My Nightmare Interviews With Google  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/my-nightmare-interviews-with-google-2009-11 <comment><USER3> This wasn't an interview, it was a test. I had a similar experience with a startup. I was interviewing for a Marketing Communications Manager position. Essentially PR.

One of the unofficial interviewers (at 24 year old MIT engineer working as an email marketer) challenged me with the question "How many barbers are in San Francisco?" We proceeded to map it out the analytical process on the whiteboard. He wanted to see formulas to understand how I would arrive at the answer.

It was a stupid, impossible question. In a similar way to this girl's experience, he jabbed repeatedly critiquing my logic.

He wrote me later to explain that he posed the same question to his girlfriend, an MIT engineer herself, and she couldn't come up with an answer. Neither could he.

They offered me the job and I declined solely based on this guy and his misguided, silly behavior. I would have hated to work with him.

When a company misguidedly challenges potential employees in this way it hurts the quality of its hires. Sure, Google can afford to be picky but does it really need an engineer in a Product Marketing role? Perhaps for dev-facing apps but such an interview process is overall misguided and immature.

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is such a terrible thing, although clearly this adversarial approach to testing ideas isn't for you, or everyone. Enrico Fermi used to challenge grad students with similar questions, the famous example being 'how many piano tuners in Chicago?'.

I don't think it's a stupid or impossible question, but one that seeks to establish how you go about estimating tricky things and thus identifying fruitful territory for more rigorous research. Let's walk through it, with the awareness that we're trying to refine our techniques of estimation rather than caring about the actual number of barbers.

'Barber' implies haircuts for men. This is good, because the number of hairstylists that cater to women depends on fashion, which is hard to quantify. On the other hand, hair cutting is more related to hair growth. There's about 3/4 of a million people in San Francisco. Roughly half of them are men, so we have 375,000 potential customers. Most men wear their hair short, off the ears. Of course some wear their hair long and have it cut very infrequently, while others like it much shorter, eg with a buzz cut and have it cut more often...but some of them may cut their own hair, since a buzz-cut isn't too challenging. I'm going to assume the number of hippies cancels out the number of close-cutters because San Francisco has a bit of a hippy reputation. So much for hairstyling.

OK, so I've postulated 375,000 men who average out to a 'regular hairstyle'. And I've postulated that a regular hairstyle means not having your ears covered, ie the old 'short back and sides'. While it's growing, you could comb it out of the way or let it cover the tops of your ears, but once it gets half-way down then you're either growing it out or it's time to visit the barber. How much hair is that? My ears are about 2 inches high, but I have small ears. 3 inches sounds pretty big though...I'll guess the average is 2.5 inches, so half of that is 1.25 inches. That's already pretty fluffy though...let's round it down to 1 inch. OK, so 375,000 men get a haircut whenever their hair has grown by more than an inch.

How long does that take? Hair grows at about 4 inches a year, so let's say 3 months. Which gives us 1.5 million male haircuts a year for the whole city. (we could have started calling the population p and the rate of hair growth g[h] and so on, but why bother, it's a chain of reasoning we're concerned with here). A haircut takes, what, 20 minutes? it could be faster, then again some want a more difficult style. So let's guess that there's half a million hours of actual hair cutting (including the bit with the sheet and the sweeping up etc) going on in a year in SF.

Now we're getting somewhere. How much does a barber work? I'd say 45 hours a week. Some barbershops open early for the business crowd, but then they're closed on Saturdays. Monday-Saturday seems reasonable, as does 2 weeks' holiday. So one barber could spend a maximum of 2500 hours per year cutting hair. Only, that seems a bit high. Sometimes you wait in line, but I don't usually think of barbers as busy flat-out most of the time. 30 hours of cutting and 15 hours a week of of waiting for a customer seems more realistic. So 1500 hours of haircutting per barber (edit: 1650, but who cares). And dividing that into half a million hours of cuttable male hair per year gives me 333, the number of people needed to cut all that hair.

At this point you can start arguing about whether someone that caters to both men and women is truly a barber, or whether women can be said to be barbers even if they only cut men's hair. If your answers to those questions are no and no, and we go with the stereotype of a barber as a man who only cuts other men's hair, then I'd halve these numbers and guess that the number of 'pure' barbers in SF is 75-100.

OK, so this is 10 minutes of my life I won't get back, but if I was going to market something specific to barbers then I now have a decent guess at the number of potential customers in my local metro area.

Of course, you could have just said 'pass me a copy of the Yellow Pages and I'll tell you'. So having done the above, I went and looked that up and got 131 results at [http://www.superpages.com/yellowpages/C-Barbers/S-CA/T-San+F...](http://www.superpages.com/yellowpages/C-Barbers/S-CA/T-San+Francisco/) ...with 2 or 3 cutters at each shop, that would suggest somewhere in the 3-400 range, but some of these entries are for Salons and some are in Daly city or Sausalito, not quite in San Francisco. Still not definitive, but not too far off either. Sure, there's a _lot_ of guessing and hand-waving here...but the important thing is that I arrived at an estimate that roughly correlates with reality. In this case I was able to check that reality (by looking up the number of self-identified barbering businesses) but once you become adept at this technique you can use it for anything, and then get on with solving the problem instead of feeling stuck by a lack of information.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's the traditionally educated engineering in me (I was trained as a mechanical engineer), but I don't see a point in this purely theoretical hand- wavy math. There are established ways for us to get good estimates of a great deal of information - including your hairdresser problem - that involve seeking out real data. Sitting in a void of zero knowledge and postulating wildly, even if it gets you in the ballpark, is wildly inefficient and I'd hate to be involved in it as part of a professional company.

A number out of your ass - regardless of how soundly backed with logic - is at the end of the day a number out of your ass. This isn't to say that all inference or estimation is bad - but rather that estimations done in a _complete_ void of background data is practically useless.

A more concrete example: estimate the number of users our chief competitor has. I can go through this like a logic puzzle and come up with a number that has zero verifiability... or I can go look up relevant data (their page rank on Google, other available metrics on their site, etc) and arrive at a far better conclusion.

I agree with the GP that these exercises are pointless and unrelated to the job for which you are interviewing. As a traditionally educated engineer, my training teaches me not to guess whenever facts are available. Don't try to memorize and infer numbers - keep your references within reach at all times. An engineer who makes few assumptions about his data is one who makes fewer mistakes and costs less money in damage.

<comment><USER6> "As a traditionally educated engineer, my training teaches me not to guess whenever facts are available."

Ah, but the most lucrative questions are about products not yet invented, for which there are few facts. They are lucrative _because_ there is not yet any competition. If there were lots of facts available, ripe for the picking, then by definition the net margins would be terrible.

For instance, suppose you were a grad student at the MIT Media Lab in 1995. Does it make financial sense to join the work on an electronic ink product? The answer to that question could only have been derived from a series of guesses and wild deductions. You cannot just look up how efficient planar electroluminescent backlights are going to be in 10 years. Or how expensive and power-hungry non-volatile memory devices are going to be in 10 years.

For a research organization to invent and capture a new market, they have to be good at making and using wild guesses about the future. (Looking up answers is valuable too, but for different reasons.)

<comment><USER5> I think you're badly mistaking what I'm talking about with "looking up answers" - what I'm talking about is considerably more than that.

How efficient will planar electroluminescent backlights be in 10 years? That's a good question - and one we can make an educated stab at given the right historical data, the right experience in forecasting, and a little bit of plain luck. Heck, you're now talking about an entire field of mathematics and engineering in and of itself!

Compare this to the Google interview though - where they expect you to pull a number out of your ass, with no opportunity to consult historical data, no field experts to interview... no due diligence done at all. It is either an extremely poor approximation of real-life problem solving skills, or everyone at Google is recklessly cowboy and trying to deduce every decision ever by sheer will of logic alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like she is the "recite facts" type, rather than "quickly think critically" type. Google wants the second type of person, and it appears she is not that. So the interview process worked perfectly; she didn't get a job she wouldn't be good at, and Google doesn't have an employee that doesn't fit with them. I fail to see how this is a nightmare, other than that she'll have to work somewhere that makes her buy her own lunch.

<comment><USER8> Totally agree that she was not right for the job, but the _process_ was a bit nightmare-ish :

      "That's all.  Good luck with your job search."  The phone clicked-- I was stunned.

In my previous job I conducted a lot of interviews of an analytical style. Some people bombed so badly that is was clear well before the end that they wouldn't make the next round. In those cases, I used the remaining time to either talk to them about the career hopes/goals, or to explain how they could have better approached the problem (these skills are partly learnt..) to help prepare them for their next interview. The way I saw it was that they were expecting 30 mins of my time, so they would get it, even if they weren't up to the job. It a courtesy, and it's also self interest - burnt interviewees make a lot of noise on campus.

