Ask HN: Do you have any backup plan? - <AUTHOR> Do you have any backup plan when things will go wrong - business, job, health, etc.? <comment><USER2> I can't plan for every contingency. I'm not sure anyone can.

But nurturing a network of family and friends, keeping reasonable savings, maintaining modest expenses, and having more than one set of valuable skills covers a lot of possibilities. These have come in handy already, and I'm sure they will again.

I would say yes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to plan for every single little thing in life that could go wrong. Health insurance, identity theft, multiple credit cards and backups of important files, pursuing higher education.

That all paid off. I'm 26 now and have a net worth of $125,000 in cash and a $3,000 car.

I'll tell you one thing. It feels empty. It feels like it can be gone at any moment. Lifestyle expenses start to inflate when you live and love in the city. So my networth is actually dropping a few grand every year at this point.

Money and caution usually result in a conservative and decent life, but not necessarily a fun one if you thirst for adventure.

My girlfriend and I dream of the day when we just quit our jobs and live in Thailand on $300 a month per person instead of wasting today at a desk! So be it if it's reckless.

<comment><USER4> I live in Thailand. $300 a month is going to be a pretty basic life.

<comment><USER5> How much would you need to experience a "good" life? Say renting a safe apartment in a nice place, do some travelling (within the country) on the side, and eat out a significant portion of meals?

<comment><USER6> $300 a month is very low, I spend double that on my rent+utilities alone. For two people, reasonably modern and large, you probably will spend at least $300-500 on rent.

I spend maybe 900-1200 per month here (alone). I consider my lifestyle very 'comfortable-frugal'. As in I spend if I need to make myself comfortable, but I don't spend a lot on party, new 'toys' or other such 'stuff'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Currently I'm trying to live every month with at maximum the half of what I earn (been around 1/5 for the past 12 months) and trying to reach my peak physical condition.

The second plan is more important to me, fit people have a lot more chance of surviving adversities.

</comment><comment><USER8> Many. At the moment I have a salary as my main income, so I live only on the amount of money I would get on benefits if my company collapsed. I use the rest of the money to reduce my expenses and provide security. I own my house, grow a fair amount of my own food, sew my own clothes, and use almost all my 'effective income' for fun things. It wasn't tough to start, since it's a pick up from my student days and I just haven't increased my expenditure, only reduced my costs.

I wouldn't make so much myself if I didn't enjoy it, but I do so it happens to work for me. I pay for others to do things I don't like, like laundry and heavy housecleaning.

My startup expenses come out of the other free cash I have, so it wouldn't hurt my lifestyle if my businesses failed; I wasn't going to use that money for living anyway.

Health is my main focus, now. I've bought a very accessible house on purpose just in case, but unless the whole country collapses I'm fine financially now until I die, and I'd kinda like that to be a while off.

I was doing something more typical initially, but honestly, just work out what you want your life to be, and then work out how to do that without it being super risky. Much happy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yeah, here are a few:

\- 6 months expenses in cash (I'm a consultant, so work can be inconsistent)) \- invest about half of my income \- have life insurance (but not disability, that's something I probably need soon) \- build potentially lucrative products on the side \- attend meetups relevant to my field \- keep up with the latest developments in my field \- exercise regularly and follow a healthy diet \- have at least one backup for most problems: \- if my car breaks down, I have a bike and bus pass; I've actually picked up a new battery with my bike \- if my house floods/burns down, I can stay with family nearby \- if my computer breaks, I can borrow my wife's or do most of my work at the library (I have a VPS that's mostly set up for my job, which I use occasionally while traveling) \- I keep emergency funds in 3 different accounts, two are local, and I keep a few hundred dollars in cash at home \- I have enough food in storage to last a couple weeks \- we keep our car at least half filled with gas always, and I have ~2 gallons in my garage (we use it with our lawnmower, so it's fresh) \- I have multiple credit cards from multiple institutions

Etc.

I can't plan for everything, but I want to make sure that I can at least survive a few months without any pay.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've saved about half of my income since I started working (6.5 years now), in part because I'm financially paranoid.

Beyond the security cushion, it's pretty nice generally. I've taken a couple months off every time I quit my job (and the quitting itself is pretty stress free, don't need to worry about having another gig lined up before I jump ship).

</comment><comment><USER11> Savings. I am not entirely sure the exact number of months, since I don't spend my entire salary each month, however at this point it is several months.

That is also the worst case, in that it assumes I can get nothing at all in terms of income for that long.

I would feel a little better moving it to something more safe than bank account, by which I mean something no government could take from me and which I could take with me should my current country collapse, but at present I am as secure as the Danish Government.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance](https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance) might be a good place to look. Also, it's heavily dependant on where you live. (e.g. the US doesn't protect the citizen as well as France does: unemployment assistance, centralized retirement agency, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER13> if the www ever goes down I'll help rebuild the web.

I own my own company and provide multiple consult services, and run a few websites so its highly unlikely that all the services I offer will ever go away. if they do I can fix bikes, houses and electronics.

if my health goes horribly bad I have insurance, I can always work from home if I'm sick.

savings wise I own my house and my car and have enough savings to live on for a long time and put a lot into a 401k and investments but I'm probably way older than a lot of the ppl on here.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a plan. I'm not currently in a position to be able to implement it if necessary, but I'm working towards it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Trying for six months contingency saved up. Very hard given other debts I have to clear without basically not living life. It's a risky trade-off.

</comment><comment><USER16> In all honesty: Go live with my parents.

I worry about what happens when they're gone. Maybe I'd have to go live with my brother.

</comment><comment><USER17> Health insurance, disability insurance, house insurance, and car insurance! Also a large emergency fund and no debt.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do you mean besides different types of insurance? (health, life, critical illness & disability, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER19> Aside from an emergency fund of more than 3 months of living expenses?

</comment><comment><USER20> yes: to die

</comment><comment><USER21> My good Looks :-P

My Children

Charge cards</comment>


LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever - <AUTHOR> http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/01/29/libreoffice-4-4-the-most-beautiful-libreoffice-ever/ <comment><USER2> While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it displeases me that the FOSS community is so hostile to the ribbon-style UI MS uses in its office product. Its such a great concept that using LO is like stepping back into the Office 97 days. Frankly, I'd rather just pay every few years for a home edition of Office than do all the mental gymnastic needed to properly switch to LO.

<comment><USER3> That's your opinion. I don't like the new MS UI. In fact, paying for Office every few years means relearning a new UI, or at least relearning where everything is on the menus now. I find that incredibly frustrating and annoying.

My issue with LO is that it doesn't work on complex spreadsheets and powerpoints. I had spreadsheets corrupted and I just had to turn away from LO and go back to Office. I was much happier in LO, but alas I cannot stay.

<comment><USER4> Did you try the ribbon for a week or two? I loathed it too. But then I got used to its workflow. It exposes a lot more options more intuitively than the current LO menu system.

<comment><USER5> I have to use Office at work. I have not liked the ribbon since it came out. It's not that I don't like new ideas. I am a SW dev and I embrace new. I change jobs every 6 mos just so I don't have to deal with old code, that's how much I like new things. The ribbon sucks. It mind numbingly sucks.

Note: Some of this was an exaggeration to drive home the point of how bad the ribbon interface sucks.

<comment><USER6> Is it really worse than toolbar hell?

[http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2012/05...](http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/officebars.png)

Icons without text labels work ONLY for frequently performed tasks with an obvious visual representation.

For everything else text _and_ icons is probably optimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it's better... but from the screenshot, I'd say myself it's design now reaches "barely acceptable", instead of the previous "pretty bad", but not "delightful" either.

Of course, I think I could say the same (or worse) about MS Word, it's main competitor. So.

<comment> _-__--- Curious - there are a lot of ways to say the terminal "so." I would have thought that ellipses (so...) capture the affect with which most people deliver it, but the hard stop actually adds a nice twang to it. I imagine the speaker quickly saying it, pursing their lips slightly and tilting their head to one side while maintaining eye contact with the other party in the conversation.

But yeah, totes agree on the design/aesthetics. It's pretty 2008 freeware- tier.

<comment> a</comment></comment></comment><comment>--- DAE pedantry?!?

<comment><USER8> Analysis is not pedantry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am probably in the minority, but even AbiWord looks way better than this new design - let's have simplistic monochrome icons on our 4k 10-bit displays everywhere! Also, the font on toolbars is sci-fi and not serious-work-like. Huge white spaces everywhere with gradients out of place. I like the new fonts (seems inspired by Yosemite) and the bottom shape panel is nice as well.

<comment><USER10> AbiWord and Gnumeric have _always_ looked better than their LibreOffice counterparts!

