Ruby 1.9.3 RC1 is out - <AUTHOR> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/388203

<comment><USER2> _sigh_ I wish I could get excited about MRI releases. It's one of the most disappointing parts of using Ruby for my daily grind. The sluggish pace of innovation is sometimes demoralizing. Until 1.9.2, released a year after 1.9.1, and 4 years after 1.9.0, the 1.9 branch was too unstable for production use. Why were 1.9.0 and 1.9.1 GA releases again? The GC also still sucks, so the performance improvements from 1.9 are mostly nullified in real world applications.

Sometimes I wish the work on alternative implementations would be devoted to effort on MRI, but I understand this is a much more complex issue than it appears on the surface. It seems like all of the developers interested in real change in MRI that have the skills to make that change have hopped on to more interesting alternative implementations or left Ruby altogether.

While I've put JRuby in production for some smaller, non-Rails codebases that used JVM libraries, I've tried to run some non-trivial Rails applications on JRuby and it's just too slow for development work. Load time on code seems to be an order of magnitude slower, which is real time that adds up over a day worth of work to be something significant, so I'm back to REE. Rubinius is cool and they've come an amazingly long way, but personally I think the project suffers from what I'm going to call "sufficiently smart compiler" syndrome. After 5 years of work, they're still not even close to JRuby or MRI performance on real-world applications.

I've spent hours and hours understanding the technical and human reasons why all of these problems exist, but unfortunately the reality of shipping things trumps.

I guess that's why I've got this Clojure book in front of me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a list of what's new in 1.9.3: [http://www.rubyinside.com/ruby-1-9-3-introduction-and- change...](http://www.rubyinside.com/ruby-1-9-3-introduction-and- changes-5428.html)

Scroll down on that page for some more lengthy explanation.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for linking to my article! There's also [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby- talk/...](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/388203) for a longer but more 'bulletpoint' list of items.

The key with 1.9.3 is it's essentially work on producing a better implementation internally. The language is mostly unchanged since 1.9.2 but 1.9.3 is a lot faster in specific situations. Couple this with the newly customizable GC settings (I'll be blogging about this shortly) and 1.9.3 is shaping up to be a fine release. 37signals are already using it in production, even.

(Plug: And for anyone on 1.8 who's ignorant of what 1.9 is about, I have something to help you at <http://rubyinside.com/19walkthrough/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's not forget Date got rewritten in C, so now it's fast:

<https://gist.github.com/1117138>

<comment><USER4> Pathname also. For anyone unfamiliar with it: [http://ruby- doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/pathname/rdoc/classes/Path...](http://ruby- doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/pathname/rdoc/classes/Pathname.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this do anything for rails startup time?

<comment><USER7> <http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/3924>

if i understand this correctly, it seems like it isn't...

"It can not be merged in 1.9.3, because it is late."

<comment><USER8> Actually, if you read through that issue there is a different patch that got accepted instead of xavier's that has similar performance improvements:

<http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/3924#note-45>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anybody know if the parallel tests will be ported to test-unit 2.x? Or if it is actually using minitest to do so: Is there a way to get minitest to output junit compatible xml? (ci_reporter doesn't support minitest)

</comment><comment><USER10>
      rand(1..10)

is now possible, cool!

Also:

      'est'.prepend('t') == 'test'

might be useful.

<comment><USER11> Why is

      "est".prepend('t')

more useful than

      "t" + "est"

? I don't see why a method for prepending to a string is necessary, when it is so simple anyway...

And random with a range parameter is useful shorthand.

Anyway, I'm more enthusiastic about performance improvements where file loading is concerned.

<comment><USER4> First, let's say you subclassed String or have a delegate. obj.prepend(str) will adjust obj _in place_ rather than create an all new String object (as str + obj would). This may be either desirable or critical, depending on what you're doing.

Second, prepend is a _lot_ faster than using + in this case. As in, a simple prepend runs in a mere 1.9% of the time (in a benchmark I just ran). Why? Fewer new objects are being created. And that means easier and fewer GC runs too.

Update: I think there is something slightly bust since on 1.9.2 using + handily beats prepend on 1.9.3. But GC has changed a lot. I'll retest on RC1 rather than preview1 ;-)

<comment><USER12> #prepend replaces _in place_? There's no #prepend! ?

<comment><USER4> No.

Conventionally, "bang" methods should only be created as 'dangerous' versions of non-bang methods. There was no non-bang method to make a 'dangerous' version of in this case so it's non-bang by default. This is a commonly misunderstood naming convention in Ruby (and I dare say I don't even understand all the intricacies!)

There are quite a few examples of this in Ruby. For example, Array#keep_if which changes an array in place.

<comment><USER12> I guess I misunderstood your definition of "in place". That jives with what I've understood about Ruby so far.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Verizon Introducing FiOS with 20Mbps Upstream and Downstream - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-verizon-discovers-symmetry-offers-2020-symmetrical-fios-service.html <comment><USER2> Verizon: can you just hurry up and buy AT&T? AT&T has made it plain that they'll never invest in FiOS, and we need it here in SF!

<comment><USER3> Haha! SBC bought AT&T, and yet, here I am, still stuck with AT&T.

Sadly that brand name will never die, unless they got bought by Coca-Cola.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> god i want FiOS sooo bad.</comment>


Run a Free BitTorrent Tracker on Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/run-a-free-bittorrent-tracker-on-google-090910/ <comment><USER2> Written by the _cat -v_ guy: <http://repo.cat-v.org/atrack/>

It keeps peer data exclusively in memcache -- would make it difficult for Google to comply with a subpoena, and foster maximum plausible deniability for all parties.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also "Using BitTorrent with Amazon S3" : [http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/index.html...](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/index.html?S3Torrent.html)

<comment><USER4> Thats for uploading/downloading data, not running the tracker.