When I was 'senior' I never applied to McKinsey, because I'd heard so many horror stories about their interviews - I just didn't want to go anywhere near them. I landed a job with one of their main competitors and spent 5 happy years there...

<comment><USER9> Googlers are not that bad at ending interviews either. I think this was just one perticular person (Anna) thing.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I was rejected from Google after an on-site interview, but they were quite polite and professional about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked for Google for a few years, and did a lot of phone screens. Most of the people who I interviewed probably felt the same way as this lady. The process may seem brutal, but it is impossible to invite everyone in for an on- site interview, and the phone screen does a pretty good job of filtering out the definite nos (although I'm sure that some good candidates are rejected).

I could count the number of people who passed one of my phone screens on one hand (and I considered myself a fairly easy interviewer).

<comment><USER12> I can't stand talking to people from companies like Google, they're always so smug and judgmental like that.

Part of my decision to drop out of the job market and focus full-time on my company (to pretty reasonable success this year) is because I like being paid based on a judgement of my work/products, rather than some half-assed assessment of me as a person made in an interview.

<comment><USER13> > rather than some half-assed assessment of me as a person > made in an > interview.

Any judgement made in a 45-minute (or less!) interview is going to be half- assed. That's the unfortunate way of the world. How do you think people should interview?

(Genuinely curious; I do interviews, and I think I do pretty well, but it's difficult to honestly examine one's own methods without feedback.)

<comment><USER14> If I may interject, I think in most cases it's much, much better to use a network of connections rather than random walk-ins. You're much more likely to get someone that not only performs well, but also fits in well with your company's personalities.

If you have to interview strangers, I think it's good to inquire into their technical background until you have ample confidence in their technical abilities, and take the rest of the time to discuss career and company goals, personalities, hobbies, etc., in a lax and non-rushed manner. I'd invite the candidate back for a follow-up interview and talk more and then invite him to work out of your office for a few days (with pay, of course).

I think it's much better to have a relaxed and friendly decorum and perform a series of informal "interviews" because you'll learn a lot more about the candidate if he feels confident and open than if he's rushed to answer a bunch of silly logic puzzles and give diatribes on his five-year life plan.

<comment><USER15> _If I may interject, I think in most cases it's much, much better to use a network of connections rather than random walk-ins. You're much more likely to get someone that not only performs well, but also fits in well with your company's personalities._

It is possible that this person is being interviewed by Google as a result of a referral by another employee within the Google, or even a referral from the hiring manager themselves.

Unless what you mean is that a hiring manager only consider people whom he and every other potential interviewer already know before the interview process even begins. The odds of ending up with such an arrangement at a place the size of Google, or even a place 1/100th the size of Google, seem insanely remote.

Someone on an interview loop at a large organization is bound to not know you from every other candidate who walks in the door. Even with phone interviews, odds are they call people based on factors entirely other than "do they know this person?" The best he may know about you is that some other person in the organization referred you, but it is not obvious whether they'll appreciate knowing this or be pissed off that their objectivity is now screwed. Some interviewers really prize trying to be as objective as possible in interviews, because interviews have a habit of being horribly imprecise anyway. But then, so do referral from J. Random Employee ("I have this cousin who's really good with computers; he helped me setup Outlook and everything. We should hire him a as software engineer.")

But then, maybe that is your point. If a company ends up at a size where they can't rely on connections, they're too big already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> These were just questions for a position as Associate Product Marketing Manager. During my senior-year interviews with Google for a Software Engineer position, there were 3 rounds, each getting increasingly harder, chock full of nothing but technical questions: some trivia (name all standard network port associations), some implementation (design a chat server), some theory (what is the big-O runtime advantage of doubling an array size upon copy over just adding new entries linearly), etc, etc...

Each time they said "this interview will take about 30 minutes," but each one ended up being around 1.5 hours.

It was grueling, but fun. I'm not sure what happened because I didn't hear back after the 3rd interview. It was at least a nice feeling to know that all of my classes in school had helped me with the answers.

<comment><USER17> Have you considered interviewing again (I'm assuming some time has passed)? I think its usually a pretty good sign when interviews go long. I think it might be worth your time. Feel free to email me if you'd like.

<comment><USER16> I have actually been contacted twice since then by Google for subsequent openings (once in the past couple of weeks!). I am currently working on my startup, but I will certainly keep this option open in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> ' "Say an advertiser makes $0.10 every time someone clicks on their ad. Only 20% of people who visit the site click on their ad. How many people need to visit the site for the advertiser to make $20?" I froze. The problem sounded easy but I didn't want to cause an awkward silence trying to solve it. '

The problem only _sounded_ easy? Isn't this what you learn in 3rd grade? When you can't do this stuff you shouldn't be allowed near numbers.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, it's easy. When you deal with logic problems all day. Or if you're used to solving problems in your head.

Personally, I solved it easily in my head. But, I had to read the problem the first time, then read it again slowly getting all the numbers into the proper places in my head. An interview is a stressful place, so easy things can get a lot harder.

<comment><USER20> She spent 5 minutes on it, 5 Minutes...

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I worked it out just as the interviewer explained it. $0.1 per click, 20 out of 100 visitors click, that's 20*0.1=$2.0 per 100 visitors. We need $20 dollars so we need 1000 visitors. This really is child's play. Honestly I think the pressure must have crippled her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Rigorous interviews will increase the false negative rate, at the expense of false positives. It's part of the culture at Microsoft and Google and other companies.

<comment><USER17> I don't know why people are downvoting you. I can tell you that I've seen the same thing and having dealt with the fallout of bad hiring, I'd rather miss some good or even great candidates rather than hire someone bad. Edi: To clarify: I work at Google.

<comment><USER23> You always run the risk of hiring someone bad. Interviewing, particularly rigorous interviewing, is a game that doesn't map very well onto work itself.

That's why the true test of a hiring process is the _firing_ process.

If you can get rid of people that can't hack it, rather than letting them gather as detritus in your system, you'll be far better off than if you simply pretend that you can actually avoid mistakes.

<comment><USER24> Hiring two people so you can fire one is a lot more expensive than interviewing 10 to start.

<comment><USER25> But what are the relative probabilities that each method will result in exactly one good employee?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I liked the "quiz" question someone posted on the linked "Business Insider" article:

You work for a digital age media company who has already achieved superior market dominance in an industry rife with failure and turnover. Your company's stock, though depressed, still sells for multiples above its competition and the option pool is pretty full and limited.

The company's single main product continues to grow its revenues nicely but has failed at virtually all attempts to broaden its product line so it remains reliant on its single huge product which may come under government anti-trust action at some point in the future to say nothing of two leading competitors aiming to unseat it. It's only other breakthrough products are given away free or at nominal charge with no discernable profitable business model.

Is it a good career choice to join or stay with this firm even though they pride themselves on asking stupid quiz questions to gauge your intelligence and make you feel very special if you are offered a position?

<comment><USER7> Speculation is for investors. As long as you get your paycheck, who cares? (And "when" they stop giving paychecks, Google will look pretty good on your resume'.)

Why are people so upset about the "quiz questions"? Is it unreasonable for an employer to expect you to think? (Is the "right answer" ever the goal of these questions?)

<comment><USER26> I don't know why people are upset. I don't, however, think there's a category of "thinking" to which these questions provide insight. I use a completely different toolset when answering quiz questions than when I'm answering "real life" questions. "Railroad crossing watch out for cars, can you spell that without any R's" is a typical 'quiz' question that asks you to abandon ways we know people interact. Asking someone, "How many pounds of tonails are cut every year?" is asinine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm her age. This is essentially a case question straight out of a consulting book. I'm out of practice for it. Way out of practice. Meanwhile, I'm scared stiff of applying for jobs because my entire class has gone crazy about how to behave, what to say, what is the right answer to questions like this. I know I'm not perfect already. I know I have work to do to get better. and the bAck of the evenvelop question is one of my weak points. And I know it.

First thing I discovered though from helping other people on other sorts of collaborative projects on the web:

Get paper for this stuff if you are out of practice, and ask to wait for an aswer while you write it down, and if you forget something, as to repeat. Always good to write somehting down- shows you are listening. She didn't.

Be a little more wild with your answer. Not over the top. But just a little. I got that last night from someone at McKinsey. Was talkign to a class of mine about the history of business. Someone asked. Don't be too much though.

And reach out about your humanness. Not everyone is perfect. If your weak point is Back of the envelope stuff, then it is your weak point.

Speaking of which, since I am taking my time (becuase I can't freak out any more, I just can't) How do I brush up on those questions? And that way of thinking. I'm good on the creative side with large data sets and how to sort out problems, but not on the calculations side...which sucks.

