you best keep some reserves in case you have to do that (it will cost a lot of money and friction, and will likely cost a lot of companies business as everyone decreases the number of companies they do business with).

Etc.

At the furthest extreme, compare to 1937 when "capital went on strike"....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Seems to have missed 'sell your lifestyle to impressionable kids'

</comment><comment><USER39> Does age discrimination exist? Yes. To the degree everyone fears? No.

People can't control their age so there is an inherent insecurity there. Combine that with a small amount of actual discrimination and confirmation bias; now you have a "dark secret".</comment>


How about we make an online movie or web-series? - <AUTHOR> I recently moved to an area that is not doing well financially. During one of my visits to a public library I had a germ of an idea for an open source movie. So I am sharing it with the community to see if there is interest in participation. I am not a filmmaker so looking for any help possible.
Here is the story in brief:

  A software engineer moves to a village to get away from the rat-race of mega cites. Strolling accross the village the engineer stumbles on a local library and regularly starts visting there.

  One day a man in his early 60s visits the library's computer section and sits at a computer next to the software professional. The man, through corner of his eyes, starts observing what the software professional is doing. The man has been made redundant few years ago. He visits the library to clear his head of his everyday life struggles.

  On observing the software professional for few days, the man out of curiosity starts reading about computers and programming. Within a few months he becomes confident and starts his early attempts at programming. Step by step using online videos and some help from the software professional he learns how to develop simple web apps. Life starts becoming exciting for him once again. After a year or so he publishes his web app just as an exercise and for fun. But the web app starts getting traction (with all the excitement and panic that comes with unexpected success!) and he goes on to become a successful tech entrepreneur.

 The movie shall have startup lessons sprinkled all over the story.
It is a simple story and can be fleshed out with lots of social messages about effects of redundancies on communities, struggles, resilience, aspirations, ageism, sexism, racism, discrimination, immigration, reverse-discrimination and also other social issues of people living far away from the centers of power and mega cities.
Let me know what you think, and very much looking for your participation. <comment><USER2> Making a movie or web series is non-trivial.

There's a reason movie credits are very long. There's a reason people go to college for it. There's a reason there's several distinct disciplines within the whole shebang.

First thing you want to do is read up on "the pitch", as in pitching your movie. And to do that you'll need a screen play. And to do that you'll need a story. And to do that...

How do I know? I've worked in movies for the last 20 years.

And with all good faith and sincerity I say good on you for wanting to make something new and best of luck. More creators is a great thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Making a movie or web series is non-trivial.

Yes, I am aware of that. Hence an appeal for broader participation. The things I did not mention in my original post due to space constraints was that students from TV and Film institutes across the world can participate in this project and can also adapt the script and other contents as they see fit for their local audience.

I am just hoping for more participation in any form in this project.

<comment><USER2> I forgot to add that a volunteer project makes that project 100x harder to organize and finish.

IMHO video projects don't happen and get finished unless you're running a school and have a set curriculum OR a lot of money OR a lot of experience running them.

You're asking too much of random strangers. You'll want to have a screenplay ready to go, a schedule, a prospective set of roles.

Why would students help you?

What script? (It's not a script, it's a screenplay)

Have you run a volunteer project before? Have you made a movie before? Either of them is amazingly difficult. Putting them together is a recipe for disappointment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why does the old man need to learn programming? The developer already knows how to do that. If they're going to do things together anyway, let the developer do what he does best, and let the old man do what the developer can't (through his life experience, people skills, marketing savvy, or whatever). That way, you avoid two pitfalls:

1\. The illusion that anybody's _first_ web app can be an immediate success.

2\. The hubris of techno-utopia, a.k.a. "learning to code is the solution to everything".

On that note: don't be preachy. Stories that are _meant_ to "teach lessons" or contain "lots of social messages" are rarely good stories. Tell your story, make it a good story, and let the reader figure out the lessons for him-/herself.

Nonetheless, despite these criticisms, I like your core idea :-) I've never heard of an open-source movie being produced, but perhaps you can turn it into a (collaborative) novel?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why does the old man need to learn programming?

That shows the curiosity at play here rather than the requirement to learn programming.

> let the developer do what he does best, and let the old man do what the > developer can't

And why you think that the developers cannot do anything other than coding?

> 1\. The illusion that anybody's first web app can be an immediate success. > > > 2\. The hubris of techno-utopia, a.k.a. "learning to code is the solution > to everything".

Where in the story it is mentioned that learning to code is solution to everything. It is specifically mentioned that the man published his web app as an exercise and for fun and the success is unexpected.

> On that note: don't be preachy. Stories that are meant to "teach lessons" or > contain "lots of social messages" are rarely good stories.