<comment><USER3> Amazon provides the tracker, but you do have to keep a copy of the files you are providing on S3, increasing your liability if you are doing something illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This should end well.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's The Hidden Tracker too: <http://z6gw6skubmo2pj43.tor2web.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> how much traffic will it take to reach google's free limits though?

<comment><USER8> App Engine gives you 1.3M free requests per day. Assuming that each peer announces and scrapes every 10 minutes, that's over 4,500 simultaneous peers. You get 6.5 CPU-hours per day, which leaves you 18 CPU-ms per request.</comment></comment>


How jobs vanish: JD.com's warehouses fulfill 200,000 daily orders with 4 humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/china-jd-warehouse-jobs-4-employees-shanghai-d19f5cf1-f35b-4024-8783-2ba79a573405.html <comment><USER2> So when does China implement a Universal Basic Income haha.</comment>


Can Someone Open A Window Please? - <AUTHOR> http://buurmen.nl/can-someone-open-a-window-please/

<comment><AUTHOR> This only works when the opener window uses target="_blank"

When posted on Twitter, the page self-closes</comment>


Stanford researcher: Google Circumvents iOS Privacy protection in AdSense ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/time-make-amends-google-circumvents-privacy-settings-safari-users

<comment><USER2> The whole is "Don't be Evil" history thing is asked too often, frequently around things which probably aren't even borderline but this feels a valid case of calling them on it.

Deliberately exploiting a loophole to circumvent privacy controls is scummy behaviour, the sort of thing you expect from the industry's bottom feeders, not from one of the biggest companies in the game and certainly on that professes some sort of conscience.

You can argue its not really evil but it's hard to say its not another step towards that, and this time it seems hard to suggest that it's contractors or some peripheral part of the company.

<comment><USER3> > _"Deliberately exploiting a loophole to circumvent privacy controls is > scummy behaviour"_

      If (scummy < creepy){console.log("film@11")};
      else google = evil;

Tracking users is Google's core business. I'd be surprised if they were the only people who have figured out how to do this sort of thing.

Holding Google to some higher standard than other companies is naive at best. Its management has the same duties to the stockholders as any other company.

<comment><USER2> You're missing the point.

Don't be evil isn't the standard I set for them, it's the standard they set for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to thank Jonathan Mayer and others like him that go through code and find these secrets and then release them for the public good. You make a great difference.

</comment><comment><USER5> If Google uses security holes in Apple's browser to "enhance" user tracking, what might Google do if they had their own browser?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I dont understand the Chrome love from the typical "hacker." I personally use Webkit Nightly.

<comment><USER7> I use Chromium. That way, I can read the code and still get a really good browser. My analysis is: they only send information back to Google when you explicitly request it.

(But what if Debian ships me a version of gcc that embeds secret tracking code into any version of Chromium I compile? Oh the fear, uncertainty, and doubt!)

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately Chromium connects to Google just as frequently as Chrome does, vide - [http://www.freesmug.org/forum/t-433541/chromium-chrome- and-m...](http://www.freesmug.org/forum/t-433541/chromium-chrome-and- mysterious-server-connections)

<comment><USER7> Sure, but you can easily delete the code that does that. The point of Chromium is not that it doesn't talk to Google. The point is that you can read the source code to determine exactly when it does, and you can edit the source code to ensure that it doesn't do anything you don't want it to.

Yes, that's hard, but that's the price of freedom. I appreciate that Google at least lets me choose how I want to use their code, where Apple and Microsoft make the decisions for me and never let me double-check them. (As it stands, I trust Google with my personal information and I think the places where Chrome/Chromium communicate with Google are appropriate and make my browsing experience better. But it's 100% fine if you don't feel the same way.)

<comment><USER5> Full disclosure: jrockway is a Google employee.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I had originally mentioned, "I don't care because Google pays for my Internet connection and could spy on me anyway," but I edited it out because Google does not spy. :)

I think, rationally, I should be more afraid of what Google knows about me than a random person. I've used Google to search for things I wouldn't exactly want to bring up in a meeting with my coworkers. But I know what the procedures are for accessing personal information, and I trust my employer with my most private searches. (It takes a leap of faith to trust me on this, so I don't expect you to. But really, Google cares about privacy.)

When I worked at Bank of America, I always felt weird buying stuff with my Bank of America credit card because I knew someone at the company would have access to that information. But I don't feel that way when using Google Checkout / Google Wallet at all. I don't know why it is, but that's how I feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This makes me think that Google had ulterior motives when bundling flash with Chrome. Having the latest, most-secure version of flash is a win for Google, its users, and the web in general, but having flash installed allows for usage of flash cookies which can read your info across browser sessions -- info that they'd probably want.

To Chrome's credit, I believe it is the only browser that allows users to delete flash cookies.

* removes tin foil hat

<comment><USER9> I've said this before, but for others who missed it, here's one of my crontab entries:

      # Remove Flash cookies and everything to do with Flash,
      # including left-over Flash files in /tmp
      15  13 * * Wed  /usr/bin/rm -rf /home/nick/.macromedia/Flash_Player/*
      16  13 * * Wed  /usr/bin/rm -rf /tmp/Flash*

<comment><USER6> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google, what's wrong with you? Do what Path did.

<comment><USER11> Too late to do that. Apple is patching it in the next iOS update.

<comment><USER12> You mean they're updating Safari with a patch created by Google engineers months ago to fix the issue: <http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/92142>

<comment><USER13> Whether the bug is fixed by the Chromium team or not, Google should not have been exploiting it to track users.

<comment><USER14> "This tracking, discovered by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer, was a technical side-effect — probably an unintended side-effect — of a system that Google built to pass social personalization information (like, "your friend Suzy +1'ed this ad about candy") from the google.com domain to the doubleclick.net domain."

edit: to be clear, whether or not is was an intended side effect, it is a side effect of a (potentially) legitimate use case (setting the value of +1-ing an ad aside).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> a question why is no one concerned about the Safari hole in context of Apple?