<comment><USER28> You sound like you're going to break down any minute. Seriously, please relax! If a company seriously cares about the exact wording of your answers, you obviously would not want to work there. Management consultancy is a load of stuff any intelligent and hard-working human can do, they just want to test your basic intelligence and reasoning and check to see if you seem like a sufficiently nice human. Don't sweat it that much, your live doesn't depend on what McKinsey thinks of you.

<comment><USER27> I realize that. I also don't want to work for McKinsey. I don't think management consulting would be a good fit. Really, I think I have too much of humorous subversive streak for that.

I realize I can do a lot of things with time and effort. I feel pressure on the time part, Overloaded. I'm doing a bit too much on top of that. I'm a little less that one week to my bachelor's critique in new media/internet art. We're a crazy bunch of folk, them artists. Long term I want to switch to learning coding, and haven't had the time to sit down and even think yet...

Or really apply for jobs yet. That's uhhh after next week, after I finish classes. When I know where I'm living/doing. That's normal for a college student though where I am...jumpy folk, mostly halfway through a very short midterm cycle...BA nearly got deleted, those sorts of things. still coming off of that sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I interviewed with Google a year ago and was pretty disappointed. One interviewer was a no-show, another was over half an hour late.

I know Google is a big company and all (sampling space fail) but that really turned me off.

</comment><comment><USER30> In engineering school, we got pretty familiar with BOEC (back of the envelope calculations), in some part to give a double check on calculations, and in other part (ahem) to double-check on slide rule calculations and exponent correction.

But that is a useful skill, particularly in conjunction with a _problem- solving attitude_ which they repeatedly emphasized us to do.

And the book _Innumeracy_ by Paulos gives examples of good problems to check with: "Is there a cubic mile of human blood in the world" and "How long would it take to move Mount Fuji" as a couple of examples.

It doesn't sound like a good sign if your latest math was as a freshman if you are looking for a software career.

<comment><USER31> This was for a marketing position though, not an engineering position. I wouldn't expect someone trained in marketing to be good at BOEC or be as analytical as an engineer.

<comment><USER32> She also bombed a middle school level math problem.

One question (paraphrased): _$0.10 cpc, with a 20% of visits resulting in a click. How many visits needed to make $20?_

 _After five painful minutes the annoyed interviewer gave me the answer...She made it sound so easy; I felt like a moron._

She is innumerate.

If I were illiterate, I'd probably describe an interview at McGraw Hill as nightmarish. "After five painful minutes of trying to sound out the words the annoyed interviewer read the sentence to me...She made it sound so easy; I felt like a moron."

<comment><USER33> Or she was just very nervous. Your cognitive abilities decline if you're put on the spot. Have you ever said something stupid while speaking in front of a group?

The girl goes to Syracuse, which is a somewhat selective University. She would not have gotten in if she couldn't do the math (her SAT scores simply wouldn't be high enough.)

This question would have been easy for me and actually would have probably boosted my confidence during the interview. But that's because I'm a quantitative person. Throw a question I was completely unexpecting though and I could be stuttering and saying stupid things. I'm sure there would be some questions or exercises the author could complete far more smoothly than I could.

Calling her innumerate (and making the analogy of her being illiterate and thus incompetent) for this slip makes me think you haven't been on many interviews yet.

<comment><USER28> Who cares about her SAT score (which someone can spend months preparing for) if she can not perform under pressure? It's not Google's job to make sure she can withstand the pressure of a stressful job (interview).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Google has interviewed tens of thousands of candidates in this manner. Other companies have interviewed even more, using roughly the same process. With all the preparation this girl put into her interview, I don't see how she possibly could have been surprised by those types of questions. The first piece of advice anyone will give you is that the final answer is not _nearly_ as important as talking through the process you would use to solve the problem. Obviously she never even read that first piece of advice, because she blurted out a wild guess to the very first question. Don't let this happen to you!

Google's interview process isn't a nightmare. It's entirely typical. If you plan on interviewing for any job, you should spend a lot of time studying the interview process and how to excel in it. If you're interviewing for programming jobs, this course is an _invaluable resource_ : <http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/>

Read all the handouts 5 times, and you won't be caught off guard like this girl was.

<comment><USER35> Direct links to handouts:

[http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_...](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Handout_1.pdf)

[http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_...](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Handout_2.pdf)

[http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_...](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Handout_3.pdf)

[http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_...](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Practice_Questions_Person_A.pdf)

[http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_...](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Practice_Questions_Person_B.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Oh, please. Perhaps they care about pedigree and GPA for new grads, but what else do they have to go on? I'm 40, and they didn't seem to care at all where I went to school nor what my grades were. The interview was challenging, but a lot of fun (the good kind of challenging), and certainly not a "nightmare."

<comment><USER37> I agree. Whenever I read one of these articles, I feel like I should post my own story of how I interviewed at Google and it was completely reasonable, if expectedly rigorous. I really only had two complaints: 1) they sent me to lunch with a guy who works on AdSense, and at the time I was working at Yahoo on their Content Match system, so we had a pretty awkward time trying to figure out what we could talk about without disclosing anything confidential, and 2) it took a really long time after my interviews for them to actually produce an offer (maybe 4 weeks or so), although their recruiter did give me regular updates of what was going on in the process.

FWIW, they did ask me for a lot of awfully detailed information about my current and past compensation packages and what other companies I was interviewing with. I mostly declined to provide that information, and they didn't push it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wouldn't really say _nightmare_ per se, although it probably felt like that at the time. She just wasn't very practiced at estimating and making reasonable assumptions.

Back when I was in my final year of uni I interviewed for a set of blue-chip graduate recruiters who threw similar questions at me. I distinctly remember sitting in a Data Connection office somewhere trying to work out how many petrol stations were in the UK. I was terrible. But there are ways to get better at this and it's really no secret that Google asks these kinds of questions. I think they reveal two things about the candidate - how good they are instinctively, and how well they prepare.

Obviously Google asks candidates who get past a certain point to sign a NDA, but there's still a surprising amount of information out there. I was recently helping a friend (and have previously helped an ex) with interviews and preparing for the logic and theoretical comp.sci. parts was actually quite a lot of fun. Maybe because I didn't have the pressure!

<comment><USER27> Correct. I'm here age, and for those of us who have to reteach themselves all sorts of math for a variety of reasons, BAck of the envelop questions are frightening under pressure. First thing you should do is take off the pressure and see if you can be collaborative with the person.b People tend to panic very easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The questions mentioned in the article don't seem particularly odious. They sound like standard "think-on-your-feet" case-based questions that management consultants and bankers also love. Demonstrating creativity and problem solving grit is more important than producing a correct number.

<comment><USER40> I think it was more about how they treated her. or at least her perception of how they were treating her.

<comment><USER40> I also can't help but notice that some of the interview questions were confusing or misleading when taken into context with the other questions.

The engineer says that he got lost when she mentions ads might have a 25% click through rate but in another question the click through rate was 20%, as an example. She probably thought, but did not write that her earlier estimate would have been ok or acceptable which would be confusing given the engineer's reaction.

Also, if said question was meant to test reasoning skills and not a raw answer, then a wrong estimate for click through shouldn't "lose" anyone. After all, if you haven't worked in search or heard of google or the internet ad business internals, how would you know what the click through rate should be more like? Advertising is but one of many industries.

I think google needs to be a bit more careful about how they ask questions or at least have interviewers talk to each other. Probably too difficult since they all have other tasks and duties to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> These seem like soft-ball questions all around. Phone screening is such a pain in the ass, I am surprised that more people don't have a timed web form or similar setup so we can avoid having to waste the hours talking to people that aren't going to make the cut.

<comment><USER16> > avoid having to waste the hours talking to people that aren't going to make > the cut.

chicken/egg... how are you going to know that without talking to them?

However, to that end, could you just raise the bar on the resumes and also the subequent first-round phone screens to reduce the number of 2nd-, 3rd-round interviews? The Google application (for non-college recruits) is already extensive and probably acts as a weed-out mechanism for many people deciding to just apply on a whim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I thought it was funny that the link she gave to "15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid" has wrong answers in the solutions. See if you can beat their answer for the two egg problem - Bonus prove your answer is actually the minimum possible.

<comment><USER43> They also got this one wrong, both in asking the question, and in answering it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_game>

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "Everyone says your GPA doesn't matter when you're finding a job." Uh, maybe for a second job- but when you are still a senior in school your GPA is one (admittedly crude) measure of how well you were doing at your last occupation (student).

<comment><USER45> As a hiring manager, I'll take internship or side-project coding experience over GPA anyday.

