Facebook Refused No-Poaching Agreement With Google - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/sheryl-sandberg-facebook-refused-no-poaching-agreement-with-google/ <comment><USER2> I recall wondering at the time why, if there was such a shortage of talented developers, newly minted lawyers were still making several times as much as good programmers. Now we know part of the reason why: Apple, Goole, Adobe and all the other big names in tech – except, apparently Facebook – were illegally colluding to pay talented devs less money. Since this was discovered, industry pay scales have gone up, while law salaries have dropped – now it's much closer. The thing that bothers me the most is that this illegal collusion suppressed wages for the _entire_ software industry, robbing us all of money that lined the pockets of these companies. The plaintiffs in this case are by far not the only ones who were affected – Apple, Google, et al. stole tens of thousands of dollars per year from each person who was working in the software industry for the better part of a decade and the vast majority of us aren't going to get any of that back.

<comment><USER3> This isn't an apples to apples comparison. Law school can require as much as $200k and 3 years of opportunity cost on top of whatever was spent on undergrad.

Additionally, it's my understanding that getting a _shot_ [1] at the big leagues in law requires a top-12 school. Are mid-tier law schools pumping out lawyers who make $150k as first year associates? I'd be surprised, but I don't have the data.

[1] Even attending a top school is no guarantee. Law school is fiercely competitive, and only top-scoring students from top schools get the really lucrative & prestigious positions.

<comment><USER4> "Law school can require as much as $200k and 3 years of opportunity cost on top of whatever was spent on undergrad."

You seem to be missing the economic realities at play. The cost of law school does _not_ matter. All that matters is the supply and demand for lawyers and programmers. And if you've been keeping your ear to the ground, you may be aware that there is a significant oversupply of law grads nowadays.

There is no economic law that says that lawyers should make more money than programmers because they choose to be ripped off in pursuit of their training. If in the future, the salary of the average lawyer were to drop below that of the average programmer, Adam Smith would not bat an eye.

<comment><USER5> If law school is so expensive, it is harder to become a lawyer. If less people become lawyers, the supply decreases (resulting in the demand for the shortage of lawyers to be greater).

"There is no economic law that says that lawyers should make more money than programmers because they choose to be ripped off in pursuit of their training."

You don't NEED a degree to do programing. Arguably a computer science degree is standard but even then, you don't need 7 years of schooling. In order to be a lawyer, you need to complete law school.

At the end of the day, it's fair for a lawyer to charge more. Why? Because someone is willing to pay the premium.

<comment><USER6> >In order to be a lawyer, you need to complete law school.

Not in California.

<comment><USER7> Actually, I wonder...I'm pretty sure the number of people who go the apprenticeship route is in the single digits (though feel free to prove me wrong). It could be a good way to set oneself apart from the pack when applying for a job. Goodness knows its a shitty job market for lawyers, and if you don't have a top tier law degree, strategically it could be a way to set yourself apart from the pack (especially at the level where you're competing against sorta middle of the road-ish ABA certified schools-like Santa Clara and USF).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think we should stop using the word "poach" when describing these job changes. Use of this word suggests that we (technology workers) are the property of our employer, and that other employers are "stealing" that property away. I don't consider myself akin to a cow owned by my previous employer, stolen by my current one. I hope you don't either. My relationship with my employer is one of equals, freely and mutually entered into, and does not imply any ownership of my person.

Hate to be the PC police, but I personally feel offended by the use of this word, and I'm surprised that more people aren't. I'd like to propose using a more neutral phrase, like "hire away" to describe this practice, instead of "poach". I hope, upon reflection about their own role in the employer-employee relationship, others might come to this conclusion and stop using this word as well.

<comment><USER9> I think you are being the PC police. There is a difference.

1) Google employee applies to Facebook on their own.

2) Facebook employee tells a Facebook recruiter, who the best Google engineers are based on his experience at Google.

3) Facebook hires a popular and charismatic Google manager, and their first assignment is to bring over the best engineers in the group.

What terms do you use to describe these situations? I am happy to adopt a more PC term, but there is a difference between being "hired" and being "poached". When you are hired, you do a shit load of interviews, when you are poached, you get a bunch more money and don't have to do a bunch of interviews.

<comment><USER10> Why wouldn't you call it recruiting?

<comment><USER9> That is too generic. That would mean no-hire, no-poach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The worst thing about this oligopoly/cartel is that during the period they were refusing to poach, they accrued billions cash reserves while spending only a little on R&D (which I assume is mostly engineering salaries).

Even after the class action lawsuit is settled, it's likely the penalty won't be anywhere near the amount of profit that was illegally captured.

Furthermore, think about what these companies would have chosen to work on had engineers been more expensive. Would we have seen more useful products coming out of the valley if staff allocations had worked out differently?

When people are cheap, throwing them into doomed ventures like Google Buzz or Apple's awful Samba clone isn't nearly so devastating to whatever middle manager chain dreamed them up.

<comment><USER12> Presumably the shortage of labor was still real, and if they needed to hire people, but couldn't poach, then they hired them from the rest of the talent pool. If that's the case, then removing the "cold calls" from the talent search might have had the effect of actually driving up salaries for those not working at these companies, since potentially reduced the supply.

If that's the case, then it would not have saved money, rather, it would have had the effect of simply shifting the money from going to existing Google/Apple/etc employees to applicants from smaller firms.

That is, it changed the distribution of spending, and probably in a more egalitarian way, distributing the spending over a larger pool, instead of simply fighting over, and raising the wages, of the small group of superstars at the big companies.

These companies are spending on R&D and increasing the percentage year over year, they are also spending huge sums of acqui-hires, and hiring faster than the local communities, or their own office space, can handle.