Seems tome that you have more to worry about in Apple than Google as there many others using the same exact hole.</comment>


How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around? - <AUTHOR> https://builtin.com/employee-engagement/how-much-engineer-pay <comment><USER2> We've banned this site for using sockpuppet accounts, voting rings, and astroturfed comments. Such abuses are extremely not ok, and this was an egregious and repeated case.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility.

There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly.

I would have loved to stay at my first organization. Interesting work and research. I was PI and PM for interesting projects by the time I left. Now I make almost double. The thing is, my current salary at my original organization isn't unheard of for that level of responsibility at all, the problem is that getting that kind of adjustment is impossible. It's possible to be hired in at that salary, though. I've noticed this is true for most organizations I've worked at.

<comment><USER4> I can tell you as a manager the salary bands are generally set by HR for the whole company. I was told point blank at a previous employer that we payed the 70th percentile. I asked how they knew what that was - apparently there are companies that aggregate this data (legally?) and sell it back to HR orgs for $xx,xxx+ a year. HR for some reason wouldn't deviate from this band for top talent (discrimination maybe?)

<comment><USER5> Bands are usually per level - if someone is sufficiently good you bring them in as a Principal/Staff/Magic Unicorn/whatever.

This leads to the same phenomenon where you need to work for 2 years to get promoted but if you jump ship your new manager will set your level in line with your salary expectations. And of course the levels are largely meaningless outside of compensation and office politics.

<comment><USER4> This exact scenario happened to me - I was a "senior manager" by HR title but I was actually just promoted to team lead in practice. I meant to illustrate the setting of compensation happened almost entirely without engineering input at a company level (in my experience, where I worked, etc.).

<comment><USER6> Damn! This explains why my company has so many senior managers. Sometimes with just one report :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article's title is pure click-bait. It would be more accurate if it were "How to Keep Your Engineers Interested in Sticking Around"

Very little of the article says anything about how much to pay engineers. I only found 2 paragraphs about engineering compensation:

> The most comprehensive study, though, is Daniel H. Pink's Drive, which is > summarized in this animation from the RSA. Pink suggests that money isn't > the main driver for highly skilled workers who choose to stay in their jobs. > Instead, he identifies a combination of three factors: the ability to be > self-directed, getting better at the job, and having a purpose in one's > endeavors. In other words, once a person's basic financial needs are met, > money starts to become less and less relevant as a criterion for job > satisfaction, especially compared to purpose, self-improvement and self- > direction.

> Unsurprisingly, this conclusion mostly matches my own experience with > engineers. Whether companies pay at market level or 20%-30% above market > makes very little impact on staff retention. You might stretch retention > slightly in the latter case, but the investment is often not worth the net > result. Keeping your engineers engaged and motivated makes a much more > substantial difference, so that's what we're going to look at next.

Even these paragraphs are primarily about how money is not the primary way to keep engineers engaged and motivated.

<comment><USER8> Be careful though. For example, I don't really care that much about money, but I do care very strongly about fairness. So if you try to cheat me by paying me unfairly (for example, compared to coworkers), even if I would be happy with the money all things considered, I could be unhappy just because you're being unfair.

<comment><USER9> I'll even add that engineers should understand the value they bring to the company and adjust their concept of fair not just against their peers but against what the company is earning from their labor.

<comment><USER10> This is one of those things that sounds reasonable but is impossible to compute. Does the company earn more from the developer who makes the product, or the infra engineer who keeps it online? Well, without either they're not making anything...

Also, if the company makes a bit less money this year vs last year, are you willing to take a pay cut?

<comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937)

It might be impossible to compute, but we still want to compute it.

Or rather, get some agreement. I would say not only it is impossible to compute, the question of relative human pay for different types of work is a meaningless question, like asking, what is more important on a car, tires or engine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they interact genuinely and naturally. When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth.

You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal.

<comment><USER11> Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation.

Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be adjusted for inflation etc by now, but very few devs make less money than they need to live comfortably by most people's standards.

<comment><USER12> Found the study: [https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489](https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489)

It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.

<comment><USER11> True. Cost of living has spiked a lot in tech hubs, too, but devs are usually on the upper tier of the income curve.

<comment><USER13> It's not like NYC wasn't expensive compared to Kansas 10 years ago.

<comment><USER12> Of course, but what about Austin or Denver? The tech industry has brought high paying jobs to a lot of smaller cities that weren't accustomed to such high salaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I left a job which paid in the 95+ percentile of my area for one that paid right about the median wage (maybe a little less). My reason: I like to own the software I write. We had an influx of people on our team who began to rewrite sections of stuff I wrote a long time ago for no real reason. Basically, some of them didn't like promise chains and decided to rewrite every one they encountered. Things finally bubbled over when I ended up in merge hell where I'd have the codebase drastically change while I was on my branch and I'd be reimplimenting the same feature every time I tried to submit a merge request, but all of these changes amounted to largely meaningless "refactoring."

It's kind of petty on my part, but I'm not the type that wins arguments. So I decided, despite loving the people I worked with, that I was not in the right job. Now I design and develop software mostly individually and I'm infinitely happier. Someone who is competitive and enjoys confrontation would thrive in that role though.

Point is, people have lots of different reasons for changing jobs. And something that makes one group happy may make another miserable. I also hate traveling to conferences, but that's the nature of the job sometimes.

<comment><USER15> I would've changed your code from promise chains to await statements (after warning you, of course) because they just look awful. And I would then have expected you to buy me a beer for getting rid of all that ugly code.

<comment><USER16> So you would've spent company time rewriting working code to match your personal aesthetics?

Sounds like parent didn't have a reasonable structure in place to generate consensus amongst the org about stylistic preferences vs tech debt, and where developer priorities should lie.

There's some ego in both of your comments as well. Async is nicer looking that promise chains, but there risk in changing working code, no? Growing with an org means letting go of your old code but joining an org requires empathy and understanding for the old timers and their code babies as well!