<comment><USER11> Gnumeric is a large steaming pile of dog poo. Do a sort on a largeish file and it will consume all the known RAM in the universe. Do the same operation in Excel and it barely breaks a sweat.

<comment><USER12> I once had to open a CSV file with about 2,000 columns. Excel failed me, OpenOffice/LibreOffice failed me, only Gnumeric managed to open the file.

I'll admit that I only deal with that many columns on very rare occasions, but it does come in handy sometimes.

<comment><USER13> In theory Excel can open files with 16,384 columns so it's surprising it failed.

[https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Excel- specification...](https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Excel- specifications-and-limits-1672b34d-7043-467e-8e27-269d656771c3)

<comment><USER12> I might misremember the number of columns (could have been 20,000 - also, it had _many_ rows), or maybe the 16,384 column limit applies to xls(x) files only, not to importing CSV files.

I remember at first cursing at Excel, then realizing what a ridiculously large number of columns the file had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I appreciate effort put into making the interface prettier, one of the things that really detracts from LibreOffice and why I almost invariably end up installing MS Word for clients is the confusing way which the mail merge system is designed in LibreOffice. I've done it enough times now to know mostly how to get it working for myself, but there's no way in hell I'll try teaching a client how to do a mail merge in LibreOffice.

And even myself, I've had to completely scrap documents I'm working on because LibreOffice gets confused and does what I'm assuming is some kind of join, resulting in tons of duplicates when it comes time to print[1]. It's almost certainly user error, but where to fix it is unclear. That whole mechanism needs to be gutted and reworked.

But I continue to deal with it because Linux is my primary environment and it's good enough in everything else I have to deal with.

[1] something like multiple data sources used accidentally, even though both point at the same source file, and even after wiping all data sources, the issue remains.

<comment><USER15> Huh. This is an interesting example of a feature that's very important to some people, and utterly irrelevant to others. I had never even heard of "mail merge" in the context of word processing software, only mass-emailers, and it would never have occurred to me that anyone was using desktop word processing software to run their paper-mailing campaigns.

<comment><USER14> It's pretty common in the small business world, or even printing envelopes/labels for christmas cards, wedding invitations, etc. Most recently, I'm using it for rapid prototyping of cards for a board game I'm making, but I do also use it for small direct mailing campaigns (under 200 destinations) for my business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Exhaustive and seamless import and export of Microsoft formats - that's the most important and desired LibreOffice feature for me and probably for for most LO users!

<comment><USER17> This works nearly flawlessly for me since 4.0.

So so many Excel files. Ugh.

<comment><USER18> It's the 'nearly' that's the kicker.

<comment><USER19> We encourage bug reports :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The icons need color for easy differentiation. These crisp monochrome icons are nice in theory, but when you're quickly scanning for an icon it all goes to mush in your vision.

<comment><USER21> They are not nice in vision theory at least. To make them as differentiable as you could, they should all have different texture, orientations and colours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> More detailed change log by Michael Meeks: [https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under- the-...](https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under-the- hood-4-4.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> If anyone follows this, what's the current with LibreOffice vs OpenOffice.org? Is one objectively better than the other now? What has the community momentum?

<comment><USER24> LibreOffice has all the momentum, all the brain share and all the innovations. They made massive changes and miraculously brought a crufty code base full of technological debt back to life.

Now they started to care about aestethics. And suddenly people notice. :-)

<comment><USER25> meanwhile, OpenOffice added some comic sans to their logo [http://www.openoffice.org/](http://www.openoffice.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When I saw the headline, I thought, "Oh no, I hope they didn't implement the MS Ribbon?" Thankfully they didn't. That MS bug still trips me up whenever I fire up Word. Looks ok, I don't really notice much, mainly because I hardly use it or Word.

<comment><USER27> You should read some of the other comments here. A lot of us have spent half a decade enjoying the massive improvements brought by the ribbon, and it's quite surprising there are still a few, er, very late adopters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Windows user here. It's not particularly any prettier, and Calc doesn't open CSVs correctly anymore. So yeah, there's that.

[http://i.imgur.com/i1YuVXA.png](http://i.imgur.com/i1YuVXA.png)

<comment><USER29> Importing of CSVs is a joke in both OO and LibreOffice - I literally have to rename files to .csv to get them to interpret .txt (or other extensions) as comma-separated - there's no nice "Import" menu like Excel has had for decades.

Even opening Calc first then using its menu to open a .txt opens the file in LibreOffice Writer!

And then of course Gnome's (on Linux) file browsers no longer support renaming of files in the browsers, so you have to mess around elsewhere.

<comment><USER30> I had no idea that LibreOffice can't be forced to recognize that a .txt file is CSV; that sounds annoying.

Watch out, though, for handling CSV files in Excel if you're using an encoding other than ANSI.

Excel for Windows does not correctly write UTF-8 files[1]

Excel for Mac lists 'UTF-8' as an import CSV encoding option but Excel for Mac does not import UTF-8 CSV files[2]

[1]Response from MS employee: "Unfortunately, not all applications can encode files in UTF-8 by default, and Microsoft Excel is one of them." [http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/office/forum/office_2013_...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/office/forum/office_2013_release-excel/how-can-i-save-a-csv-with- utf-8-encoding-using/12801501-c1e4-4a64-80d9-96b680b64cfe)

[2]Response from MS employee: "Excel for Mac does not currently support UTF-8" \-- despite UTF-8 being an option in Excel for Mac [http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-m...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macexcel/mac-excel-converts-utf-8-characters-to- underlines/7c4cdaa7-bfa3-41a2-8482-554ae235227b)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Don't OSS project has professional designer? I mean like Apple-quality designers?

<comment><USER2> Have you ever tried contributing to a popular FOSS product? I have. Expect to be downvoted, yelled at, etc for suggesting change, especially change that's an emotional issue for geeks (implementing a ribbon-like interface, you know the one started by the 'evil' microsoft). Linus's childish attitude is pretty much the poster boy for this attitude. Namecalling is the norm.

There are so many cultural and management issues with big FOSS projects, you could write 100 phd disserations about it. Its not generally a welcoming and innovating environment. Generally, from what I've seen, its the products with the very small teams (or sometimes one person) who seems to make the breakthroughs and everyone eventually just copies those guys.

Can you imagine someone with great credentials and a great portfolio trying to engage the LO team on a novel interface? Can you imagine the Linus-like comments aimed at her way? That's a major demotivator for innovation, change, and success. Oh god, heaven forbid you're a woman in FOSS telling men to make a change. That's an even worse nightmare right there.

This is why, I think, so much FOSS stuff looks like shit and has poor documentation. The artsy crowd, visual thinkers, UI nerds, and the writers are systemically kicked around to the point where they don't contribute much, so a lot of UI decisions are made by coders, who typically are creatures of habit and have a "if it aint broke why fix it" mentality in regards to interfaces and other features.

This is also why OSX is such a wonderful product. Apple took all the strong BSD code and dismissed the linux and BSD WM's and put a WM on there that didn't suck. Apple had the management structure to implement effective change without a "coder's veto" so many FOSS products suffer from. Or how Apple took KDE's khtml/webkit and wove both Safari and mobile Safari around it.

<comment><USER32> I think a lot of it comes down to what a visual designer can contribute. FOSS projects are typically the sum of individual contributions from a lot of people, all scratching their itches. There is limited scope for someone to _tell_ other people what they need to do.

A designer who can't code is dependent on other people donating their time so that the design can be realized. This puts the designer at an immediate disadvantage.

<comment><USER33> If you don't value design you're incompetent as a developer. Why would you even contribute to a project if you don't want what's best for the project?

<comment><USER34> Maybe they do value design. Maybe they just value different designs than you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sigh. I see the trend of horrible single colour icons has now spread to LibreOffice.

<comment><USER36> There are multiple icon sets so you are welcome to switch to a more colorful set :)

</comment></comment><comment> V-2 These colorful, podgy toolbar icons (on Windows) remind me of Ami Pro for some reason :) [http://i61.tinypic.com/2cmly5c.jpg](http://i61.tinypic.com/2cmly5c.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER37> Hard to take them seriously when they insist that their main application icon is "beautiful" as well.

Beauty aside, having an open office alternative is always welcome.

</comment><comment><USER38> While the icons may have gotten flatter, it still didn't fix any of the major information architecture issues that plague MSWord clones of the 2000s.

The "design problems" aren't the colors, it's being responsive to exactly what users want to do without putting unnecessary interface elements in their way.

Take a look at HackPad for an example of great text editing experiences.

