Getting rid of free office snacks doesn't come cheap - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-09/why-getting-rid-of-free-office-snacks-doesn-t-come-cheap <comment><USER4> One of the best comments I've ever read on Hacker News was about this topic. I wish I'd saved the link.

The point was that this engineer took the removal of any perk as a sign to leave, and soda/snacks was a huge one.

Why? During the early stages of the company, the "free" soda and food was something everyone chipped in for to save money. And why shouldn't they all save money by buying things like this in bulk? The "free" things were more valuable to each employee than the total bulk cost of those things.

The "taking away" of this "perk" represented a shift from a company that one was a valued member of to one that had a management vs. employees mentality. The idea became that the free soda/snacks was something that management gifted to employees to keep them happy.

And that shift in culture was the signal to leave.

<comment><USER5> Yup. The relationship between employee and employer is a 2 way street, and it may not seem like it some times but both of them have tremendous power. When the employer starts doing dumb shit and increasingly makes it obvious they don't truly value the employee they pick up on that. And then they start leaving. Who leaves first? Oh, just the people who are the most intrinsically motivated, who care about the work the most, who have the most talent/experience and can easily find a job elsewhere (and know it). And when those people start to leave it starts a cascade. Because when the best, most talented, most experienced people leave it makes the working environment worse. A big aspect of job satisfaction for devs is working around other talented and capable folks, when that diminishes it creates a bigger incentive to leave. So more and more people leave, generally the people who have the easiest time finding jobs.

So talent and experience just start evaporating out of the company. And before you know it there's an enormous brain drain happening.

The thing is, this isn't obvious to people higher up until much, much later. And then it tends to manifest itself as a reduced capability to execute on projects, especially difficult ones. But almost always there's a zillion other things that one can readily blame for such things because no project is the same from cycle to cycle. And, of course, management is generally resistant to the notion that they fucked up and screwed the company over with short-sighted policies. Who would imagine that something as simple as getting rid of free soda could translate into not being able to ship on time years later? That's preposterous? But these are just the rocks in the river that the currents and eddies swirl around, they're the visible aspects of sentiment and changes that run deep and are invisible unless you're in the trenches and paying close attention.

Devs aren't a "cost center", they're the value that the entire company is built around. Treat them well and you'll be able to keep the best ones around for a long time, which is an enormous competitive advantage.

<comment><USER6> I've often heard this "the best ones leave first because they're in demand" meme presented as fact. It sounds logical enough, but is there any evidence that this is really what happens?

Sometimes, the best and brightest are also the most invested into the organization's success, hence the least likely to leave. They may be earning a top salary, they may have the ear of the CEO, or they may just love their job too much to pack up and leave on a whim.

It's been my experience that the biggest complainers when it comes to belt tightening policies are in fact the lesser contributors. The little dog yaps the loudest. I don't know exactly why, but it often seems this way.

<comment><USER7> I work at a small satellite office for a large company. I have no issues with the local management, but the general sentiment is our cost-cutting obsessed overlords up at corporate HQ just don't care about morale/retention.

Senior people don't care as much about free soda as the young folks do. However, we do tend to have families and kids, so when you constantly erode our medical (higher premiums and deductibles starting next year, but at least they didn't nearly _double_ our share of the premium like they did last year), dental, and vacation benefits, we lose motivation.

...and then we end up reading hacker news when we should be working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always liked the explanation given by __--__ [0] in a HN thread long ago on a Steve Blank post "The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free"[1] about the same subject :

> "I'm not management, but I've had it described to me like this: cutting > soda, while it may be insignificant and certainly isn't going to change a > damned thing money-wise for the company, makes the management feel better > about the situation. It makes them feel like they're doing something and > something is better than nothing. It's also a CYA tactic. If the CEO wants > to hold somebody personally accountable, the CFO can say "look, we did > everything, we even cut back the soda!"

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5757467)

[1] [http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- eart...](http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle- earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/)

<comment><USER9> I mean...they're saving $600,000. That's not nothing.

<comment><USER10> Out of $2.5B? That's $0.0006B. I mean, it basically is nothing...

For 36,000 employees, that's less than $17 per person. Meanwhile, the CEO gets paid $21,800,000 per year.

<comment><USER11> The real question is that if the CEO somehow knew for certain that cutting the soda would allow him to earn that 21,800,000 but keeping the soda would boost productivity earning him 22,500,000 instead, would he cut it anyway because that's just the way things should be done?

<comment><USER10> I bet the soda cut was more about keeping up the appearance of doing something. His compensation is probably more directly affected by his perceived effectiveness than from the subtle productivity benefits more soda would bring.

<comment><USER8> Right! It's low impact, high visibility. And the last line of the old post - "we _even cut out_ the sodas" \- is a great soundbite.

To borrow from the common criticism of the TSA - it's cost cutting theatre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's funny: For a lot of the employees we've hired offering to buy a $500 monitor or a $600 chair moved the needle on how excited they were more than a $5,000 or $10,000 change in salary would.

I think there are a few things that play into that: If you made an extra $10,000 you'd want to do something responsible with it, but you wouldn't really notice an instantaneous change in your day-to-day life.

But I think more importantly than that it signals that you're supposed to have a good experience and be taken care of. Saying, "Look, if you want/need a monitor or computer to work consider it done" says something about the company. Your success means something to them.

What can office snacks possibly cost a company? Say it's a 10-person company, snacks would cost _maybe_ $1,000/month on the high end? And at that point you're probably burning >$120,000/month in salaries. It's barely even a drop in the bucket, assuming we're not talking about infinite catered meals.

<comment><USER13> that is a huge pet peeve of mine, the whole nickel and diming and paying developers $xxx,xxx a year and expecting them to make do with a single $200 1080p crappy monitor and the cheapest possible pc one can get.

This seems to happen sometimes because of budgeting issues and silos and so on, but it is still penny wise and pound foolish to expect "passionate" folks and not give them the tools to excel, and creates ongoing friction which will definitely not help with attrition/retention.

If I owned my company I would honestly nowadays give every developer an 8-core 128gig workstation or two with 2-3 21:9 35" 1440p screens and 1TB+ of nvme ssd and a $1k+ allowance to get whatever best-of-the-best chair they want to get (say, a steelcase leap or similar)

Even if you spent $10k on each engineer for this (and the above would be less than that) it would be worth it just from the perspective of you want your employees' workspace to get out of the way as much as possible to enable them to be productive and write good quality code.

The output and code quality gains from having a top-of-the-line machine/monitor pay for themselves in spades, but for some reason this never seems to be noticed in any company I have worked for, it can go from "we are a startup, we have no money to waste" all the way to "we are a large company and beholden to our shareholders, we have no money to waste" but the end result is the same, the people who could do with better tools don't get them and gripe (justifiably) about it.

<comment><USER14> On the other hand, getting your team spoiled like that can easily make a product that only works for people who have top-of-the-line conditions.

e.g: (2nd hand info - might be wrong) There's a recent Batman game that fails to work properly, and in fact, was essentially pulled from the market and re- released almost unchanged once common-enough gamer machines (still not "very common") caught up with the specs needed for the game.

another e.g: Facebook now does 2G Tuesdays[0] in which network speed is (optionally) purposely degraded to 2G speeds, to make sure that the technologically spoiled Facebook engineers and designers get an idea of the service their lesser-equipped users get.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-2g-tuesdays-to- slow-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-2g-tuesdays-to-slow- employee-internet-speeds-down-2015-10)

<comment><USER15> That shows a need for proper test equipment (and guidelines/practices that require those tests), not for an handicapping of the primary tools.

Requiring PC game developers to write a game on a old PC makes no more sense than requiring PSP game developers to write the game on a PSP.

<comment><USER14> Possibly, but that's a different discussion, and one that -- unlike the "primary tools" discussion, cannot be solved by throwing more money at it.

In my opinion and experience, unless you already have proper testing practices, for PC development it is better to make sure your developers have test rigs on their table that are comparable to end user equipment -- and, in most cases, it's better if it is their development machine.

> Requiring PC game developers to write a game on a old PC makes no more sense > than requiring PSP game developers to write the game on a PSP.

"Old" is a spectrum. Most people on this thread say a (e.g. channeling Spolsky) your developer should have the best machine money can buy - <USER2> 128GB of ram, 8 cores, 1TB SSD. That's not on the "old" / "new" gamer machine spectrum at all. It's on a completely different scale, given that most gamer machines these days (AFAIK) have 16GB of ram quad cores with 256GB, and casual gamers have 8GB with 128GB SSD or even an HDD

I would require PSP developers to test and debug on a real PSP rather than an emulator - but since PC is both the dev and the target environment, it is reasonable _in most cases_ to require the dev PC to be comparable to the deployment PC, and that would essentially guarantee proper function (at some dev cost, compared to the "best machine money can buy", but with significantly reduced "you need to fix this" testing feedback cost, with a likely overall positive effect -- at least from my experience).