<comment><USER15> I assume you are looking at things for a living. And from your corporate tone, so are your coworkers.

We all want to look at good things. Promise chains were bad things. When I see bad things, I am willing to make the change. So should you. And we should ask before we change. GP was caught off-guard. That is not what we want.

We good?

<comment><USER16> We good

> corporate tone

oof, maybe not wrong though.

I don't look at things for a living, I trade time for money with the expectation that my time has a multiplier on revenue, profit, and team health/productivity. I guess I've seen enough legacy code at this point that I don't have any desire to change it just because there's something better, changing stuff that works has to be a reasonable balance between tech debt/maintenance/quality of life things, vs features/uptime/performance. Of all those things, features make the most money right? So why would I want to spend time refactoring things when I could make measurable, incremental improvements somewhere else? Spend all day in the same system? Sure. Drive by refactorings? Absolutely not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I worked at Netflix for several years, where they actively practice paying 'top of market.'

This is an oft misunderstood tactic, but in action means: 1) Yearly, employees are asked to seek evidence for their top of market compensation. 2) employees do two things as a follow up - They either interview elsewhere to get competing offers to establish 'top of market,' or they feel fairly paid and do nothing.

Having worked at a few large tech companies that practice the typical equity grant and vesting structure designed to maximize retention, Ive never seen a more effective tactic to completely remove the concern of 'am I paid enough' from the employee. As a result:

1) The really high impact people are paid extremely well, as Netflix always overbids. 2) The average performers either go elsewhere or retain without jockeying for greater comp and ownership.

The proactive seeking top of market is a good feedback loop to pay for/reward impact and to build trust with your team, and is something I still practice with my teams outside of Netflix.

This was back in 2015, so some things may have changed. Regardless, the net to the business has compounding returns. At an average company:

1) Most employees do not pay for their salary in business impact. 2) Top performers drive outsized impact relative to their compensation.

If you find a way to mitigate 1), you can pass the savings into 2), protecting and retaining your highest value employees.

While other factors do obviously matter, and comp isn't everything - _removing_ comp from the hierarchy of needs entirely dramatically changes the mindset towards ownership of work and outcome.

<comment><USER18> I'm probably taking the wrong lesson away here, because from an outside perspective the message seems to be "don't waste time interviewing someone who currently works for Netflix".

You'll either waste your time, or get buyer's remorse. Very little upside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's only about 50% about pay for STEM fields. They have to be engaged, feel like they have a voice or influence in the culture/business decisions, have great equipment to use, and flexible time off.

<comment><USER20> All of it can be dispensed with if you pay even more

<comment><USER21> Indeed, pay me $1m a day and I'll stare at a wall for you.

Probably wouldn't do it for long, the first day would be amazing - that buys a great house. The rest of the week and I'm set for a very comfortable retirement.

<comment><USER22> This is part of why stock options are so valuable to organizations as an incentive: the retention power of high pay without the calculus of "do I have enough?" from liquid compensation

<comment><USER23> Huh? Everyone I've ever known who had significant options knew exactly what they were worth.

I knew someone who changed their bash prompt to (price * unvested count / days left). He said at the time it was the only thing that kept him from quitting or punching his manager.

<comment><USER24> Long ago companies only bothered issuing options when the stock was illiquid; certainly my startup share options _never_ had a meaningful market value from founding to acquisition.

Publicly-quoted companies issuing options is just a weird form of deferred bonus with a favourable tax treatment.

<comment><USER25> Well, they also come with the hope that they'll increase in value prior to vesting. But, yes, RSUs in public companies are certainly more like getting bonuses that vest over time than a stock market lottery ticket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The large UK broadcaster I work for is having to make large amounts of savings. They've decided that they don't like paying for slack (for £10 per user per month), and instead are going to force everyone to use MS Teams.

Since 95% of people have been working from home (and no plans for most to go back this year), they won't allow people to take unused monitors back because they might end up lost. These are £80 monitors.

It's these pathetic nickle-and-diming that is far more likely to make me look for another job than not paying a £200 a year pay rise.

Someone sees "£80 times 20,000 staff, that's over £1m, we can't risk that!"

<comment><USER26> Saving £1.6 million/month isn't nickel-and-diming. That's almost £20 million/annually, which is more than many companies make.

As for the monitors, that may be COVID19 related. If the office is locked up, there are almost always physical/security procedures that must be followed in order to allow non-essential staff into the office...and that doesn't include any cleaning or sanitation that might be required by any COVID19 rules. This means that you need to have someone physically come to the office to open it up. On top of that, you need someone knowledgeable about the hardware (i.e., IT) to come in to make sure any employee taking a monitor home doesn't mess up anyone else's setup.

So you're risking exposing at least two lower-paid employees to COVID19 for the convenience of one higher-paid employee who could just buy his own goddamn monitor for £80 if he cares about the screen real estate that much.

<comment><USER21> Our offices are still open, just with 10% of the staff in them.

And the "£1.6m a month" view is the problem -- if you are spending £5k a month, or 40p a minute, on the costs of keeping an employee (probably more with the cost of office space), an extra £10 a month is neither here nor there. If it costs just 1 minute extra a day, you're losing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 100% agree with this article, but would also caution against any kind of generalization. Different people want different things.

For the first ~7-10 years of my career I strongly believed that everything was about salary. I picked jobs solely based on the comp package, and the work I did was motivated by bonuses and promotions. I'm sure that's still the case for a large chunk of engineers, but for me, with more experience under my belt, I now think more and more about stuff like fulfillment, ownership, real world impact of my work etc.

<comment><USER28> Indeed! "Autonomy, mastery, and purpose" in terms of dev opportunities: mastery is somewhat common, autonomy is rare, and purpose is ultra rare.

