A Review of the TV Show Start-Ups: Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://programmingzen.com/2012/11/14/a-review-of-the-tv-show-start-ups-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> This show is pure mind-rot television. It's as accurate in portraying startups as _The Real Housewives_ portrays real families, or _The Hills_ portrays real friendships. If you have never worked in a startup before and you're looking to see what its like, you are being misled. And if you have worked at a startup before, this show comes off as entertaining at best. Personally, I really like _SharkTank_. While I've never had experience pitching an idea, the investors always give sound feedback and I enjoy the backstory and follow-ups that they do with the companies.

<comment><USER3> Great example using Shark Tank, which is also dramatized for TV. They take the most entertaining pitches, most people don't get a deal, because the show isn't about making deals, it's about selling entertainment. And the 'investors' are their for their image, not their deal flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it to be an ok reality tv show that is disconnected from reality enough to be entertaining, but with hints of real life poking through.

How many of us have known someone who had an idea for a startup, but can't do an elevator pitch? Or known a self-promoter with a bunch of shallow relationships, but styles themselves as a serious networker? Or someone who when they make a little money, blows it on fancy toys and cars? Or someone who thinks pitching is just a formality to getting money?

These are real archetypes. They exist. I've met plenty of them. Sometimes, against all odds, they are even successful.

<comment><USER5> Oh and the girl who says that engineers are secondary to the success of a startup and that people with ideas are the key element. There are a lot of those people around here.

<comment><USER6> Really? Do we really have "entrepreneurs" in bay area who say "engineers are secondary"? I guess thats why investors complain there is more noise rather than signal in the bay area nowadays. I wonder is it because movies like Social Network. I also fear shows like this might excite wrong audiences.

<comment><USER7> Are you being sarcastic? Of course, you have people who have never worked with anyone before, come along with an idea, and think they are the most important people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree with everything this article says, but the segment showing the Dave McClure pitch was the most "real" and fun part of the first episode. It was intense, exciting, and quiet realistic, if not a bit predictable (when Ben proudly states that he has 42 other businesses). In my opinion, the 5 minute segment filmed at Dave McClure's desk made up for sitting through an hour of b.s party scenes.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you can find it, I recommend Startup .com (documentary about govWorks .com) <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/> It follows a dot-com bubble company's founders, but still relevant, interesting and very real.

<comment><USER10> Another show I remember liking a few years ago was Startup Junkies, it's available at hulu <http://www.hulu.com/start-up-junkies>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The thing isn't that this show is necessarily inaccurate, but that it betrays the spirit of what startup culture is supposed to be. A large reason why I, and I suspect many other people, got into this is that it was seen as a true meritocracy. It's supposed to be about people building something other people love. Nothing else is supposed to matter. It's not about your dad's friend being the boss, or that you were both alums at the same Ivy league school, or brothers in the same fraternity. It's supposed to be about your ability to create real value.

This show makes it seem like what we're doing is the bad parts of Hollywood mixed with the movie the social network. Again, it's not that it's necessarily inaccurate to some, but, at least for me, it's not what it's about. I just wish that a show like this could have promoted startup culture as a kind of culture that promotes tearing down barriers and your merit being based on how hard you work and what you accomplish.

<comment><USER12> "betrays the spirit of what startup culture is supposed to be" is probably implied by "reality show"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As unfortunate as it is, this is Bravo TV. These people do exist (granted, as a minority), and they are relatively accurately represented IMO. The show seems to be going for the Sean Parker as represented in the movie The Social Network. They're trying to go for the most dramatic and outrageous scenes possible, and they do happen occasionally. Yes, it is missing out on a whole other side of it all and I hope that they at least show the audience a few scenes of the actual culture (if even in a condescending matter).

</comment><comment><USER14> I have to say that it was mostly the girls in the show that annoyed me. The guys were pretty believable in my opinion, and also legitimate. One of them was the founder of Carsabi (YC company).

I'm a startup founder and I've been to a costume party or two in my time. I'm not just at home coding all day. And yes, I've drank alcohol before and had fun, drunken, crazy nights.

For some reason I feel like the people who are bitter about this show are bitter because they work 24/7 and are completely stressed out. They don't like the idea that some people are making startups and having fun as well.

In the end, though, people need to stop taking this thing so seriously. They obviously took 6 people with the most extreme personalities out of Silicon Valley to do a TV show to ENTERTAIN. People understand that. People know that not everybody in Jersey acts like the guys in Jersey Shore.

I will say that the Sarah girl annoyed the hell out of me. When she said that one of her tweets was worth $10,000 I just laughed. She barely even has any followers.

<comment><USER15> It is about the balance though. Sure everyone goes to parties, I wouldn't devote most of an episode to it unless it was relevant to what they were doing.

Clearly though it isn't directed at the majority of people working in startups, who would be way more interested in what the characters were building and how they were doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What I would really like is a show following a Y Combinator batch, from start to finish and beyond.

<comment><USER17> Bloomberg did something like this with TechStars: <http://www.bloomberg.com/tv/shows/techstars/>

<comment><USER18> Well, this looks a lot better than the other show. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER15> From the couple of eps I watched it still is a little reality tv style. But compared to this show it is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "If you're not aiming for something a billion dollars or larger, why waste your time?" This sounds a lot like a show about sell-outs and brogrammers.

<comment><USER20> Isn't this generally what investors look for in a market? Something large enough that even a small share can earn a handsome return? I wouldn't judge Dwight on that statement alone; Ms. Zuckerberg just needed something juicy for her audience. My guess is there's much more to him than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've actually enjoyed the first two episodes (half watching while programming); they're are quite entertaining! I think it's a bit unfair to judge the overarching merits of the personalities depicted just yet because we haven't gotten to know most of them. We know Sarah Austin, the life blogger, and the Way duo. The first 2 episodes haven't focused much on Kim Taylor, who has, in fact, worked in the industry over the past few years. Nor do we know much about Dwight's ambitions (yea, we've seen him party and make some general statements about his goals, but we don't know much about the process he went through with regards to Carsabi), though he and his co-founder are apparently Berkeley grads.

If at some point we get to more more about the lives of these two over the last 6 months, I think the overall tone of the show will have shifted.

</comment><comment><USER21> So where can people not in the US find the show? (can't get it in itunes, doesn't air on TV here).

It's a little far fetched to be surprised that the tech industry would be poorly portrayed. If you've ever seen a police, medical, spy, or law drama on TV you know what to expect. Good, brainless fun.

<comment><USER22> Try [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=ELdlNqFzO2slw&featu...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=ELdlNqFzO2slw&feature=plcp)

<comment><USER21> Nope. Not outside the US at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm in different because it's "reality" Television; with "television" being the operative word. We can talk about how it misrepresents the real Silicon Valley (Note: Which I know nothing about) but let's not forget, that it's a business and not a non profit. So the objective of the creators has been achieved: 1)Tell an entertaining story, 2)Get people to promote it by talking/blog about it about because they love or hate it, and 3) know that the promotion will bring eyeballs/ratings which leads to underpants and profits! At least for one season, it's mission accomplished for Randi.

</comment><comment><USER24> But anyone familiar with Bravo programming knows that it's just par for the course. After all, it's on the same channel as all the Real Housewives shows. Bravo reality shows depict glamorous and dramatic lives that most people won't experience, whether it be first or second-hand. They're realistic, but in a weed through ten thousand people until you find 5 who fit the mold you want to fill kind of way. They're not all like American Pickers or other shows in that sub-genre which depict normal, everyday people that you encounter every day.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think what it comes down to is that the show was crafted for Bravo's target audience which is not anyone that reads Hacker News. The general silliness of it is a by product of inputting the start-up Silicon Valley theme into there show generator it outputs a flaky drama. The flaky drama core of the show is what makes it a Bravo show. All there other shows have that same core. I changed the channel after 5 minutes.

What would a better start-up show look like?