<comment><USER15> Frankly, I think setting up a standard testing VM with limited resources (2-4 cores, 8GB of RAM, small disk) makes much more sense than purposefully reducing programmer productivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cutting snacks is a great signal to employees that they aren't worth the $2/day of Dr. Pepper they consume.

Instead of cutting snacks just cut the job of whoever proposes that as a cost cutting measure. Probably save more money and nip a lot of other problems in the bud.

<comment><USER17> Sprint saved less than $0.05/day per employee by cutting snacks.

<comment><USER18> I think you're counting all sprint employees, even field workers and store employees, but the free snacks were only available in the corporate office. Also, I think you're assume 365 days/year, but the snacks were likely only available for ~ 253 workdays/year.

According to Wikipedia, the corporate office has around 7,000 full time employees (not including 4,000 contract workers), so the company could have saved as much as much as 35 cents per employee per day.

<comment><USER19> 35 whole cents? Stop the presses! Assuming you pay minimum wage that's like getting everyone to spend an extra 2 minutes a day

<comment><USER20> As someone who has spent 15 years working in Microsoft Office all day, I'd rather they saved 35c on snacks than 45c on Office. I know which one would hit my productivity hardest ;-)

<comment><USER19> Yes, that too, it's unbelievable how cheap Office is compared to hourly salary. Great tools are essential to doing a great job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > > [http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article11...](http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article1123165.html)

Marcelo Claure, current CEO was paid $1 million, with a $500k signing bonus, on top of $24 million in stock

Previous CEO Dan Hesse was paid $1.2 million as part of $49 million worth of compensation.

> Axing the free food will shave $600,000 from the budget

... Let them eat cake! (okay obviously not that extreme, but you know: bread is to office snacks as cake is to... millions in bonuses).

<comment><USER22> I'll run your company into the ground for you for _half_ what the other guy is charging. Hiring me as CEO will save you just as much as cutting the food budget. You can't afford to _not_ hire me.

<comment><USER23> Hire him, username checks out. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> OK, I'll play the devil's advocate here. I am against free snacks in the office. First of all, it tends to be utter garbage: muffins, chips, cheese sticks, soda, sugary drinks, cookies etc. Has anyone tried to calculate lost productivity from health issues arising from eating that highly processed junk full of salt, sugar, and trans fats?

Second, snacks in the office might make more sense in the suburban offices in the places with extreme climate swings (think Schaumburg or Kanata) where getting out of office for a snack is an ordeal. In large downtown cores like Toronto or New York I would say a stroll for a snack is more refreshing for productivity than mindlessly eating chips in front of the computer after a short run to the cafeteria.

Third, there is this "useless perk" consideration. I'd rather get the share of money spent on the junk food and do whatever I want with them.

<comment><USER25> > I'd rather get the share of money spent on the junk food and do whatever I > want with them.

That would be true if not for taxes. A meal at the office is effectively 40-50% cheaper than the corresponding paycheck increase.

<comment><USER26> Aren't perks for employees a taxable benefit? (Maybe the employer pays the taxes rather than the employee...)

<comment><USER27> I think the IRS for some reason hasn't clamped down on this benefit in kind. HMRC wanted to charge the employees tax when one big UK employer wanted to roll out free tea and coffee.

Apparently the CFO got pissed off over this found a loop hole and we all got 120 free shares that year as a way of going F You to HMRC

<comment><USER26> Yeah for snacks and company-provided meals I can see it being grey enough to be "meh". But I remember back when I worked at RIM in Waterloo, I heard that a reason they couldn't sell parking passes to their underused parking lots near the UW campus was that it would make the 'free' passes employees got a taxable benefit (and all of the headaches that implied). I guess if the perks can be taken from the office (phone bills paid?) that's an easy argument for taxability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I worked as an engineer at a place that not only had free soda but one of the multi-flavor fountains like you'd see in a fast food place. It was initially quite cool; you could come in with your cup and just fill up whatever you wanted.

Of course, soda syrup costs literally pennies. Food places pay more for cups than soda, and since the engineering group wasn't buying that many cups (people used their own) the cost was essentially wrapped up in the machine itself.

Now comes the true stupidity. To "cut costs" they stopped refilling the soda dispenser but _they kept the machine_ and _even left it plugged in_. It became a glorified ice dispenser (when the break room _already had a different ice dispenser_ ), consuming electricity. It had a bunch of now-useless fountain dispensers on the front of it.

Think about that. The company decided not to pay the pennies it would have cost to make employees happy, and elected to continue operating a machine that didn't have any reason to exist without the soda. The beginning of the end was signaled loud and clear to employees and I saw a marked drop in giving-a-crap- about-things after that point. The company is not around anymore, long since divided into pieces and sold to the lowest bidder.

<comment><USER29> Why wouldn't you sell the pieces to the highest bidder?

<comment><USER30> They were masochists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I had a really relevant experience in my ex-company. It was a small company doing video analytics and monitoring. It did well in initial stage and the pantry was stocked with real bean coffee maker, beers, sodas, and pastries. Then its business went down hill, and the beer was removed (beers are expensive in Singapore), then cheap beans were used, then no bean coffee but 3-in-1 instant coffees. Guess what was the ultimate items they scrimped on? Toilet paper. You read it right and I am not kidding. They swapped 3-ply to 2-ply and that was when I called it quit. The company went bankrupt after 1.5 years.

The lesson here is not about how much 'gift' it was taken from employees, it is more on the changing wind in the air that employees need to watch out for. If a company is so desperate to cut snacks, usually it means it has much bigger shit at the backyard that employees may or may not be aware of.

<comment><USER32> * Guess what was the ultimate items they scrimped on? Toilet paper. You read it right and I am not kidding. They swapped 3-ply to 2-ply and that was when I called it quit.*

...I wasn't aware that 3-ply was even a thing. That said, my lack of attention to brand names means I've discovered quite a range of quality in the local 2-ply offerings here.

<comment><USER31> Actually I wasn't aware the difference either until the admin (she was my friend as well) complained about there was nothing left to 'optimize'...

I must clarify i called it quit not because of the lack of 3-ply paper for my backside, but I felt it was really an issue for a company trying to save on such thing. My reasoning was right.

<comment><USER33> I had to supply my own soap in their toilets during the legal 3-month notice period at Atos, France. I'm sorry, they deserve to be named.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Every startup company I've visited has in-house snacks and drinks. Works wonders for them keeping people in the office more hours of the day. Sprint is a beast. I doubt many people work a single minute over their schedule.

Now, you don't see the higher-ups partake often, they know better. Much better for the soul to walk around the block, get some sun and air, and grab a coffee or snack. I get to know my neighbors as well. Builds community outside the office...

</comment><comment><USER35> What a weird decision.

600,000 for sprint is such a drop in the bucket, but at scale these line items like "snacks" look like big numbers.

As a side note: lots of people are commenting on the quality of snacks as being the reason to not bother with them. Obviously if you're just supplying people with Dr Pepper and Mars bars you won't get much of a benefit. The snacks you bring into the office should satisfy a few things

1) You dont go hungry

2) You eat something healthy

3) You continue to harness the "serendipity of the office"

</comment><comment><USER36> > "There's an old saying where they say the goal is to pluck the feathers from > the bird with the least amount of squawking," said Chamberlain. The less > visible the cuts, the better—even if it means taking money out of employee > pockets. "Changes to contributions to employee retirement plans," he > suggested as a less disruptive cut than emptying the snack larder. "These > are highly obscure from a worker standpoint."

That's some cold shit right there.

<comment><USER37> I'm ok with that. Perception matters. I dont think it is cold as much as realistic. I would much rather have my contributions to the pension cut.

Someone decided that providing milk is too much of a pain in my office. We used to have a guy who dumped off a dozen litres fresh milk a day in the break areas. Now I buy my own. That annoys me. Buying milk takes up cognitive space that I could use for other stuff.

No milk annoys me way more than if we were to cut pension contribution cap by 1%.

I save about 500 euro/month or so in the pension (I dont even know exactly how much, I just went with the cap). Lowering the cap by a percent would probably save about 50 euro / month per employee or so. There is no way I spend 50 euro / month on milk.