I have straight-up told managers that I'd be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for more autonomy. Haven't found a taker yet :)

It is so frustrating to repeatedly demonstrate value, endlessly repeat the story about how "gmail was the result of 20% time", yet be forever told "nah, we just need you to stick to grinding tickets".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find the reasoning of this article pretty obnoxious to be honest.

They start off with a valid argument, that if you treat engineers better than everyone else it creates resentment in other parts of the company and that makes sense.

 _If that weren't enough, all of this "special treatment" towards engineers can create resentment throughout the rest of the company. Such negativity hurts performance and retention in other business units where employees might feel that they're treated unfairly._

I've actually experienced this myself as the new guy, even within the engineering department. Then 5 paragraphs later this is what they write:

 _Maybe instead of offering free lunches on Fridays, you can provide funding to attend Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC, once that's hosted in real life again) or a Coursera subscription. If you're in the mobile apps space, you might offer to buy the newest iPhone or Android device for your engineers annually on a "yours to keep" basis._

I'm sorry for the negativity, I just don't think I can trust the judgement of the author on this issue after reading that. Also as a mobile developer, shouldn't you be aiming for your app to perform well on low to midrange devices first, thus targeting the largest ammount of potential users? If you're styling for the iphone x/11 notch you're gonna be doing that in the simulator first regardless.

</comment><comment><USER30> Pay me enough so I can feed my family and have comfortable shelter.

Don't create a culture where I am a doer but not allowed to be a decider. I will eventually walk away from asymmetric power structures.

If you don't/can't trust me, I probably won't trust you. I prefer relationships of trust.

I want to learn and improve. Use your extra money to do that and act is if it matters to you.

If you must use pay as your sole means of appeasing me, pay me LOTS. So very much that I'm willing to put up with the bureaucratic shitshow that is your company, spending all my drone-ish non-innovative 9 to 5 day thinking about the rush I'm going to experience doing cool things with all of the excess cash you're giving me.

</comment><comment><USER31> I changed jobs in the past year and only received a slight pay increase. For the first time in my engineering career, I really enjoy my job. There are a lot of factors but the thing that stands out the most is the senior leadership here. They actively seek to engage the entire organization in strategy and planning and are really working towards a more transparent and realistic process of growth and advancement. My experience previous to this had been leadership only paying lip service to these ideas at best. I am not sure what increase in compensation would be required for me to leave and I honestly hope I don't find out.

</comment><comment><USER32> It probably depends quite a bit on the engineer's life outside of work.

For much of my career, I was the only income earner in a family of 6. Making ends meet was sometimes a challenge, which made me very salary-sensitive _and_ averse to the risk of income disruption.

My family finances have somewhat improved in recent years, letting me unclinch a little regarding money. This lets me put more weight on other factors relating to job satisfaction and feeling of purpose.

<comment><USER33> "Making ends meet was sometimes a challenge, which made me very salary- sensitive and averse to the risk of income disruption."

This. I think a large chunk of society forgets that after you get past 25 and actually have a life and responsibilities, that a meager $100k in a particular region is barely enough to cover base expenses, childcare, car/home loans, etc.

Out of curiosity, how long were you the sole earner before getting to a better state of financial security?

<comment><USER32> A little over 20 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's a style of management I encounter still that is very unsupportive of it's employees. Untrusting, thinking they're always out to leave just to make more money. It's interesting because the engineers I know tend to be pretty altruistic people and I won't say they don't care about money but it's not their leading factor in employment (I definitely know the other spectrum as well so don't think I'm ignoring that).

I've worked at places specifically didn't want to send employees to conferences because they think everyone uses them as farming tools (whether that's true or not, some engineers just want to go learn and it's pretty upsetting if you have a SME in some subject and don't allow them to attend a con while plenty of other $leaders go).

I've also worked for tech places where a boss would come in and fire you on Monday then call you up and offer you $1k to return on Tuesday, me being about 21 at my first sysadmin job kept me around for that abuse.

It's really, really not a good feeling to feel untrusted or like you're constantly being tested by your employer.

<comment><USER35> Hah. Seems like this is not as uncommon as I thought. My senior had her convention request denied by company while multiple leadership folk were flown over there. She got pissed and paid for her own access/flight. She clearly met a lot of people there. Maybe that is what management is most scared of. She already almost left once.

<comment><USER34> It's very common if you're not at some big FAANG or group that is in all the partner groups (CNCF, etc) and pays to get tickets every year.

I do this a lot for a few foss projects I contribute to because even though I'm always hired as the SME for my niche leadership will only give me tickets/flights to conferences if they have extras and none of their drinking buddies want to go. Typically what happens is I'll start at a company, ask about going to $mybigcon when a training budget is brought up, that training budget is always slashed, not real or goes somewhere else then I'll never ask again and I'll find my own way to get tickets (from conf partners, etc).

The funny thing, when I have to do this not only am I really bothered that my company wouldn't spend the $1000 ($200 plane, $800 ticket) but I go out of my way to not focus on ANYTHING that will benefit my company but instead I have a good time and learn things I'm interested in and mingle with every other company/partner I can.

I've actually had companies expect me to get tickets myself from the projects or from gold partners that I know. I don't have that much clout by any means and even asking partners for tickets makes me feel terrible because they're limited too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not directly a compensation component but organizations can make sure they have a technical leader supporting software organizations.

Consulting with companies on productivity I can't express how much devs not feeling like they have representation/a voice at the exec level negates comp effectiveness.

<comment><USER37> Question is, can this be faked?

What we're saying is that coders are often willing to pay for "a seat at the table". But maybe management can sell them a placebo.

It's not clear-cut that management ignoring coders will _always_ turn out for the worse, even though management that _always ignores_ coders probably has, historically. Maybe sometimes their voice matters and sometimes not.

<comment><USER38> It can be faked to the engineers, it can't be faked to reality.