<comment><USER39> If you're trying to "edit text" with LibreOffice, you've already picked the wrong tool for the job. The fact that a lot of people end up picking the wrong tool for the job isn't really LibreOffice's fault, nor does anything immediately leap to mind that they can do about that. In the meantime, a "document editor" is definitely a viable use case, even if it isn't the all- consuming use case that your usual Microsoft Word oriented "computer science" high school class may inadvertently teach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Looks like software from the 2000's :( They should just hire someone to make a modern design

<comment><USER41> Even if it does, so what? I'm all for having designers on the team, but gratuitous redesigns often end up for the worse.

Something like LibreOffice is a giant piece of software produced by a team that is far too small. They have to be conservative, and they have to focus their energy properly.

Frankly, instead of playing around with trying to make things "beautiful" (which is hopeless anyway, given how opinions differ), I'd rather they turned their design brains towards the kind of small tweaks that make the UI flow better. There are bound to be hundreds or thousands of little corners where twiddling slightly with the layout of menus, dialog boxes, etc. would make users more productive. Focus on those, please. (Note that judging by the more detailed reports, this is actually what they are doing.)

<comment><USER42> The Ribbon UI idea - to highlight contextually relevant options and hide irrelevant ones - seems like a worthy idea to copy. That said, using horizontal rather than vertical space would be good.

<comment><USER41> There are good things about the ribbon, true, and you're spot on about using horizontal space. I wonder though whether the LibreOffice team have enough solid data about user behavior to make good decisions in what would be a huge redesign - not to mention that, judging by the screenshots, they are already starting to make good use of horizontal space.

Also, I'd personally prefer if instead of just permuting UI elements they would adapt some of the really nice ideas that really make things flow better for everyday users. I suppose it's nice to have a bigger Undo button, but wouldn't it be less contentious and more useful in the long term to teach people about Ctrl+Z?

In particular, the live previews don't require a permutation of the UI layout, and (during my admittedly limited use) I found it to be the nicest of the changes that people usually associate with the Ribbon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> 12000 defects fixed?!

OMG! One Herculean effort this must have been.</comment>


IKEv1 Information Disclosure Vulnerability in Multiple Cisco Products - <AUTHOR> https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20160916-ikev1 <comment><USER2> No way could anyone else have discovered and used the same vulnerability during these 14 years. Thanks for making use safe./s

<comment><USER3> I get the point of your comment, but at a minimum if this were indeed NSA work, at least they could monitor for exploitation of the same bug against targets they want to defend (which, given their network reach could be both public and private sector).

Fixing it would've at least prevented exploitation, but there is value in knowledge of who else has this exploit and who they're trying to attack.

<comment><USER4> Do we even know anything about their defensive operations?

I'm almost glad we don't since defensive capabilities are the kind of thing you'd rather not disclose to your adversary until you truly need to leverage them, but at the same time, with all the leaks, it's as if the NSA just runs offensive operations and reactive analysis/reconnaissance.

<comment><USER5> Yes. IPsec is widely used, and TLS on top of that with formally verified specialized implementations of IPsec. They also use data diodes, restricting the syntax of data that flows into and out of networks.

<comment><USER4> I appreciate this, but I should clarify that I'm speaking specifically to active defense (hence defensive operations) rather than developing, publishing, and using defensive best practices, which I'd personally consider more passive than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The vulnerability is due to insufficient condition checks in the part of the code that handles IKEv1 security negotiation requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IKEv1 packet to an affected device configured to accept IKEv1 security negotiation requests. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to retrieve memory contents, which could lead to the disclosure of confidential information."

So basically heartbleed for Cisco VPN's.

<comment><USER7> This is a pretty common vulnerability. We found the same bug in nginx not long before Heartbleed. Cisco in particular has a history with these kinds of bugs (IIRC FX sort of famously dumped a whole image of a Cisco router in the early 2000s with one).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reflection of a "responsible" disclosure culture...

</comment><comment><USER9> I reported incredibly strange IKE behavior on PIX 6.x to Cisco in ~2005. They escalated to TAC, confirmed it was a bug, and eventually "patched" it. Wonder if it was same codepath?

</comment><comment><USER10> > An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IKEv1 > packet to an affected device configured to accept IKEv1 security negotiation > requests > There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.

Call me crazy, but could one not work around this by ... I don't know, disabling IKEv1?

</comment><comment><USER11> How best, or how would one expect the NSA to behave? Where is the balance between offense and defense? On one hand, I can see this exploit needing disclosed to the general public. On the other, I can see this being useful for offensive purposes.

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess that's why there's IKE 2...

IKE 1 was seemingly purposely complicated.

</comment><comment><USER13> And this is just one of the disclosed 0day tools. Supposedly, the Shadow Brokers have quite a bit more that has yet to be released. Should be interesting in the future as more comes out.

</comment><comment><USER14> Where in the page is the NSA mentioned?

Not saying it's not reasonable for the NSA to have exploited (they probably did), but unless we have proof, the headline is a bit clickbait-ish.

<comment><USER4> Search for shadow brokers in the disclosure. That's how Cisco's been crediting them.

<comment><USER15> ⌘+f

<comment><USER16> As long as we're being pedantic:

⌘F

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is anyone else bothered by the mis-use of the term "zero-day" in the media?

</comment><comment><USER18> Where does it indicate the NSA had anything to do with this?

<comment><USER19> In the "Exploitation and Public Announcments" part of the linked article, it says that this vulnerability was discovered in the documents leaked/hacked from the Equation Group, which appears to be a group either within or extremely close to the NSA, although neither their actual name nor their existence has been acknowledged by the NSA.

I don't see any reference to this exploit being used 14 years ago though, although the code being exploited is that old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> looks like a slandering title : how do you know NSA had the knowledge of this vulnerability ? I know that NSA may be considered "allmighty" considering its researching power, but this sounds a bit like a fast and easy accusation, and misleading title... I expected a whole different story (disappointed to see that ctrl+F "NSA" had no result).

<comment><USER4> Right at the bottom of the disclosure.

> The exploit of this vulnerability was publicly disclosed by the alleged > Shadow Brokers group for Cisco PIX.</comment></comment>


I'm Patrick McKenzie (patio11). I make and sell software. Ask me anything. - <AUTHOR> https://inbound.org/discussion/view/i-m-patrick-mckenzie-patio11-i-make-and-sell-software-ask-me-anything

<comment><USER2> Very interesting suggestions here. I wouldn't have expected this one:

 _If you were starting from scratch again now, where would you start?_

 _Short-term plan: Write a book about the problem space for the SaaS business in #1 PRIOR TO LAUNCHING THAT BUSINESS. For example, if I were biting off im going to once and for all solve email marketing for software companies , Id write about the strategy of doing so prior to making software._

Has anyone else done something similar? Perhaps writing an ebook or creating a video? As long as the asset you are creating costs money and can allow you to give away pieces of it, would other mediums work as well as a book?</comment>


Kubernetes Rook EdgeFS 1.1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/kubernetes-rook-edgefs-1-1-released-2e4359057849?source=friends_link&sk=8c491b92cb156f19a792db2b1cd3f786 <comment><USER2> I tried it a few months ago but the cluster was kinda unstable, very often not detecting all the nodes as belonging to the cluster and things like that. Hopefully it has improved in the meantime.</comment>


Microsoft's ruthless executives against Google's cold engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/11/business_vs_engineering_auletta_on_microsoft_and_google.html

<comment><USER2> Hurr, engineers don't have feelings, so they don't understand emotional blah blah blah. I don't know how the author feels remotely qualified to write a book about a company with a famed engineering culture, when it's so obvious he hasn't come close to understanding trivial misconceptions, much less a culture as a whole.

<comment><USER3> Why are you taking this personally?

I will go out on a limb and say:

* The typical engineering/CS students I met at college had a noticeable lower emotional and social intelligence than the average student. Obviously there are exceptions. The kid with the best social skills could have been an electrical engineer, while the worst maybe was a finance major. But there was definitely a distinction.

And the effect feeds off of each other. Many people are under-socialized in high school but break out of their shell in college. I'd like to go out a limb again and say the opportunity for this is less for CS/engineering students.

I went to a large state university. Engineers/programmers at my school really tended to be exclusive. Like there was an engineering floor in my freshman dorm and they all kept to themselves. The few engineers I'd run into at parties would sometimes joke about not hanging out with his peers. I had a pretty diverse group of friends in college but very rarely ran into them outside of my math classes.

People learn their social and emotional intelligence from their peers. With CS/engineering groups, there's aren't many tribal leaders to learn from.

* It's pretty evident that Google execs are having trouble understanding how others perceive them:

Eric Schmidt recently suggested to a group of reporters that Google's culture was the strong hand that kept it from engaging in anticompetitive behavior: "If somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and we announced an evil strategy, we would be destroyed," he said. "There is a fundamental trust relationship between Google and its users." He shared similar comments, according to Wired, with Varney's predecessor at the Justice Department, who apparently was floored that "trust" was Schmidt's legal justification for pushing through the Yahoo/Google deal.