Cutting the pension contribution cap by 1% would have been a worse deal financially for me, but the milk annoys me way more than a cap cut does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not long ago I was running a small office of 4-6 devs and at least once a month I would make a trip to Costo or Sams and buy some good stock of soda's and snacks for everyone. This was easy to do, and cost negligible. Then at some point I hired an admin assistant and she correctly pointed out that, long term, this was likely a very bad thing for everyone's health. Drinking 1 or 2 soda's a day is not healthy for anyone. I know we were all adults in the office but at least I felt responsible for providing more healthy alternatives. Easier said than done as I was never really able to figure a good alternative at that scale. Most beverages in a can seemed as bad or worse than soda. I wonder if the office density in cities like SF or big startup hubs offer an alternative for this. I mean logistics of fresh fruit vs once a month trip are very different.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, I fear that as someone who will likely run a tech company or manage etc.

I don't really want to buy shit food for people that I know they really want. It just doesn't feel right. Buy a bunch of organic fruits and veggies and bean dips or whatever and I feel like they would still want the crap food anyways.

Suck a pickle.

<comment><USER40> It's not as bad a dilemma as you think. Buy the doritos and buy the fresh food too. You show respect for your employees by respecting their wishes and you show you care about them by offering healthier options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The same goes for better keyboards or chairs for employees. I'll have a coworker say "this keyboard is uncomfortable" or "I'm squinting a lot at this monitor", and when I offer to order something different, they reflexively say "Oh, don't get anything too fancy!"

If the company's going to ask someone to work years of their life away, the least a company can do is make sure the damage to vision, posture and wrists is minimized. Note minimized - it gets a little more clear when you realize that nobody really comes out of a career with _better_ health - even if it's just age.

(someone will probably pop up and say "But I'm more healthy working now that I've lost weight at 50 years of age than I was at 30!" Fine. But you'll never get to be 30 again, fat or thin.)

<comment><USER42> I showed up at my first day at the new gig with my own keyboard (tenkeyless Cherry MX brown keyswitches) and mouse. Multiple people said "Hey, you don't have to bring your own stuff, just tell us what you want and we'll order it."

Having spent a decade at a much larger company (Halliburton) I feel absolutely _spoiled_ at this place. The system they gave me on Monday? Brand new 2015 Macbook Pro Retina 15" with 512G SSD and 16G RAM (and external USB3 hub and USB3 SATA HD for Time Machine backups). Two 23" monitors were already on my desk waiting with DVI-to-Mini-Displayport adapters.

Today I sent a request for a desk lamp, and someone walked in 30 minutes later with two and asked which one I preferred. This afternoon I requested a license key for VMWare Fusion 8, and had it in email about an hour later. This stuff would have taken weeks, or never been approved, at my previous gig - <USER3> half the stuff on my desk was brought in from home because purchase requests would have been rejected with "You have a keyboard already, why do you need an expensive one?"

<comment><USER43> Do you mind telling us the name of your new workplace?

<comment><USER42> cPanel in Houston. Awesome people and work environment, so far.

<comment><USER42> Today the Das Keyboard 4C was waiting on my desk when I arrived (it was requested two days ago) and the big and tall office chair I requested was delivered (assembled) this afternoon. I feel so spoiled compared to places I've worked at before.

<comment><USER42> When I inquired about a better chair, I wrote "I'm a big dude and the chair I have now won't last more than month or two with me on it. Do we have options for better chairs? No rush, whenever you have time."

One of the facilities guys came by a couple hours later, said "We have two options for big and tall chairs, want to follow me and you can try out the ones that a couple other people have?" The first one I tried out in someone else's office (they were gracious and said "sure, he can try mine") worked, I said "This one will do". He rolled it in, assembled, into my office the very next afternoon!

Sort of a funny contrast from my first day at my first "real" IT job at an ISP in Oklahoma City in 1995 - "here's a screwdriver, you get to assemble your own desk." That first day happened to also be April 19 - the day of the OKC Bombing. What a first day.... We ended up winning awards for our duct-tape- and-bailing-wire on-the-fly 'Net coverage of the event...

Everyone oohs and ahhs about the perks that Googlers and Facebookers have - but I'm feeling pretty damned spoiled here in Houston.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> J-dawg If we're talking about corporate stinginess, look no further than IBM's London office. They don't even provide a place to make your own tea or coffee, let alone the actual tea or coffee. Bringing in your own kettle is banned. The best you can do is buy a cup of hot water from the canteen for 23p and put your own teabag in.

It's become a bit of a running joke among staff there, but nobody seems to seriously complain about it. I guess they've just got used to it. I do think it says something about IBM's current attitude to its employees.

</comment><comment><USER44> Personally snacks aren't huge for me. They are normally junk food or something "healthy" like baked chips which I also don't eat. Now fruit is something I would be interested in but the short shelf life of things like that normally makes it unattractive to businesses. Also drinks don't interest me much as I drink water all day. All of that said I've worked at places that had snacks and worked with coworkers who took advantage of those snacks all the time and they seemed to really enjoy that perk. So I don't hate when a place has snacks/drinks it's just not a value-add for me 99% of the time.

Now free lunch every once in awhile? That's a very attractive perk. I once worked for a company that took all the employees (max of ~15) out to lunch once a week which was a lot of fun. We rotated between everyone to choose where to go so everyone got a choice and just about anywhere you would go there would be at least something you liked. Now I get that snacks/drinks probably cost way less but we wouldn't have had to go out to eat. I've got friends at jobs that regularly cater in food which is pretty awesome as well.

Right now the company I work at has a cafeteria (with subsidised prices, lunch is max of $5 more or less) so cost of food and need to leave campus really isn't an issue and every once in awhile we have a free lunch event like for Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Christmas, etc... This ticks so many more boxes for me than free snacks/drinks ever would.

<comment><USER45> Where I work now, I had requested fresh fruit be added to the snack bins... unfortunately it goes so quickly that there's rarely any there when I get around to a snack in the later afternoon...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I just started (two days ago) at a company that not only provides free drinks (soda, coffee, tea) and snacks ($10 credit per week for the vending machines), but they cater lunch from a local restaurant every day. If you don't want what is being served that day, you have a $10 daily credit that can be used at a local deli sandwich shop (and have it delivered).

I accepted the job without hesitation even though it's a tiny pay cut over what I was making previously. "little things" like this can make a huge difference in employee morale.

</comment><comment><USER46> _Watch Next: Four Ways to Nap at Your Desk_

I found this a highly amusing follow up to this article.

</comment><comment><USER47> A more humorous take on the same topic is [http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/junk-food- fi...](http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/junk-food-first- published-in-2005.html).

</comment><comment><USER48> Unless I'm at Google (or Facebook, or a few other places of that quality), I seem to end up mainly bringing my own snacks. Companies usually provide crappy shelf stable junk food.

I'd love an office which had great drinks even if it had no food.

<comment><USER49> Right. I hate the snacks in our office because it's all chips and junk (no free drinks here :( ) But, I bet Sprint could really cut down on snack costs by providing celery sticks and water instead of chips and soda (no one would eat anything).

<comment><USER48> My definition of "healthy" is different -- I'd want low-carb. But really, just listening to employees and customizing from there.

<comment><USER50> I don't think there are a lot of carbs in celery and water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I worked for a big company that had this policy: "no free stuff, we just going to pay you top dollar and you can buy whatever you want" good, nobody complain. When they added free snacks I knew it was time to jump ship :P

</comment><comment><USER52> Getting rid of snacks if the earliest and easiest to recognize sign of time find a better job

</comment><comment><USER53> What I am about to say will probably anger a lot of people, but I think it is worth thinking about, so I'll just go ahead and say it.

I have to say that I don't think that snacks are really the issue. I've worked in offices with snacks and offices without snacks and I don't think it makes any difference at all. Snacks (and monitors and new computers and expensive chairs and company purchased gadgets) are a proxy for appreciation. It is quite easy to set up a delivery of drinks. Everyone can chip in, and as programmers get paid multiples of the minimum wage everywhere in the world, every programmer can afford it. However, when I have worked on teams that attempted to do this, it has been shut down by those that feel that "We should not have to do this. The company should provide for us!"

There is a rock star mentality amongst programmers. To be honest, I don't think it's unique to programmers. Sales people and management traditionally have their junkets that say to them, "You are special". Just like a salesperson would ideally like an open bar, programmers would ideally like an open budget for snacks/toys.

But _why_ do programmers and managers and salespeople value this extra (and really inconsequential) thing? Shouldn't actual appreciation trump the purchase of drinks, or gadgets or copious quantities of alcohol? In my experience, it does _not_. We have all seen and heard horror stories of bad management and we have all had the feeling of "Well, if I have to put up with this crap, they are going to have to pay a lot of money." But I have also seen good managers go to unreasonable extremes to help employees and to back them through difficult times. Instead of thinking, "I have an amazing manager. I don't care about soda." normally I see reactions that border on "What have you done for me lately? This cheap crap is unacceptable."