Sure, a good GPA is good. But if you back it up with _experience_ , you are ahead.

<comment><USER46> At any large company HR will have designated a minimum GPA merely as a mechanism to manage the volume of incoming CVs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> For an associate product manager position, it only gets harder.

I quite enjoyed the back of the envelope calculations during the early calls, as well as talking about interesting products I had encountered recently.

It got quite interesting on-site. I really enjoyed the first couple of days of interviews, which focused on design ("design a shopping mall"). The last day was still fun, but less enjoyable, as it involved coding on a whiteboard, estimating the computational complexity, and then improving its efficiency. Then I was asked to spec out the requirements for adding unit tests to a programming language.

I felt the interviews were fair and well-balanced, the main sticking point for me was the emphasis on GPA and academic history.

<comment><USER31> Those were questions for an engineering position right? Not a a product manager position?

<comment><USER47> No, APM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My Google interviewer had a toothache. I didn't get an offer. Their recruiters are notoriously independent; not sure that's a good thing. I was actively sought out, but had no chance because the interviewer had a bad day.

Question: is it more important to keep out the bad ones but lose some good ones, or vice versa? (ie, what's the correct balance between false positives and false negatives?)

<comment><USER43> I've heard from several Googlers that false positives are orders of magnitude worse than false negatives. In reality, I think it's more clear-cut - <USER2> are those developers who know all about tries, algorithms, parsers, GC strategies, unit testing, OS level details, networking, etc., and those developers who know how to program in Blub for Blub libraries. For most positions, Google wants the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I am mystified that companies use interviews in hiring despite the overwhelming academic evidence that interviewing does not work,

I conjecture that what we are discussing is primate social behavior (yes, "monkeys in a tree") and social hierarchy in action. Of course we _are_ primates, so maybe it _is_ vital that Google hire enough "alpha males" or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER50> I once came on interview with a very big company, a lady that interviewed me slowly began to become medieval and very angry - for no reason, so I got afraid of her and just walked away myself, for goodnes sake. A guy before her was friendly.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think those kinds of quizzes doesn't extract how good or bad the person is for the job.

I wouldn't work for a company that rate a person by quizzes or tricky questions.

</comment><comment><USER52> Non critical thinking people are not worse as they can have other strong skills like immagination or creativity or ability to understand user feeling or simply a lot of taste. I think that with this kind of interview Google is creating a monoculture inside the company. The effects may be the fact Google has some problem pushing web services where technological strenght can not do a real difference.

</comment><comment><USER53> Her last answer really did her in, I think. She said she was "wishing [the number of graduating seniors] was higher" since she was amid a job search. That would mean more competition for jobs. That indicates a lack of critical thinking skills.

<comment><USER54> I think the gmail answer would have sunk her too. Google is an advertising company -- 1/4 (25%) clickthrough on Gmail ads (not even search) is just crazy. People click search ads because they're looking for something, Gmail ads probably get an order of magnitude less click through (people aren't in gmail to find new things). For someone applying to an advertising company, she needs to know their basic business model and assumptions.

If she thought about her own usage, she'd realize that it was an insanely high number (had she ever clicked on a single gmail ad, let alone 25% of them?).

<comment><USER55> >If she thought about her own usage, she'd realize that it was an insanely high number...

It's dangerous to generalize from yourself like that.

<comment><USER56> Better to generalize from one data point than to generalize from none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> That wasn't a nightmare interview; she is clearly unqualified for an analytical role. She should get a job in advertising instead.

<comment><USER58> To be honest, a moderately intelligent 5th grader could have answered that question about the 10 cents per ad. I know that math isn't her field, but on some level one is expected to be well rounded.

<comment><USER27> I've taught some very intillegent third graders. No. No they wouldn't have under the time constraints and pressures. People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak.

First easy thing to do which isn't describe. Tell the person to sit down with a pen and paper. And then talk about the why and how. That was the demeaning part. Antoi-collaborative, very scary.

<comment><USER59> _People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak._

Even at Google, a job is not a vacation. Wanting to hire people who react well under pressure is completely valid.

The mistake, which is not at all unique to Google, is to think that "high pressure interrogation at a job interview" is usefully similar to the kind of pressure that might occur on the job. For _some jobs_ it will be. For many others, it's completely different.

Compare these scenarios: "QA just found a huge, unexpected performance problem in this server application and no one knows what's causing it. The application goes live in 48 hours and you and your team have until then to make it handle ten thousand times as many users as it does now." vs. "You just landed after a 10-hour flight and will be meeting a major potential customer in 30 minutes. TSA blew up your laptop because it looked suspicious and the airline sent your luggage to Albuquerque so instead of a carefully-prepared presentation all you have are a couple index cards with vague notes about the product. If you don't make a sale, your company will be bankrupt in a week."

<comment><USER27> No job is a vacation: I've done work under pressure as well for both school and other land.

Google is not going to be bankrupt in a week. If your interviewer is really smart, do the Seth Godin thing: freelance the person for a few weeks, or offer them a real life case they are currently working on to see what that person is actually going to do.

One of the ways I figured out I would make a horrible teacher was I worked as a teacher. I really believed and worked very hard as a teacher. Ultimately, I needed a more collaborative environment, and I was stressed out because I met some really smart kids who were flunking half of exams on purpose when I confronted them about it. They would not work with me to fix these skills in third grade, particularly when there were background issues going on, and I was not the primary teacher. I found it not appropriate for me. I found that really high pressure, and not appropriate for me. Meanwhile, I know I will stay up all night on my own unpaid looking for affordance of different websites and how they can be applied for different business reasons. There you go? That seems to be appropriate for me. I just wish I knew more people in that field, and I wish I had the time to learn to code (after first round BA critiques....)

Interviewers need to sit down and know what is the pressures of the job, Half that interview would not have helped her at all. Furthermore, It is can I work with that person on the job, and help me and her reach a goal under pressure. That's a reasonable expectation. Very reasonable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interviews at SOPA/PIPA Protest in San Francisco's Civic Center - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/qHzhqneEg-M

<comment><USER2> Hey Carl, thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER2> You did a great camera work!</comment>


Why Loggly Chose AWS Route 53 Over Elastic Load Balancing - <AUTHOR> https://www.loggly.com/blog/why-aws-route-53-over-elastic-load-balancing/ <comment><USER2> Former Loggly employee here. Loggly is at CTO #3 or 4 in about 3 years. The CEO, marketing guy with black turtle neck, "runs" engineering. It is NOT an engineering company and they are on their way to outsourcing all development to India.

Formally they had all of their EC2 instances configured to run without swap and didn't use EBS such that instances would crash 1-3 times a day and lose all data which would require 1-2 day customer restores of data.

Additionally, this Java shop oversubscribed threads on every Solr box which made them restart each Solr instance every hour. To think any revolutionary engineering ideas come from an former Apple marketing wannabee who puts outsourced Indian engineering in place as yes men is a huge stretch.

Let's be honest, Loggly is in huge trouble and can't hire quality engineering talent and as a result is trying to remarket themselves as an engineering driven company as they outsource to India.

Key question isn't..do you use DNS or Elastic Load Balance...it is...what is your VOLUNTARY RATE OF ATTRITION? Hint, really bad!

<comment><USER3> I interviewed there for a devops/sys admin role and ran far away after that process when I learned about what is going on and problems the ops group has to solve.

Then reading this fluff piece made me glad I never even thought about working there after that phone interview. Whoever claims a DNS round robin is a good way to handle fail over doesn't really know what they are talking about. I have dug into the how something like rsyslog handles a dns request. My guess is it just passes it off to the OS.

But what I got from this is loggly is ok with losing customer data

<comment><USER4> could you expand on what made you run away? i.e. what sort of problems which are tasked upon the ops group would make an ops person run away?

This is unrelated to the loggly bit, it would just be interesting to know for a non-ops-guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Serious question: Are people upvoting this to poke fun like some kind of daily wtf?

A logging platform that lists 1 of their 2 major requirements as "To not drop any data, ever" is using round robin DNS for fault tolerance? I can't see too many people on HN upvoting this for being insightful or impressive.

Edit: I just can't help myself. How are you going to send syslog when any server fails and not "drop any data, ever"? Even over TCP the in transit messages are lost when the connection is broken. So like, their business is basically syslog and they don't know that?

<comment><USER6> I upvoted it in the hopes that someone would provide the missing piece. Like "oh, we forgot to mention that the DNS is pointing to our own haproxy servers that all have redundant power/network/whatever) or something.

<comment><USER7> Loggly seems to be all about running In The Cloud, so that seems unlikely.