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, this is a very serious review, which is what you'd expect from an SV industry insider. If you'd rather read a funnier one, take a look at "I'm Not Here To Make Friendster" - [http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2012/11/tech_b...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2012/11/tech_business_reality_show_start_ups_silicon_valley_reviewed.html)

<comment><USER27> And another funny one: [http://betabeat.com/2012/10/silicon-valley-reality-tv- show-s...](http://betabeat.com/2012/10/silicon-valley-reality-tv-show- startups-shots/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I thought the show was terrible. It was 99% drama and 1% actual content.

Sharktank and Dragon's den are much better.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yes, some of these people exist in silicon valley. But the fact that the entire cast is white, not one asian or indian, there are only a couple engineers, and they live extravagantly, they did not pick a good cross-section of what the valley is really like.

I know shameless networkers, I know wantrepreneurs, I know brogrammers (kind of am one to be honest). But seriously? the entire valley isn't like that, and this only reinforces those negative stereotypes.

You can find plenty of drama with real life experiences. We got a frivolous cease and desist letter that stressed me out for an entire day when I thought we might have to change our name, I slept on my roommates floor so I could make a few hundred dollars off my room on AirBnB during the Outside Lands weekend. My friends and family loaned me money, paid for meals, let me airbnb out their apartments for profit while they were away and gave me almost all the proceeds. Follow enough entrepreneurs and you won't need to manufacture drama and you don't need to show me searching for a semicolon in my code.

In conclusion, a wasted opportunity.

QED

<comment><USER7> There aim is to entertain, not represent an accurate idea of the life of startups. More popcorn, less historical.

Because they want more people to watch it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like how there's almost no footage in the second episode for the car guys. Just a two second shot of code being written before the producers gave up.

</comment><comment><USER31> Where can I watch this show online?

<comment><USER22> The first episode is available for free on iTunes: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/start-ups-silicon- vall...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/start-ups-silicon-valley- season/id570755482)

It's a travesty, and puts female entrepreneurs in a poor light, pitting them against each other and making them look petty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Thought it was going to be about Startups doing TV Shows. In reality it is about TV shows about Startups. Be warned.

</comment><comment><USER33> _They most prominent ones are depicted as social butterflies trying to use their connections to succeed. Who you know does matter, but it's definitely not the focus in the disruptive environment of startups._

Maybe its just me, but I felt this show accurately depicts a large segment of SV startups, i.e., startups funded on the basis of founder connections rather than the merit of the underlying idea or execution (i.e., Color). It also accurately depicts the outright silliness of so many startup ideas (see...whatever the idea is behind the siblings' startup, plus the ones described in the second episode at the blonde's conference.)

 _Overall this show is an utter travesty and a complete misrepresentation of what the startup world is really like. It is to the startup world what porn is to real sex. It's Hollywood's misunderstanding of what the nerdy neighbors in Silicon Valley are doing._

The show is very representative of the experience of _these_ particular individuals. They are all working in the startup world. Just because their experiences aren't his experiences doesn't make them any less real. Indeed, I've seen all of those "contrived" disagreements and drama take place in startups that weren't on TV. I've met people just like the siblings, just like that one girl who actually does some work, just like the gay programmer guy, and just like that Carsabi guy.

 _The sacrifices, risks, low profile, and 70+ hours workweeks of most actual startup founders are mocked and trivialized by a show that portrays a carefree world where you can easily make it if you're connected enough and can pull the right strings. Where partying and looks come first, and where they are virtually never shown, you know, actually doing any hard work._

This pretty accurately describes my experiences with both SV and Silicon Beach (in Santa Monica).

The goal of this show is not to be educational. It is to be entertainment. It's not going to focus on, or even show the boring stuff.

<comment><USER34> I agree, while it's not an accurate representation of the majority of startups, it is a pretty accurate representation of some of the wanteprenuers that are "business people" with some money that no nothing about programming and want to get into Startup Life (tm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Fake, and gay. Go to the Hacker Dojo to see the real shit.</comment>


Do people still read blogs? - <AUTHOR> http://justinjackson.ca/blogs/

<comment><USER2> It's a bit of a paradox, but I think the more a blog is a "niche" blog, the less likely it is to lose readers, while blogs covering more general topics are being (and will be even more) cannibalised by news aggregators indeed

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Niche blogs can build a pretty passionate following (depending on the topic). Also, if it's "stuff you can't get anywhere else" it's more likely people will come back.</comment></comment>


My App Launched And Nobody Downloaded It - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apprazed/id817741899?ls=1&mt=8 Fux. <comment><USER2> So lets build a app that will get downloaded!!</comment>


What "full stack" really means to the job market - <AUTHOR> http://chrismm.com/blog/what-full-stack-really-means-to-the-job-market/ <comment><USER3> I couldn't disagree more with this entire article.

> the self-taught web developer knows surprisingly little about the web's > underlying technology.

I know very few developers who aren't self-taught. In reality the opposite seems to be true. It's the developers who take a course and don't continue learning that stall. This is something technologists (even non-developers) absolutely _need_ to do -- self-teaching. The article even contradicts itself with the very next line.

> Language-oriented courses cannot cover the complete web stack, and students > will end up clueless about what an htaccess file does, or how to restart a > Unix daemon, or how the different types of POST encoding work.

Then, there's this...

> There was a time when looking things up on Stack Overflow whenever you had a > problem just wasn't an option, and many pieces of software had unreadable > documentation, if they had any at all ... That is the environment where > hackers thrived, and that's what we are going back to, sooner or later.

It's almost as if he's nostalgic of the way things used to be. Like things were better when the documentation was terrible and you couldn't look things up. To all of that, I say good riddance.

> If every time you find yourself dealing with a complex issue that affects > multiple technologies your first instinct is to search on Google, you should > reconsider your working habits.

I'd actually argue the opposite. If you ever find yourself with a complex issue that affects multiple technologies, your first instinct _should_ always be to google it. Sure, you should understand the problem and all, but there's no need to make your life difficult just for the sake of "being a hacker".

> I have met many programmers that don't like to code in their spare time, and > that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers.

Disagree 100%. Some of the best developers I've met understand very well how to separate their work. The stereotypical hacker that works all through the night on obscure problems tend to pidgenhole themselves and lose sight of the purpose of programming. They also tend to be the ones that burn out to epic proportions. It's a very unhealthy mindset to have, and to be encouraging others to have.

<comment><USER4> And conflating full stack with just front end and back end doesn't help to me full stack means layer 1-7

<comment><USER5> "Full-stack" was never a reference to the OSI model.

You can spend your whole career deep in the layer 7 weeds nowadays. A legit "full-stack" technologist will dive into layers 6 and 5 occasionally.

Below that you're talking about TCP/IP, BGP, Ethernet, and fiber. The beauty of the model is that each layer doesn't have to care about the implementation details of other layers, and that's reflected in hiring as well.

Nomenclature aside, some of us really do span layers 1-7. But layer 1 is pretty boring, and there's not a lot of value to add in layers 2-4 honestly, except in extraordinarily demanding environments.

Even the people who think they work at layers 3 and 4 are usually just using layer 7 tools to manipulate configurations for layers 3 and 4.

<comment><USER4> Its how I perceive it - if you cant design an implement a full 7 layer stack for simple applications (ie CCNA level) you should GTFO

"The beauty of the model is that each layer doesn't have to care about the implementation details of other layers"

Err having worked on international OSI interconnects id take that statement with a bucket of Salt -)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 'full-stack' trend is a reflection of rising, dare-I-say unrealistic expectations, one which the author supports by their recommendations in their blog post. By perpetuating the notion that the only 'true way' to be a good developer is to structure their lifestyle around understanding implementation details behind all the layers of a modern tech stack, they place an unnatural reverence on the mythos of hackerdom while ignoring that software development is not solely a creative pursuit.