I have never been in a traditional management role ("agile coach" is the closest I've come and I always concentrated on improving the skills of developers rather than working on business processes). What I find frustrating about this situation is that smart managers realize that for an extra 10% of their budget, they can provide a modicum of luxury for the programmers in lieu of actual appreciation. Soda trumps helping a developer make it through a rough patch in their life. A monitor with pixels too small to even see is more important than being able to sit down and talk about how to make work situations better. Programmers will burn down the building if they don't get their name brand chair, but will tolerate never having discussions about how to develop their career.

That sucks.

<comment><USER54> I see snacks and/or sodas as just a proxy. A company who thinks about their employees enough to provider sodas and coffee is often the same company who thinks about career development or helping an employee through a rough patch. Remember, the free soda is not about the free soda as much as it is a signal about how the company acts towards employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Taking away snacks might cause grumbling... Take away coffee and you might as well put the company up for sale.

<comment><USER56> As Dave Barry would say: "I am not making this up!".

I once visited this company [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI_Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI_Technology) and they had a room with vending machines where you had to buy your own coffee.

Not somewhere I'd ever consider working.

<comment><USER57> > As Dave Barry would say: "I am not making this up!".

I have only had personal contact with one company outside of SV that offered free coffee (my current company doesn't count, because the machine is provided by the management company we rent our offices from). To me, free coffee is the exception, not the rule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> As a self confessed sugar addict, I wish my office _didn 't_ have free snacks. Or that they'd change them to something healthy.

</comment><comment><USER59> This subject came up at a previous employer and one of my colleagues argued that she didn't drink soda or eat snacks and it was unfair to offer freebies that she got no benefit from, and if you want snacks and drinks you should pay for them yourself.

At first I thought that was being a bit mean, but when you scale up an organisation you might go from having one or two people of that opinion to having hundreds or thousands. Big organisations have to pay a lot more attention to issues of fairness and discrimination, and being seen to implicitly subsidize a lifestyle or habit clearly detrimental to health such as snacks and soft drink consumption is actually a bit of a can of worms. Subsidizing things like gym membership could be seen as discriminatory as well I suppose, but at least it can be justified to shareholders on the basis that it's a benefit to the company to have healthy employees.

<comment> atom-morgan I'm in the same situation as your colleague. But this would be like me asking for extra vacation because I don't plan on having kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Sometimes people do counterproductive things (to the company) because of poor incentives.

If someone gets rewarded for cuttings costs, but not for increasing company revenue, guess what they do?

If HR gets rewarded for hiring a low risk, average employee but doesn't get any credit for hiring a brilliant college drop out, guess what they do?

</comment><comment><USER61> Cutting snacks altogether shows lack of creativity. A more subtle move is to switch to healthier (and less popular) snacks.

</comment><comment><USER62> I wonder if the snacks become a necessary medication for boredom, and taking them away places the level of boredom in sharp relief.

</comment><comment><USER63> I can understand the convenience of having snacks a dozen steps away, but where is the evidence that correlates the length of time present in the office with productivity? I can certainly tell from my own experience that stepping outside for even 5 minutes boosted my mental state after I returned.

</comment><comment><USER64> In Poland no snack is really free: if company provides it then it's obliged to count it as employee's taxable income. That's how ridiculous this country is :)

EDIT: there's also one more ridiculous example of taxation in Poland: if company throws a party for its employees (there are many such parties, usually focused around "Employee of the month" awards, and other corporate bullshit) then attending such party counts as "income" for the employee. But, according to Tax Office, you have to pay tax even if you don't attend a party, because the opportunity to attend is your income by itself :)

</comment><comment><USER65> Where I work we have a soda machine and a can of soda costs about 0,80 euro cent, which isn't that really cheap knowing how much a soda can costs.The idea is that we so fund tickets for a local PHP conference. Water and fruit is free.

I don't have particular negative feelings about it (there are more important things) but it is certainly one of the more remarkable differences if I compare it will all the other places that I have worked. My previous employer was even mad if you took soda's from home.

The most choice I ever had was working at Lernout and Hauspie. All the free soda, coffee or even soup that you could possibly think of.

</comment><comment><USER66> When I worked in an office position doing very demanding work on intelligence software, the only thing that acted as a good reprieve from the day to day grind was being able to get up, go to the break room, and get something to eat and snack on to keep everything going. It was an excellent thing to have -- cutting it could easily kill off that kind of "brain refresh" that's needed in highly technical jobs. Sprint certainly employs IT and development, and if these cuts affect them, they're almost certainly signing a death warrant for their company if their most skilled employees start leaving.

<comment><USER67> Having a common place with free snacks also allows people from different groups to come together and mingle, exchanging ideas and knowledge through the company.

At my first job the new good coffee machine was a place we'd all congregate at twice a day for a coffee and a chat between teams and other random people in the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> If management feels they _need_ to cut snacks, sodas, whatever, then they've lost confidence in the company's viability. Time to leave.

</comment><comment><USER69> What if your employees start abusing it and taking the snacks home?

[http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello- facebo...](http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebook/)

</comment><comment><USER70> What's wrong with leaving the office in order to get one's "munchie fix"? How else are we going to breath some fresh air during the day? Or to actually walk, on our two legs, not barely moving from one chair to another?

</comment><comment><USER71> A canary-in-the-coal-mine indicator of cultural change in a growing business.

</comment><comment><USER72> > "They would never have given the snacks to begin with if they didn't think > it was helping boost productivity somehow."

The same logic explains why austerity on the national level does not work.

</comment><comment><USER73> This is a classic way for management to get people to leave. Make the conditions worse, and people leave. Then management don't need to pay them to leave.

</comment><comment><USER74> Hell, my employer of 2500 people doesn't even offer free rot-gut coffee.

</comment><comment> bra-ket actually snacks are very unhealthy</comment>


Airbnb confirms $1.5B funding round - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-15-billion-round-2015-12 <comment><USER2> _"...the company had bookings of $2.2 billion, double the level one year ago. The company also generated $340 million in revenue in the third quarter, according to the Journal.

The home rental company last raised money in April 2014 at a $10 billion valuation. This round makes it the third-highest valued startup out there, after Uber and Xiaomi."_

These guys are just quietly moving forward (for the most part) and crushing it. Nicely done.</comment>


Stock Market Newsletter with Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.stockjoe.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Stock Joe uses an algorithm to determine support and resistance indicators, along with other essentials, for your portfolio and then sends alerts to your inbox each morning. Launched on PH today.

[http://www.producthunt.com/tech/stock- joe](http://www.producthunt.com/tech/stock-joe)</comment>


Still searching for the perfect online backup - <AUTHOR> http://wp.josh.com/2014/01/05/still-searching-for-the-perfect-online-backup/ <comment><USER2> I know the author tried and somewhat dismissed Crashplan, and I have found it sub-perfect (it uses FAR too many resources when it's not actively backing up), but I have worked around it by making a "net start CrashPlanService" and "net stop CrashPlanService" batch file and calling them from task manager.

I let it run while I'm not at the machine, which is some number of hours during the day, and shut it off when I am there. It has been working pretty much flawlessly for me in that mode.</comment>


Does Pinterest own the word "pin"? - <AUTHOR> http://niftylettuce.com/posts/does-pinterest-own-the-word-pin/

<comment><USER2> I think the larger question is whether people could confuse this service for one by Pinterest - and I'd say the answer is Yes.

"pin" in itself isn't an issue but the logo and typography are visually similar and could lead to confusion. You also directly use Pinterest as part of this service.

I say this from the perspective of someone who has received formal cease-and- desists from Facebook, Coke (<http://bit.ly/17Tulqr>) and a few others :)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Ownership" of a word is not the issue here. The standard for trademark infringement is based on a "confusingly similar" basis. Unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule here: it's up to a judge to decide. That final points made in the article are exactly how one would go about mounting a defense; but again, you are at the mercy of the courts here and fighting this would cost.

(IMO the PinPigeon logo is indeed confusingly similar)

</comment><comment><USER4> In my opinion, despite the protests, the logo has clear similarities to Pinterest's, and my first impression would be that it's trying to glom off of Pinterest's popularity.

I am aware they aren't identical, but that's not the relevant measure. The question is, could they confuse an average person, and in my opinion, yes. It is ultimately a question of what the judge would think, but I sure wouldn't care to stand in front of a judge and make that argument.

<comment><USER5> The only similarities between the two logos is that they both use script fonts (widely used before Pinterest), and they both use the prefix "Pin".