EC2 instances running haproxy would mitigate a number of the problems they discussed with using ELBs but the inability to use VIPs (with vrrp or ucarp) in AWS means that a failure will always boil down to the same pattern: a key front end instance dies, client traffic keeps being directed to it for 5 minutes (at best), and that's life.

<comment><USER8> The only way for them to fix this would be to have their own client that would attempt retries while caching unacked logs locally, but they market not needing a client (only syslog) as the benefit.

TL;DR Loggly can't promise no data lose in its current incarnation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > If there is an issue with a collector, Route 53 automatically takes it out > of the service; our customers won't see any impact.

Except when for example rsyslog caches DNS resolution forever. Or the log forwarded doesn't have a buffer and logs get lost.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I don't get their approach. There is no way this will cause 100% delivery if one server fails within that rotation.

That chances of failure go up dramatically if 2+ hosts behind round robin fail, etc.

Not to mention once hosts resolve this to an IP they will re-use the route. This approach is not balanced.

I don't want to be /that/ guy but if they can't scale with ELB they should invest in a dedicated load balancer infrastructure that can offload requests to their cloud instances.

This is a really bizarre post.

<comment><USER11> I am more worried about the DNS caching issue.

The 2+ hosts failing should not be much of a problem if you have a separate health checker host which does nothing except gathering heart-beats from all the hosts in your fleet and updating the DNS periodically.

<comment><USER10> That's exactly why it's a problem.

If you have 3 hosts and 2 of them go down, in this setup there is more than 50% chance that cached hosts will be trying to connect to a non-existing server.

Also expecting client to perform a DNS lookup every time there is an outgoing log packet is pretty shitty for performance. You can't guarantee near instant DNS server availability for every client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of other comments have torn this article apart (and justifiably so), but I still feel the need to pile on.

In their docs, Loggly only gives out one API endpoint: logs-01.loggly.com.

It is referenced as the endpoint for HTTP, HTTPS, syslog and syslog TLS. These seem to be the only methods available to send log data to them.

There is the obvious problem that a DNS record with a 60s TTL cannot possibly receive every single packet sent to it in the event of a server failure. Even if the returned IP address is an elastic IP, it takes a substantial amount of time to move to another instance in AWS.

I don't know why you would use the same service hostname for all of these endpoints. Separate names for each endpoint, even if they all pointed to the same pool of hosts, would at least give some flexibility in the future when they have enough traffic to get desperate about capacity. I would also think they might want to segregate native syslog from HTTP traffic, since I presume it uses different processes on the backend.

It's also curious that they chose to return only one A record. DNS RR is a poor substitute for real load balancing, but it's better than nothing. With multiple A records, there is at least a chance that some of their traffic will go to other servers -- rather than all of it potentially going to one as it is now.

While they made no claims about using Route 53 for its geo DNS capabilities, I still found it amusing that I was sent to a US East IP from California. Not that it's super critical that my log lines get delivered quickly, but it is ideal to shorten the path of an insecure and unreliable transport in order to improve durability. Although I would never ship syslog out to some host on the Internet, a host 16 hops away is even more ludicrous.

I think their article says a lot more about how poorly ELBs function when you exceed the low traffic threshold it is seemingly designed for than about how well Route 53 works (and it is a decent static DNS service). The inability to robustly direct incoming traffic is the achilles heel of AWS.

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a rather large technical divide between 'no logs left behind' and relying on DNS lookup to provide that guarantee.

<comment><USER13> I was thinking the exact same thing while reading this - it reads like a company that doesn't understand the unique challenges involved with distributed computing.

I'm actually in the middle of deciding between Loggly, Papertrail, and Logentries for centralized log management. I guess that cuts it down to two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is primitive. It seems like they are on the verge of discovering BGP, which could be used to provide scalability, load balancing, and clean failover without DNS caching issues.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why would you allow your clients to transmit potentially sensitive data to you as clear text over the internet?

<comment><USER16> I'm sure it's because rsyslog supports it (many mentions in the article to staying compliant with rsyslog).

<comment><USER15> Thats what I don't get, how is it responsible to stay compliant when that means insecure?

<comment><USER17> You can use rsyslog with TLS [http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/rsyslog_tls.html](http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/rsyslog_tls.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are some alternatives to Loggly? I really like being able to aggregate my logs with minimal setup (and cost). I'm logging with Logback (Java), and there is a convenient extension that forwards log statements to Loggly.

<comment><USER19> We just finished writing a syslog4j-derived Logback appender with support for UDP, TCP with TLS encryption, and cleartext TCP:

Background and setup: [http://help.papertrailapp.com/kb/configuration/java- logback-...](http://help.papertrailapp.com/kb/configuration/java-logback- logging/)

GitHub repo: [https://github.com/papertrail/logback- syslog4j](https://github.com/papertrail/logback-syslog4j)

Papertrail also works with the standard Logback SyslogAppender.

<comment><USER18> Does the syslog appender handle large, multi-line log messages (i.e. messages containing stack traces)?

I recall having some trouble with that when using syslog with Loggly, before switching over to the json appender.

<comment><USER19> Short answer: it depends.

Long answer: logback and both appenders can accept pattern formats to adjust how they're formatted. How useful the end result is depends a lot on the receiver, though, and more than that, there's no one implementation that's great for everyone -- that is, there's no right way to "handle large, multi- line log messages," only attempts at making them more useful.

An easy example is searching. Some people want to see the entire message, others want only the matching portion of a stack trace, others want some combination, and others - probably most people - just want something that's useful, however the actual UX works.

In Papertrail's case, our sender-specific context links (think grep -A/-B/-C) were designed for navigating multiline output from a single sender: [https://papertrailapp.com/tour/viewer/context](https://papertrailapp.com/tour/viewer/context). It's basically pivoting from a single entry in a stack trace to the entire stack trace.

<comment><USER18> My main concern isn't formatting or searching, but truncation, see [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2011986/does-syslog- reall...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2011986/does-syslog-really- have-a-1kb-message-limit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting points. Here is a few things you'll miss choosing Route 53 over ELB:

* HTTPS termination.

* Autoscaling group management. By connecting an ELB to an autoscaling group, the logic of registration and deregistration is fully managed behind the scenes. With route53, you have to implement it yourself.

* Minimum autoscaling group size. If you enable ELB health checks, you can rely on the ELB to maintain a group of instances of constant size.

<comment><USER21> ELB's HTTPS termination is mediocre and, last I checked, doesn't offer the best ciphers. A year ago It was impossible to get an A+ on ssltest [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/) using ELB to terminate SSL.

Not to mention it still needlessly includes a ton of dangerously insecure ciphers just begging to be misclicked.

<comment><USER22> The current default, ELBSecurity Policy-2014-01 [1] enables ECDSA/PFS and is close to the Mozilla TLS recommendations [2]. Getting an A+ on the Qualys test requires the HSTS header [3], which isn't an ELB issue.

[1] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/Devel...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/elb- security-policy-table.html)

[2] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS#Amazon_Web...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS#Amazon_Web_Services_Elastic_Load_Balancer_.28AWS_ELB.29)

[3] [http://mir.aculo.us/2014/04/04/how-to-get-an-a-on-the- qualsy...](http://mir.aculo.us/2014/04/04/how-to-get-an-a-on-the-qualsys-ssl- labs-test/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What kind of TTL value would they use for these records? Should something happen to one of the collectors, couldn't that value still be cached by an endpoint or an intermediary?

Even with a short TTL, are there still servers out there that don't respect all TTLs, or has that been eliminated by now?

</comment><comment><USER24> Everyone should use hosted services for everything. Soon we'll have hosted services for hosted services. (I actually worked at a company that was a hosted service running mainly off of another hosted service + AWS.)

</comment><comment><USER25> >Amazon Route 53 DNS Round Robin Was a Win

>If you've ever used the Internet, you've used the Domain Name System, or DNS, weather you realize it or not.

Interesting article, wrong weather used in this sentence.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for noticing this! It's fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems odd to leave off any discussion about DNS TTLs, and the risk that something like 220.127.116.11 could end up sending them a thundering herd.

</comment><comment><USER28> What kind of time granularity can you get for health checks on ELB vs Route 53?

<comment><USER20> ELB Health Check: min, max = (1s, 300s)

Route 53 Health Check: either 10s or 30s</comment></comment>


America's middle class is shrinking almost everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/11/news/economy/middle-class-shrinking/ <comment><USER2> I thought the video was interesting, but the CNN editorial commentary is just vapid:

> There's no one reason why the middle class is shrinking, Kochhar said. One > of the main causes? Rising income inequality, driven by factors

Right. That's exactly the same as saying "the main cause of the middle class shrinking is the middle class shrinkin".

> They are also seeing their incomes shrivel.