You could argue that excessive salaries are actually bad for allocation. Wall Street has infamously brained drained tons of the best and brightest to figure out how to gain small efficiencies in stock trading. What discoveries might have occurred had string theorists not left to go optimize portfolios?

One thing I wouldn't call engineers is cheap. You're talking about people making upwards of $150-200k in salary, and probably up to half-million when total compensation is considered. I paid more in taxes last year than my mother earned in several years of working as a cashier. And that's pretty sad. I grew up poor so I have a different perspective on this, but I see a lot of #zeroethWorldProblems whining going on in the valley while the world around them is falling apart. It's useful to have some perspective, and honestly, if these companies are to be fined and sanctioned, I'd rather the money go to poor people, instead of lawyers and techies who need to increase the bid on their studio apartment.

<comment><USER13> Regardless of what the ultimate consequences would have been of any price fixing scheme, do you or don't you believe it is _wrong_? You can argue all day about the hypotheticals of how much or how little this all actually affected wages, but if you believe in principle that some general free market mechanism should be the determining factor in private sector wages, then you should disagree with what happened. Even if in the end it's a fight between the merely wealthy (which, btw, I don't think every engineer at Google/Apple/etc are making those top wages, at least not based off median numbers I've seen) with the super wealthy you still had an unfair practice that skewed what should have been market wages and put more money into the pockets of the super wealthy.

I think it's acceptable to say that this scheme was bad and wrong and also to acknowledge that there are more significant and severe wealth and wage problems in this country for a large group of people outside engineering, law, medicine, etc. and those problems need to be addressed. I don't like the attitude of saying hey, the engineers are doing pretty good guys, it's ok if the even richer take money from them they should have rightfully earned. That won't solve any problems, least of all the more severe wage discrepancies or plight of the poor.

<comment><USER12> Well, I don't consider not cold-calling as a price fixing scheme. As long as normal hiring process continues, all you're doing is shifting recruiting from a smaller pool of highly compensated engineers, to a large pool of less compensated engineers.

It would only be price fixing if there was an industry wide agreement to put a cap on engineer salaries. Rather instead, what you have is an agreement to shop in one market exchange instead of another.

I mean, what do you think is better for both engineers in general, as well as the companies: Trading a small set of engineers back and forth with ever more escalating compensation in a bidding war, or, hiring from a large, general pool of applicants?

One way leads to disruption, mono-culture, and somewhat unfair bias towards those not on the roster already of the big companies. If anything, not cold calling should increase diversity as well.

This scheme only seems slimy to me, because any agreement between companies in secret, seems slimy. But I am really not seeing it as a price fixing scheme, and I find it hard to get myself motivated to Occupy Mountain View protesting.

This reminds me of several years ago when Google switched the Holiday gift from giving $1000 tax free cash in an envelope, to giving a free device (phone/tablet/etc). Some people were irritated by it and complained, but I found the complaints to be a solo on the world's tiniest violin. Seriously, there are people starving on Christmas, unable to even buy their children toys or clothes, and people earning in the top 1%-10% are annoyed that instead of $1000 cash, they get a $500 device for free. It's an even more absurd version of Louis C.K.'s "everything is awesome and no one is happy."

<comment><USER14> I can understand this stance, but I'd point out the section that makes the issue cross the line of "appropriate collusion" (god that's a terrible phrase) for me, that being the "We do not hire from these people even if approached in the normal application process" groupings

Focusing recruiting, sure. But pre-filtering on the basis of factors "not relevant" to the person performing the job starts to get into a very grey territory in terms of discrimination. (I realize on the surface this seems silly since where you are working is totally relevant to a new job, but not in the context in which it was being utilized.) I really don't intend to draw a strawman with this, but that I see a big difference between their limiting their effort, and their prohibiting your effort.

<comment><USER15> I find it interesting that had they framed the 'do not hire' rules under the concept of avoiding lawsuits due to trade secrets, then there would be zero 'evil' in the whole thing (Not that I think it was evil in any case).

On top of that, unless I missed something, the documents I've read excluded engineers, the ones getting their jimmies ruffled, from the 'do not hire' list and simply had them on a 'no cold call' list. It was management and sales that were under some 'do not hire' list, right?

In this whole thing, the only part that I find morally/legally suspect is the agreement to not hire certain categories of employees from certain companies. Everything else is just a bunch of hand waving from highly paid people that want to be paid even more. And even that, had it been worded slightly different, would be arguably legal.

<comment><USER14> And that's exactly what I'm getting at. Once you establish that there has been a breach of law, you _have_ to take the context/wording into account, which is highly "slimy" on its own merit, as the grandparent post puts it, and turns what might otherwise be a "don't word your hiring practices in such a way or collude them between companies" reprimand into a "you're clearly doing really underhanded things, and are even _self effacing_ about this" (citing the "let's not put on paper something we could get sued over" memos)

I (as an engineer) have my "jimmies rustled" because this sets a really worrying precedent for the behaviors of these companies I do/might work for, and is frankly the sort of behavior that makes me have implicitly low trust for people with this sort of power, which is an unfortunate state of things. (I'd really like to be able to trust people, I promise...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Money (literally) quote:

 _And what happens next is precisely what is supposed to happen when companies don't collude to defraud their employees of fair-market wages: Google coughed up more money to improve its retention._

<comment><USER11> What's most amazing about this debacle is how clueless the executives seem to be.

From the blatantly illegal smoking gun emails, to Google's almost immediate raise after this scandal became public. It's so coarse.

<comment><USER16> When you're an executive, you have many problems. It's pretty common to deal with the immediate one and create a whole host of other ones. One could argue that that's how it should be, because otherwise you're irresponsibly avoiding what you should be doing.