Services like this one pop up all of the time. Little apps like this enhance the use of a site like Pinterest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope Pinterest sends a C&D to Intel...

[http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/pin-a-dynamic- binar...](http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/pin-a-dynamic-binary- instrumentation-tool)

</comment><comment><USER7> What confuses me is how Pinterest could get a trademark on the word "pin". It's a far too common word that logically could be used to represent virtual "pinning" of information.

<comment><USER8> Tersely, the USPTO is broken, that's how.</comment></comment>


McDonalds tells kids there are 9 planets - is that too few? - <AUTHOR> http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/10/05/2090088.aspx

<comment><USER2> Pluto will always be a planet to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh man. Do we really want to get into a huge fight over what actually defines a planet?</comment>


Libra cryptocurrency users don't have to trust Facebook, says social media giant - <AUTHOR> https://techerati.com/news-hub/libra-cryptocurrency-users-dont-have-to-trust-facebook-says-social-media-giant/ <comment><USER2> Belief in this statement requires a degree of trust in facebook.

Jokes apart, Facebook says it is only one of the 100 participants in the network without any special privileges or accesses. While this is technically true, Facebook can maintain a decent amount of influence on the consortium with its technical know-how and leadership in making updates over the network.

<comment><USER3> The first sentence of the article is also pretty funny: "Facebook stressed it will not control the new digital currency and users don't need to trust Facebook in order to use it"

It's like Boeing saying: Boeing doesn't fly your plane, your pilot does, so you don't have to trust Boeing in order to fly on Boeing airplanes.</comment></comment>


Why Can't We All Just Get Along? Uncertain Biological Basis of Morality (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/why-we-fightand-can-we-stop/309525/ <comment><USER2> A good read and even more relevant today than when it was written in 2013. I like that Wright does not suggest the world's moral ills could be solved if only everyone would convert to his chosen school of utilitarianism.

The argument eventually concludes that the answer is bias neutralization through metacognition aka self awareness. However, Wright acknowledges the extreme time, effort, and desire necessary to overcome one's biases.

Although I can't force others to be less biased, I can work on becoming less biased myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the problem with hypotheticals, they are never an accurate representation of human psychology just like a ball ignoring air resistance. The two problems are not the same, the human brain KNOWS that pushing a large man onto tracks is not guaranteed to save the people on the trolley, even if a researcher tells them it will. The subconscious recognition of that uncertainty will affect the result. Flipping a switch is a guaranteed outcome, one which cannot be swayed by subconscious thought.

In addition, one could also throw themselves on to the track in the second problem, and if you decide to push the large man on to the track you will also have to weigh the guilt of knowing you may have been able to stop it by sacrificing yourself.

This is just one example, but it shows how such research is flawed. The human brain isn't designed to think in terms of guaranteed outcomes, and a researcher cannot assume that two decision are equal just because they say they are.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.reddit.com/r/VeryBadWizards/comments/7i1tyd/vsau...](https://www.reddit.com/r/VeryBadWizards/comments/7i1tyd/vsauce_set_up_a_reallife_trolley_problem_for_his/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > One question you confront if you're arguing for a single planetary moral > philosophy: Which moral philosophy should we use?

The Golden Rule is practically universal. I'm surprised it doesn't get a mention. I'm partial to Hillel's version: "What is hateful to you, do not do to others—this is the whole of Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule)

> It's true that Greene is a utilitarian—believing (to oversimplify a bit) > that what's moral is what maximizes overall human happiness.

I prefer this formulation: what's moral is what minimizes overall human suffering, now and in the foreseeable future.

> The rift was mended by putting the boys in non-zero-sum situations—giving > them a common peril, such as a disruption in the water supply, that they > could best confront together.

It's tragic that Covid19 hasn't united us. How did we end up fighting over wearing masks? (This question is rhetorical.)

> Self-doubt can be the first step to moral improvement.

I mean yeah, but: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." — Bertrand Russell

This entire essay is premised on people wanting to get better. On having some degree of curiosity and willingness for self-examination. I don't see a lot of that in the world.

<comment><USER6> The idea that a universal moral system is preferable to a hierarchical or individually diversified one is itself a moral opinion which draws significantly from the Christian universalist conception of human value. That doesn't make it right or wrong, but it certainly doesn't make it culturally universal.

The reduction of suffering is also not a universal aspiration; many thinkers believe that meaningful suffering is desirable and necessary to form an identity and find meaning in the universe.

"Only the English [philosophers] want to be happy."

\- Friedrich Nietzsche

Personally I remain unconvinced that this drive to make everyone everywhere look, act, and think the same way is desirable or conducive to actual diversity. It mostly just makes the world less interesting; McDonalds and the western business suit replacing centuries of local cuisines and clothing. Solutions should instead focus on how to manage various ethical and cultural values under the banner of a secularized political state. Otherwise you'll get secession and fracturing into smaller states, which are highly undesirable from a geopolitical perspective (see: Germany and Italy prior to their unifications in the 1800s.)

<comment><USER7> I think Nietzsche was a great man and not nearly as judgmental as he conducted himself. But I also believe the classical explanation that he had a problem with his mother and that is the reason why he had such strong expectations towards himself and others.

Nazis abused his writings but he wouldn't have like them of course. His dislike for christian morals is understandable because he saw them as a form of subjugation and contrary to emancipation. I think this grew to an unfortunate amount of hatred later on. He is partially correct as are the morals of Christianity in my opinion.

<comment><USER6> Well I only invoked the quote as a response to universalism, not necessarily as a reference to Nietzsche's ideas in general.

But sure, I don't agree with him on everything, and while I think his diagnosis of Christianity is in many ways correct, it also is flawed in others. Of course we have to differentiate between what Nietzsche actually wrote and what the popular culture notion of his ideas is.

Otherwise, I don't think I'd agree that his high expectations come from a Freudian read of his childhood. For the most part they are pre-Socratic Ancient Greek cultural values, especially _agon_ , which was a sort of competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Maybe we're approaching a point where we can actually harness this > knowledge, make radical progress in how we treat one another, and become a > species worthy of the title Homo sapiens.

These moral arguments always imply that we can pronounce the way things ought to be and that it's just a matter of finding a way to make everyone conform to the "correct" vision for humanity.

But there's a danger in homogeneous crops, flocks, and societies. Having everyone pulling in the same direction will surely have unintended consequences that may well do more harm than good when the final tally is taken.

</comment><comment><USER9> One key feature for human success was the adaptability of behavioural patterns. Anything you find that's "hardwired" or heavily biased towards must have been pretty universally positive to neutral along the way. In light of that it would be more surprising than not to find very much in the way of those.

</comment><comment><USER10> Rather than expecting people to standardise beliefs, perhaps it would be easier to identify a set of practices that make it easier for people with different "moralities" to coexist?

[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER11> Most moralities are not mutually compatible.

For instance, if my morality is individualism, and your morality is collectivism, we can't coexist without one side being forced by the other to compromise their morality.

BTW, I upvoted your comment.

<comment><USER12> > For instance, if my morality is individualism, and your morality is > collectivism, we can't coexist without one side being forced by the other to > compromise their morality.

Individualism and Collectivism aren't moral frameworks. You could have both an individualist and a collectivist both be deontologists, utilitarians, or some other framework.

<comment><USER13> > 'Individualism and Collectivism aren't moral frameworks'.

Of course they are. Nozick begins Anarchy, State and Utopia with the pronouncement that individual rights are absolute. Rawls begins A Theory of Justice by claiming that justice is the first virtue of social institutions. Their conflicting visions of political life are intimately related to the value the place, respectively, on the value of the individual and the value of the collective.

The triumvirate deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics is a useful framework, especially pedagogically, as a parsimonious way of teaching ethics. But actual ways in which humans have thought about ethical and political life is far more complex, varied and interesting. If you tried to reduce Hegel, early Javanese culture, or third-wave feminism to 'deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics', you would get no where. The vast majority of people have not thought in those terms, and so are misunderstood when read through those terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's no better example of the us and China ideology conflicts at play right now...

Both sides believed the other cheated bullied and unfairly gained from themselves...

<comment><USER15> Almost. China believes US is the bully, but I've never heard of anybody believing the US unfairly gained.

<comment><USER10> Can you recommend any sources (selfishly I'll say preferably in a european language) for relatively mainstream chinese viewpoints?

One might hope HN would provide a non-siloed venue including (one would guess, self-selecting for relatively pro-western) chinese geeks, but as far as I've seen, those who openly identify as such are discouraged.