So is that. _sigh_

Common, journalists. You can't really be _that_ lazy.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately this is par for the course for CNN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One more reason to endorse [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world)</comment>


HP CEO Mark Hurd Resigns Over Sexual Harassment Investigation - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hp-ceo-mark-hurd-resigns-cfo-cathie-lesjak-appointed-interim-ceo-hp-announces-preliminary-results-and-raises-full-year-outlook-2010-08-06?reflink=MW_news_stmp <comment><USER2> This is really sad. HP has been making a lot of really interesting strategic decisions lately, some decisions that I think have been set up through acquisitions and product development over the past few years. Mark Hurd seemed to know what he was doing on a long term scale, which is something unusual in a company like HP. That he was fired over something as unrelated to business skill as sexual harassment is sad. Shame on him, of course, but I wonder if his absence will end up hurting HP more in the long term than his personal actions over the short term.

HP recently hired some top notch industrial designers, and their newest computers are built far better than the older ones. The acquisition of WebOS was strategic. HP is poised to take on Android and iOS if they can execute well enough. From what I have seen, HP has been putting all the pieces into place for positioning themselves as the Apple of the PC world, at least in their high end market. They even embarrassed Microsoft by refusing to support the Windows 7 Slate in a consumer device. That's a big risk I was surprised HP took. It sends a message.

I was excited about HP's future, but now I'm not so sure. HP just lost its Steve Jobs.

\---

Someone else in this thread linked to this awesome NYT article about Hurd: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/technology/companies/26hp....](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/technology/companies/26hp.html)

<comment><USER3> _That he was fired over something as unrelated to business skill as sexual harassment is sad._

It turns out that it was more to do with inappropriate payments to a contractor with whom he had a person relationship. [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-06/hp-chief-mark- hurd-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-06/hp-chief-mark-hurd-resigns- finance-chief-cathie-lesjak-named-interim-ceo.html) The headlines are rather misleading in this respect...I'm not sure whether that tells us more about journalists or the way HP announced his departure.

edit: more comprehensive report w/press release text: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_i...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=69578&tsp=1)

But regardless of the specifics, your implication that a firm should employ no other criteria than financial ones for employment decisions is odd to me. Private affairs are one thing, but committing a crime or tort on the job is considered unacceptable for most employees. How much incidental misbehavior do you think is excusable by high productivity? Alternatively, how much lawsuit liability should an employee be able to run up on their own account?

<comment><USER4> Greed. If you're going to have a monetary sexual relationship, might as well as man up and pay from your own pocket, not put it on the company's tab.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _But as the years passed, as I dealt with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and with Packard himself, I began to understand that the key to the greatness of Bill Hewlett and David Packard was that they held no attachment to things, only people. The garage was left behind, as would be, in time, the redwood building. So too was the audio oscillator and thousands of other products--all abandoned in the endless pursuit of something better. Only the people remained, and they were cherished and respected, far more than by any corporation in history._

\- Michael Malone <http://www.forbes.com/2000/10/19/1019malone.html>

Mark Hurd did not fit in this mold. Neither did Fiorina.

<comment><USER6> The curse of the publicly traded company, after the founders retire. There are precious few companies that can survive this transition - as the principled, long-term management style is swapped out for quick profits and lowest-common- denominator management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

<comment><USER8> Maybe less than five minutes.

<comment><USER9> Actually, I've wondered idly before what that time window might be between witnessing a behavior in someone for whom you hold a lot of respect and deciding that no, it's not an illusion, they are actually doing that, and that your estimation of them will consequently have to go down.

<comment><USER8> Um, I think you missed the joke :-\

<comment><USER10> Just FYI, I got it and found it funny. Highlight of the thread, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He says _"I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career"_

While his actions do seem inexcusable, it is good to see that he is admitting error. Too often, people refuse to accept any personal errors and prefer to portray themselves as innocent victims. It is good to see that Hurd didn't choose that path.

 _[edit: note to downvoters and johnknee's question - HP's investigation concluded that there were violations of HP's standards of business conduct and Hurd himself has acknowledged his error. Hurd has also admitted that the inaccurate expense reports were intended to conceal his personal relationship with the female marketing contractor and that this "showed a profound lack of judgment"

If you disagree and if you find no fault with Hurd, I suggest you take it up with HP and with Hurd himself.]_

<comment><USER12> > While his actions do seem inexcusable

What were his actions? I didn't see anything about what the accusation was.

<comment><USER3> _Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Mark Hurd resigned as chief executive officer after an investigation found he had a personal relationship with a contractor who received pay from the company that wasn't business- related._

[http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-06/hp-s-mark- hurd-r...](http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-06/hp-s-mark-hurd-resigns- after-sexual-harassment-probe.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The investigation determined there was no violation of HP's sexual harassment policy, but did find violations of HP's Standards of Business Conduct." - hum, that is a curious line.

HP seems to have no luck with CEOs. I wonder if they will use this situation to find someone more familiar with the mobile space.

<comment><USER14> They are in a tricky situation because a the alleged victim will certainly sue the company if she (or he) has not done so already, so if the board admits there was sexual harassment in an internal investigation that will be used against the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google stop supporting a product that not many people used, and it jumps to a thousand upvotes and remains on top for over a day, attracting hundreds of comments.

The CEO of a top 5 IT firm resigns after admitting to inproprietaries and sexual harrasment, dropping almost 10% of the stock price (around 10B of market cap) and the story struggles to make the front page and doesn't attract many comments.

This is really big news, and I am surprised that it isn't being covered more and more in-depth. I think it is fair to say that a large portion of HN readers, and the general tech/startup blogosphere, have no idea how the IT world works, who this guy really was, what his job was etc. If this was Apple, the story wouldn't die for weeks. Enterprise and hardware make up a huge part of IT, it is just covered poorly.

(Edit: there was a lot of hype around wave, granted, I could probably find a better example of less-significant events that attract a lot of attention)

</comment><comment><USER15> This guy should move to Russia.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/2470...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/2470310/Sexual- harrassment-okay-as-it-ensures-humans-breed-Russian-judge-rules.html)

<comment><USER16> Wow. That situation sounds pretty bad.

<comment><USER17> > According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they > had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses

As much as I hate Russia^, this is total BS. I can speak of Moscow, S.Petersburg, Perm, Ryazan. It could be anywhere between 0-60%, but 70-100% simply does not match reality.

^ - I'm allowed to, I live here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> He's getting an 8-figure severance package:

<http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100806-715953.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> Judging from how HP apparently tries to create products that rip off customers (like minuscule ink refills that cost $14 a pop and run out almost immediately), my cynical belief is that "lack of character" is necessary, if not sufficient, for promotion at HP. But in this case, they had nowhere to promote him to.

</comment><comment><USER9> On the investor call they said they can't talk about candidates right now, but how about subsumed Palm CEO and Apple alum Jon Rubinstein? I don't know how he would fare helming such a vastly larger ship, but the guy knows a thing or two about a focused product strategy and the importance of good UX.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is no wonder in Mark Hurd's ouster. He was a corporate butcher. In the name of cost cutting he has made the life of many people miserable. Rather I would say that the curse of thousands of people who got suffered because of his dictatorial policies punished him by sacking him. He would have got millions of dollars as severance payment. But history remains that "Mark Hurd has been fired". Instead of finding new avenues and channels to accommodate the efficient employees, he has simply turned out to be a butcher of sending the people to burial ground.

</comment><comment><USER21> Idea from far left: this sets up Jon Rubinstein as a potential incoming CEO. He's got the technical chops, and was acquired recently with Palm for a significant amount of money. While I don't have information to confirm otherwise, Rubinstein seems to have the work ethics espoused by Hewlett and Packard. Who knows, maybe HP at the hands of Rubinstein would really rise to become a true competitor to Apple.

</comment><comment><USER22> i wonder how a new CEO will effect the palm acquisition.

<comment><USER23> On general principles expect it to die in one way or another, unless it's got a major high level champion left in the company (note that the departure of Hurd might be followed by some people who will now be lacking political cover).

I'm not saying this will happen, it's just that this is an all too common pattern. _Nothing_ in big companies that work like HP gets anywhere without champions ... so see if there are any left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> hey, HP, Jay Allard just left Microsoft! He has built his life on the social aspects of the internet, and knows games. I bet he could make a really successful tablet and phone product.

<comment><USER24> Social aspects of the internet and games are not part of HP's strategy. HP's in the business of selling infrastructure that makes the internet and games possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm just curious, is anyone looking at the board for a pattern? Shouldn't they have caught on this behavior sooner and taken action to rectify it before this big pile of public mess?