[http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/technology/obama_google.fort...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/technology/obama_google.fortune/)

BTW if you have a CS/engineer background and have good EQ/SQ, props to you! I truly believe people with a diverse skill set have a tremendous advantage. The people who rise to the top of Hollywood don't tend to be the pure artists but business/artist (or artist/business).

<comment><USER4> Congrats, so you figured out the difference between an intro/extrovert. Do you think an extrovert engineer at google would somehow produce software that less monopolistic than an introvert's software?

I don't think introverts have a less diverse skill set than extroverts either. It's harder for extroverts to perceive an introvert's skill set so it's highly likely that you're probably just unaware. I'd say the majority of business leaders are actually introverts.

<comment><USER3> The terms "introvert" and "extrovert" are very misused. It just measures how much you like being around other people.

I know many introverts with very good social and emotional skills. Likewise, I know many extroverts who are terrible in this regard.

<comment><USER5> That reminds me of a joke:

Q: How can you tell the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer?

A: The extroverted engineer looks at _your_ shoes when he's talking to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like this needs a followup article on The Onion. "Google Engineer Baffled That She's Not Returning His Calls; 'I just commented that her breasts were of optimal volume relative to the dress she wore to dinner that night! What does she mean, calling me a pig?!'"</comment>


Ask HN: Best thing to do in summer break for student? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys I am first year student studying SE in UK I was wondering what is the best thing to do in the summer break. I "think" that I know Java and PHP pretty well(about 85% percent overall mark). The first thing that came to my mind was to find a job. After about one week of searching I found only one job for junior Java developer(maybe I am searching wrong). The next idea came to my mind was to get certificate, that way I will have better chance of getting a job right ? The oracle Java SE 8 Programmer I cost about 150 pounds, which I think are too much money for person that is not working. Next idea I have was to work for open source project just to meet people, but I think I don't have necessary skills for that. Also I try freelance projects, but almost everyone have more experience than me.<p>I will be really happy if you can give me some advice what is the best thing to do during this 3-4 mounts time period? <comment><USER2> I don't particularly know how things work in the UK for students, but here in the US the best idea would be an internship or a summer coding program (Google and similar companies do a few of them for students).</comment>


People leave managers, not companies - <AUTHOR> https://blog.intercom.com/people-leave-managers-not-companies/ <comment><USER2> One of the issues I've had that isn't mentioned here is the value of mutual trust. Communication and trust are the two cornerstones of a really solid manager <-> managee relationship in my experience. Whether that lack of trust manifests itself as micro-management, constant check-ins, or a constant threat of surveillance it can easily turn an above average performer into an apathetic and demoralized employee.

I used to work remotely for a company that spanned more than a few timezones, with a wonderful daily team manager and a not-so-great weekly department manager. Learning that my minutes and output were constantly monitored completely destroyed my trust with the latter, and had me searching within the week. My reaction to that was so strong I actually considered it a fortune when I was laid off for unrelated reasons rather than having to quit.

I would be reprimanded for signing on five minutes later than usual despite being on a team of individuals that spanned multiple countries, and would get a questioning ping if I was offline for more than 10 minutes (especially problematic if you're the type of programmer to write or plan code on the whiteboard / paper first). Extremely draining to deal with that sort of nonsense and mistrust.

Please, managers of the world, trust your employees! You have performance metrics for a reason!

<comment><USER3> IME this kind of experience comes when you have a manager who has no fundamental understanding of what it is that they are managing and has no particular reason to trust you.

A manager who can monitor your output by reading your pull requests simply won't engage in this type of behavior whereas a manager who can't will usually instinctively gravitate to terrible metrics like "does he show dedication by being in at 9am rather than 9:05am"?

Managers should form a very deep understanding of whom to trust and why or understand on a very deep level what it is that they are managing.

Managers who cannot do either of those things should be terminated with prejudice.

>You have performance metrics for a reason!

As far as developing software goes, every single performance metric is terrible.

<comment><USER4> Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric?

To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional.

As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways. Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted.

 _Edit:_ Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

<comment><USER3> >Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric?

 _The worst_ metric.

That is, unless the "turning up on time" is actually causing a serious and recognizable problem. Then it's the problem that's a problem.

>As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways.

No it doesn't. If you put the onus on the developer and say "not only do you have to deliver high quality code you have to make me _trust_ that you've delivered high quality code by adhering to these arbitrary metrics I've come up which bear no intrinsic relationship to how you do your job" you're admitting incompetence as a manager.

It's a manager's job to know whom to trust and a manager that trusts the useless developer who turns up at 9am sharp over the excellent developer who turns up at 9:05am requires termination.

>Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.

It will definitely make a _bad manager_ trust you less.

A good manager will either recognize that you're delivering or not.

<comment><USER5> > A good manager will either recognize that you're delivering or not.

And a great manager will evaluate the wider effects of your behavior on the whole team and over a long timescale. If you being late to your job causes others to start doing the same, and if your manager cuts you slack because you are a "high performer" then social dynamics come into play that must be...well...managed! Performance also slips over time. People get spoiled, sometimes depressed, sometimes lazy.

Managers look at whole teams and long-term trends. Stop focusing on yourself and the immediate moment. Success is a marathon, not a sprint, and requires careful, regular progress.

<comment><USER6> > If you being late to your job causes others to start doing the same

You're missing the point entirely: Who cares if they're also late?

Short of them being late to something important like a meeting, it seriously couldn't matter less than any of the thousand other things you should focus on as a manager.

Unless you work in something with external time pressures (e.g. I used to work in equities and US market hours dictated our need to be available) there's no reason it should matter whether someone shows up at 9 or 9:45. If you're really worried about people missing each other, set core hours (11-3 say) where everyone's expected to be available.

<comment><USER7> You're missing his point. Being late could (hypothetically) have side effects that affect the morale of other team members.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this article misses an important point, which is that managers, or at least line managers, are often the messenger for decisions made in upper management.

If I think back on the jobs I've had in the past, it's very rare for me to have issues with line managers. However, I had serious doubts about the competency of upper management in multiple companies that I've worked for.

In this case, unless upper management recognise the problems that the line manager is highlighting, there's often not much more the line manager can do. Seeing as upper are (in my experience) frequently out of touch with the repercussions of their decisions, line managers should accept that they can only do what they can with what they're given (either that or leave).

<comment><USER9> As manager in the middle you often feel helpless. You want to help your people but you have nothing to offer. Can't give raises, no place to promote people, top management doesn't support your initiatives. It's a difficult place to be in.

<comment><USER10> My last manager quit because of that feeling of helplessness. Basically my manager left his manager.

<comment><USER11> Can relate to this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's probably easier for managers to overrate their skills and performance because the problems they cause are often not overt; if parts of their team are underperforming, the knee-jerk assessment is that "there's something wrong with Joe" rather than "there's something wrong with our process" or "there's something wrong with what I'm doing."

Some of my worst experiences with management involved cases of serious micromanagement. I'd say if you're micromanaging, there's a 99.9 percent chance that you're a bozo and you don't belong in the position you're in even if you had initially earned it. You have trust issues with your employees and you've failed to build a team and environment that allows people to effectively manage themselves.

The best mangers I've known are the ones who are _minimally_ involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves.

I'd argue that people usually leave both managers and companies because companies too often fail to recognize the broken patterns of managers. This is anecdotal, but I worked at one place where more than half of the development team(those with the most talent) quit within a span of 2 weeks, and somehow upper management decided it was not the fault of our tyrannical manager and instead replaced those positions with junior developers they could underpay and abuse. It's all the more insulting when you can point out the problems and provide actual solutions, and the aloof men in suits on Mount Olympus allow the problem to fester. I might have stayed for another year had they booted out our manager.

The fact that most people have stories of terrible management is astounding, and it doesn't say very much for whatever training managers receive(if any?).

<comment><USER13> > The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People > who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so > often, will often figure out how to manage themselves.

In those cases, did you feel you shared values with those managers? Or were they indifferent to your values, and just left you alone?

<comment><USER12> I've experienced both kinds of low involvement, but I was definitely referring to cases where we shared values.

A case of indifference is still preferable to tyranny, though it obviously comes with its own set of problems. The biggest issue I have with uninvolved managers is the conflict between knowing what's expected versus the level of autonomy I should have. This problem is not isolated, of course. But an uninvolved manager may grant a lot of autonomy while failing to make it clear to their employees what sort of decisions they cannot male autonomously. As an employee, I will only ask so many questions before deciding the system is ridiculous and then overriding it. That's just my nature. If something is so important to a process, like communicating with a bunch of anonymous suits on Mount Olympus before a major release of one particular product, that information should be handed down to me. I shouldn't have to pry every detail out of management to get my job done, and occasionally they'll be punished when I make an arbitrary decision.