<comment><USER16> This sounds crazy, but /r/sino on reddit is pretty much as close as you'll get to mainstream Chinese political thought in English. There's a very good chance many of the people there are legitimate shills for the government, but I mean, those are the state-sponsored and permitted opinions that they're presenting. People going against the grain either don't talk or get silenced.

From an American perspective, the stuff said there is absolutely bizarre and contradictory to virtually every talking point you'll hear from everybody else, but it aligns very closely with what people I know who live in China/still have strong ties to China say. Expect lots of cherry picked data and extreme reaching just to prove a point. Though to be frank, that's politics everywhere.

If you're frequently caught up in American/European politics, a few minutes of reading discussions there might frustrate you, but it'll also make you think because the viewpoints are so contrary to what most Westerners regard as the norm.

<comment><USER15> I would not recommend /r/sino if you're looking for good discussions. It's an echo chamber. Most of the guys there are blindly pro-China, blindly anti- American. For better discussions and analysis, check my recommendations here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24035638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24035638)

<comment><USER16> I mentioned /r/Sino because it's what you'll typically find on the Chinese internet. It _is_ an echo chamber.

Try scrolling through weibo for an active discussion saying "Maybe Taiwan can be its own country" or "Maybe China's policy of banning all foreign discussion platforms isn't good." You might have a one off comment saying something like that, but the moment multiple people talk about it, it is guaranteed to be deleted _in the best case_. If the discussion gets too big, worse things will happen. Oftentimes there'll be a discussion about something offending China by simply existing, and the comments are just increasingly outlandish suggestions of how everyone needs to retaliate.

/r/sino is just a mirror of the Chinese internet experience, in English. It's like reading comments on a mainstream TV news site, but anyone who dares call out the content as BS gets their comments instantly wiped.

<comment><USER15> Are there any places on Chinese Internet with more balanced discussions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "They fight not because they are fundamentally selfish but because they have > incompatible visions of what a moral society should be."

Agree. I think much of the conflict in the world today comes from the fact that people on the left end of the political spectrum value empathy, while people on the right value loyalty. It's difficult to find a common morality when your hierarchy of values is misaligned.

<comment><USER18> > people on the right value loyalty

But loyalty to whom? To your group or tribe of course. The group as a whole can be highly immoral raping and killing other groups. So loyalty does not mean morality, even though as you suggest it may be the case that "right values loyalty".

Left values empathy? Surely yes, but I would rather say the left values equality of all human beings. Empathy follows from understanding that we are all the same, and should therefore have equality in our dealings with the society.

Loyalty is selfishness. You help those who have helped you in the past you don't care about those who have not helped you in the past. Loyalty is mob- mentality</comment></comment>


What is SageMathCloud: let's clear some things up - <AUTHOR> http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-sagemathcloud-lets-clear-some.html

<comment><USER2> I really hope SMC succeeds. Sage is pretty awesome and probably the closest thing we have as a free software alternative to things like Mathematica. But Sage still needs a lot of work. E.g., the packaging is simply bad. It's just one giant source tree containing almost every dependency including GCC and Python. That's just ridiculous.</comment>


Recession Is Coming - How it'll affect tech companies and jobs - <AUTHOR> https://sysadmin1138.net/mt/blog/2019/08/recession-is-coming.shtml <comment><USER2> Actions you can take now: -Budget and spend less than you earn -Save as much as you can for emergency funds and investments -Invest in safe ways. I want to hedge against recession so I bought bond funds and commodity and inflation funds. -Remember to enjoy life and not worry too much. You can only do so much.

</comment><comment><USER3> This misses an extremely important point many don't know: you can't buy benefits under COBRA from a company that no longer exists.

</comment><comment><USER4> What would be an example of a long shallow recession in history? 1929?

<comment><USER5> This?

[https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:JPN:CHN:KOR&hl=en&dl=en)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone actually code at a hackathon? - <AUTHOR> This is really to vent my frustration. I've participated in about 6 hackathons in the last year. 4 in the SF Bay area and 2 in NYC. Today, I'm at the Foursquare hackathon in NYC. It seems the majority of people are just talking and networking. Now it is possible that these guys have learned to code without keyboards but I highly doubt it. I am not pissed that people are networking ... this should not be the primary activity. Otherwise, we should call it a bloody mixer!! The thing that really pisses me off is that these chatterboxes are going to show off completed apps ... ones they have not built at the hackathon. Now seriously ... in the few hours at one of these events, you simply cannot create a polished app unless you have a large group of developers who are seriously coding. I have seen such efforts (e.g. at the iOS hackathon at Paypal earlier this year ... people were actually coding inside the auditorium and talking outside).
I'm really frustrated by this state of affairs. I don't come to a hackathon to pitch my latest startup app ... I come to code. In some instances, I've decided not to present at all the end of the hackathon cause most of the other teams are presenting an extremely polished piece of work (again, I have BIG doubts that some of these are done during the event).
Anyways ... vent complete. It would be nice to know I'm not alone. <comment><USER3> Hey isqster,

I'm Jorge and I work as a software engineer at Foursquare. I'm sorry to hear that you're frustrated at our hackathon. Certainly some people are chatting and socializing, but that's only natural when you put a lot of people in the same room. From what I can tell though, the vast majority of people are actually building something today.

Some people have brought projects that they started before today, but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. The hackathon wasn't meant as a sprint to see who can churn out the most code in a day, but rather a gathering of developers who are excited about the Foursquare API and what can be built on it. We want people to share ideas about what they're building and what's possible to build on top of our API, and yes, also to encourage people to build new stuff. (That said, not everyone has brought prior work to the hackathon! I know at least one team that has built several apps on top of our API in the past, and they've started a genuinely new project from scratch for the hackathon.)

If you feel the main room is too noisy, there's lots of side rooms at General Assembly which are a little quieter. You'll see teams in the side rooms making generous use of the white boards to design their app and plan out the necessary work for building it.

Again, I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated. If you have any suggestions on how we can make future hackathons more conducive to coding, feel free to ping me in meatspace. (I'm sitting against the big white wall by the water cooler. My name tag says "Jorge".)

<comment><USER4> One easy way is to give away prizes to the top 3 apps built at the hackathon. The reason why people actually coded at the iOS hackathon were the prizes (I attended). Obviously submissions built prior to the hackathon would be disqualified so this prevents people from building it, then attending.

There's still lots of socialization, but I believe hackathons should be centered around code, otherwise you might as well just call it a foursquare mixer. There were lots of really cool apps built at the iOS hackathon -- I'm really glad it was so hacker-centric, however the prizes were significant. Paypal gave away 3 iPads to winners that night.

Also, if the goal is to get people learning about the foursquare API -- the only way people will learn is by practicing. I learned a lot from others at the iOS hackathon -- even stuff I thought I already knew well. I think foursquare would get a lot more mileage if they just added a few small prizes to fuel competition.

Some of my friends are marathon runners -- they say that if the city sponsoring the running event offers no prizes, almost no professional runners will show up, but if the city offered a $100 small prize, there will be a significant amount of pro athletes attending. Does foursquare want pro hackers attending, or do they just want scavengers who are attending for the free food?

<comment><USER5> An iPad is not a significant prize. A professional developer earns an ipad every day or two at their day job, and that is guaranteed even for the fourth best work product of the day.

<comment><USER4> Significant compared to most hackathon prizes is what I meant. Most hack day prizes are a pat on the back or useless company schwag. I don't believe hackers attend hack days for the purpose of actually making enough money to fund their living styles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Haskell ones tend to produce a lot of code: but we plan ahead on what to work on, and turn up with small teams.

More info on how we do planning: <http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hackathon>

<comment><USER7> I guess it has a bit to do with the different focuses, at the foursquare event your likely to get people who are trying to grow a business, so networking will be a primary goal of theres and it is advantageous to them to show something more polished to get some attention for the project.

A quick look at the Haskell page shows you guys are more focused on the language and supporting libraries themselves, which I assume most people are doing it out of love for the language and programming rather than any commercial gain.

<comment><USER6> The focus is primarily about building open source infrastructure, so yep, for the love of code (though often informed by commercial need).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been to many hackathons both in the SF Bay area and in the Sydney area, and I find the Sydney ones to involve much more hacking.

I think many people in the tech scene in the SF bay area are there because they want to get in on that scene, because it's the hot/$$ thing todo, but they don't actually have tech skills - so when they come to tech events, they either find a way to not hack, or they find someone to hold their hand through hacking.

We don't have that problem in Sydney. Basically everyone who is in the tech scene is in it because they truly like tech and have the skills. (Or they will try damn hard to develop the skills themself.)

Generally, I find we have a higher quality of developers at free tech events in Sydney than in San Francisco for that reason. I was pretty happy when I moved from SF to Sydney and realized that I no longer needed to figure out how to filter the pseudo-techs from the Google tech events that I organized.