Companies for whom engineering is key need to (at least to some extent) organise themselves around engineering. The strategic decisions need to take into account the needs and capabilities of engineering and engineers. If they don't then they won't be good at it. They'll be staffed with mediocre people who generate mediocre output very slowly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "As an engineer, I experienced firsthand the dual relationship most of us have with the rest of the business. One day you're a hero for delivering something "magical," then the next you're a jerk for not delivering something "so simple" in a short amount of time, or refusing to make certain "easy" changes, even if those requests carry a hidden but critical risk of destabilizing the whole software."

That part of the article really struck a cord with me. From my experience, I think that a big factor in whether engineers start looking for another job is how much the manager acts as a filter for the unrealistic expectations of the rest of the company. Engineers should not be too isolated, after all some interaction is good to get feedback and it feels good to directly see people benefit from your work, but managers have to be able to shield their engineers from the mood swings of the CEO or the pie-in-the-sky promises from marketing. I think this is a big component of a "good working environment" and is often worth more than pay or promotions.

</comment><comment><USER40> Keep them too stressed out and busy with work that they don't have the time and energy to really look for something new and grind dozens of LeetCode problems to get them through the grueling technical interview gauntlet? Seems to be working with my company to keep me there, at least.

</comment><comment><USER41> IMO, the only reason above-market pay doesn't raise retention as much as people want is that it's possible to have above-market pay _and_ a job people enjoy doing.

And on the other hand, you can offer enough above-market and people will do any job, as evidenced by the other thread I saw yesterday where people were making crazy salaries to implement unethical, deceptive practices against their users.

<comment><USER42> Link the thread?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> In Herzberg's theory, Money is merely a hygiene factor, not a motivating factor.

Generally by the time engineers start thinking about money you've already lost them.

My rule of thumb has always been that when I start thinking "I'm not getting paid enough to put up with this", it's time to move on whatever happens.

<comment><USER44> I am a big fan of Herzberg's dual factor theory. I find it much more practical and actionable than the ubiqitous Maslow's hierarchy.

In one of my previous jobs, I asked people in my team to make a survey to identify their motivational and hygienic factors. The surprising result for me was how much variation there was among different people. (e. g. for somebody salary was a motivational factor, for anybody hygienic one). Anyway, understanding these factors for individual team members made me much more effective manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> A nice, laid-back, zero-bs team is all I need. I value that much much higher than money. I have no interest in workplace drama. I've always considered career and competition to be quite pointless: if I had a good idea I'd build the product myself and keep all the margins in my pocket. It's computer stuff afterall.

Often I have no interest in the work itself either, but if the team is good I'm happy. They could make us shovel snow all day, I'd still come to work.

</comment><comment><USER46> Good article on an important topic. I would like to address what I perceive as assumptions in the perspective. We really need to get away from this idea that salaries are these paternalistic expressions of fairness. We earn money from providing value.

If you want people to stay, your options are to give them money, prestige, or stability.

\- Money includes salary, bonus, commissions and contingent comp, stock options and perks and even vacation time.

\- Prestige is conferences, publications, exposure to high profile brand clients and stakeholders, airline points hotel and travel rewards, charity sponsorship and matching, committee memberships, media and public facing representation, and leadership options.

\- Stability includes things like investing in training, giving them headcount, bringing them into the strategic fold, partnerships, responsibility for key client or stakeholder relationships, etc.

Evaluate your total comp using the triad of Money, Stability, Prestige. Chances are you are weighted toward one, and there is a role out there with a different balance. I think HR salary bands are a wishfull opposite of market rates, and personally I think they're stupid for any company that is still growing and not just optimizing an established long term revenue stream. If you are a bank or institution, sure, but your entire business is an optimization problem not a growth problem. If there is any upside volatility in your revenue and you are making something new that people want, pay for value, because I'd argue you can't afford not to.

I've watched companies lose key engineers that delayed major product releases over a $10-20k salary bump while flying their marginalized director of special projects around in business class, and my conclusion is that compensation is arbitrary and a negotiations power game. Don't spend too much time reasoning about it.

The companies that retain people are the ones who figure out the Stability and Prestige elements of the triad.

</comment><comment><USER47> Honestly I have given up trying to "keep" engineers because it's a losing battle. It's impossible to compete with big tech. From the offers I've seen, if FAANG/Big Tech really wants one of your team members, they will get them and there is nothing you can do.

My employees stay because they want to. They enjoy the work, domain, colleagues. The salary is competitive and fair. They can thrive in this environment.

But I am under no illusions about creating some special environment that can prevent them from getting poached. You can throw cash, stocks, options all you want but if Big Tech wants them, they will outbid you.

Just assume that at any moment they can and will get poached and ensure that the business can continue if people leave. Keep the stack simple, stick to standards, minimize NIH etc.

<comment><USER48> > From the offers I've seen, if FAANG/Big Tech really wants one of your team > members, they will get them and there is nothing you can do.

True, but your team members aren't getting any offers from FAANG/Big Tech unless the team members put in some effort. At least, they have to do a series of interviews.

FAANG positions are notoriously coveted, at least here on HN, and most people have to work hard, including preparation, to get into them.

So the question comes, what does it take to make your engineers comfortable enough they don't think it's worth going through the process to get those other offers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've worked for about 7 different companies over 15 years and at each of those places I've seen a ton of engineers come and go. Most of the time, the reason they leave is one of three things: got fired, got laid off, or was pushed out. So, if you want your engineers to stick around, you gotta find out why so many of them are being laid off or pushed out and prevent that from happening. That's where you'll get the most bang for your buck.

Engineers don't just leave for no reason. They leave because they're either forced out or there's something that really sucks about the company: most of the time it's the work life balance that really sucks.

</comment><comment><USER50> The trick to retaining engineers, besides paying them fairly, is to hire good managers that understand engineering. A huge component of workplace satisfaction can be traced back to how much an employee likes their boss.

</comment><comment><USER51> For whatever reason this is making me think about the narrative from a lot of VC's, Paul Graham, Tyler Cowen, and many more that remote work will commoditize software engineering and destroy wages there.