As it stands now, 'full-stack developer' is a euphemism, which in hip new places means ' _we want you to live and breathe code, because you will be given vague requirements and expected to deliver the entirety of the solution from the bits moving across the wire to the UI espousing the latest visual design language in less than a month_ ', and in established places means ' _we want an infusion of new blood to bring sanity to some legacy code and we 're counting on you to debug and fix everything by yourself_'.

</comment><comment><USER7> A lot of it is bullshit.

One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to estimate software projects"

Well yes, if you refuse to use a stable stack you will need 300 hours to chase your tail when you could have solved your client's problem in 30.

Writing the average bizapp as an SPA would be like your doctor cutting off your leg because your knee hurts. In any other field we'd call it malpractice, but is is called being one of the cool kids in computing.

<comment><USER8> > One of the most common recurring posts on HN is "it is impossible to > estimate software projects"

Its not so much that it is impossible to estimate software projects as it is that the analysis necessary to estimate software projects with reasonable accuracy involves doing a substantial portion of the work required to produce the solution -- which means that _accurate_ estimation that is _useful_ for decisionmaking is elusive, not that estimation is impossible.

<comment><USER9> I heartily agree. This view is actually supported mathematically. See "Large Limits to Software Estimation" ([http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/kcsest.pdf](http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/kcsest.pdf)) by J.P. Lewis. Supplementary materials: [http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/softestim.html](http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/softestim.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I proudly call myself a 1/2 stack developer. Didn't put it on the resume, but I used tell that people who were interviewing me, it makes for a good joke to break up the ice.

So I know one half, but I know it well. Yes, I've heard of front end frameworks, some design ideas, some CSS but I might as well say I don't. Well, so far it has worked pretty well for me.

I also heavily interviewed for my company before, and would usually be pretty leery of who claimed they are "full stack". Yes, some candidates were really good and knew both sides, but most just knew about superficial stuff on both ends (which is ok too, just not for what we were hiring).

</comment><comment><USER11> >I have met many programmers that don't like to code in their spare time, and that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers.

Whatever little credibility you had up to this point you've just lost.

<comment><USER12> Not exactly, because someone who explores other technologies unrelated to his/her "work" field will inevitably pick up experience and knowledge - <USER2> the employer can grab for free without sending the employee to expensive courses or having to hire highly specialized freelancers.

I have done a lot of weird things as "hobby" projects with even weirder technologies, including interfacing with smartcards in PHP (don't ask), working with cheap-ass Chinese thermoprinters, electronic chips, devkits, FPGAs, operating a mixed OpenLDAP/AD stack,... and I very often have profited at my job from the knowledge I gained while developing.

Oh, and someone who never heard of Apache rewrite rules please shouldn't call himself a full-stack developer. Ops (and being able to formulate ops requirements to a hoster!) are a part of the stack, too, not just deploying some nodejs stuff to a container in the cloud.

<comment><USER13> But the point is that it totally depends on the person and it's not this hard and fast rule.

It's also vague to the point of meaninglessness considering all the various kinds of technologies and depths within those technologies one might be toying with in their spare time.

I would argue that the general intuition that many programmers have about people who code in their spare time is simply a too-narrow view of the picture. It's more about people who are really good at LEARNING, and people who code in their spare time tend to become very good at self-teaching new things and figuring out how different systems work and interact.

A developer can be good at learning as long as he or she is practicing learning _something_ in their spare time, but I don't think it has to be a side project (or even technology-related at all) to see a benefit in professional productivity.

<comment><USER14> > A developer can be good at learning as long as he or she is practicing > learning something in their spare time, but I don't think it has to be a > side project (or even technology-related at all) to see a benefit in > professional productivity.

This is an excellent point. I have lots of side projects outside of work. At the moment, none of them involve code but they all involve learning things; some of them are even fairly technical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most full stack developers have breadth but not depth. It's incredibly time- consuming to have a complete understanding of the entire stack and no matter what you do, even if you live and drink code and do it all the time you will not be a complete engineer, there is just too much and you will never retain it all. Rather than try to be this ninja superstar that start-ups all look for these days its more realistic to be able to work full-stack but specialize in a particular field. Machine learning and a solid academic background in stats, math and understanding of concurrency will get you just as far as a guy who knows React, Sass, HTML5, Python, Ruby, Go, MongoDB, MySQL, AWS, Redis, Celery, Kafka and Hadoop.

<comment><USER16> I recently move from a full-stack position into a more focused position. I felt like I was "jack of all, master of none" which really irked me. The time I was given for training was good, but it had to be split among all the different layers of the stack which meant I never really got an opportunity to get deep into any particular layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article never answers the question in its title.

The basic job of management is to organize the division of labor. In practice, "full stack" seems to mean "we don't know how to divide up the problem, so we want people who can cover for this management failure".

<comment><USER18> Also - "full stack" can also mean "we don't want to hire another developer, we want one person to (poorly) do the job of three other coders"

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands >>> Whenever you have to google some error message or problem, read all the answers. Get as much context as possible on your problem, and do not be satisfied just with having come across a solution.

This is a fatal flaw.

Considering a TON of JS frameworks are so new, there just isn't a whole body of data on issues people are experiencing.

I don't how many times when React started getting traction, I'd google an issue I was having and there was one Stack Overflow question about, and one answer and neither had been upvoted. No tutorials available and posting something on the Google group was about as effective as lighting my hair on fire.

<comment><USER19> And then there's the converse problem with older frameworks like Rails: you google a question and you find three different answers, and now you have to figure out which of them work in your context (because your context can't be summarized by which version of Rails you have).

If you're googling something about Linux it's even common to find that _none_ of the answers fits your context.

The more "full-stack" I get, the more I just hate all stacks. Everything turns to shit if you give it long enough.

<comment><USER20> "Full Stack" == VHDL / BPMN / ITIL / PDDL / .this !!! ;-) (and of course, IGMP)

<comment><USER20> oops sorry I forgot to mention sharding!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't agree with the author.

But full stack became a thing in job ads for a reason. And in my opinion the reason isn't because fullstackers are better. It is because of the dissonance between being able to see what cadidate needs to become your employee and being able to reach those candidates (marketing skills, interview skills, communication skills, finance skills). Using the word "fullstack" in job ads just tries to minimize this skill-gap.

</comment><comment><USER22> There is an astounding level of arrogance and developer elitism permeating the whole post. I think lojack with top upvoted answer captured most of my grievances.

The only thing I would add is that as high quality (and progressively cheaper or even open-sourced) layers of abstraction continue to be developed, it will favor the pragmatic problem solver who seeks breadth in knowledge over the pedantic hacker who DFSes into esoteric issues that are often nonessential to creating core value. And that's because the main ingredient in successfully writing software that creates real value is finding the simplest solution that works well enough. Very often that means biting the bland bullet and setting aside your burning desire to do something complicated.

</comment><comment><USER23> > "Language-oriented courses cannot cover the complete web stack..."

On Coursera, every course I've taken has used the programming language as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Perhaps the author should Google online courses more extensively.

</comment><comment><USER18> > I have met many programmers that don't like to code in their spare time, and > that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers.

I dunno. When I spend 8 hours a day coding (paid), spending another 2-4 working on my own stuff isn't all that appealing. I mean, I want to do other things with my life than _just write code_. If that makes me a shoddy developer so be it.

When I'm not busy on paid work I do explore new technologies and techniques. Perhaps this is what the author is refering to? However I still consider this to be "work", as it's a way to shore up my skills. It's unpaid but it makes my skillset and my time more valuable.</comment>


Amazon's Home Security Company Is Turning Everyone into Cops – Motherboard - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvyvzd/amazons-home-security-company-is-turning-everyone-into-cops <comment><USER2> Wow, Amazon has literally created a panopticon worse than Nextdoor & Facebook. This satirical article is quite accurate: [http://theneedling.com/2019/01/02/nice-easy-fill-in-the- blan...](http://theneedling.com/2019/01/02/nice-easy-fill-in-the-blank- template-for-nextdoor-suspicious-neighborhood-activity-posts/)</comment>


Escher's Waterfall Is Real - <AUTHOR> http://www.greatmathsteachingideas.com/2011/02/20/eschers-waterfall-is-real/ <comment><AUTHOR> This was submitted (via a different site) over two years ago. It's quite intriguing now looking back on that and seeing how close the suggested explanations were.