<comment><USER9> Maybe moving to Sydney is something I should look into, theres the occasional meetup (ruby, node communities (in a library :P)) but that's all there seems to be. Brisbane is rather dull in many ways.

<comment><USER10> What's the best way to get in contact with all the Brisbane based hackers so we can get the scene off the ground?

<comment><USER11> Funny you should ask this today, I just sent out a notification for YBITS, the Young Brisbane IT Social.

The idea is to get a group of like-minded young (of mind) IT professionals together in a 'networking' format that doesn't feel douchy.

It's part of my cunning master-plan to give Brisbane a bit more of a startup scene, but most of the attendees are still un-aware:P

I think it'd be a great venue to kick something like that off, do you want to work together on something? YBITS is here: [https://groups.google.com/group/YBITS/browse_thread/thread/4...](https://groups.google.com/group/YBITS/browse_thread/thread/413d027aa053f656?hl=en) (That's the link to our march meeting) and you can contact me via my details here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently attended a NightOwls meetup in Tel Aviv and had the same reaction. I still plan on attending events like this, because:

1\. I can program at home any night.

2\. Hackathons allow collaborating in person with other hackers. This is much more valuable to me than pure programming.

3\. Hackathons are perfect places to find co-founders and developers, _because_ they mix of programming and networking. I can demo apps and informally meet the people behind them all at once.

Edit: In all fairness, NightOwls isn't meant to be a hackathon. I used it as an example because it emphasizes _working and getting things done._

<http://www.meetup.com/Tel-Aviv-Nightowls/>

<comment><USER7> The night owls concept is generally a fairly short event to, so most people don't come expecting to get to much done rather to work in a bit more relaxed environment and interact with other like minded people. (In the Melbourne version anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I share your frustration. I think many of the trendier companies have a tendency for it to end up being networking and also about being seen at so- and-so's hackathon. It's a 'scene' for many ppl who wanna be 'hackers' but really are not.

My biggest pet-peeve at hackathons are those who turn up with full working hacks they did prior. Nothing wrong with that but please have the courtesy to not enter them into the competition against the poor smuck (like me) who only had the last 12 hours to pull their hack together.

<comment><USER14> I actually feel like your event (NYTimes Hackday in December) was pretty good along those lines; I didn't get the feeling that any of the applications had a significant amount of pre-writing code-wise.

<comment><USER13> Glad you enjoyed it. We should be doing it again this year too.

There were a couple with projects that were written a week+ prior but we factored that into the conversation when giving out prizes.

<comment><USER14> Cool! I dunno if we'll be able to make it out again (we were the Night Scheduler guys), but I'll definitely see what I can do.

Really? There were a couple that I could see that being a possibility with (the Etsy/Flickr guys), but I didn't even consider them as contenders seeing as how they sponsored. _shrug_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Were you at the NYTimes Open Hackday? My teammate and I flew in from Michigan (to be fair, I'm originally from the Tri-State area) to participate, and we damn well weren't just there for networking. That having been said, the networking is incredible. I participated in a Yahoo! Hack U event up here in the great white north, and landed a job this summer out of it (and an offer from Yahoo, which I wound up turning down); the offers that a little bit of networking at the NYTimes one turned up were incredible as well.

Honestly, it's all about balance. My teammate and I spent 99% of the time at these two events coding. We walked in with absolutely no code pre-written, and emerged from both events with a fully-functional application, the synthesis of which we plan to put into full production in the near future. However, the one or two hours of networking that we engaged in, be it during "hacking time" or not, were extremely valuable (and, arguably, helped shape part of our final applications).

Just my two cents.

<comment><USER15> I was also at the TimesOpen Hack day, and spent most of the day coding. There was a lot of chatter there, though (some of it contributed to what my app eventually became). Bring headphones for when you need to start building. Thankfully no one there presented deckware.

<comment><USER14> Were you one of the Trippy guys? Really liked your application. I was one of the two Night Scheduler developers.

<comment><USER15> Yep!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was wondering why they were being selective on the people who could come to this. I really wanted to come and learn more about their API but it seems as though they were picking people who already built on it. Isn't the point of these events to get new people into the ecosystem?

To answer the question, yes people really do code and come up with solid apps at these events. Check out the music hackday apps that were built last weekend at the same space: <http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=NYC_2011_Hacks>

<comment><USER17> Send a message to my github account when we do the next foursquare hackathon and I'll do my best to get you in (<https://github.com/tjulien>). We maxed out the number of attendees based on how many people the space could hold. There was no criteria of having used our api before.

<comment><USER16> Will do. It was more packed than last week?

<comment><USER17> About the same number of people as at music hack day, I guess

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We attended the Foursquare hackathon yesterday as participants and ended up winning with our thedealio.at private messaging app.

To be honest, the only thing we had completed prior to arriving at 1:00p was that we knew the idea. We had no name, no code written, had not heard about the new API features released, nothing. So at least it's one datapoint that the winners aren't all pre-developed, polished products.

For me, the biggest benefit of hackathons are that you are absolutely forced to use all sorts of skills, not all developer-focused. We had to discover a problem that was worth solving for a lot of people (P/M fit, I suppose). We had to battle with stupid issues like buying an .at domain name and having my credit card get locked up due to an overseas suspicious purchase, then having to wait for DNS to propagate so we could get an SSL certificate issued as required by a new feature of the Foursquare API. Also how the look and feel should be, the UX--simplicity, fun, and engaging. We spent the first three hours writing no code, just getting our game plan in place.

Then of course in the actual development we broke all kinds of rules like code duplication, no testing, editing code directly on the production server, etc. We focused squarely on speed, knowing that time would be our biggest threat.

Which brings me to my main point. Building any software product is all about compromises, and knowing when to make them. It does go against the spirit of a hackathon to bring a polished product to demo, while just networking all day. We didn't do that and did okay. But only by using every means available (including pretty much skipping dinner).

I hope that the possibility of polished products doesn't hurt the hackathon spirit, and this post is mostly to offer encouragment that single-day hacks can still hold their own. There were some really great hacks there, and the ones I know that were built just yesterday were among my favorites (4squareand7years being my particular fave).

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a hard time actually hacking at such events, but I've seen great development work happen in a slightly different context --

I think the ideal format is a pair of events, separated by a week or two. At the first, you present some cool new technology (a new sensor, embedded platform, api, etc.). You show some examples of how it works. People get together and discuss, form teams, etc. Then, during the next week or couple of weeks, they get together in person at other locations, or collaborate online, to develop stuff. Then, there's another big public meeting, where successful projects can be demonstrated. Best of both worlds. Maybe at the second session people can beta test, give feedback, etc.

(I'm actually at SuperHappyDevHouse 42 in San Jose right now; learning more about Intel TXT in a corner with my laptop, while other people play board games and socialize...)

<comment><USER20> I'm at SHDH as well (hi!). There's definitely a mix here, but I think part of that is because of the venue. The only reason I'm on HN right now is that I'm waiting for a screen scraper to finish, which is terribly slow on the wifi here. I was hacking until my battery died, at which point I decided to explore and mingle a bit until an outlet opened up. At past events, it was a similar mix - certainly not 24 hours of pure coding, but it's an environment where I can hack away on stuff I've been putting off for a while and still enjoy myself. YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was at the same FourSquare hackathon today, and you're right -- there was a lot of socializing going on, and there were people who seemed to be trying to figure out how to present their previously-existing project or startup.

On the other hand, the New York hacker scene is anemic enough that we can use any chance to socialize and network that we get -- and there were people there actually coding things from scratch today, myself included.

I had to leave before the presentations, and haven't see most of the apps people have been working on, so I can't comment on the "overly polished" aspect of this... But in an ideal world, I would hope that people would be able to enjoy whichever aspects of the event were relevant to them, and not get sidetracked by the people who were on a different track.

</comment><comment><USER22> Absolutely. Eventually you sink into the code and forget about the chatter and your shitty laptop keyboard and you can get a lot done. A few hours later, you can come out of it, get some beers, and go back to sitting at your desk for 12 hours a day.

Some software I've written at hackathons:

<https://github.com/jrockway/eslide>

<https://github.com/wjackson/hiredis-raw>

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes, they can be successful, if people are focused.

For example, see this account of a recent OpenBSD hackathon: [http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=2010111509113...](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20101115091138)

</comment><comment><USER24> as someone who regularly competes in hack days and has won a few, there is nothing more annoying than having someone come in for a few hours, add a new feature to an already developed product then enter the whole thing in as a hack, a lot of the time the Judges don't know and it just promotes the tactic to other people...