<comment><USER17> Huh? This just goes back to the whole, fixing the urgent things instead of the important things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's what's saddest to me about this. There isn't really a labor shortage. These companies colluded for years on salary and poaching to make it possible to selectively hire from choice schools and people with a certain "pedigree" \-- which artificially limited the pool of people they felt were "acceptable"...which drove up the salary of people from this pool which of course caused them to want to collude to keep wages down. _This_ is why discriminatory hiring practices are bad for everybody.

Now years later Google, using the power of massive data, has figured out that it didn't really matter all that much that they were hiring from this artificially limited pool. Which means it didn't matter all that much to start with for any of these companies.

If they hadn't colluded on pay and poaching, but stayed selective, they would have been eventually forced to either reach outside this selective pool and end the "shortage" or suck up the higher wages.

Basically the market would have resolved the issue of higher wages for them.

</comment><comment><USER19> What was that motto? Don't be... ending? Don't be evasive? ... Don't be Evan? No, sorry, it's gone. Can't have been important anyway, or someone would have remembered it.

<comment><USER20> I think it was "Let's choose three words that people will beat us over the head with until the end of time every time we so much as throw a gum wrapper on the ground"

<comment><USER21> I don't care if the company's slogan is "HAIL SATAN, EVIL ROCKS AND CUTE ANIMALS SUCK" \-- if they're doing something illegal, they deserve to be beaten over the head.

<comment><USER20> Precisely -- they should be taken to task for their unethical and illegal actions, not some cutesy-poo slogan.

<comment><USER22> Don't pick a cutesy-poo slogan as your corporate motto, do the opposite, and not expect to get grief over it. Why pick that slogan in the first place?

I know "vision-statements" and things like that don't get a lot of mileage here but character matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Of course Facebook refused! They were hiring many more employees than Google was as a percentage of the starting employee base because of the insane growth they were undergoing. They were building a business, they had to keep poaching.

I don't think Facebook should get much credit for not participating, when they couldn't have.

Also, from a more game theoretical approach, they were a free rider on the collusion - they could have outed the collusion if they were that benevolent, since they clearly knew what was happening. Why didn't they publicize the blatantly wrong agreements at the time?

<comment><USER24> The fact that it was in Facebook's interest to do the right thing doesn't change the fact that when it came to it, they did the right thing and Google, for all their "don't be evil" talk, did the wrong thing. That's what really matters in the end.

And I don't particularly like having to say this, because I've been a Google fan ever since I switched to their search engine from AltaVista, whereas I think the world would be a better place if Facebook shut down their servers and deleted their database tomorrow. But yes, damn it, Facebook _does_ deserve credit here.

<comment><USER23> They would deserve credit if they acted against their best interests by making it known what was going on at the time, but they knew they were benefiting from lower than otherwise salaries due to the collusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _It's worth noting that Facebook was hotter than the sun back in 2008, so for it to continue to recruit from other firms could could have been a reflection of its market position; if you are doing the poaching, why would you disarm?_

Facebook was much smaller then, and likely had a lot more to gain from poaching than they had to lose.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sheryl Sandberg only spoke for herself. She did not mention her knowledge of what other people in Facebook did. She only said that she, personally, didn't agree to the agreement on behalf of the company. She did not say that Facebook didn't have an agreement, only that she did not ever agree to one.

This is an important fact when looking at the evidence. She is only going to say enough of what she needs to say in terms of the lawsuit. The burden of proof of the law suit has to prove that Facebook had one - she could only speak about her own involvement. There was nothing about the other people at the top of the company - and in Law - nothing equals nothing.

<comment><USER27> Abstract away from the people. At the time, it was simply not in Facebooks best interest to enter into such an agreement - at their ridiculous growth, they got lots of money and needed to put it into top talent, which means they need to aggressively recruit. If you then enter into an agreement not to recruit from many top companies in the valley - that hurts your chances.

It's not that Facebook is the only ethical company in this, it is just that at the time there was no upside for them in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> To be fair, Sandberg saying "we didn't do this" about an illegal thing doesn't necessarily mean that they didn't do this. Also, why would a company much smaller than the others agree to this?

<comment><USER29> Losing a talented employee can hurt regardless of the size of the company that snaps them up. A larger company will often have more resources with which to compete in the job market. A smaller company might (illegally) join such an agreement for the same reason that a weaker nation might sign a defensive pact with a stronger one.

<comment><USER28> Right, but as a Googler who went to FB, movement was much more common one way than the other. Also, I can say for a fact that Facebook recruiters were using Google org charts to reach out to people, so that's probably why they didn't agree to this, not because they're super awesome nice people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In late 2008, Facebook seemed to ramping up hiring (and recruiting aggressively, with good reason, from Google). Any "truce" would have been severely one-sided for Facebook.

I'm sure they weren't worried about bleeding employees to Google if they said no, especially when you remember $GOOG was near a 3-year low and FB growth was exploding..

</comment><comment><USER31> The most offensive thing about these stories is that those same people who conspire to drive down employee salaries then go to their executive compensation committees where they conspire to drive up executive salaries.

</comment><comment><USER32> I remember my friend At Google telling me that he just got a big raise and that the raises were happening across the company. I wondered what cause googled to do this, but quickly assumed it was because Facebook was sucking talent away from google. At the time googlers were paid less than other companies too.

Facebook might look good in this instance but remember they were growing really fast at this time so it would have seriously hurt them to agree to any hiring pacts.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, I have something positive to say about Facebook.

<comment><USER34> It's not really like they had a choice -- they needed to have access to large pools of existing work forces, and agreeing to no-poaching would prevent that.