No, it should not be preachy. I personally don't like preachy movies. But social messages can be communicated subtly without being preachy.

> Tell your story, make it a good story, and let the reader figure out the > lessons for him-/herself.

Yes, exactly. That's the way I think too.

> I've never heard of an open-source movie being produced

Developers who develop open-source software for movies do have projects that produce open-source and CC licensed content. My other intention here is to provide opportunities to both tech professionals and university students who are studying Film and TV. By participating in this project they will get experience.

> but perhaps you can turn it into a (collaborative) novel?

Yeah, that is a good idea as well.

Thank you!

<comment><USER3> I don't want to argue about the specifics with you. You asked us what we think, and based on the brief information you gave us, I told you my first impression. I am sure you will discuss the whole plot in much more detail with your future collaborators, and perhaps with other friends and acquaintances too - see what feedback they give you.

I wish you all the best for the project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am unable to edit the original post, hence posting the storyline here again:

A software engineer moves to a village to get away from the rat-race of mega cites. Strolling accross the village the engineer stumbles on a local library and regularly starts visting there.

One day a man in his early 60s visits the library's computer section and sits at a computer next to the software professional. The man, through corner of his eyes, starts observing what the software professional is doing. The man has been made redundant few years ago. He visits the library to clear his head of his everyday life struggles.

On observing the software professional for few days, the man out of curiosity starts reading about computers and programming. Within a few months he becomes confident and starts his early attempts at programming. Step by step using online videos and some help from the software professional he learns how to develop simple web apps. Life starts becoming exciting for him once again. After a year or so he publishes his web app just as an exercise and for fun. But the web app starts getting traction (with all the excitement and panic that comes with unexpected success!) and he goes on to become a successful tech entrepreneur.

HTH

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of the _learn to code_ movement in 2017, which didn't have a very positive [1] reception with programmers...

It is an interesting idea though, perhaps if it was portrayed as a comedy like Silicon Valley or The Internship, people would be more accepting...

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13604551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13604551)

<comment><AUTHOR>
      > Reminds me of the learn to code movement in 2017

Well, this is not about coding. Because I am a software engineer and also because I think showing coding as a profession will be easier on screen, I chose tech company as the way to convey the message.

The aim here is to cover wide range of social issues, sweet bitter experiences of people who are on the fringes of the tech revolution.

<comment><USER4> > _Well, this is not about coding._

It may not be the central in your mind, but the way you outline the story makes programming/coding/tech seem like the core theme...

I do like the idea though, especially this commenter's version of it

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045253)

<comment><AUTHOR> > It may not be the central in your mind, but the way you outline the story > makes programming/coding/tech seem like the core theme...

I actually has a longer version of the post with some more details of the story, but had to reduce it due to the 2000 char limit on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Code blocks don't wrap on Stack Overflow. Reading the story brief was very difficult. Consider reformatting it.</comment>


Amazon Route 53 - The AWS Domain Name Service - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/12/amazon-route-53-the-aws-domain-name-service.html

<comment><USER2> Amazon is kicking some serious cloud-based butt. I don't see how the competition will catch-up or keep-up. Great work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Managed DNS like this is interesting. We keep a Slicehost account around because it's DNS manager is top-notch. When the command-line tools get better for this, it might be a good alternative.

Here's where this will rock: if I could sign up for S3, Route 53 and Cloudfront, then deploy a site entirely hosted on AWS. Use Route 53 to point the A records of my domain directly at the Cloudfront distribution and the MX records at Google Apps. Is this possible?

<comment><USER4> Yes, except you have to use CNAMEs (you're meant to point at your distribution's hostname, not its IP address) so you're out of luck if your site is foo.com rather than www.foo.com.

<comment><USER5> Also, s3 doesnt serve up index.html for folders.

<comment><USER4> But S3 doesn't even have "folders"; a bucket is just a mapping from keys (paths) to values (documents). So if you want a document at /foo/bar, just store it at the path /foo/bar.

The only special case is the root "folder" (i.e. the empty key), which CloudFront does now explicitly support: [http://aws.amazon.com/about- aws/whats-new/2010/08/05/cloudfr...](http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2010/08/05/cloudfront-adds-default-root-object-capability/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like something Wikileaks should try...err... wait...nevermind. :)</comment>


Running list of deep learning radiology companies - <AUTHOR> https://deeplearningradiology.wordpress.com/2017/01/20/running-list-of-deep-learning-radiology-companies/ <comment><USER2> The problem with Radiology is

1\. If a tumor is incorrectly identified (and it happens a lot) no one realizes it until much later. In many cases the radiologist never knows what the outcome of the detection was. The patient could have been unnecessarily operated, put on year long drug schedule for no reason etc. Unlike anesthesiology where the results of any action are more or less in your face.