<comment><USER25> How would you enforce that only work done doing the hackathon is presented as the entry? Not trolling, genuinely curious and looking for suggestions.

<comment><USER24> When we run hack days we do simple things like check when the domain was registered, check if its indexed in Google and a few other things but what we also do is have at least two developers on the judging panel that can judge if someone has cheated or not... It does work both ways though, we almost lost a PayPal hack day last year because the judges believed we had worked on the product previously when we had genuinely built it from scratch in 24 hours.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHkKRO4Po_g> is the video of our presentation btw :)

<comment><USER26> I'm glad you guys weren't disqualified, but I'm lol'ing at the irony of PayPal judges presuming guilt and asking you to prove your innocence. Good to know that they carry that policy everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've always found my productivity (especially in regards to debugging) dropping massively when I'm stuck with just a small laptop screen. So with coding efficiency dropping so much, it only makes more sense to seize the moment and do what you can't at your home/office: bounce ideas around with others.

<comment><USER7> As someone who usually works from home I find that coworking gives me enough extra concentration that outweighs the using a smaller screen than usual. Also having your team in the same room every now and then does wonders for tracking own bugs and planning new features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We've now run 5 Health 2.0 Developer Challenge Code-a-thons (we have some Federal gov cooperation and they wont let us call then hackathons!). Sure at each one there is chatting and networking but at each one somewhere north of 100 people produce anywhere between 8-12 teams each of whom show what can be built in a short day (9-5). While they're not always fully completed apps, most are, and most have been terrific.

And while it's OK to bring in something that's been worked on before, most of the teams at the code-a-thons meet at the day and integrate medical professionals with coders.

So anyone who wants to come code at an event where what you build might really make a difference (not that we dont love Zunga & FourSquare, but....) check out www.health2challenge.org

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe competitive events get more people coding?

I went to the first SF startup weekend where 40 people tried to implement a single idea. A democratically selected idea which was the first choice of very few people.

They have since switched to competing self-selected teams and much better ideas and implementations resulted.

See? Distributed decision making works better for many things.

Anyway, my point, besides the blatantly political one, is attend events where the structure and rules are conducive to what you want to do. And if the rules aren't published in advance, call and find out. And don't be afraid to leave if you think you're time will be wasted.

</comment><comment><USER30> The code sprints and hackathons we have in the Drupal community in Los Angeles are highly focused on a specific task or event with an actual deadline, so everyone is _expected_ to participate. There's always something for non- developers to do, from user testing and content editing to being in charge of food or music.

</comment><comment><USER31> Can't say I've had this problem at any of the UK hackdays I frequently attend, only the US ones I've been to.

I think one of the differences is having an overnight. The networkers and loiterers bugger off after a few hours leaving just the developers and designers overnight who want to actually make interesting things.

</comment><comment><USER32> I notice this happening a lot in our area as well. When we host hackathons we try to have a topic to focus on as well as project ideas and open source projects ready to work on.

I think opening a public git hub repo with what you want to work on then having people pull that down can start some great coding sessions.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hey, I actually took a train from long island to the city this morning expecting to take a tour of 'general assembly', (where this hackathon was hosted)..But I didnt get past the elevator because of the hackathon! I wish I had known because I would have love to have been there coding with u iqster! Anyway, I plan on becoming a communal member there next month after they review the thousands of applications they have recieved.. iqster, did you get a chance to talk to any of the founders of general assembly there or anyone that is a member?? I talked to Matt Brimer for 5 mins next to the elevator, he couldn't sit down and talk with me because of the hackathon! I was planning on taking a tour and joining today but BLEHH! Do you have aim or skype iqster?

</comment><comment><USER34> They should probably just rename them something else.

<comment><USER35> I agree on this one. Don't call it a "hackathon". Misleading solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think you'll find that many gatherings are like this. Tech Conferences in particular seem to fall into this category where half of the people are there to network and the other half are there for the meat and potatoes content of the conference.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been to several multi day and one-day hackathons, mostly in the Bay Area. I've shipped code at every single one, but I definitely share your frustrations at those who turn up and demo stuff they built elsewhere. I also have had trouble actually socialising at some hackathons, because everyone was so focused on their own project they didn't want to talk for 5 minutes about their problems (related to the app I was building to solve them). Oh well!

I think clearer rules around "look, guys, congratulations for doing a startup, but this is _not_ the place to pitch your year-old app" would immensely help.

</comment><comment><USER38> I participated yesterday. It's my second hackathon. I get your frustration with the typical hackathon.

My approach is to focus on finding the right people and the right concept at the beginning of the event and to get to know them better while working with them. The goal is to walk away with some new relationships. I spend only a small amount of time talking with the rest of the crowd.

At an event like the foursquare hackathon, I'm not really concerned what happens with the presentations. At other events, like TechCrunch Disrupt or Startup Weekend, I would.

</comment><comment><USER39> I did. The only hackathon I ever did was a TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon last year. I stayed up all night, and made a real-time, semantic question-and- answer site where you could invite your friends via instant message.

It didn't win. Some robot that stabbed imaginary people in the air won.

It looked like most people there used existing software and just added something onto it. If I knew that, I would have come and added something to YouMixer.com ... I think I would have won :)

Update: I just went there and it looks like it somehow took off in spain!

</comment><comment><USER40> I compete fairly by writing 100% of code at the event, but I also have a product that I wrote and implemented as an API. It is a powerful API similar in scope to what Tungle likely has (I don't have access to a competitor's API).

When I demo my hack, I de-emphasize the use of my API. In effect, I grab a couple of sponsor APIs, mix them with my own API, and create a product.

I talk with teams for a while and help them when I can. In the end I take 24 hours to simply code.

</comment><comment><USER41> I just got out of the Tor hack day in Cambridge MA (which I hear may become a monthly event, yay!). We divided into two rooms: soft ware (code) and soft skills (documentation, policy, how to run a server on your PC, fundraising,...)

I thought this worked pretty well, although I can't say either room was lacking conversation! But in our case this is also about community building for an open source project - slightly different agenda.

</comment><comment><USER42> I was at a Zynga Hackathon at Berkeley a year ago. I suppose it's true a good amount of networking goes on, but that didn't bother me too much. I was really there just to hack something together overnight, and my team actually moved to a separate location so we wouldn't be disturbed. So overall it was a pretty good experience despite what other teams were doing. Hope you also feel this way in the future!

</comment><comment><USER43> The last one I was at my team built an interesting HTML 5 game with impactjs in under 24 hours (we sponsored the hackathon). There were a lot of cool projects built in the same time period. However, the biggest problem was non- workers who just wanted to chat with people who were actually working. It was very distracting and I bet many of the projects would have gotten further without the distractions.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've been to several hackathons in Ontario and there's always tonnes of coding getting done. We had 19 apps one time.

<comment><USER45> Same thing happens in Montreal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This complaint is kind of like complaining about people going to dance clubs to socialize and hook up rather than dance.

OP, I'd suggest you accept the current state of affairs, or start your own event focused on what you want to do. Why rain on other people's parade?

</comment><comment><USER47> I've observed this sort of thing in a few coding contests recently - <USER2> contests that were poorly designed. It is quite unfair to people who want to follow the intended spirit, you're right.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know if a hackathon has been held where there were active measures/rules/restrictions in place to ensure that all development was done within the period of the hackathon?

</comment><comment><USER49> Yes, I just got home from a code for america datacamp hackathon at socrata in seattle, was a lot of fun and quite productive.

</comment><comment><USER50> I have done several hackathon's and I have always coded the entire project there. I usually do all of the planning and organization ahead of time but I always complete the code during the event. Thats part of the fun of it IMO.

</comment><comment><USER51> solution: start your own event. call it Actual Hackathon (TM)</comment>


Why China's Heading for a Hard Landing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-27/why-china-s-heading-for-a-hard-landing-part-1-a-gary-shilling.html

<comment><USER2> From the second paragraph: "Its consumers save too much and spend too little." Which is as opposed to countries like US, Australia where people spend more than 100% of their salaries? More debt is good right?

If I was the finance minister for China I would study the US very closely for a list of things not to do - overspending on credit is one of those things.</comment>


Show HN: Lets Get Arrested Project - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hamukazu/lets-get-arrested <comment><AUTHOR> This project is intended to protest against the police in Japan.</comment>


The Canadian Copyright Bill: Flawed But Fixable - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5080/125/

<comment><USER2> I can't help but cringe when reading this. My biggest issue is the minutiae it seems to entail that is created in trying to balance the concerns of all the different parties. The complexity it adds creates ambiguity, and makes it harder for people to tell whether or not they are in violation of the law.</comment>