<comment><USER35> I'm no fan of Facebook, but in the absence of evidence that they acted tactically, it would seem fair to give them credit for understanding that participating in a cartel is both stupid and unethical.

<comment><USER34> I would err on the side of caution and look at their previous behaviour as a predictor of future behaviour, which leads me to it being more from the side of necessity than anything ethics wise. You know the story of how Facebook was started yes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Facebook maintains a no-poaching agreement with companies which share the same board members. Is this common enough for it not be a big deal?

<comment><USER37> This is pretty common in startups: it's considered bad form to poach employees from companies that have common investors, and board members of those companies.

Sometimes, however, recruiters may not necessarily know and reach out to candidates and violate this unwritten rule.

Also depending on the case, boardmembers/investors may look the other way.

<comment><USER38> So why isn't anyone upset about this practice?

<comment><USER37> Good question. Think of it as a "gentlepersons" agreement not to actively poach someone from another startup with common investors. Similar to how investors generally don't invest in competitors to their portfolio companies (but it does happen-- See KPCB investing in both INRIX and Waze).

It was more of a guideline, rather than a hard fast rule.

This agreement didn't prevent people from recruiting friends, or from people actively looking to join another company.

Also, if the person is/was unhappy at one startup, the investors would prefer they join another portfolio company rather than not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >The pervasive attempt by large tech companies to suppress wages by diminishing their employees' rights to choose where they work is not merely selfish in the extreme, but is counter to the very market principles that made these companies so successful to begin with.

The "free market" system is just an illusion. When you are on the side of those with the lowest power (e.g. the workforce), the system does not work.

So much about the notion, that the "free market" system will correct itself.

</comment><comment><USER40> Platforms are getting a little bit like mini kingdoms these days, feudal in nature, from the castles of the Altos.

5-10 years before we have a moat around a campus, a technological one though that blocks all non-essential communication while you are Under the Dome, then, apartments, pretty soon "bring out your dead" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs)).

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a great precedent set by Facebook against a not so great one.I feel that this current trend is quite scary to think about.

Taking away someone's opportunity to be employed elsewhere oversteps the line between the employer and the employee's personal life.

</comment><comment><USER42> There's a flip side to this no poaching agreement, evidenced by Facebook's position:

Is there a benefit to this agreement depressing wages in that, for startups, obtaining competent developers was cheaper than it would have been otherwise?

<comment><USER43> Well, sure, there was a benefit to the startups' founders and funders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> How did people come to the conclusion that these companies had the agreement to reduce wages?

It seems like they had this agreement - only because they hated their employees being poached on.

It's not price fixing.

It's self preservation.

Sure it had a side effect of keeping wages low - but that was not their goal. None of them are short on money.

I'm not saying what they did was right - but lets not frame it in a context that makes it look like they did this to not let employees have more money.

When in reality - they did it to stop others from stealing their employees.

<comment><USER45> You can't "steal" employees. They're people, not property. They have agency. These agreements exist solely to limit the opportunities of the people who work for these companies. At the bare minimum they should have been public, so people who decided to take a job at one of the companies knew they'd be restricted in their ability to find work elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone know how much money we're talking about here? How much do, say, Google SRE people make after a few years on the job?

<comment><USER47> Avg $126,375 according to GlassDoor for Google SRE

<comment><USER48> TBH that's surprisingly low. I know engineers making this in Phoenix at mid- size companies and even more in specific industries like financials. Cost of living is much lower than many of Google's offices here. These folks are good engineers, but probably couldn't pass the kernel/syscall level questions people have shared from Google SRE interviews.

The whole culture of those colluding companies seems pretty feudal - "you should feel honored to be a member in our court"

<comment><USER26> I think it's exactly that - there is a lot of real or manufactured kudos in working for the Big G. Geeks wanted to work for them. They approached Google. Google didn't have to try.

That, and it's a fun exciting place for young people, the bikes, free food etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Yet another reason for every semi-talented programmer to become a consultant. They rob you of less money that way.

I'm certainly going to write to my MP about this. I think you should too. In fact I think every programmer out there should be involved in bringing a class action case against them.

</comment><comment><USER50> "You can't just free market part of the time. Good on Facebook for not being party to the shenanigans."

I'm always fascinated by what people don't understand about free markets. The author appears to think "free market" means lots of government enforced market controls (which would be an obvious contradiction in terms).

In an actual free market, it's not illegal to collude to suppress wages, just like it's not illegal for employees to form unions, leave for other better jobs, or start their own companies to compete and pay superior wages to steal talent.

In intentionally overly simplified terms, "free market" means a lack of, or severe limitation of, government controls. How is it possible the author doesn't know that?

<comment><USER51> _How is it possible the author doesn 't know that?_

Because you are (your words) using 'intentionally over-simplified terms.' A free market is not simply one without _government controls_ , it's one without _government controls or other de facto authority_ , such as price-setting monopolies.

Excessive government regulation means a less free market. Similarly, excessive monopoly control or cartel-like behaviour means a less free market. These are similar forces; the market loses freedom because one group has excessive control of it.

So, paradoxically, government regulation can result in a freer market - it's more complex than you are claiming.

<comment><USER50> I disagree. Monopolies can only exist in free markets when force is applied, eg by a corporation hiring thugs or militia to restrain the free market, and the government fails to stop that use of force.

The only way a corporation can acquire de facto authority in a free market is with violence (in which case they become a competitor with the government as it regards rule of law). There is no other way they can literally hold back competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Proof positive that there is no shortage of people - just companies paying a living wage.

</comment><comment><USER53> i mean, come of, of course they did. it was going to be like 99:1 in Facebook's direction.

this isn't any shining beacon of ethics.