A good manager should be able to provide relevant information and facilitate the product process while staying out of the way. If they're always too busy attending meetings outside the team, then they'll reap what they sow and have no one to blame but themselves.

By the way, I do not make character judgments on most managers. Most of the people who've managed me are great people outside the office setting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been managing large teams (Anywhere from 100 to 300 people) and in my experience I would phrase it differently.

1\. In a going concern, which has found traction, a manager is often the _reason_ for people to leave the company.

2\. In a company that is not finding traction, or the larger view of its direction is obfuscated, managers are the reason people _stay_ back to work.

This manager being the end-all of association comes from military knowledge that you fight because of allegiance to your battalion, cause and the country - in that order.

In an knowledge enterprise, these constructs exist, but with almost equal weightage.

The best manager cannot make an employee stay back if the company is not going anywhere, or if the cause is not evident.

The worst manager will lose employees even if the company is going bonkers.

<comment><USER15> You have been _directly_ managing over a hundred people? That just sounds like textbook bad heirarchy

<comment><USER16> They did not claim to _directly_ manage 300 people, and it's somewhat bizarre to assume they did.

<comment><USER17> I think it's the "large teams" bit that makes the OP appear to be saying the "team" is up to 300 people. Team suggests a group of equally ranked members to me.

You can't really have a team of 300, sounds more like a management speak version of team.

Of course only the poster knows for sure their intended meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At my previous job, I left due to the company, not the management.

My direct supervisor was great. He was a good manager on most levels.

I left because the company had no future, they weren't going bankrupt, but they weren't growing either. I never got a pay rise, probably never would. My benefits actually shrunk as time went on, staff social functions were cut (e.g. team lunches), use of networking funds became more restricted, and my work environment became less flexible.

In fact, the only reason I considered staying was my manager and coworkers.

People leave poor working environments, whether it's a company or a manager causing that poor environment.

<comment><USER19> Yea, its too easy to say people leave managers, but it was never in my case. I think it varies between industry. With the software companies, the churn is mostly due to folks looking out for better opportunities..

Me personally almost always looked outside due to availability of better opportunities. The argument that people leave managers makes sense only if you are in the best possible job/company you can get with your skill set (which is a very small %) and you somehow got a rift with the manager big enough to leave.

But it could be different in other domains/industries where people stick with the same company till their retirement..

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You don't just leave a bad manager. You escape! Emotionally it is deflating, defeating, a real grind that affects your whole life if your work situation sucks.

</comment><comment><USER21> No, people leave companies too. Using my throwaway account because I don't want my name attached to this.

I went contract-to-hire at my current job. When it came time to come on full- time, the offer they made was far too low to accept. The owner of the company made a big deal out of the bonus and at the time I believed him. I held out for $5k more before accepting.

Fast forward a year later and I'm really looking forward to this bonus. It was 5% of my salary, basically an extra paycheck. I was expecting at least three times that because of what he said during the negotiation. I started looking that day and am interviewing with two companies.

I've since realized that I just don't want to work for consultants anymore. You're being farmed out and your labor is being arbitraged. This incentivizes them to dick you on comp. I know in his mind it's just business, but I don't want that in my life anymore.

So while the thesis of this article may hold for a certain segment of the labor market, it certainly doesn't hold for all of them. Some segments just suck. Conflicts of interest in these segments invariably pit line workers against management and no amount of manager cordialness or professionalism will prevent turnover.

Sure there are a few workplaces that have ironed out conflicts of interest and so can attract the cream of the crop, these places can build nice engineer caves and then personal relationships rather than endemic conflicts of interest become the dominant cultural factor that drives turnover. But these guys trying to tell the rest of the world's managers how to run a shop is just profoundly naive.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hey all,

I'm the blog author, Rich Archbold from Intercom. Just to clarify …

I wrote this blog, with the exaggerated / cliched title, to try to speak to the large cohort of over-confident, under-skilled and often lacking-enough- self-awareness, managers out there. I was (and often still am) a member of this cohort. Being a great manager _all_ the time is really hard and almost impossible IMHO.

The goal was to hopefully try and generate some more self-awareness and introspection and thus make life a little fairer, more pleasant, more growth- oriented and hopefully more successful for all concerned.

I wasn't trying to deny or downplay that people also leave their jobs for all of the other reasons highlighted by folks here.

Thanks, Rich.

<comment><USER23> My take based on my experience is,

#1. People get hired for what they are good, their skills and then get promoted (to management) for same technical/IC skills not for the MGMT skills. No MGMT ramp-up. No MGMT tools. No MGMT framework. You are now tasked to lead a team. it's surely will fail.

#2. Next the mindset. Typical mindset when you move from technical (or any IC) role to MGMT and the higher you go in MGMT should completely change.... unfortunately its not so easy to give up the control. MGMT is about making others successful... giving up your control to others is very frightening and often causes identity issues... moving from do it all (as an IC) to ask_and_inspire is not easy...

#3. Assuming you overcome these two... typical problem of MGMT/leadership is they try to find, "What's the matter?" where as the focus should always be on "What matters to you (an individual/ICs in team)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Likewise, there probably isn't such a thing as a 10X developer, but I totally believe 10X managers exist (they provide cover, they have empathy, they are able to lead people who otherwise aren't very manageable). I've only met very few of them in my career, most managers are 1X or even negative.

<comment><USER25> 10x developers definitely exist, quite amazing to work with them.

<comment><USER26> But 0.1X managers are always telling us they are a myth. Do the math. :)

<comment><USER24> It's the 0.1x manager who generally demands rock stars to make up for their inability to manage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have only ever left good managers. I've had bad managers, but it was only under good managers that I was fully enabled to do my best work - work that would give me the confidence (and the resume fodder) to pitch myself to a new company for better pay.

That may seem disloyal to those good managers, but I never left on a whim. It was always an agonizing process. But it was also always necessary. My former managers have never held it against me, and I now have connections with a number of great managers who would hire me without question if I was ever looking again (and they know I would work for them in a heartbeat).

What always happened was that it became evident that my interests and my company's interest had diverged, whether it was a lack of opportunity for advancement, the company was going under, the product was a non-starter, or upper-management was bent on self-sabotage.

EDIT: Added missing words

</comment><comment><USER28> There's often a third possibility; leaving _groups_. At a small enough startup they're effectively the same, but I've seen distinct groups form in companies as small as 20. While it's true that a manager can affect the quality of the entire group, they're only one factor. High-performing fun group with a ho-hum manager? I'll probably stay. Dysfunctional bunch of ho-hum peers with a really good manager? That was my last job, and it's not my _current_ job for exactly that reason.

Especially at a larger company, managers might be constrained wrt hiring and firing, reviews and raises, pushing back against misguided product-management decisions, etc. Even a good manager might not be able to deal with these issues quickly enough to prevent attrition. I've seen some _really_ good managers, people I'd worked with before and who have been superstars at other companies, burn out trying. That's sort of leaving the company that hobbled the manager, but other managers and other groups within the same company were doing fine so I'd call it leaving the group.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tellingly, when I interviewed with Intercom their "culture fit" manager was extremely rude and condescending, and constantly interrupted. Everyone else was polite, but if this is the person who gets to decide "yeah, they'd fit in here" that's a pretty huge problem.

People turn you down because of managers, not companies, too.

<comment><USER30> Funnily enough, I like Intercom's hiring process (as it appears on paper). But...my real life experience was quite different.

Interviewed by a precocious child who didn't have interview skills.

<comment><USER29> Intercom does a fantastic job with content marketing. I'm not sure how much it reflects reality, though. Again, most of the people I talked to were polite; it was just one extremely off-putting interviewer. I nearly thought it must be some kind of perverse test to see how I handle jerks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've definitely left companies and not managers before. To be fair it's usually because my manager's manager's manager was an asshole who thought 1% and an attaboy would be enough to keep people when our rent had gone up 7% and neighboring companies we're offering 50% more. Also to be fair, my managers were good enough that I stayed 6 months longer than I would have with even a neutral manager

</comment><comment><USER32> Problem is, managers shape companies.

Last company I left went bankrupt and got bought by a VC who replaced the whole management.

The new managers were running around telling people how to do things because of the "company spirit".

A few people, including me, were in the company for over 7 years and we knew the company spirit, because well, we lived and formed it.

Now some newly hired MBAs try to tell me that I'm wrong?