Or not.

Here's that previous discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2233584></comment>


How to lockup the in-flight entertainment system on a Boeing 777 - <AUTHOR> http://embeddedgurus.com/stack-overflow/2011/06/how-to-lockup-the-in-flight-entertainment-system-on-a-boeing-777/

<comment><USER2> The title of this article is bit misleading as each airline has their own system, British Airways even having rather different-looking interfaces in the various cabins classes (though the films are the same). The one thing all such systems do seem to have in common is instability. In my experience, the inflight entertainment locks up on about one in four flights without any hostile action from my side. It could of course be someone else experimenting.

</comment><comment><USER3> You gotta love someone who experiments with these things in public. I do the same thing often getting systems to fall out of their intended use mode.</comment>


My node_modules are in Git again - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bestander_nz/my-node-modules-are-in-git-again-4fb18f5671a

<comment><USER2> We fixed this with installing npm proxy mirror. So each install happen from this proxy and if something missing it will be downloaded and saved for later from central.

In this case we always have the same dependencies that we have locally. But of cause this means you need own box with proxy.

(in our case it is nexus)

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably the only ongoing issue I have with the node ecosystem (other than the general poor taste of JS developers, which is forgivable) is everything around versioning.

I don't understand how npm ended up the way it has--Bundler got it right, other people got it right...why isn't this a solved problem?

I know they're making it better, but then they go and do something like making a for-profit company out of it and I get nervous again.

Hell, package management in Elixir ([http://hex.pm](http://hex.pm)) works _great_.</comment>


IPad Teardown - <AUTHOR> http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-Teardown/2183/1

<comment><AUTHOR> The most interesting thing in my opinion was the fact that 80% of the space was taken by two large batteries.

No wonder thae battery is irreplaceable.

<comment><USER2> Open the battery door of your phone and you'll see a similar phenomenon. Except that you can replace the battery.

<comment><USER3> I'd really love to see some startups working on Battery technology. Batteries don't seem to have improved at all in the last 30 years. They absolutely suck. Surely someone out there can do better :/

<comment><USER2> Uh, you don't remember the NiCd and NiMH batteries from a decade ago? I do. Those _really sucked_.

<comment><USER3> But the advances in battery technology are lame compared to CPU / memory / disk.

In the last 30 years, we've gone from having a room full of hard disks storing 32GB, to a memory chip the size of your fingernail storing the same.

In that same time period, batteries have improved a little bit. I understand it's a "harder" problem, but it'd really be nice if people were working on it.

<comment><USER4> >>but it'd really be nice if people were working on it.

Are you joking?

Consider that electric cars are using similar tech as laptops; there is a _lot_ of battery research.

(Google e.g. lithium air, I believe that is the latest great hope for getting rid of the oil dependency...)

<comment><USER3> I'm sure a few people are working on it ;)

It's just depressing how much batteries suck.

Why can't we buy AA batteries that last a month constant usage now? Probably because then we'd buy less batteries, and people are unlikely to buy more expensive batteries.

Anyway, some new startups working to shake things up would be cool IMHO.

<comment><USER5> 50 milliamps for a month is equal to the energy produced by 50 grams of TNT.

OK, so not kilotons, but not something you want to carry around either.

<comment><USER2> Current isn't energy, so no.

<comment><USER5> In the context of a ~1.5 V AA battery (the grandparent comment's lament), current over time is energy.

Regarding internal resistance, the resistance of all materials drops when they get sufficiently hot, and even a volt or two is enough to get an arc going. Once that happens it will spread until the entire battery is converted to plasma. Given the energy densities the other commenter hoped for, the propagation rate is likely to be at the speed of sound, in other words a high- order explosion. Which is not surprising given that such a battery would amount to a stick of dynamite with electrode layers spaced every few molecules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sweet! Thanks for posting this (an hour before the other submission that hijacked your link by pointing to page two, I might add).

The only bad thing is it was a bit deflating to see the thing disassembled while I'm still waiting for UPS's very slow (in subjective terms) delivery today.

<comment><USER7> I got a knock on the door a few minutes ago...it was the FedEx guy with my iPad _dock._ Still no iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Guess we can own it?

</comment><comment><USER9> That's cool. Very efficient assembly.

</comment><comment><USER10> 2GB of RAM was what impressed me the most. I was expecting 1GB at the most.

<comment><USER11> It's 256MB, apparently. The article says 2Gb(256MB) per die, for a total of 512MB, but <http://furbo.org/2010/04/03/benchmarking-in-your-lap/> tested it and it's 256MB. I'm not sure where iFixit gets the idea there would be two dies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How long do you think until someone accidentally shorts or punctures those massive Li-Poly batteries.

Isn't that battery type particularly prone to explosions (seriously!)

<comment><USER13> I guess that is one reason why the front display is made of quite thick glass (it seems) and the back is made of aluminum. You would need to give it quite a beating in order to damage the batteries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Intriguing. Somebody secretly took apart the 3G model and found this:

<http://i.imgur.com/It9To.png>

<comment><USER15> 4 iPads to a workstation. It's iPhones all the way down.</comment></comment>


Made by Google (live) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wURy8AdsS4 <comment><USER2> Sometimes it's sad to see these also-ran phones and tablets. So much work, time, money with so little payoff. Android has stagnated so much it's really not worth it anymore.</comment>


Show HN: Robots 4 Income Equality - <AUTHOR> http://robie.us

<comment><AUTHOR> Working on eventually launching events like marathons, and a super pac / non- profit focused on a guaranteed basic income.</comment>


Why conspiracies spread faster than ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/26/the-truth-is-rushing-out-there-why-conspiracies-spread-faster-than-ever <comment><USER2> I have a vague theory that conspiracies tend to spread faster through societies that have opaque, distant and domineering governments. Poor analytical and critical thinking ability among the population is also partially related, though I would like to nip in the bud the assertion that all alternative narratives are conspiracy theories.

Imagine it's the eve of the Vietnam war, but you don't know that there will be a war yet. There's a lot of posturing by the US, and US warships actively patrolling Vietnamese waters. The Gulf of Tonkin incident happens, and the US is at war-- the official story being the Vietnamese attacked the US patrol boats (in their waters). An alternative narrative (smeared as a conspiracy theory by its detractors) from this era would look like someone saying that the US artificially caused a situation in which they could get into a war with Vietnam.

Years after the fact, we now know that the Gulf of Tonkin was a complete fabrication, and the alternative narrative was correct whereas the official narrative was a lie. With documented wrongdoing in hand, the "conspiracy theories" can really begin... governments leave themselves wide open to refutation of their authority when they blatantly lie and fabricate events to get their way.

<comment><USER3> Tony Blair, George Bush, and the dodgy dossier come to mind now. A reason to attack Iraq fabricated nearly from whole cloth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > by then we'd be under military control

You're in America - you are. You live in a militarized police state. The police don't consider themselves civilians anymore. They deploy en masse with automatic weapons, _green_ military uniforms, armoured vehicles to steal from and generally terrorize the populace.

> Stories of strings being pulled by hidden hands

They are not all that hidden. Corporate money being used for political campaigns. Some are slightly more hidden. The "free trade" deals being enacted recently.</comment>


Julian Assange threatened legal action over WikiLeaks documentary - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/sep/11/julian-assange-legal-action-south-southwest <comment><AUTHOR> Whatever else he is, Julian Assange is certainly a five star prat.

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=prat></comment>


Hackers hit A-list law firm of Lady Gaga, Drake and Madonna - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52632729 <comment><AUTHOR> 'The website [0] for Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks is down and hackers claim to have 756 gigabytes of data including contracts and personal emails.

'A screenshot allegedly of a Madonna contract has been released, and the criminals are demanding payment.'