</comment><comment><USER54> So Google refused to hire Apple employees, but presumably didn't refuse to hire Microsoft employees. What a bad move for their culture.

</comment><comment><USER55> Could this have more to do with the fact that PHP/Javascript is the primary language used at Facebook whereas it is pretty much language-spaghetti at Google? Perhaps Zuckerberg figured that his technical culture didn't leave much for Google to poach yet he wanted to soak up some talent from the likes of Google. I kid, I kid!

</comment><comment><USER56> You all keep trashing companies for no-poaching agreements because it lowers your wages. Let's look at this from perspective of employer. There are costs associated with obtaining well performing employee: * Hiring: people spend their hours filtering prospective employees. Usually HR does that, but bigger companies have separate hiring department. Expensive. * Idling: newly recruited employee rarely has intimate knowledge of all technologies, systems used inside a company and surely has no idea how they are tied together. This takes some months to grasp. Recruits often wreak havoc and as a result produce very little net worth. And you greedy recruits want your 6 figure salary for your havoc. * Training: employees are trained. Be it actual courses, conferences or just unsuccessful internal startup its still training. And having a team work on a doomed to be killed project for a year is again expensive. In order to compensate for these no-worth-generating expenses employers are left with 2 choices: lower the salary or invent a way to keep the employee. Lower salaries are usually not an option because, well, who you will hire then in the first place when rivals often much better packages? Companies are left with an option to try and keep the employees.

In intimate atmosphere of Silicon Valey it is hard to keep employee salaries/benefits and skills a secret, therefore it is much easier and cheaper to contact employee of a rivaling company and offer a better mutually agreed package. You either agree not to poach and let prospective employees go through your normal hiring process or chain employees with timed contracts.

So just think that no-poaching agreements might be the thing keeping your salaries that high.

</comment><comment><USER57> Even without facebook, there would likely have been another mega-successful startup springing up and ruining the hiring collusion. As long as incumbents can't create a regulatory or legal moat (e.g. patents), I don't think these kinds of salary depressing tactics will work for more than a few years at a time.

</comment><comment><USER58> When I talk to other developers about this stuff and H1B exploitation, we all seem categorically not in favor of collusion. These companies were started by software developers. What the hell happens in the process of running a company where you justify this kind of morality shift?

<comment><USER59> Where did you get the idea that software developers are the very definition of moral paragons?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Engineers are still paid way too low for the massive value they add to these companies.

</comment><comment><USER61> so basically every company did the most logical thing for their own best interests.

</comment><comment><USER62> Looks like Facebook identified a market inefficiency, and chose to bet on their ability to attract/acquire/retain talent over taking the defensive stance that Google and Apple did. Bravo to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER63> Is this a surprise? Facebook has been hiring Google employees for a while...

</comment><comment><USER64> Where are the calls for boycotting Google for doing something blatantly "evil" and illegal?

Kudos for Facebook for doing the right thing here.

I'm just curious what ramifications this has, if any.

</comment><comment><USER65> I still don't get why this is news now, and not like 3 or 4 years ago. I knew about this back then, and I'm some random nobody.

Is it because there's proof now?

</comment><comment><USER66> "Don't be evil."

More like "Don't get caught."

</comment><comment><USER67> The one person I admire the most is Mark for being a rebel in the valley.

<comment><USER68> Don't worry, he's got his own strategy to keep programmers' salaries down:

[http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerbergs-self-serving- immigration-...](http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerbergs-self-serving-immigration- crusade-484912430)

<comment><USER69> If all he wanted to do was keep programmers' salaries down, he could just as easily open offices in India and China and employ people over there and pay them even less than he would have to pay them if they immigrated to the US. And as a large company that's an advantage Facebook has and their prospective competitors lack. I'm sorry you feel insecure that more immigration might threaten your ability to single-handedly earn three times as much as the median American family, but literally every other human being other than native-born American programmers is better off with this kind of immigration reform.

<comment><USER70> That would mean Facebook would get the same quality of engineers in India vs. grad students from India that are studying in US. Frankly, this is far from the case. In fact, most grad students from India studying in the US are by far of a higher quality than just a regular engineer in India.

From what you've written, you're equating engineers as commodities (as in they are no different from each other), which is quite insulting to the actual engineers here from India and China. They are just better and Facebook knows this. They want the better quality and they are willing to pay more (than those in India) for it, but they won't go so far as to greatly inflate the salary of the entire software engineering occupation in America.

<comment><USER71> "Most grad students from India studying in the US are by far of a higher quality" \--- This is completely wrong. The one who go to study abroad are definitely are the TOP 10% at all in terms are talent and quality. It is only that their parents were able to send them to additional tuitions (private coach session apart from school time) and was educated and have money send them. I myself know at least 100s students who are far better than those who go to college in USA or other countries. Please note that exceptions are the one who go to Stanford, Berkley and few top notch ones but even they only get students who have money not the one who have passed excellent scores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Ten things we know to be true...

...make that nine things we know to be true...

</comment><comment><USER72> Pay fixing and chomski

</comment><comment><USER73> Programming is not like being a cash register attendant at the supermarket (no offense to these workers intended).

For programmers, getting into the workflow of a company, their existing codebase, becoming efficient, it may take months.

Shipping a product may (and typically does) take over a year. The lifetime of a product may be over a decade.

And if a developer quits mid-way through a project, they may derail the entire project, while someone else has to spend the time, step into their shoes and continue their work.

I honestly can't imagine the morality of someone who would just abandon their project, their baby, so to speak, and go work somewhere else at the first call from another company offering more money. Did they take the first job out of desperation? We're talking top-of-the-top companies here. I doubt so.