The bankruptcy lead many people to leave. The rest left because of the new management. Now the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained.

<comment><USER9> "ow the company has the old name and product, but noone of the people that created or formed it remained."

That's probably by design.

<comment><USER32> Don't you say?

Just because people do things intentionally doesn't make it any better...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There is an important distinction that hasn't been discussed much:

\- The reason people _decide_ to resign.

\- The reason people _begin to consider_ resigning.

In my experience, bad management is what usually kicks off the whole thought process, but other factors are what cement the decision (like an offer with higher pay, better title, higher prestige company etc.)

</comment><comment><USER34> I work on a team that lost about 66% of its members in the last year and a half. Every single one of them liked our manager, but the way the organization works at a higher level was making everyone's life miserable. People absolutely leave companies because of the company.

I've also had toxic managers at other organizations, so I agree a manager CAN drive an employee away, but that's not always or even usually the case.

<comment><USER35> I think that too is on the company. A good one-level-up manager will check up on their underlings, the managers in question, and figure out who's good and bad and resolve the situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can't help feeling that sometimes saying "People leave managers, not companies" is something senior company management tell themselves to absolve themselves of blame for staff turnover.

I could be managed by the best manager in the world, but if I'm paid 20% below market rate I'm going to leave for a better paid job.

</comment><comment><USER37> People leave the environment, not just the manager, though the manager is a big piece of the puzzle.

I quit my last employer because the manager was an abusive bully with severe trust issues who would constantly threaten, abuse and demoralize people, but HR was also to blame since they did not lift a finger to address the issue even though this manager's behavior was widely known throughout the company for decades.

I've also left a great manager in the past since the business was going nowhere. I've left a good manager and good team because I was very underpaid in another company.

</comment><comment><USER38> Funny, I just left a job where new management was installed and promptly lost ~12/30 people in the span of 9 months. Not only was life markedly worse on day 1, it got worse every time another quality coworker or line manager left.

You'd think this would send a signal to someone that a mistake had been made. Nope!

</comment><comment><USER39> The best software teams I've worked on didn't have managers, they had facilitators.

<comment><USER40> For self organizing teams, and teams with motivated people, servitude leadership style works really well. Ensure the teams goals and direction is clearly set, and just remove roadblocks as needed.

But there are other types of teams, and other situations where other styles are more effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I left my first job because the company(Yahoo) was burning. My manager was great, I'd love to work for her again. I left a few months earlier than I needed to though, because her new manager was an asshole.

</comment><comment><USER23> #1. People get hired for what they are good, their skills and then get promoted (to management) for same technical/IC skills not for the MGMT skills. No MGMT ramp-up. No MGMT tools. No MGMT framework. You are now tasked to lead a team. it's surely will fail.

#2. Next the mindset. Typical mindset when you move from technical (or any IC) role to MGMT and the higher you go in MGMT should completely change.... unfortunately its not so easy to give up the control. MGMT is about making others successful... giving up your control to others is very frightening and often causes identity issues... moving from do it all (as an IC) to ask_and_inspire is not easy...

#3. Assuming you overcome these two... typical problem of MGMT/leadership is they try to find, "What's the matter?" where as the focus should always be on "What matters to you (an individual/ICs in team)"

</comment><comment><USER42> "People join good projects and leave bad managers" is how I phrase it, quoting a business school professor and author, Michael Feiner.

I wrote about how to use the perspective to help prepare for job searches and interviews, and to enjoy your time at work more: [http://joshuaspodek.com/people-join-good-projects- leave-2](http://joshuaspodek.com/people-join-good-projects-leave-2)

</comment><comment><USER43> That manager may not be your line manager, they may be several levels above, they may even by the CEO. So actually, it _is_ "the company".

</comment><comment><USER44> I've left a good manager for a higher salary.

<comment><USER45> Congrats! How is the new manager at the higher salary? Equally good? or Bad?

<comment><USER44> It was years ago, but everything worked out :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> people drop out of shitty things that undervalue them, which is much of the modern world. welcome to the world, 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not my usual account for obvious reasons, but - I'm on my way out because of the company, not my manager. My current manager is decent, and my previous one was the reason I came to work for this company.

The thing that's driving me out is the company's lack of direction. They talk of innovation, but their actions demonstrate that they're more concerned with maintaining the status quo with incremental improvements to aging products.

I've spent about 70% of my few years here working on new products that never saw the light of day. That's disheartening. Fool me twice... time to go.

</comment><comment><USER48> Not disagreeing with the point made, but why is this "article" (or rehash of other people's management philosophy) on the intercom site? What does it have to do to with them outside the fact they probably have managers. I might be a sour old man, but I honestly don't get these infomercial type blog posts. It makes me have a lesser opinion of companies publishing these types of things, although with intercom their _beep boop_ sound already pretty much destroyed any sympathy. /s

</comment><comment><USER49> I can relate to this as a manager and as being managed. I been looking into this, do you think Self-Managed types of Organizations reduce the issues with this type of problem of out of date communication style from top down? we are in the 21st century. We don't need to have information coming from top down we need information coming the the bottom up. Our smart devices can do better job than a human manager!

</comment><comment><USER50> I left my big fat paying job after....

\- reported a females colleagues non sexual harassment

\- started to be harassed myself by my direct coworker who insisted I use css lint in the strictest mode. When I disagreed with what lint was saying in the strictest mode he sold to management that I don't know how to code or do my job. From then on I struggled to change their minds even when linking to things like using negative margins is valid.

</comment><comment><USER51> It was ironic to see this title and "here is why I left google" on HN front page at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER52> The manager is your interface to management. It's their job to tell you what you need to know and what to do. To an employee, they're the face of the business.

But at the end of the day, if it's the people that make up a business, then I'd question if they are not the same thing.

I asked a new acquaintance of mine about something bothering me.

I asked him, "so, how often do you fire people? How do find the right people for your businesses?"

"I hardly ever have to fire anyone," he said. "I ask them questions, and they leave."

Damn.

And the thing is, this pressure isn't faked or manufactured. This isn't anyone trying to fire someone. This is just someone needing work done, and answers.

No business wants anyone incompetent, yet, it happens, because of interviewees lying through their teeth and not knowing any better.

So they walk in and fail to do the exact job they won for themselves, then come the questions.

Now they lose their place and have to leave, knowing they got the job by accident.

There is plenty of real pressure to go around in a real business, and we avoid managerial roles because we know the stakes are higher. We know that having a manager is "safer" than being one, because having a manager is having someone responsible for you, and for your well being. It's how America figured out how to hire from the abundant talent pool of those who can't handle tough responsibilities and stay happy on their own, and those who'd rather have it easier. It's the luxury of being managed.

But above that, it gets even worse. Fewer luxuries, just higher pay. Just think of all the bullets the CEO has to catch with their teeth every day. And wen they fail, it's news.

<comment><USER53> Being a manager is about being loyal to the company and not individuals. It pays more precisely because it causes pain to peoples' consciences to put an abstraction above fellow employees.

Talking about a CEO catching bullets in their teeth is ridiculously inflated language. Why use such imagery? Because the mission of a typical company does not sufficiently compensate for the guilt produced by putting the organization ahead of individuals.

<comment><USER52> No.

Putting the organization ahead of individuals isn't what's happening. The individuals ARE the organization.

So if you put yourself ahead of the organization, you're putting everyone else behind you, including your boss. This is a challenge for millennials especially, who are used to always being put first, and having their emotions managed.

A good manager doesn't put themselves before their boss or anyone else. How often do you hear of programmers who enter management to hardly touch code again? A good manager puts the organization first, both above and below their pay grade.

But their performance also depends on the people they manage. If a worker is incompetent, they have every right to be hard on those mistakes. And the worker is fully responsible for setting things right. Work is not homework that gets handed back to you after its graded. It's something needed by someone else that needs it for something important. And nothing is redundant in a tightly run business.

When I think of Melissa Mayers, I think of bullets. Despite whether anyone agrees with "her" moves (which were clearly backed by her counsel), she was doing everything she could to increase market share and rebuild a failing business. She took on all the risk, and becomes target practice for those who despise her failures. When was the last time you were bashed on HN? And she does this so that everyone at Yahoo has a job. She is fighting for YOU.

Regardless of my word choice, to borrow your words, the CEO is a ridiculously inflated position.

<comment><USER53> You assert that "a good manager puts the organization first", but first does not mean "ahead of individuals". So what is it ahead of, if not individual interests?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> My experience has been the complete opposite. I'm grossly underpaid and I know for a fact that my manager is fighting for me to stay here.

The company (HR and upper management) and myself (I should not have accepted such a low starting salary) are solely to blame.