'The hackers known as REvil or Sodinokibi previously attacked foreign exchange company Travelex with ransomware in January.' [1]

'Cyber-security company Emsisoft says the hackers have posted images online of a contract for Madonna's World Tour 2019-20 complete with signatures from an employee and concert company Live Nation.'

[0] [http://www.gsmlaw.com](http://www.gsmlaw.com)

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51017852](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51017852)

Travelex hack previously on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21979655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21979655)</comment>


Firefox Roadmap for Flash End-Of-Life - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2017/07/25/firefox-roadmap-flash-end-life/ <comment><USER2> No word on the last-I-heard-now-abandoned Shumway project. :(

Don't get me wrong I'm glad we can call flash dead but unless Adobe open sources it, we need a project like shumway for archival purposes.

<comment><USER3> There's going to be a lot of content like flash games that will not be ported to HTML. For these, wouldn't it make sense to run them in a locked-down VM, using the last flash version, rather than re-implementing Flash from scratch?

<comment><USER4> An interesting solution could be to work at the SWF level instead of the Player level. Instead of rewriting, porting or locking down the Player, could it be possible to automatically translate SWF files to another format?

I am fairly certain that there was some work about this but I'm not sure if anything succeeded. Regarding the ActionScript part, a plausible solution would be to target Haxe with the OpenFl library. OpenFl is a Haxe library exposing the same API as Flash so you can use it to compile projects to the targets supported by Haxe (JS, C++, ...). Some advanced AS code could be tricky to translate, but using untyped sections and restricting it to JS it could maybe be possible?

<comment><USER3> I remember hearing about some attempts to do this, I thought they had got fairly advanced. A quick search brings up a project called Smokescreen, which could play some flash. However, the project's website no longer exists. There's a github project - [https://github.com/cesmoak/smokescreen](https://github.com/cesmoak/smokescreen) but the last commit was in 2011.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link, it's definitely interesting. Unfortunately it seems that most of the open source Flash projects died out around 2011-2012.

What I had in mind was more about converting the programs (SWF files) instead of fixing the VM. I know that there were some open source VMs, but were there some successful attempts at converting SWF files to a different format?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's still some pretty fun classic games on Kongregate that I like to go back and play every 3-4 years. What options will we have after 2020?

<comment><USER6> The Flash authoring tool comes bundled with a standalone Flash movie player that can open .swf files. It's available here, but I have no idea if this will continue to work (the page warns against using this if you're not a developer): [https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.ht...](https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html)

It's also possible to export any Flash movie as a standalone executable with the Flash runtime baked in. This should be immune to any sort of deprecation. Of course this relies on the developer who holds the original source file to do the exporting.

<comment><USER7> There's also a tool for converting flash to html5, but i'm not sure this would work 100% for games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Chrome made similar announcement yesterday: [https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye- flash...](https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash- chrome/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I still prefer to watch youtube with its flash player. It handles my multi- display setup better in linux, plus it releases the audio right after I finish with the video. Not the end of the world though. I just have to start using a secondary browser for youtube vids (that I want to view with audio on) and tinker with my WM for getting a good fullscreen.

<comment><USER2> Tip: `mpv`, the video player, natively supports youtube videos (as well as many other video streaming sites through the fabulous youtube-dl).

Watch videos using an awesome, _efficient_ video player with `mpv [https://youtube.com/watch?v=...`](https://youtube.com/watch?v=...`). I believe vlc offers the same feature.

<comment><USER10> Not only that, but there are very small extensions that place a button on your toolbar that will launch MPV with the current URL. It's the only way I watch YouTube nowadays, it always launches fullscreen on the second monitor and quits when the video is done.

It's such a small change, but has a very large impact on the quality of my video-watching experience, I couldn't believe it initially.

<comment><USER11> I wonder whether youtube-dl (which is what mpv uses to get audio/video over the web, I think) is going to get completely neutered by EME. Your setup is similar to how I use Youtube lately, and the recent progression of EME has got me worried that the setup won't be working for too much longer.

<comment><USER12> Is there any reason mpv couldn't stream encrypted video to the GPU? Or implement its own EME wrapper and use the same blob the browser uses?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Stupid question, wouldn't it be possible to compile current Flash player into Javascript using Emscripten?

<comment><USER4> Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that you need the source code to compile a program using Emscripten? Even if some components of the Player are open-sourced [1], the Player itself is still closed source.

[1]: [https://github.com/adobe/avmplus](https://github.com/adobe/avmplus)

<comment><USER14> What if you decompiled the binary to c and __then__ compiled it with emscripten?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There a lot a PR crap and marketing here, catering to adobe.

> Over the years, Flash has helped bring the Web to greatness with innovations > in media and animation.

In reality, it was actually the opposite. Flash made the web lose a couple late before much needed features emerged by occupying space with a proprietary plugin which is among the top cause of security issues due to constant vulnerabilities.

It's sad that mozilla would take such a stance and pretend flash made the web great, or maybe they truly believe this which would explain a lot.

Thing is by 2020 it's possible firefox would have ceased to exist, when we see the speed at which it become irrelevant and how mozilla pushes for this outcome. Or maybe by 2020 firefox would have rebounded and turned around to put the user first. We'll see.

<comment><USER15> > Flash made the web lose a couple late before much needed features emerged by > occupying space with a proprietary plugin

Aren't HTML animation authoring tools are still catching up to what Flash had? I don't know that it held the web back so much as it provided a bar to clear.

On a content level, Flash was definitely a boon. A lot of stuff like Homestar Runner and Kongregate could not have existed with pure web technology at the time.

There was a Hanselminutes podcast where it was mentioned that all the hostility towards Flash before HTML animation was ready for prime time drove a lot of animators away from the web completely, and that we're still recovering from their departure.

<comment><USER7> IIRC the timeline was something like this: macromedia bought flash from another company and changed its name to flash and released it around 1997. At the time it was merely capable of doing vector animations (no chance to spawn kongregate out of it, if spawning kongregate can be considered a good thing or not is another debate).

Work on an open standard for vector graphics and animation started in 1998 (svg and smil) and due to the nature of the process took time. By the time the specification was mature in 2001 and 1999 flash had gone through a few major versions and had just started including the first version of scripting (still no kongregate possible at this point).

Flash got another major release introducing actionscript 2 in 2004 and after being bought by adobe got its 9th major version with actionscript 3 in 2007 (and there we have kongregate). 4 years later support for the first version of the open standard equivalent was still incomplete in browsers, 10 years after the specification was mature. Could it be that it was not a priority for them as there was flash filling this market ?

In the mean time flash had added support for video, of which the open standard equivalent specification took a while then took another while before browsers implemented it (once again, could it be related to fact that flash already filled this market ?)

The other point to note is that flash from version 1 came with a GUI animation editor with a slight learning curve, while the open standard required to code, something most graphic designers do not care to learn. This also played a part in flash popularity despite being proprietary, being a resource hog, a major security issue and a serious privacy concern.

IMHO had flash not existed, the open standard would have been given a higher priority and better authoring tools may have seen the light of the day.

So as we saw, kongregate could not have existed with flash either at the time, and by the time kongregate launched, flash has had 10 years of existence and the better half of dominating the market preventing the emergence of the web technology that would have made a non-flash kongregate possible.

And as we see now in 2017, the closed and proprietary flash is once again on the way out and with it about 20 years of web history are gonna disappear and kongregate is now switching to pure web technology, though it could have been done a few years back it only happened now that flash has been officially deprecated on all platforms.

Nothing that we weren't repeatedly warned about for maybe 15 years now.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Was Fired From a Tech Startup and What My Boss Had to Say About It - <AUTHOR> http://www.fdpod.com/why-i-was-fired-from-a-tech-startup-and-what-my-boss-had-to-say-about-it/ <comment><USER2> I have a very different take here. I will delete it if it doesn't resonate with others:

Those who live by the sword die by it.