And articles like this make me think about institutional knowledge and how there are no standards what so ever in software, and so long as new frameworks, languages, and not invented here syndrome persist there will always be a need to keep your engineering staff around.

/end ramble thoughts

</comment><comment><USER52> Needs V Wants.

I need shelter but it only costs so much to full-fill need. Then if I'm get paid sufficient salary to cover all my needs then wants decides the utility of the next marginal dollar. If the value doesn't align with my want then I don't care. As you get older you realize your time is finite and you want to enjoy what you do if you have the opportunity to make such a decision.

So if a job pays 20% more but requires more overtime or more stress then I'll pass.

</comment><comment><USER53> Pay is not everything. But it also depends on the engineer as well. I've taken pay cuts to work on interesting and engaging work in the past. But then again my lifestyle is pretty simple and minimalistic and for me the trade-off was worth it.

</comment><comment><USER54> When I worked somewhere 100% for the money, my motivation declined and I ended up in such a rut I was one of the worst performers on the team.

Compensation is important but if they are golden handcuffs, your organization (and employee) will suffer.

</comment><comment><USER55> Enough to take the issue of money off the table, given how much life costs wherever they live. And not by applying a "rent index" or "cost of living" factor to whatever people get paid in SF.

</comment><comment><USER56> My job gives me no bonus or raise after a year and a half, despite obvious vast increases in my responsibilities and the assumption of another engineer who lefts' tasks too.. I just don't know how to approach asking because I hate confrontation and those kinds of situations. I basically always change jobs because of this reason - I'm just avoiding a conversation I don't want to have and the raise is bigger by quitting haha

<comment><USER57> If you'd like some unsolicited advice - the job hunt is tricky, because you should be optimizing for the best outcome for yourself. However, if you think of it as materializing your leverage -- just go out and get an offer that is better than what you have. Use that to approach your boss, it won't be a confrontation if you approach it with "I like it here, but it's clear that I'm underpaid. Can you help me find a way where it makes sense for me to stay?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> An interesting question is whether paying enough (imagining an unlimited budget) won't end up selecting for coders who care more about the money than the work.

A further question is whether these coders are actually better for the org -- the Henry Ford efficiency wage-type incentive may keep them at consistent pace and quality, whereas rockstars with physics PhD may have parallel agendas to make the project more fun to work with.

<comment><USER58> Consistent quality requires accurate measurement. If you can't accurately measure quality and there's only external motivation, you get Goodhart's law.

<comment><USER37> But Goodhart's law applies to anything that's measured at all (it originates from the world monetary policy), even if it can be measured vey accurately.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

OTOH maybe quality exists as a qualitative concept but can't be measured -- then you just do pass/fail (like colleges have dropped letter-grades during the Zoomdemic).

What I'm saying is that "shallower" coders, who are motivated by the extra pay, may be more willing to align their concept of quality with the interests of the organization, while self-motivated coders will have their idiosyncratic or fashionable ideas.

When shopping around for a team to make a web app for my startup -- no technical requirements, we were feeling the market for price first -- we got a $$$ proposal for using PHP and Laravel, and a $ proposal for using AngularJS. I regret that decision; it cost us at least a year of time-to-market.

The original team quit (they worked for a trusted friend of our "business cofounder") because they weren't really experienced in web dev and their opportunity cost was off the roof - they were crack coders that did all kinds of different projects. Then we decided to hire someone (with good references) as a consultant and manage him ourselves. Dude was apparently capable but couldn't be screamed into using off-the-shelf components rather than rewriting and refactoring constantly. He eventually flaked on us, got too many projects and we weren't fun anymore I guess. Finally we found a small company online. By all appearances the new team hates being around computers but can be managed by Trello and feature branches. Web dev is a bore, but it's a living, and not everyone manages to make a living out of their surfing passion.

<comment><USER58> Goodhart's law doesn't apply when your measurement is perfectly aligned with your goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you pay me a lot but my job makes me miserable, I'll just use that salary as leverage to negotiate a high salary at a company I want to work for.

</comment><comment><USER59> I hope sooner than later there will be some kind of union of engineers and salaries will be public and standarized (and the median value of the salary for each position will be higher than today, due to the power of collective bargaining). It is shameful that some senior software engineers earn so much less than others, due to out-of-band reasons.

</comment><comment><USER60> Money alone doesn't keep many problem solvers around.

Problem solving is as important as the compensation.

A great environment to solve problems, and to be able to work with other smart, conscientious people, while pursuing new levels of mastery is a really good sell.

People who are driven solely, or primarily by money can't be paid enough and will on that mindset, tend to move on.

</comment><comment><USER61> You should pay them market rates to replace them (ie, much higher than you currently are). Yes, you should also foster their need for growth and learning, but that's because it's an investment in their productivity.

Investing in engineer's productivity, and paying them what they're worth, turns out that's all it takes.

</comment><comment><USER62> This question would be much easier to answer if salary transparency from employers was the norm, or even required.

If every job listing on Indeed had a salary/compensation range, it would be very straightforward to see what the going rate is for that particular skillset, and it would push employers to be competitive on salary.

</comment><comment><USER63> Ah a management consultant producing arguments for lower pay for Hr/Accounting to justify cost cutting.

I am Shocked Shocked I tell you, can you smell gas :-)

Whilst pay isn't every thing people do tend to lie when asked about what important to them - the same way you slowdown when the time and motion team are monitoring you

</comment><comment><USER64> My experience is very anecdotal, but there's a point where the pay/stock options are definitely enough to keep people around. I have a few friends in this exact position now, where the golden handcuffs are too sweet for them to walk.

</comment><comment><USER65> At my company, I think engineers are more concerned with feeling comfortable and having the flexibility to take care of the demands of their lives and families over high pay.

Midwest company so YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER66> * functional requirements - great pay

* non-functional requirements - great culture.