</comment><comment><USER24> Hurd is a brilliant man and above all, the man could execute. He leaves behind some very talented executives. Let's hope they stick around. This is a wonderful opportunity for someone new to come aboard and give the company a more solid vision because it was unclear what HP's vision was under Hurd. It's tough when you have 300K+ employees.

I think this calls for Vyomesh Joshi to step up. Now that's a guy that works wonders. He's keeping the printing business alive (against all odds) with some serious leadership and innovation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I used to be obsessed with this 2009 NYTimes profile about him and read it several times: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/technology/companies/26hp....](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/technology/companies/26hp.html)

Not anymore.

<comment><USER26> As someone who has faced different forms of abuse, including sexual abuse. I would ask people not to judge anyone on the basis of sparse information or their mistakes.

We don't even know what happened over here, and I think that nobody is in a position to comment on/judge either party involved. It's just too complicated.

On the other hand, the amazing thing is that HP still retains its core values and asked Mr. Hurd to resign even when they had the option of simply burying it. Even though Bill and Dave are long gone the spirit of their institution still survives. Simply Amazing.

[edit: I am pretty sure that a lot of people will find this comment to be offensive, but think about it. Does judging a situation and the people involved as an outsider help anyone? In fact, it just makes it worse.

On a more personal note, I don't want to be a victim of the cards I've been dealt. I would rather learn how to play the hand. I've learnt to see the silver lining, learn and just move on. It makes life easier to deal with. ]

<comment><USER27> I wouldn't be so quick to claim HP has any real values. Do you remember this? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_spying_scandal>

The simple fact of the matter is that HP makes some decent servers and low cost storage that we buy a lot of. Unfortunately in recent years Mark Hurd has cut their support staff so thin, and outsourced most of it to Costa Rica, so that now when you need support on a server you're more likely to get someone speaking english as a second language that knows about enough to order a part # for you and have it shipped so you can replace it yourself.

I guess for these "cost-cutting measures" Mark Hurd should be praised, or at least he has been praised in this business environment. I don't think he has particularly done anything brilliant other than accelerate the globalization and outsourcing of the tech industry as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So Hurd is finally finished?

hoho</comment>


US Secret Service IT is 1980s mainframes, only up 60% of the time - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-secret-service-outdated-computer-mainframe-system-1980s/story?id=9945663

<comment><USER2> I don't know what's more worrying--the state of the Secret Service's IT, or the prospect of the government attempting to replace all of it with an ambitious new IT development project.

<comment><USER3> If you haven't worked in government contracting you don't know just how spot on this comment is.

<comment><USER4> If you haven't worked in government contracting read this:

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/who-killed- the-v...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/who-killed-the-virtual- case-file)

<comment><USER3> "...poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements; overly ambitious schedules; and the lack of a plan to guide hardware purchases, network deployments, and software development for the bureau."

Yup, that's about how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's part of me that actually feels relieved at this news. If these are the same people enforcing the Patriot Act, I feel like I have a fighting chance now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, that's old! Just by looking at Moore's law: 30/1.5 = 20, a machine of the same size would have aproximatively 2^20 times more power!

</comment><comment><USER7> Just goes to show you what red tape does. It's sad that servers that even the smallest startup uses are more advanced and modern than those of the United States government.

<comment><USER8> There is no need to throw out something that works well, however old it is. New startups will end up using the more modern stuff, just like older ones will end up with slightly older equipment. That's not a problem unless if affects reliability.

That, of course, assumes the government solution works fine, something the article says it doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd buy a couple 327xs if they come up in an auction!

</comment><comment><USER9> sad (and terrifying)</comment>


Twitter bans two Twitter clients - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2011/02/18/twitterTestsTheirKillSwitc.html

<comment><USER2> IMHO this is disingenuous linkbait. An attempt is made to connect a political speech issue with a technical measure used to block certain software. Whether Twitter has any interest in blocking _content_ might be an interesting discussion, but it has nothing to do with this afternoon's hot story.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. This post also neglects to mention that UberMedia has admitted to some TOS violations and that Twitter wants to get them back into the ecosystem:

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/18/ubermedia-bill-gross- twitte...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/18/ubermedia-bill-gross-twitter- surprise/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty sure that hadn't been published when I wrote my piece. Maybe you guys should try this new idea called "benefit of the doubt." :-)

<comment><USER4> Maybe you should try this new idea of not overdramatizing to create link bait. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2236746>

<comment><USER6> This is a different perspective. It speaks to the developer relationship that Twitter worked so hard to cultivate in the early days, and turned around recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It's right there in the last paragraph. Maybe the other guys didn't make it that far. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Interactive tutorial: generative adversarial networks (GANs) for beginners - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/learning/generative-adversarial-networks-for-beginners/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for making this. You should also post it to [https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmachinelearning/](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmachinelearning/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Hope it's helpful.

This is on /r/machinelearning, but I'll post it on /r/learnmachinelearning as well.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6fxbcr/int...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6fxbcr/interactive_tutorial_generative_adversarial/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Code from the tutorial, including the notebook itself, is available on GitHub here: [https://github.com/jonbruner/generative-adversarial- networks](https://github.com/jonbruner/generative-adversarial-networks)</comment>


Being Human is Good Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/being-human-is-good-business/ <comment><USER2> Assistly seems like an interesting customer service platform if human vs issue centered customer service really is their differentiating feature.</comment>


Tips for selling your side project - <AUTHOR> http://codeandtechno.com/posts/tips-for-selling-your-side-project/ <comment><USER2> I'm the Director of Websites at Flippa.com, we're an online marketplace for buying and selling websites, domain names, and smartphone apps.

To date, we've signed up 900,000 users and have done over $180,000,000 in total transactions, and we've helped thousands of entrepreneurs sell their side projects :)

If you're looking to sell a side project, my biggest tips are:

1\. Keep an accurate accounting of financials

2\. Install analytics and ensure it is capturing data correctly

3\. Be realistic about price expectations (ex. websites typically trade at 2-4x annual net profit).

If anyone has a website and is interested in getting a free professional no- obligation valuation, you can simply visit: [https://flippa.com/deal- flow/sell](https://flippa.com/deal-flow/sell)

I'm also happy to answer any questions people might have about selling a website, app or domain. You can contact me directly at joseph.carroll[at]flippa.com or you can simply respond to this thread.

<comment><USER3> The sibling comments snark to you is unwarranted, at the very least the escrow service flippa provides adds significant value to the process of selling a site.

I recently found a site on flippa, after the auction had closed, with no sale. I've been unable to contact the owner. I'd really like to make an offer, unfortunate for me! Any tips on that situation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "They'll see the code, and if the code is shit, then you may be in trouble"

Has anyone EVER gotten "in trouble" for shit code? It's about 80-90% of everything I've ever come across in the last 15 years. And frankly, probably 50-60% of what I've produced in that time also falls in that camp as well. It's only been in the last 5-10 years that attention to code quality has _really_ been on my radar, prompted in part because I've had to provide support on stuff I wrote 10-15 years ago and ... it really opened my eyes as to where I cut corners and the huge impact it can have.

<comment><USER5> This sounds like "half of the code I see is below average".

Good code is rare because goodness of code is a relative measure against other code.

<comment><USER4> doesn't have to be. it can be measured against defined standards - documentation, tests, clear naming, complexity metrics, etc. it's not just a case of "half of everything is above average".

I used to compare my code to my previous code and other code I saw, and most of the time it was 'good'. When I started comparing my code to more external measures, most of my own code would now be 'poor', because of the external things it didn't measure up to. Now, often, there were valid reasons for cutting corners, but... that doesn't make the code itself better, it just justified the poor quality.

<comment><USER5> I agree with everything you've said in your reply but it does not contradict what I said.

To be more specific, the "defined standards" (docs, tests etc) are measures of what makes something better or worse. They aren't a measure of what is good. What is good is if those docs, tests etc are superior to the docs, tests etc of other code.

And we are right where back to the relative measure problem.

One could come up with an objective measure of "good" which would require a threshold for these measures. Such a measure would require us to say that a project is good if the docs are of such and such standard, the test coverage >60%, the names can be understood by most people and so forth.

However, I think that standard would still be informed by what most people do.

To put it another way, if we waved a magical wand and everyone started documenting and testing starting tomorrow, then "good" code would require something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't want to be too negative but the entire post could have been shortened to 'put it on Flippa'. Then, the other advice is quite obvious.

Flippa isn't bad but if your side project is good for anything and you want to achieve a better price, do a small M&A process: Identify potential buyers yourself, approach them and keep the approaches synced to create and keep up competition. Also you could combine this manual leadgen with Flippa.

<comment><USER7> You mean spam people?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hello. I'm Eric and I run [http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com)

Thanks for listing it on your article.