Poaching employees like this is also very unfair to every company spending a lot of resources to find the right employees, to build the right teams from other channels, only to have the competition cold call them and take them away after the former company has done the hard work.

There's also the problem of trade secrets. An employee who has spent some time at, say, Apple, learns a lot about their product plans, processes, methods, and so on. Getting those employees means that one way or another you get access to these carefully kept trade secrets implicitly, if not explicitly.

Keeping wages down is bad, but employees who keep shifting jobs, leaving a trail of destruction behind them is also bad.

How do we resolve both sides of the issue so everyone is happy?

<comment><USER74> You're concerned that _people_ can be immoral because their economic decisions are harmful to _corporations_? You're worried about whether both sides are "happy" when one side is a corporation incapable of experiencing feelings? I think you've lost track of what's important.

Your argument isn't just about cold-calling; you seem to be saying it's "immoral" to consider switching jobs at all. But you are not in moral debt to your employer. It is entirely reasonable to want a higher salary, and we shouldn't cry for the corporations that have to pay it.

Switching jobs comes at a cost to the person, too. It involves breaking professional connections and quite possibly relocating. It seems considerably more disruptive to the life of the person who's switching jobs than to the company who has to train someone else, so they're probably doing it for a good reason.

Your life is more than your work. Your project is not your "baby". You might have a _baby_ that's your baby.

I'm not sure what it means to take a job "out of desperation" if it doesn't apply to basically everyone. Most people work because they need money. If these people didn't need money, they wouldn't work for Apple or Google. Maybe they'd start an unprofitable lifestyle business doing what they love. Maybe they'd do something very fulfilling and very unprofitable, like teaching.

There is so much more that you can aspire to than advancing Google's bottom line. If your goals align with Google's, it's entirely because of the paycheck.

<comment><USER73> > You're concerned that people can be immoral because their economic decisions > are harmful to corporations? You're worried about whether both sides are > "happy" when one side is a corporation incapable of experiencing feelings? I > think you've lost track of what's important.

I feel like your mind is playing a trick on you. Corporations don't exist as a standalone entity. They're an aggregate entity - one that's made of _people_.

It's not corporations vs. people. It's people trying to be happy working with other people who also are trying to be happy. We're all trying to work together and build something that's bigger than any of us.

A corporation can't "feel", but it also can't "think", or "decide". The _people_ in it feel, think and decide.

When people "harm the corporation", they hurt _other people_ whose hard work gets diminished in the process.

Maybe you think management is "incapable of feeling", well, then sure, you better leave that company. But I'm insulted by the implication that's the rule, rather than the exception.

And also I'm insulted by the implication these companies are in it just for the money. While Google and Apple, the two biggest companies mired in this scandal are led by people with widely different world views, do you honestly think they're in it just _for the money_?

Maybe you're letting your cynicism inform your opinions too much, or maybe you're working for a company that really is focused just on money. But don't speak for everyone.

<comment><USER74> If you're not personifying corporations, I just don't understand who's supposed to be "unhappy" when a worker gets a raise.

The person in payroll? It doesn't actually make them unhappy to put higher numbers on a check.

Someone in management who sets budgets? Working with economic constraints is their job. People I know in this role are _happy_ when they're able to give raises, because their employees are happy.

The shareholders? Cry me a goddamn river.

Of course there are people who are passionate about their work at large corporations, but you can't tell me that the large corporation is what they would choose if they could do anything they wanted with their life and money was no object.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom  - <AUTHOR> http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/10/why-i-ban-laptops-in-my-classroom/

<comment><USER2> I am in law school. I started school not bringing my laptop but that quickly changed.

My notes are better because I can edit without crossing out. I can insert, delete, and copy+paste.

I make bold, italics, larger print, etc.

My notes are in outline format from the beginning. There is no need for me to waste time by typing my notes at a later date. Trust me. In law school you need a very comprehensive outline to take a final. Handwritten notes won't get you there. Also, when it comes time to take the bar, you want your old outlines. They will get lost in print form.

Also, several classes require you to have the text of large volumes of statutes. I am talking 1000 pages of statutes per class. I have electronic copies of those. That saves me from having to carry extra books (not to mention the tress).

Also, I can search my notes, cases, and statutes to find the information I need. I am not flipping through a book with 1000 pages of statutes. I can simply search for "notice" in UCC Article 9 and it will bring me to every single statute where notice matters. Very awesome.

I also search my notes and outlines from classes I already took to serve as a refresher when outside issues arise. Very handy.

Of course the computer can be a distraction. But it is a damn good learning tool, too. When it is time to listen, I stop taking notes. When a student or professor says something important, I write it down, just as if I used paper.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely. The students that misuse the laptop are going to end up getting a grade they deserve, regardless. This professor is putting the burden on himself, when it should remain on the students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, I rarely found classes valuable when I was in school; they mostly consisted of the professor (or TA, usually) reading us the textbook. I only went to class so that I wouldn't miss surprise exams. A laptop was nice to have so I could do something useful during the class periods that weren't exams.

That said, I did have a few interesting classes, and I never needed a laptop in those. I imagine that the author of the article teaches interesting classes, and I think it's a shame that people want to sit in front of him and buy shoes instead of listen.

Also, from the article:

 _The University of Chicago – as committed as it is to personal freedom and choice — has decided to block internet access in all its classrooms._

Is this true? That wasn't the case when I was there.

(Edit: aha, only the law school: <http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1329>. I hope nobody tells them that 3G access for laptops is nearly free these days -- technical solutions to social problems _never_ work.)