He particularly liked "you're a great cultural fit." That means you are JUST LIKE THEM. We can't say, "same race" (but it's true), we can't say, "same gender" (but it's true), and we can't say, "same taste in technology, living address, clothes and what you do on your off time" (but it's true - to the point that side projects are a part of many CTO job descriptions).

Well, those who live by the sword die by it. What I really like about this story is that it shows just how shallow "cultural fit" is.

At my company, I have no idea what some of my C-level people look like. This will absolutely shock some of you. It also gives me access to talent at a multiple of talent to dollars that you cannot even dream of.

Sure, we will never put an "About us" page up with a 'culturally fit' workforce. We might even just use models of 16 28-year-old men who look exctly the same (maybe off of a swim team), give them all glasses and a Macbook, and put them all in a company T-shirt, with a footnote "Representative models."

Meanwhile the rest of you feel free to continue warming chairs with them.

<comment><USER2> Just a note that I truly did mean to delete this after seeing what reception it got (a positive one here); however I was called away before even finishing it, and unfortunately it is now outside my edit window. (I was still editing it.)

The comment should be regarded as a draft, only, of a satire and/or opinion piece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm impressed his former boss sent him a note to state that he felt really bad about the way things happened. It would be nice if he'd done more initially but it still takes a lot of character to write that note and apologize vs just blow it off or chalk it up to the past.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. There was nothing to lose by sending this and everything to gain. There was no character required to write an apology when you're no longer near the situation.

I suspect he's just trying to rebuild burned bridges for better networking in SF (he just moved there).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> His boss fired him and told him why?

 _Never do that._ When firing someone in an at-will state, just do it and explain nothing. Explanations can easily lead to lawsuits. It's just not worth the risk.

<comment><USER6> Unrelated to the validity of this advice: it's kind of sad that our society has evolved legal structures that make it prohibitively risky to tell another human being why you're taking an action against them.

Hmm... what if you could have an employee sign a release as a precondition of being told why they were fired?

<comment><USER7> I got a CV through the other day from a stranger.

The guy had some great experience but the CV was weird.

It was 10 pages long for 4 jobs. He listed every course he'd ever been sent on, including health and safety and diversity training ones, and just mixed his degree in somewhere with them. He listed each version of word he'd used (seemly every version released) with equal prominence as Java and SQL. Each time he'd been hired as a temp contractor he wrote his job title as CEO, because he was getting paid via his company.

My boss laughed at it and told me to bin it.

He needed to know what was wrong, or he'd stay unemployed (which was a shame for a guy with some great skills). I agonized for about a day and finally sent him some tips from my personal email, but I'm sure we could get sued if the strangeness was due to a disability. Something wrong there.

<comment><USER8> You can't be liable for a disability you don't know about, and I wouldn't assume he has one.

At some point, probably around the time he was graduating from high school or college, somebody helped him put together his first resumé, and since it was naturally thin, they probably encouraged him to put in everything that might catch an employer's eye. He's probably never read anyone else's resumé.

I've seen this several times, and I've seen the opposite extreme, too. Somebody gets told early on "fit it on one page", and thinks that's how all resumés should be, forever. None of these people have any disabilities I'm conscious of, though in tech, a mild ASD would hardly be shocking. They've just been given advice that's either wrong or incomplete.

Meanwhile, I know one guy very well who does have a disability, and whose resumés have frequently been complimented. You'd have no way of knowing from them that he's in possession of a document from a psychologist that says PDD- NOS on it, and unless you know exactly what you're looking for, you're not going to notice when you meet him, either.

<comment><USER9> > You can't be liable for a disability you don't know about, and I wouldn't > assume he has one.

When it comes to employment matters, you can be sued by just about _anyone_ for just about _anything_.

Opposing counsel can and will spin every fact that seems meaningless or innocuous. For example, the poster here indicates that he responded to the applicant through a personal email. This is not normal behavior, so you can bet a plaintiff's attorney would focus in on that and try to use it to suggest that the poster didn't response through his work email because he knew something wrong was being done.

Talk to any defense-side employment attorney and they'll all tell you the same thing: flimsy, baseless lawsuits are filed against employers every single day. But responding to a flimsy, baseless lawsuit costs money, and many of these lawsuits are settled because it's more cost-effective and expedient to pay to make the case go away.

Bottom line: taking action based on an unrealistic "you can't be liable..." attitude is extremely dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice story, but we're hearing only one side of it.

Was the writer working running his "sex and comedy" blog at the same time as working for the company?

I can imagine the CEO sacking him when he came across the guy's blog; what with the pictures of vibrators and skanky models..

The start-up's customers were looking for Software Developers: unless they were limiting themselves to the young/liberal Bay then this kinda thing will be damaging to their image.

<comment><USER11> I can imagine 99% of customers never putting two and two together in the first place. I talk to salespeople all the time, and not once have I thought to inquire about their personal interests, side projects, etc.

<comment><USER12> That may be true for you and the other 99% of customers. However, if that 1% of customers who do consider such things to matter are the most important of a given firm's customers, then their opinions on such issues can have an astronomical impact on the business.

<comment><USER13> Hi there. I'm the author of the piece (my friend just emailed me to tell me I'm on here - which is all sorts of cool and weird).

I didn't run the Full Disclosure site at the time but I was doing standup comedy, which certainly could've been one of the reasons. Comedians have to have a web presence, so if you were to google my name, videos of me doing standup may have appeared.

But to tell someone not to pursue their extracurricular passions while bludgeoning their soul during the day for a paycheck, just sucks. Maybe it's a reality, but it did not leave a good taste in my mouth about my employer.

<comment><USER14> Sorry for what happened to you, but in reality what you do off the clock does indeed matter. Companies have an image to maintain, not least startups which are trying to woo more venture capital, and you can bet that the VC's staff will be researching each and every employee. And if it's not VC, it's a potential purchaser or a broker that's going to take you public.

It sounds like your CEO was probably a jerk, but in his mind he may have had his company's welfare as top priority.

Now as for sacrificing one's soul for a paycheck, well, that's a personal choice. Maybe you should be up front with your next employer about your stand- up stuff and see how they respond. Once it's out in the open, you will at least know where they stand.

Best of luck.

<comment><USER15> > Maybe you should be up front with your next employer about your stand-up > stuff and see how they respond.

What someone does off the clock with their own time, unless they're a public figure representing their company 24/7 (such as various high profile CEOs) should have no bearing on how they're perceived either by their employer or clients.

As long as you are performing your work duties efficiently and doing your job, you are holding up your end of the bargain and that should be the end of it. If your employment contract doesn't stipulate that you are not allowed to engage into certain activities outside your working hours, then you can do as you please and your employer has opened themselves up for a gigantic lawsuit by pulling these kinds of shenanings.

I for one would sue the hell out of you if you fired me based on what I do on my own time, if you can't prove that I was underperforming or damaging the company in any way.

<comment><USER14> "I for one would sue the hell out of you..."

No, you wouldn't. It's incredibly expensive and without a really blatant reason like "We're firing you because you're black, old, and gay", no lawyer's going to do the work on contingency.

Anyway, the company is never going to say they fired you for running a knitting website, or whatever it is you do. They'd just say they're downsizing, sorry, and while they're grateful for your contributions, market conditions necessitate an occasional reorganization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Regardless of whether it's right or wrong, physical appearance can often have a big impact when dealing with certain clientele.

Certain types of clients just prefer to deal with people who conform to what might be considered a more "conservative" appearance. Deviating from their expectations can reduce their level of trust, for instance, which can impact business dealings. This is especially true when dealing with customers from abroad, especially when there are other cultural differences at play.

Some people have also had very, very bad experiences with other people who dress or groom themselves in a specific way. It's not the appearance itself that is harmful, but rather the association it has to other people who were directly involved with bad experiences in the past.

An example of this are those Ruby on Rails developers who choose a so-called "hipster" appearance. It can only take one disastrous Ruby on Rails project for a client to consider all software developers who have such an appearance to be untrustworthy and unprofessional. Again, whether it's right or wrong, this can happen very easily.