</comment><comment><USER55> people also leave the environment, so not only their managers, but their peers. managers are somehow reponsible for creating a proper environment, but it is hard to enforce the atmosphere created by the rest of the team...

</comment><comment><USER56> Do people join managers, not companies?

Serious question btw. I think such a scenario would be vastly superior to the general "join a black box" type of recruiting we have today.

</comment><comment><USER57> People leave salaries.

</comment><comment><USER58> I had a great manager at my last job but left because the role wasn't the right risk/reward profile I was looking for.

</comment><comment><USER59> I have mixed thoughts on this. The one company I quit, I quit in large part because my manager was abusive. A particular tantrum my manager threw was what caused me to apply to several jobs in a fit of pique, and when one of them gave me an offer, I put in my notice. On the other hand, the company was toxic on several levels, the abusive manager was only part of it, and I'd been looking at job postings on and off for months before that incident.

The pay was abysmal. Nobody at the company had any insurance (because of this I will never work for a startup again). Company leadership was willing to roll over for a transphobic landlord and throw me under the bus. The company was a young startup without any infrastructure or processes, and pretty much everybody technical had very little professional experience (including both the technical leadership and the rank-and-file; and I say this even though I ended up becoming friends with several of my fellow rank-and-file, most of whom I still talk to to this day). Somehow I got along well with the CTO, but he was very mercurial and there were some people there (including a couple friends of mine) he took a strong personal dislike to for no real reason, and I was always afraid he would turn on me. I definitely quit the company and not just the manager.

I still keep up with them and their employees on LinkedIn. One thing I've noticed is that since I left, they've been handing out Director titles like candy, I'm assuming to compensate for their lack of monetary compensation.

The company was a disaster on pretty much every level. The one good thing I could say about it was that some of my ex-coworkers there are still friends of mine, but that's a really low bar.

Edit: I want to add another story. The company I ended up jumping ship to, I came close to quitting before they laid me off, for reasons that had _nothing_ to do with my manager. My manager was excellent. I liked him a lot. But the work I was doing had nothing whatsoever to do with my skillset. I felt like an idiot compared to my coworkers, I made far less useful contributions than pretty much anybody else at the company (my boss reassured me that he didn't care because he knew the stuff they did was esoteric and was willing to spend years training someone new), and the longer I stayed the more it felt like it was actually harming my career since I was letting my specialty atrophy (and I still thought this even though I'm not a career-minded person!). Ultimately, that decision got taken out of my hands because 1/3 of the company including me got taken out in the only layoff in the company's 20-year history, but if I did quit it would have been _despite_ my manager being awesome, not because of him.

</comment><comment><USER60> There's a lot of talk about full stack developers lately, I'm still waiting to find the first full stack manager. Someone who's visionary, yet realistic; confident, yet empathic; powerful, yet humble. I feel like there's some truth to the saying that the best leaders are those who don't consider themselves fit to lead.

<comment><USER53> I've seen a variety of managers doing bad jobs, and it never makes me think I could do it better. It makes me think about managerial problems, and how they are inherently difficult because of conflicts of interest.

On the other hand, I got tired of technical problems, because the _real_ problems always seemed to be managerial where I worked.</comment></comment>


Yew: Rust framework for making React-like client web apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DenisKolodin/yew <comment><USER2> When I saw the work being done with adding web assembly support to rust I though it was cool but I never really put much thought into how far it could be taken. Seeing projects like this is really great and makes me realize just how much room there is for using rust for web front ends. Given all the consideration for performance that the web has needed recently, I am excited to see what is possible with wasm and rust in the future.

Also, its amazing how fast this has popped up. Wasm was added to the compiler literally a month ago and already there is a standard library from dom manipulation and front-end frameworks. 2018 is definitely going to be interesting

</comment><comment><USER3> Why does update(...) mutate the model instead of returning the next state? This would make update a function instead of a side effect mutating the model.

<comment><USER4> Probably for performance reasons, allocating a whole new state each frame is pretty expensive.

<comment><USER5> Incremental updates to large, immutable data structures do not require allocating a whole new state per update (despite maintaining immutability!) Mutation is still frequently more efficient though, at the cost of not being able to reason immutably about your program. But if you're doing something that requires multiple versions of your state (e.g. history, undo/backtracking), the immutable version is going to be more efficient and _definitely_ easier to write efficiently in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Most efficiency gains of imperative programming languages like C or C++ come from the compact and continguous memory layout and usage of the stack which is usually in the L1 cache.

In theory there would be no difference between mutating an existing memory area and allocating new memory to write to it. The number of bytes written to RAM are the same.

<comment><USER7> > In theory there would be no difference between mutating an existing memory > area and allocating new memory to write to it. The number of bytes written > to RAM are the same.

It's not the same, you need to allocate new memory, if it's on the heap then (depending on your allocator/OS etc) you will be making a syscall, which means context switch, cache eviction etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome. Is one of things I was hoping to happen when I first heard about wasm.

Nothing against JavaScript, but I is nice that other languages can now be first class citizens on the web as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was imagining a React style UI framework but for desktop apps. The ingredients I have in mind are React, GraphQL, and Rust. I think these three solve the problems of their respective areas the best and combining them together would be priceless.

<comment><USER10> How would GraphQL be useful for a desktop app?

<comment><USER11> I think GraphQL is useful for getting data for UIs on any platform.

\- build views without being blocked waiting for a new rest endpoint

\- get exactly what the UI needs to render

[edit]

Although to negate my own first point, nb4 being blocked on waiting for new mutations and queries :P

<comment><USER12> Also, you can use it to query local data too.

This enables you to transparently move data-source around.

<comment><USER11> That's a good point! Never thought about local data sources. I've only mapped over SQL, REST, and redis/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As the great cambric JS framework explosion fizzled out, only a few lucky survivors where left (angular/react/vue.js).

Little did they know that web-assembly was already scheming their demise.

<comment><USER14> Don't worry, we know.

<comment><USER15> Wondering if you are doing anything about it?

p.s asking as @spicyj is, from her profile, an "eng manager of React @ Facebook".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So here's my Christmas present, and maybe an excuse to learn Rust. Ho ho ho!

</comment><comment><USER17> I was literally thinking "Maybe I should try using stdweb with React" last night. Awesome work, can't wait to use it/contribute!

</comment><comment><USER18> The counter demo is 9.4mb in amsjs and 1.5mb is wasm.

<comment><USER19> Is this after running wasm-gc? [https://www.hellorust.com/news/native-wasm- target.html](https://www.hellorust.com/news/native-wasm-target.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great concept. This is my desired FutureStack for 2018!

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, that's a really clean API. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER22> Any update on wasm support for mobile platforms ?

<comment><USER23> Uh, it works? [https://caniuse.com/#search=Webassembly](https://caniuse.com/#search=Webassembly)

Remember you can also have a polyfill (at a performance cost when parsing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Coming next year: PHP apps that compile to WASM, so you can <?php ?> right in your HTML.

<comment><USER25> Or, I bet, a WASM port of Arc and the default Arc forum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Benchmark?

</comment><comment><USER27> color me shocked: this is really a rust web framework (compiles to wasm). i was expecting a backend framework that supported react development on the frontend in some non-trivial way. wow. very cool.

but i thought wasm couldn't manipulate the dom? is that not the case anymore?

<comment><USER28> It can through a thin bridge.

See [https://github.com/koute/stdweb](https://github.com/koute/stdweb)

<comment><USER27> so how mature is this tech? is this really feasible? writing browser client code in rust?

<comment><USER29> The biggest holdout is non-Edge IE [https://caniuse.com/#search=wasm](https://caniuse.com/#search=wasm)

The story with Rust compiling to it is still younger; it works well at the moment, but is very fiddly. The early adopters and enthusiasts are working on making it all smoother. So for most people, it's still a bit young. Just depends on your temperament.

<comment><USER30> > _The biggest holdout is non-Edge IE_

IE is discontinued. IE11, which was released back in 2013, only gets security- related updates. It's on life support.

IE11 part of Windows 10 which EOLs in 2020 (mainstream) or 2025 (extended).

<comment><USER31> we still have 7.6% IE11 ecommerce traffic which converts very well (US, home remodeling).

it does appear to be declining ~0.2% per month, but it's a long way off from dead :(

<comment><USER32> 7.6% isn't considered dead?

<comment><USER33> Actively doing something that predictably results in 7.6% less traffic to your profit generating website seems quite the _questionable business decision._

<comment><USER32> How much money are you spending on dealing with IE11 bugs? My estimate from my last job is more than that 7% brings in.

<comment><USER34> Are there actually IE11 bugs at a noticeably higher rate than bugs (or intentional deprecations) in other browsers? I thought we were just talking about a lack of new features that are present in Edge.