<comment><USER5> "FWIW, I rarely found classes valuable when I was in school; they mostly consisted of the professor (or TA, usually) reading us the textbook. I only went to class so that I wouldn't miss surprise exams. A laptop was nice to have so I could do something useful during the class periods that weren't exams."

It's hard to gauge whether this says more about your ability to contrast and draw imaginative connections between the material and yourself or whether this indicates that you went to schools that aren't very good.

<comment><USER6> I never found classes valuable myself. You'd be surprised how amazing the ability to read is. Apart from anything else, the spoken word is very slow.

<comment><USER7> I'd agree, for the most part. Especially with Gen-Eds, I would just hope for powerpoints or go to the local notetaking service and grab a copy of the notes and just cram for the exams. I'd try to pick Gen-Ed's that were interesting, but the exams and everything else just made learning a chore.

Classes I actually found useful:

\- Technical writing (english)

\- This SOC class where all the teacher did was talk about real life and the lessons he learned. Amazing stories, so much advice still sticks with me to this day.

\- My Enterprise Integration class which had so much cutting edge info I knew more than my co-workers on some things when I started a job. I still wish I had saved all the notes.

Aside that, the most important stuff I learned in college were all real-life lessons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many of these reasons are why I didn't take notes in most of my classes (for some it was obviously necessary).

PG used to get perturbed at me when I wouldn't write anything down when I had meetings with him. But really, it was because I wanted 100% of my attention focused on listening.

<comment><USER9> I tend to be the same way. Taking notes whilst listening to someone speak interrupts my ability to absorb what they are saying.

That said, depending on the nature of the speech, a few keyword notes are harmless (and sometimes required), and it seems prudent to write things down in more detail as quickly as possible afterwards.

<comment><USER10> Something similar happens when I'm on a trip and bring my camera. I can take home either pictures or memories.

<comment><USER11> I try for both when I have a camera. The act of taking a picture is so short, and framing a picture is in sync with appreciating the view. For OMFG moments, the camera comes second, and can occasionally be missed. For rapid-fire events, I've found that the camera (DSLR) has caught things I've missed cuz the eye's only so fast and the "data buffer's so small...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly, I have a hard time concentrating on a presenter when I have a laptop with me. That's a large part of why I'm much more likely to be seen with an old-fashioned pen and notepad when something is actually important to understand.

<comment><USER13> I have a hard time writing legibly with pen and paper due to tremors and there are people with all sorts of disabilities like dysgraphia. I can only hope these professors can allow for exceptions to the rule.

<comment><USER12> I would be shocked if they did not, to be honest. It just seems like common courtesy to me to cater to each individual's needs. Even if a professor objects though, there are some very vigorously enforced laws which are intended to help people with physical or mental challenges. School administrations take them very seriously.

(I'm mildly dyslexic myself, so please don't take those terms pejoratively.)

<comment><USER13> Just speaking from prior bad experiences :) I used to use laptops back even in high school, where the teachers were fine with it but made it clear it was a privilege extended to us that could be revoked should there be any misuse. One teacher caught a kid playing a game in class and wouldn't let anyone in his classes use a laptop. I got pretty mad in the beginning, but the whole thing blew over before I had a chance to go see if I could get an exemption from that rule with a doctor's note.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I know I've definitely been on IRC in class while taking notes (however, some of it was with fellow classmates...) and more, and I really do see how this can be a problem. But computers can be pretty helpful...sigh.

I've tried looking into ways to take notes without distracting other people, and I think my iPhone would be perfect if only I could use it with an external bluetooth keyboard or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From my position, I see two root causes why this is the problem and they could be fixed (its what my venture is working on doing). The problem with laptops most notably is the fact that they have this screen. The screen more or less creates a barrier between the person and speaker. This is not a good thing, especially not in a classroom and its also disrepsectful to the speaker. The second is laptops that are not being used for education but rather, as the article writer suggested, for Instant Messaging or other various purposes. If, theoretically, the laptop was one that was specifically designed and built for use in the classroom by students on a day-to-day basis, the problems addressed in this article would not be an issue. However, because they aren't, many times students don't have adequate tools on their laptops, the tools that are there are time consuming and hard to switch between for doing multiple things at one time, and they aren't focused on anything educationally enriching.

[promo]That's exactly what my venture, EDunuity, is working to address.[/promo]

<comment><USER13> How you determine what tools the students need in the first place? I've used laptops heavily for almost all my classes for the past few years now (obviously I can't take a laptop to a ceramics class, for example) and the tools I use depends on the class.

For most classes I can get away with using textmate, voodoopad and word (yuck). However, for classes with lots of diagrams I can't easily reproduce on the computer, I'll take out the tablet and use it with voodoopad specifically. Another person using a laptop in my class just brings a digital camera and takes pictures. There was one class I had where someone else wanted to take notes with me, so we used google docs in class. But I don't do that in a CS class, where I usually just bring out my IDE of choice and start hacking away and occasionally take notes.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER14> Well, the determination was made partly on what I and my co-founder have both experienced (being we're both students, freshmen in college), and additional talking we've done with both teachers and students in various types of classes. We've also done a fair amount of reading from studies about the usage of laptops/tablets in the classroom and read opinion articles like these to observe the issues.

In your case, you're one of the students who has already made that digital jump over and has all the gear you need. You, being the geek that I'll assume you are (-don't take that as an insult, I am too...), got these tools and self taught them and are self disciplined in their usage. However, most students and most schools don't have this.