The specifics of this particular case aren't very clear. But I wouldn't be so quick to underestimate the importance or impact of physical appearance in general, when it comes to business dealings.

<comment><USER8> > _Some people have also had very, very bad experiences with other people who > dress or groom themselves in a specific way._

I've had very, very bad experiences with people who dress in suits. Indeed, the people who have had the most severe negative effects on my life have invariably worn suits. And I can't name many people I've had positive experiences with who _ever_ wear suits.

Yet, somehow, I don't think that's what you had in mind when defending this nonsense.

<comment><USER12> I take it that you're not a "person who wears a suit"?

The reality of the business world is that those who control the money are often "people who wear suits". This is especially true when large sums of money are involved.

If a given business wants such people (and the organizations they represent) as clients, then the business will need to conform to the expectations of these potential clients. The impact of such conformance can be even greater on a startup, which may not have much leeway or influence in such dealings.

I'm not "defending" nor "promoting" what happened in this case; the details are much too vague. I'm merely pointing out that there are factors at play in the real world which may make such decisions more plausible and more comprehensible.

<comment><USER8> > _I take it that you 're not a "person who wears a suit"?_

I'm a person whose life experience tells me anyone wearing a suit is, to a very high degree of probability, evil, stupid, or both.

Do your justifications work both ways or not? If it's just fine to discriminate against someone for not wearing a suit, is it equally fine for me to discriminate against someone for wearing a suit?

> _the business will need to conform to the expectations of these potential > clients_

If people would stop appeasing these idiots and instead do the ethical thing by telling them to take a hike, it wouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER12> Of course you can distrust somebody who wears a suit. I didn't say that you couldn't, or that you shouldn't.

You keep forgetting about the context we're discussing here, though: real- world business dealings. When one party has money, and the other party wants some of it, the party with the money generally sets the tone of the business relationship. This may involve certain expectations with respect to how the people they deal with appear and behave.

Yes, maybe startups seeking business relationships with larger, wealthier organizations shouldn't put up with expectations that they feel are unreasonable. But that's not how the real world works, unfortunately. If money is to be made, then some sacrifices of various forms will very likely need to be made. I'm merely pointing out this very real fact of today's business world, and how it's plausible that appearance can play a very significant role in business relationships.

<comment><USER8> > _Of course you can distrust somebody who wears a suit._

I didn't say distrust, I said discriminate against. As in, "I don't like that you wear a suit, so you're fired.".

> _I 'm merely pointing out this very real fact of today's business world, and > how it's plausible that appearance can play a very significant role in > business relationships._

You're pointing out that many people are willing to be unethical to make money. This is neither surprising nor interesting.

It is, however, disgusting, and doubly so because the appeasement is the only thing that allows it to persist in the first place. If the person with money had trouble finding vendors who lived up to their arbitrary expectations, the incentive would exist to change those expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > I was told that neither salary nor equity were negotiable, but I was sold on > the promise of the company.

Yo, fuck that. Everything is negotiable to one degree or another. That sounds like someone trying to take advantage of you.

<comment><USER17> I've never understood that. Just taking a job because OH MY GOD JOB. I've been in on going salary negotiations for over two months, all while they paid me the highest contrator salary just to have me stay on. Straight up said "Pay me X or I walk, thanks". 5 second meeting.

FUCK company/corporate loyalty. I'm here to get paid so I can fund an adventurous life, not to make you richer. I'm here to _make myself richer_ and that's 100% all there is to it.

Know your value, unless you're _really_ in a bind.

That was it.

<comment><USER18> I'd say in a healthy employee/employer relationship, you're both making each other richer.

<comment><USER19> Nope -- you always make the boss richer.

<comment><USER18> Well, in the strictest sense, I'm getting richer by being employed. Of course, good money handling and living below my means are required for me to make progress.

I think you mean to say that "my boss" is capturing more value from my work than I am, which is probably true, but that doesn't mean that we're not both benefiting. I look at it as a simple transaction; I give my time, he gives me money. I don't plan to keep this arrangement forever, but it's certainly making me richer right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Human Resources is not your advocate. Human Resources is a risk-assessment > department.

Powerful statement.

<comment><USER21> This is basically why unions were formed in the first place. HR is there to protect the company, and they are owned by the company. Unions are there to protect the employees, and they are owned by the employees.

I know the current attitude is against unions, and there are probably a lot of anti-union people on HN, for good reasons. Unions realized their power and became corrupt, became money-hungry, became power-hungry. Unions were one hand in the pot that bankrupted Detroit. And that's a shame, because now employees have literally no one watching their backs. At-will employment and an employer-friendly environment creates a hostile work place where employees of many companies never know when or why they're going to be fired.

Unions aren't entirely bad. Employers aren't entirely bad. It's just a shame we can't figure out a good balance of employer _and_ employee protection.

<comment><USER22> Good unions are great. For employees, for the economy, and even for the employers. I don't understand how American unions got so crazy and self- destructive (or if they're not, why so many Americans are convinced the are).

<comment><USER23> I'd say it's because of the same reason why some people vote against their own best interests (e.g. less taxes on the wealthy). They believe that one day, they will be rich and powerful, so they had better not vote in things that would affect them when they get there.

The problem is, most of them never get there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My take was that once you strip away all the unicorn and ice cream BS, there's little magic that prevents a startup from being based on the same values that drive the largest companies. Bad leadership and greed tend to have the same result, whether in SF, Chicago, or St. Louis.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very tough story. What I don't get is why someone who is so good at sales (the story supports this) is on food stamps. If you can say, "I landed clients A, B and C" then a competitor would hire you to do it for them too, no?

<comment><USER26> After an experience like this, somebody like him would probably swear never to put himself in that position again.

<comment><USER13> Yes. Exactly (I'm the author). I never want to work in a cubicle again. Which is what the whole Full Disclosure thing is, trying to create my own business as to never deal with this or these types of people again.

<comment><USER25> OP - If you can sell, you can sell yourself and your firm. Short term you'll have problems, but medium term you'll be ok and long term you'll do fine. Hang in there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah, the magic of "at will" employment. It's an excellent tool for those who rely on fear based management, and a horrible deal for employees.

Based on my experience in the tech industry, I assume I am being lied to. Things have only gotten worse recently with all of the fast money sloshing around and the bad actors it has drawn in.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, it's to where if I get a whiff of dishonesty, I start submitting resumes. This is my third job since April and I've already started looking for the fourth. I used to think job-hopping would raise a red flag and keep me from getting hired, but it hasn't yet. I think if anything it signals value that you can find work at will.

<comment><USER28> It hasn't yet _that you are aware of_. I would immediately pass on your resume without a second glance. Four jobs in less than six months very strongly signals a number of negative things to prospective employers.

Perhaps the only companies willing to hire you now are those with high developer turnover who just need a warm body to fill the last vacated seat? And perhaps you are perpetuating that?

<comment><USER27> Hmm. The 3 jobs I've gone through were all very different. One was a very small software development company, they decided after three weeks that they wanted someone with a lot more experience. I went from there to a huge corporation, where I was unhappy so I found another job. This one I'm at now is a largish "small business", like 300 employees.

I'd be confident in my ability to find another should these guys suddenly not want me. But they told me when they hired me that it wasn't even a competition, I was that much better than their other candidates. It was like that at BigCorp too.

Another thing is that all three were contract-to-hire, except for BigCorp, which omitted the hire part. I had significant accomplishments at each of them, making and delivering entire apps. This is reflected in the resume.

It's a different world out there. You really have to try people out before you can commit to them. Many times it just doesn't make sense to continue.

<comment><USER28> Where are you in your career? Just based on what you've written, it sounds like you're early on in your career and don't have a good idea what the right questions to ask during an interview are. Interviews are as much about you vetting the company as the company vetting you.