(If you were talking about IE5 or IE6 I'd understand the argument.)

<comment><USER31> most ie11 bugs that are relevant/annoying are around its flexbox impl. specifically equal height boxes via min-height and such. maybe some other fancy css animation or 3d transform stuff, but these are not terribly critical and can degrade without much impact.

thankfully, js and dom bugs are either rare or well-known and have lightweight polyfills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Maybe I don't get it, but why would I use this? What problem is it solving that _insert JS framework_ isn't?

I understand JS is popular to hate, for a variety of reasons, but those reasons seem mostly to boil down to nerd cred. The "hate what's popular because being contrarian means I'm cool" crowd.

So, and this is an honest question here, why should I invest the time to learn an entirely new syntax for a framework to build web applications? What can this do that vue.js or react cannot? (And I don't mean it does it _differently_ I'm looking for it does it _better_ or JS framework _doesn 't_ do it.)

<comment><USER36> > I understand JS is popular to hate, for a variety of reasons, but those > reasons seem mostly to boil down to nerd cred. The "hate what's popular > because being contrarian means I'm cool" crowd.

Then you're not paying attention. I'm not sure how you expect anyone to answer your "honest question" when you've already dismissed all the answers. It's not just fashion, programming language design is a real thing that it's possible to do badly or well, Javascript is a legitimately bad language, and Rust is a legitimately good language.

Learn Rust or another ML-family language, actually learn it to the point where you can write a decent, full-sized, _idiomatic_ program in it. It won't be easy, but it's worth it. I mean, I could talk through all the reasons such languages are better, but it seems like you're already determined to dismiss them, so really the only way is to see for yourself.

<comment><USER37> > Javascript is a legitimately bad language, and Rust is a legitimately good > language.

Yeah, statements like these without even trying to back them up are pretty ridiculous.

Sometimes someone brings some stupid issue that's never a problem in practice, but most of the time people just admit they simply have no real experience with JS. They just love to claim how superior they are, and anyone who disagrees is "not paying attention".

FYI you are just showing how awful are communities around "legitimately good" languages.

<comment><USER38> > FYI you are just showing how awful are communities around "legitimately > good" languages.

Just to let you know Rust's community is pretty cool and not awful at all. For instance the Rust Survey 2017 reports that 98.7% of respondents feel welcome within the Rust Community.

Furthermore according to the Stackoverflow 2017 survey, Rust is the "most loved" language.

<comment><USER37> Sure, I bet community is great otherwise, it is just occassional elitism (which I guess was inherited from the C++ community) that comes off as toxic.

Btw that same survey showed how people are quite fine with writing JS, which makes this entire thread seem even more ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wanted: Full stack rust developer</comment>


Would you use this dashboard - <AUTHOR> http://marketsmart360.com

<comment><USER2> doesn't load, so probably not.</comment>


Flask powered CMS - Quokka - <AUTHOR> http://www.quokkaproject.org/

<comment><USER2> Hi!

I am the author of Quokka CMS, Thank you @suhair for posting.

Quokka is a work in progress, it is in early stage of development but already works for the basic which is user authentication/authorization, article posting ans extending with blueprints.

This is not my first CMS project, I am also one of the developers of another CMS made in Django [http://github.com/opps](http://github.com/opps), Opps is a big project ready for production and running on large audience websites.

So I started Quokka as an experiment to implement all the CMS features in a non-relational database, that's why I choose Flask and MongoDB.

I think this project will get really serious because I am realizing that MongoDB fits perfectly for dynamic CMS.

I am really open for suggestions and contributions.

Quokka - The happiest animal in the world and maybe the happiest CMS in the internets. :)

<comment><USER3> i understand you wanted to experiment with mongodb, but why moving away from django ? there isn't such a big conceptual difference between the two, except flask has less things. What part of the django stack did you want to build differently ?

<comment><USER2> I like Django, I work with Django a lot and currently I am developing another product with Django.

The only problem is that Django do not play very well with Non-relational databases, and Django has too many things for a small project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm guessing you lived in Perth at some stage? These things live pretty exclusively on Rottnest Island: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quokka](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quokka)

<comment><USER2> I actually live in Brazil, but I like the animal because of happiness. I've never been in Rottnest Island, I really want to go someday to see a Quokka.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be good to see a site that already runs like, like a demo.

<comment><USER2> Hi, The project is really new, I started some weeks ago. There is no website running yet.

In few days I will have a demo running.

<comment><USER5> I look forward to it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first glance, I read "Flash powered CMS", and was both horrified and curious.

<comment><USER7> Every time I'm searching for something Flask related Google tries to be an smart ass and "corrects" my search to "Flash". Incredibly annoying. Sometimes the link that forces to search the original query that you entered is not visible.

<comment><USER8> time to switch to ddg

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really liked that they listed the project tree in the README file. I am going to start doing this in my future projects.

<comment><USER2> I did this because github is slow sometimes for browsing on folders. I always like to take a look at all the project tree to see what it offers and how complex it is.

Maybe github can implement a feature "show project tree" would be a nice addition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Additional requirements are : passlib, twill, markupsafe

after following the instructions I was still unable to login, with invalid password message.

registration takes me to a 500 error page as well.

I think I will wait until this becomes more developed.

<comment><USER2> Added extra requirements Fixed the login problem [https://github.com/rochacbruno/quokka/commit/321af1e2546f9fb...](https://github.com/rochacbruno/quokka/commit/321af1e2546f9fba9adb2b6942ce5da3505c6371) Registrations now works without the need to configure email server (but confirmation email goes to the console by default)

Thanks for reporting that issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am going to be looking into this. I am building an ecommerce platform in flask and I also started coding a small CMS to handle few things.

Let's see. The only thing I am not too sure about is your decision of tying it with a specific DB.

<comment><USER2> Cool, it is open for contributions and an e-commerce module will be great!

I started this project because I already work developing CMS using relational databases and there are some things that SQLs gives headaches, schema definition, migrations and denormalization for performance are those things.

So I started Quooka as an experiment to get rid of those limitations of SQL databases. Mongo was a natural choice because it was the only one I knew how to work and Flask because it already works well with mongo and mongoengine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wasn't there a Quokka sports site back in the bubble days? I really liked that name.

<comment><USER13> There's also www.quoka.de, a classified-ads site in Germany and Austria.

<comment><USER14> This might be the original ... [http://www.quokka.com.au/](http://www.quokka.com.au/) classifieds ads, based in Perth. Started as a newspaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> i'd love to see some additional apps (err blueprints, perhaps) like a job posting app

<comment><USER2> Yes I have a roadmap for new apps.

Poll, Recipes, Feedcrawling, Social messages and Google Analytics integration. Job posting is also a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mongo???

<comment><USER2> Yes! MongoDB is one of the bests non-relational databases and fits perfectly for dynamic CMS.</comment></comment>


The NSA Teams Up with the Chinese Government to Limit Internet Anonymity - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/09/the_nsa_teams_u.html <comment><USER2> Sadly the NSA and China are NOT strange bed fellows, and you don't need a lot imagination to see what's gone wrong with world.

For the clueless or tragically optimistic:

Fascism came out on top. Communism failed spectacularly, socialism and capitalism slowly give way to fascism.

<comment><USER3> _Fascism came out on top. Communism failed spectacularly, socialism and capitalism slowly give way to fascism._

Don't be quite so certain... the last chapter has yet to be written. Sometimes things change quickly and dramatically.

<comment><USER2> Oh I know, I lived through the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

And I lived through the painful transition to market democracy... which is still on going, going, going, towards fascism.

<comment><USER4> What comes after fascism?

<comment><USER2> Crisis driven collapse & revolutionary reform which is a lot like flipping a coin and ending up with either a small democratic government or even more fascism.

If you end up with the first, you're still not safe as it tends to grow over time. Think of fascism as the highest entropy state of society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this why the US under Reagan brought the USSR to its knees? So that the West could team up with China on tracing dissent?

I'm saddened, I really am.

<comment><USER6> Human history has always been a struggle between those who want to limit the freedom of the individual and those who want to preserve it.

I don't think either side has ever got the upper hand, and I doubt either side ever will.

<comment><USER5> There are two questions: Where is the pendulum now? And which way is it swinging?

We may not be living in a Stalinist dictatorship, but I don't like the way things are going on both sides of the 49th parallel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "...imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever."

</comment><comment><USER8> _"... TraceBack is most useful in monitoring the activities of large masses of people. But of course, that's why the Chinese and the NSA are so interested in this proposal in the first place. ..."_

Step 4 on the way to a Fascist state. Set up a comprehensive internal surveillance system ~ <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment></comment>