So all these AI startups are going to be training on very incomplete data.

2\. More detection more profit. There is no incentive to minimize false detections. The entire system from the radiologist, to the doc/hospital visits, to surgeons, to pharma, to the equipment manufacturers from false detections. Nobody is getting paid to reduce false detections.

So all these med AI startups are going to do quite well for themselves whether they actually benefit the public or not.</comment>


What did the Neanderthals do for us? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151116-what-did-the-neanderthals-do-for-us <comment><USER2> The most interesting part of this article is how much of the Neanderthal genome is still present in the non African population. I would be really interested to see the same analysis applied to the Melanesian population who are 6% or so denosovian [1].

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan)

</comment><comment><USER3> What advantages did the Neanderthal genes add (or take away)? The only way to really find out is to create a modern day living Neanderthal. There's probably decades of research to do before we can pull that off, but some day it will happen. We need more than just the genome, unfortunately.

We already know a surprising amount about Neanderthal humans. They were generally short, around 5'7"/170cm, but their bones and muscle attachment sites were larger, suggesting bigger and more powerful musculature.

Combine hereditary strength with a vigorous lifestyle during a brutal epoch, when both predators and prey were dangerous giants, and we are looking at a truly powerful breed of humans who are thought to have been many times stronger than modern Homo Sapiens humans.

It seems, though, that this great strength was not a useful enough trait to be passed on through interbreeding; the modern humans displaced H. Neanderthalensis after a few thousand years, and we definitely don't have the musculature they had, not even our Cro Magnon ancestors who were contemporary with them.

Their huge braincases are another mystery. They averaged 1600 cubic cm, versus 1400 for modern humans. Were the Neanderthals smarter? Or were their brains larger, as claims one scientist, to accommodate a larger optical center for their enhanced night vision?

Ah, what we would give to have a way to warp time and visit that bygone era!

<comment><USER4> > What advantages did the Neanderthal genes add (or take away)? The only way > to really find out is to create a modern day living Neanderthal. There's > probably decades of research to do before we can pull that off, but some day > it will happen

Do you want to create Khan? Because that is how you create Khan. If you're averaging a bunch of genomes to do this (e.g simple rank-based voting), and assuming most mutations are deleterious, you're probably going to end up with some sort of super-Neanderthal who is way smarter and stronger than the average human.

<comment><USER5> Fictional sources are not evidence in a debate or argument.

<comment><USER4> The Khan part is a joke but the rest is serious. Nearly all mutations are unique and deleterious. So if you average them all out, you'll end up with an organism that is significantly more fit than average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "It may seem strange that we inherited disease-causing genes at all. After all, only beneficial genes should survive, so surely over hundreds of generations we should have shaken off these unwanted contributions?"

Certainly not my field, but my understanding is that unless a mutation has a direct impact on survival and fertility... then there is no evolutionary drive for it to go away.

All animals have negative genes that just stick around as random "junk" which has accumulated over the years. It's not surprising that we have picked them up too.

<comment><USER7> > Certainly not my field, but my understanding is that unless a mutation has a > direct impact on survival and fertility... then there is no evolutionary > drive for it to go away.

Well, genes get corrupted by random mutations, and if they have no survival value, there is no correcting force. So they drift out of the genome.

<comment><USER8> Are you referring to genetic drift? This is a statistical phenomenon by which alleles that are near neutral for viability change in frequency until one becomes fixed. This doesn't mean that neutral mutations will invariably push the wild type out of the genome. Actually, that would be improbable in the absence of a selective pressure or an accident of history.

<comment><USER7> I'm saying genes that have no survival-value will fade away due to accumulating random mutations.

That's probably different from whatever you're describing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a very interesting topic, but the article is fluff: smoking, red hair, some diseases.

 _I am 2.5% Neanderthal._

Pffff. If you are < 3% are you even european? ;)

<comment><USER10> If she had over 3% she would have written a smarter article. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We share a lot more than 20% of our DNA with Neanderthal's ~99%. So, it's not clear exactly what they mean by this article.

<comment><USER12> They factor out genes attributable to common ancestors we had with Neanderthals.

They're talking about genes that were specifically modified along the Neanderthal branch of evolution and then added back to us.

<comment><USER11> Considering we are the same species and would interbreed, I don't think it's that clear which line started a given mutation. Unless they had a lot of samples to work with.

IE, did a trait start with us and move to them. Or did it start with them and move to us.

<comment><USER13> The Tibetan adaptation to high altitudes is a good example of introgression from Denisovans: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140702-genet...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140702-genetics- tibetan-denisovan-altitude-science/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>