I suppose unlike other sites, SideProjectors is completely free, so no cost for people to listing it and selling it.

Then the immediate question is "how do you make money?".

Well, I'm a developer and I run other businesses so, SideProjectors is... really my side project. And it has been for almost 4 or 5 years.

I started SideProjectors at a local hackathon where we won a prize from Freelancer! and it all started from there. It receives a constant flow of projects each day and a number of projects have been sold since it started.

In terms of getting the most amount of exposure, I think personally, the most important thing is providing as much detail as possible. It's likely to be featured on the front page, it will show people that you are serious about the project and if not being sold, people will at least message you asking many follow-up questions.

I've been meaning to add a bunch of features to SideProjectors, so hopefully it'll continue to improve!

<comment><USER9> Are you going to sell SideProjectors on SideProjectors someday?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I buy side projects -- if you have traffic / revenue, drop me a line with the URL and some high level stats and lets talk.

<comment><USER11> Cool. How do you personally think about the value of a small project? What do you look for? Does the ideal for you look something like "buy it, let it go, it never needs anything, and you make more and more money, hoping one of these will really take off". Or maybe you invest in care, feeding, and growth... Or both...

I suspect many of us here have side projects, so understanding them as investments would help us help someone like you, I'm guessing.

<comment><USER10> There are two investment strategies when looking at a potential purchase either (1) buy and hold or (2) buy and flip. The value of a small project stems from its upside potential. At a high level it's important to consider the niche, growth potential (is there room to improve the website, position in market, etc), buyers personal experience, and quite importantly the current and historical traffic and revenue.

It's important to note there are rarely any websites where anyone can "buy it, let it go, it never needs anything, and you make more and more money, hoping one of these will really take off." I can't tell you the number of times a developer thinks this is true for their side project, overvalues it, and comes back a few years down the road telling me they are looking to sell but now with traffic and revenue 10x lower than what it used to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bought a number of side projects, its a nice way to get a validation of the market. I always like to see a number of paying customers even if it is just a few.

<comment><USER13> What so you do with them? Expand and flip, or maintain and reap the monthlies, or what?

I understand why someone sick of a project would sell it. I don't fully understand the buyer market. Why would someone pay 20k for some car muffler site that makes 2k a year in AdWords traffic?

<comment><USER12> My experience :

I bought a number of smaller projects that serve as traffic generators to bigger projects, typical freemium services that provide me regular signups on a daily basis.You can make the calc: pay a few thousands for years of free referrals.

I bought a bigger project 10K+ and that has technical issues that need to be resolved (will migrate from Node.js to PHP) but i have an existing customer base that helps understand the problem you try to fix. I am rebuilding the solution but in the same time i can experiment with pricing and traffic generation on the service i bought.. it is a de-risking strategy.

The reason why people sold in general because they don't have the marketing budgets to carry the project when its initial launch spike runs out.

EDIT : I typically pay 5x recurring revenu max or max 1K to 2K for non revenue generating sites that have interesting traffic of an audience I target Edit 2: I want to build a recurring revenue stream to supplement my consulting business

<comment><USER14> Where do you find the side projects to buy and how do you perform due diligence on them?

<comment><USER12> I find the sites on the services mentioned in the article, Sideprojects and Flippa

I do due Diligence myself , I have a good technical background and a good digital marketing background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would it be wrong to use a finance-textbook approach e.g. recurring revenue divided by a rate of return? (Or rate_of_return minus rate_of_growth, using the Gordon model.) For example, if I get 1k/mo in ads, dividing it by (0.25 / 12) would result in a sale value of 48k.

The rate of return must reflect of course the high risk of the investment (e.g. users may migrate to other app and revenue dwindles) and must also cover the costs of app maintenance (every major release of mobile app takes some maintenance in code, at least).

I used 25%/year as example but I am not really sure if it is too low (or too high). Fact is, not many investments yield 25%/year.

</comment><comment><USER16> How do you know what your side project is worth?

<comment><USER17> Typical valuation methods are: multiples, replacement value, comparable transactions.

1) Multiples: a comment from Flippa says websites go for 2-4x annual net profit, which is similar to a Mom&Pop operation. So if your side project made $5,000 per year, then value would be $15,000 at 3x multiple.

I like to think about multiples in years. It'll take me 3 years to make my initial investment back - then I think is that good or bad? Apple's stock price to earnings is at 12.6 years, Amazon is at 99 years.

2) Replacement Value: if you estimate your time to be $100 per hour and you could replicate the app/website + business in 1 month, then $100 x 8 hrs/day x 20 business days = $16,000.

3) Comparable Transactions: if you see projects similar to yours going for $25,000, then that's what the market is saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> People interested in buying website should also look at [https://empireflippers.com/](https://empireflippers.com/).

P.S. I am not associated with them in any way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll add it to the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whenever I have a project, I have this insatiable itch to stick it on my Github. I love open source, so unfortunately I don't think I'll ever be able to sell something I make.

<comment><USER20> Open source doesn't mean you'll never be able to sell it.

Your belief that you'd never be able to sell the things you make just means you aren't thinking creatively enough about how to sell it.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. The first thing that comes to mind is that the brand identity of a product may be valuable enough that the fact you can get its source code for free doesn't have a huge impact on its value.

Of course this would require you to license it in a way such that the source code is free but the brand isn't, a la PHP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice article. I'm looking for a (SaaS) side project to buy. Some thing that is making $3k or more.

<comment><USER22> I'm in the same situation, and I haven't found any marketplace save for Feinternational where you'd be able to buy something like that. Either you can buy SaaS with million+ run rates (which of course cost a lot), or you find mostly ecommerce/AdSense/affiliate type of businesses (Flippa etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone interested in selling their SaaS app? Mainly looking for / interested in projects generating between $10-35k in MRR. If so, shoot me an e-mail (in profile). That probably doesn't classify as a side project anymore, though..

</comment><comment><USER13> What did the site in the story sell for? Beer money isn't descriptive enough.

<comment><USER24> Lower bound for someone who "really likes beer" is maybe a six-pack a week or about $500 for the year.

Upper bound is maybe three fancy pints per day or about $7500 per year.

About the same range as a used motorcycle on Craigslist.

<comment><USER13> So let's meet in the middle and call it $3k?

If you value your time at $100 an hour, and had $1k in expenses total (servers + ads), you would need to have spent 20 hours or less on the project to "break even"...

Seems like I would just leave the sucker up to get a few bucks a month vs selling so cheap.

<comment><USER25> > _If you value your time at $100 an hour_

Because very many programmers, even in the US, make 240,000 per year? ($100x8x25 _12). Or even $300-$350K, given all the overtime people do?

How about $30-$40/hour to be more realistic ($70K-$100K per year).

And how about, it's your side project, so you get to work on it whenever you like, using whatever technology you like, from home etc, and those aren't exactly hours you'd be able to bill to anyone (and because you also have a day job, you wouldn't even want to take extra billable customer work).

>_and had $1k in expenses total (servers + ads), you would need to have spent 20 hours or less on the project to "break even"*

Or you need to like what you're doing, and know that you would have done something similar anyway even if not to sell it, and thus consider the money an extra bonus.

<comment><USER26> Your hourly wage should be priced much higher than your wage for fixed yearly employment because the time is inconsistent and there is overhead.

If you make $100k/year at a full time salaried job you should price your hourly at $100/hr. This is why plumbers charge $80+/hr -- it is skilled labor and the work is not constant and there is overhead.

You have to consider vacation time/benefits/overhead/etc. To estimate yearly salary _at full employment of near 40hrs /wk_ is double the hourly x 1000 per year. So a $100/hr wage is about $200k/year _if you are working a full 40hrs per week on client work and there is no overhead_. This is never the case -- there is always overhead.

tldr: $100k/hr is not at all an unreasonable level for a software developer to value their hourly time.

<comment><USER13> > tldr: $100k/hr is not at all an unreasonable level for a software developer > to value their hourly time.

I was with you until you added the k to the last line ;)

But yes, I don't think looking at a dev thing and valuing my time as $100 an hour is that far off. Even if it is off by $50 either way, it makes math easier...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would love to buy someone's side project if there is negligible work to maintain it (although then why would you sell it). But still if someone just wants something off their plate.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd recommend using https for the sign up form to improve the conversion rate. Some people(like myself) would be more likely to join.

Free certificates available from letsencrypt.org (no affiliation).

</comment><comment><USER28> Built basically the same thing when I was looking for a decent office chair (scrape craigslist and send me an email), though it lacked the nice front-end.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a UK SaaS web business I'm interested in selling. If you're interested you can find my contact info in my HN profile.

</comment><comment><USER29> No we need an Ask HN for project ideas that sell.</comment>