<comment><USER27> Yes, I'm still learning. But it's hard to really know what a company's like from any amount of questioning of your interviewer. I feel like my jobs have given me a good picture of what the industry is like at the various levels.

Right now I'm just trying to get a decent salary. This contract-to-hire nonsense has to go. I'm sick of $20 an hour. If I jump again, they're going to have to offer $70K+ right from the start. No more recruiters, my last two jobs went through recruiters, I need to be my own advocate.

I would love to be able to stick around, but in many cases that's just not smart. I just so happened to have strung three such situations together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One of the more frustrating things about working in the Bay Area is having to deal with finicky personalities like the OP's boss & CEO. It really takes a psychopath to court a potential hire so hard and then fire them 5 weeks later due to their appearance (after they sign a couple of large customers, btw).

If this were NYC, I could understand stabbing someone in the back after they secure a couple of large customers. Though, in the Bay Area, it's like being stabbed in the back by a meth addict; sometimes it makes sense, most of the time it doesn't.

<comment><USER11> I watched a CEO fire someone he had recruited cross country just weeks after he had relocated his family to the Bay Area. They screwed him and his family over real good. Not long afterward, the CEO fired his outside accountant and made his wife the CFO of the company. I straight up asked if he was hiding something, knowing that he probably was and that my stock and bonus were fictional.

I was fired immediately afterward. I laughed gleefully on the drive home from the comically bad exit interview.

<comment><USER30> There's a certain level of unethical behavior in termination that can lead to a successful termination lawsuit even in an at-will state like California. Outright bad-faith conduct still violates the implicit covenant of good faith and fair dealing, though it's a fairly high bar to be held in violation.

Cases where it's been found in the past include terminating an employee in a way calculated to harm the employee maximally, due to a boss settling a personal vendetta and being intemperate enough to say so; and engaging in a pattern of firing people just before promised benefits vest, in which case the company can be found to have been falsely promising benefits it never intended to deliver.

Hiring your wife as a CFA to cover up questionable dealings seems like it might be leaning in that direction...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seems like it crashed, here's the cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.fdp...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.fdpod.com/why- i-was-fired-from-a-tech-startup-and-what-my-boss-had-to-say-about-it/)

</comment><comment><USER32> If he had competing offers, he was in a good negotiating position. I can understand believing in a great company and drinking the kool-aid, but if you have competing offers and a company explicitly states, "Salary and equity are non-negotiable" \- that's a huge red flag.

You should be allowed to negotiate as a savvy prospective employee. With very few exceptions, you don't want to put yourself in an environment where terms are dictated to you rather than opened on a floor _with_ you for your input. Even if you fail miserably at the negotiation, at least you had an opportunity.

Second to this - unless you're literally at-will employee, this is grounds for liability. The author was explicitly told, "You didn't do anything wrong, we're just getting rid of you because you don't fit." IANAL, so I won't harp on this as I don't know the particulars, but I'm _fairly_ sure this is a case most lawyers wouldn't shy away from if everything is to be taken at face-value here (anyone with a law degree can correct me if I'm wrong).

In any case...I'm glad the author received validation of his abilities, even if it was nearly a year later. Maybe his former boss will grow a backbone and rehire him for something awesome. At least he didn't burn a bridge.

<comment><USER33> >"Salary and equity are non-negotiable" ...

>You should be allowed to negotiate as a savvy prospective employee.

that was the negotiation. The author took "being a part of that revolution" in lieu of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I got fired from a hardware startup because I wasn't pulling enough billable hours (actually, it was because I argued too much, didn't think it was good to put all of our eggs in one basket with one client--especially an abusive one-- when we were trying to not be a consulting company, but the billable hours issue is what they went with). Of course, if they had not ignored my reports on a quarter million dollars of missing license revenue... oh well, their loss.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Anyone who is worth a shit has been fired at least once."

<comment><USER36> Nope. I know plenty of people who have significant worth to their companies/clients and never been fired.

<comment><USER37> ... or never told you, or knew that they should quit before getting fired, or laid off(but the boss knows it was to get rid of him/her).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The big question: did he end up getting coffee with his former boss?

<comment><USER39> My big question is how exactly the way he looked triggered his dismissal.

<comment><USER27> I'd have marched into the CEO's office and demanded an explanation. Looked him straight in the eye and make him justify his decision.

<comment><USER40> ... And probably get hauled off by security or even worse the Police?

<comment><USER8> It would be unwise for security to physically "haul" you off unless you were being violent, and even if they call the police, they will simply tell you to leave and not come back. Cops won't touch or arrest you in this situation unless you refuse to comply.

You may or may not get the answer you want, but there's not much they can do about you making the attempt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I was cool with it until here :

"Well it turns out I could [be fired], unless it could be reasonably inferred that I was being fired for being part of a protected class. So had my boss said "The CEO thinks you dress like a faggot" or "The CEO thinks that's what a nigger would wear", things would have been different. But as it stands, the fact that my boss told me I was being fired related to appearance at all was definitely a dicey, questionable move."

I've no idea why he feels the need to talk about how "protected classes" can't be fired when he's talking about why he was fired, but it seems as if he's no idea why some people are protected based on their sex, sexuality or color.

Unless the author is gay, then "The CEO thinks you dress like a faggot" is in no way equivalent to "The CEO doesn't feel you have the right look for the company."

<comment><USER13> It wasn't worth getting into within the post, but there were strong suggestions that the CEO may have listened to a podcast of mine where I talk about having been an escort, and many people think I come off as gay. "What your look may convey to clients" really wasn't my favorite thing to hear. [http://www.fdpod.com/podcasts/episode-19-coming-out-vince- ma...](http://www.fdpod.com/podcasts/episode-19-coming-out-vince-mancini-matt- lieb-interview-eric-barry/)

<comment><USER42> You didn't once mention the fact that you're wildly open about your personal life on the internet: [http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2013/01/30/cheap-dates- super-...](http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2013/01/30/cheap-dates-super-size- me/)

I don't know about your employer, but I would certainly think twice about keeping an employee who clearly doesn't realize the effect that this brand of open honesty has on people outside of SF kink circles.

They didn't can you because you were an escort; they canned you because you talk so openly about fucking on the internet, attached to your real name and without any kind of prompting. What else will you overshare?

<comment><USER43> Please take your puritanical sensibilities elsewhere and be sure to say "Sayonara!" to the First Amendment on the way out. kthxbye

<comment><USER44> The first amendment has nothing to do with this. That governs the relationship between the government and "the people" and until incorporation via the 14th amendment it didn't even apply to states and their citizens. It has nothing to do with the employer / employee relationship. Secondly I didn't see anything wildly puritanical about the statement. A lot of people aren't comfortable with that type of content and that fact could have affected the CEO's decision to fire the OP; because he didn't feel comfortable presenting the OP as the face of the company, which as the sales guy he was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> More than the article itself, it's amazing how much prejudice people have, especially related to skin color. The guy can say "faggot" but if he says "nigger" you have a bunch of people saying how bad it is to use the "n" word. Oh come on. What he meant is as clear as water.

People should grow up and realize that by doing that they're just stigmatizing the object of prejudice even more.

</comment><comment><USER46> I figured the whole "be loyal to yourself" stuff almost in my first job when I was not allowed to rise up the ladder too quick as "more senior people" need to be promoted first. That day I decided my job will always be my plan B. I am happy to report now I run my own , very profitable business and have achieved financial freedom from JOBS and BOSSES

</comment><comment><USER47> So:

1\. What do we know about the Boss? Nothing. Does he have a family? We don't know.

2\. Is the Boss meant to quit simultaneously? _Why_? It's not clear that this would've stopped OP being fired.

If he's such a good boss, quitting makes the situation worse for _everyone left behind_.

</comment><comment><USER48> "They were going to revolutionize the recruiting industry" by "online applications that discovered and ranked the aptitude of software developers", but failed with their own HR. Sigh ...

</comment><comment><USER49> Yeah, we still don't know why he was fired.</comment>