"great" \- is a variable here. People define it to their own understanding and advantage.

</comment><comment><USER67> If the matter of pay is the only thing keeping the engineers there, this feels more like a problem with the business model or company culture.

</comment><comment><USER68> Well let's flip it around : you! yes you reading this, why are you staying in your current position ?

<comment><USER69> Pay is probably pretty good (especially if current rise materialises) for my level of experience, and I have lots of autonomy in how I do things, as I'm the main technical decision maker on non-frontend tasks.

I'm also doing uni part time, and taking half a day off every week is a tough proposition for employees. Despite the chaos, I do like the work I do, and as it's a Greenfield project, I want to see it reach some level of exposure to core clients before I can consider it a job well done.

What about you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Pay them with the experience of building a product somebody wants to use

</comment><comment><USER71> tl;dr: Engineers prefer a "positive" work environment over competitive salaries.

Couldn't disagree more. Pay me.

<comment><USER72> I agree... and I don't. I work primarily for money, but not totally.

My job probably doesn't pay me absolutely the maximum that I could make anywhere. If the work environment turns sour, I can hopefully make an approximately lateral move - not significantly more or less money, but a better environment.

I once worked for a medical device manufacturer. We failed an FDA audit. As a result, our procedures became much more stringent, and life turned into a huge amount of paperwork. I couldn't take it. It didn't take a raise to get me out of there.

<comment><USER73> The problem with a stressful job is that part of that stress invariably become intertwined with the prospect of losing the said job, hence an expected loss of salary. This means that even if you primarily work for money you'd have priced in the positive environment.

Anecdotally, the place where people are uncertain of their future are highly stressful, even when the work is not heavy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Ask them.

</comment><comment><USER75> > When it comes to engineers, the key to employee retention isn't just about > pay.

Maybe I'm atypical, but at a certain point all the other factors just don't cut it. If you're trying to pay me $400k/yr total comp and I can get $600k/yr elsewhere, the disparities in culture or whatever have to be pretty significant to dominate.

<comment><USER25> At those levels, you're probably talking about at least some stock-based comp and that's harder to factor in.

But that aside, a lot of people would care less about the delta between $400K and $600K than the delta between $50K and $75K.

<comment><USER76> 400K to 600K is still qualitatively significant.

For example, it can mean whether your spouse has the option to stay home to spend more quality time with the children, without having to sacrifice expenses due to income reduction; or it can mean how well (or not) you can take care of aging parents.

<comment><USER25> Of course. And I don't mean to imply it isn't. $200K is a lot of money to most people and may be enough to make a significant lifestyle choice that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

But _in general_ percentage salary increments affect lifestyle more at the low end than they do at the high end. (And, of course, the absolute differences matter _far_ more at the low end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Our industry's asinine interview practices keep people from job seeking and getting their fair value. The sooner engineers refuse to give leetcode interviews, the sooner we'll see a natural bump in average engineering salary, and we'll have more power in the job market to demand better working conditions.</comment>


An Internet propaganda campaign at your fingertips - <AUTHOR> https://it-was-fun-at-first.net/about <comment><USER2> I think this is brilliant social satire come to life. Can there be a block chain of people who "trust" a source within the net and where central claims originate?

<comment><USER3> Judging by the number of comments taking seriously, it might be a little too brilliant ;)

<comment><USER4> There is a .zip you can download, and a link to give it access to your Twitter account. That's enough to make me think it's legitimate :) If you are brave enough to go through either of the steps, let me know what's at the end of the rainbow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea. But I don't see why this should have a horrible red background.

<comment><USER6> > I like the idea.

A voluntary bot net is still a bot net. And I wonder how voluntary it really is? Can you easily decline further participation if you start to disagree with some of the "fake news" it is spamming?

<comment><USER7> One would think that simply changing the password on the Twitter account would be the end of it. But for the curious, I would still recommend establishing a "burner" account for testing purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks like it will end up like Microsoft's inadvertently racist chat bot, except it will be people and on purpose. And it'll happen faster.

<comment><USER9> The bot, Tay, was taken offline after about 16 hours. There was an organized, purposeful effort by /pol/ to train Tay to be racist.

<comment><USER8> Damn. Fair enough, I must have missed that. My thoughts on its fate remain unchanged though, haha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll call shenanigans on this one:

>> In order to hire the Botnet you first need to join the bots with your Twitter account.

Any actual commercial enterprise, legal or not, would take your money without asking your participation.

<comment><USER11> Are credit unions not "actual commercial enterprise"?

<comment><USER10> In a credit union it is your money that is doing the participating. They don't ask for your car keys before taking your money. These guys are taking your money but first want your twitter account ... or at least some twitter account. I assume most "customers" will create and submit dummy accounts.

<comment><USER11> In a credit union, you must give them money to purchase a share of the CU before they'll take your money -- you literally have to buy in.

Requiring a Twitter account just changes the form of payment from being all dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't trust this system with my twitter credentials and I expect this site to get a fun letter from twitter and maybe countermeasures .

<comment><USER13> Yeah, this is terrible on several levels. The lack of any transparency about who is running it should be as red a flag as that background color.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like the idea but sadly I'm sure it's more of a marketing effort than an actual platform. I've been saddened to not be able to find social media marketplaces that provide an actual twitter platform (ie programmable). All you can buy is x thousands of account blasting an identical message. Or maybe I haven't been looking hard enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the authors here. You can actually use spintax to compose your tweets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the inline comment in the page source.

</comment><comment><USER16> Mac-only? Where's the linux port? :)</comment>


Google, PayPal Set on Android Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestreet.com/story/10880639/google-paypal-set-on-android-deal.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is kinda odd, Google Checkout and Paypal were at each other's throats a few months ago. I wonder what the advantage for Google is?

Sure, it gets access to Paypal's large installed userbase, but that being said, is it conceivable that all Android users don't already have Google accounts with credit card info?</comment>