While my venture is specifically interested in K12, we are interested in college too. For most classes (a ceramics class could be an exception), you have your basic necessities and then some additional tools you could be using. That's what we're focused on in our works, is creating the basics in a way that can be easily and seamlessly used in classes so that every student has access to the tools and resources they need, and with a certain degree of personalization to fit the different needs of different people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awkward. I am in class right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's the same with conferences. Have you ever given a talk to a group of people and more than half are looking at their laptops? It really makes you ponder all of the time you put into preparing your presentation.

<comment><USER17> With respect, maybe your audience is telling you to build a better presentation.

<comment><USER4> Nope, people have their laptops out at even the best speakers' talks. It's an addiction.

<comment><USER18> So do professors ban laptops because they genuinely want to help students overcome their addiction, or because the professors don't feel like they're getting the attention that they deserve?

<comment><USER4> The article answers this question.

Basically, students think they can multi-task (IM and listen to the lecture), but professors know that the students can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of the classes I've taken within the past 4 years, all of the professors/instructors have placed their notes online. I figured that all classes were going this direction. I personally find taking (verbatim-ish) notes to be a big distraction.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sad but true. I wish there was a way to have laptops be part of a positive teaching experience. Maybe if you had live chat rooms during the lecture it could make the class richer rather than more distracted.

<comment><USER21> IRC backchannel?

There are a lot of things that can benefit from a backchannel. Live event, conference, etc. Having a discussion between viewers can be really valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> With a laptop i could record the lecture while surfing the web and paying attention here and there as i always did.

With the audio recordings Im sure Id want to listen/study to the bullet points only. Thus, I'd create a program that did this and sell the audio cliff notes to my fellow classmates.

He should say laptops are optional...not outright ban them; let students do what is best for them. Have a row of laptop users ..row non laptop users.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think banning laptops in class is a good idea. When I had my laptop in class I basically screwed around and looked up at the board occasionally to see if the professor had written anything on it. Turns out that's a pretty worthless way to take notes.

Then again, I get deathly bored of physical writing after about 2 sentences and half the time I can't even read what I wrote so I was more or less screwed either way.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was never able to get much out of lectures in college. My ability to remember what people say out loud is practically nil. My handwriting was poor, and I could not write quickly. In any case, what was the point of my transcribing lectures instead of just reading material?

The only time I ever learned anything directly from a prof was talking to him in his office until I could put things into my own words.

</comment><comment><USER25> Heh...if some douche wants to waste his tuition by screwing around with his laptop, that's between him and his wallet (although, under the TARP, it's arguably between him and _my_ wallet...grrr).

My laptop stays shut during lectures and presentations unless I have the notes/slides on my screen or need to cross-reference something with another source. Anything else is too distracting for me.

</comment><comment><USER26> At my university we had a no laptops policy on case study discussion. At first you kinda get annoyed about it, but you later realize how important it is. It is nice to pay attention and not have to worry about the guy next to you playing call of duty on his laptop. I also must say that I missed several things surfing the web. I think there should be a no text messaging policy as well in classes.

</comment><comment><USER27> My cousin is a Philosophy professor and he says it's annoying to hear "tappity tap tap" all the time, even when he isn't saying anything or before class starts, you can tell people are using IM.

I say jam the wifi signal, set up an access point with a signal booster but don't have it attached to anything. I'm not sure if that will work but it's worth a try.

<comment><USER28> The simplest way to do it with standard 802.11 equipment would be to transmit at high gain on channels 2 or 3, 6 or 7, and 9 or 10. But there's lots of devices that cover that spectrum; it'd be cheaper to rip the transformer and magnetron out of an old microwave oven and energize that in the middle of the classroom. Use a pulse width modulator to step down the power by a few orders of magnitude if you're feeling generous enough to not cook your students.

*note: Do not actually do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In situations where I want to take notes but don't want to distract myself or others, I keep my laptop on but with no backlighting (so the display's almost black). I can just stream what I want into there and edit it later. Often I'll grab audio as well.

</comment><comment><USER30> When I was in school we didn't have laptops and we paid attention all of the time. OK, maybe not.

We used quill pens so we could only pick out a few keywords to scratch down to jog our memory: parchment was so expensive that we would rotate the paper 90 degrees after we had written in one direction and write across. You could normally make out both directions if you were careful. I think the harder it was to write the more we appreciated what we had. Not like students these days.

This is nuts. He wants his lectures to be absorbed the same way he did when he was in law school. Student don't need a laptop to tune you out.

How would you design lectures if you knew every student had a laptop and wifi? I can't believe we will be using pen and paper in even 30 years to laboriously transcribe lectures.

<comment><USER30> A lot of folks are writing in to explain how they didn't pay attention in class because they had a laptop. The argument seems to be that "I can't focus on class if I have access to a laptop--so no one in class should have one."

What happens when they get back to their desk: most jobs these days involve access to a PC/browser. It would seem like they would also be tempted to surf the web instead of work. Do they want to prohibit their co-workers (and competitors) from having access to the web? Should we go back to programming using a keypunch?

How/when do you develop the self-control to focus on the task at hand? Pencil and paper allow you to doodle and not pay attention. The challenge is not the affordances of the laptop but the inability to focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I teach English 101 at the University of Arizona and ban laptops for similar reasons. I'd prefer the students be engaged with the class and not suffer from the chronically divided attention they probably do elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you are teaching an important class for a major then I can understand it. But when you are teaching a class that everyone has to take to satisfy one little requirement, banning laptops is annoying.

<comment><USER32> In that case it sounds like laptops are not the real problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good. Myself, I want to get rid of physical classrooms and go back to teaching, this time just online instead. Let's see what approach will prevail in the long run ;)

</comment><comment><USER34> If people are banned from taking notes on laptops, then they should be banned from taking notes on pen and paper also.

<comment><USER35> That makes no sense. It's almost as if you did not read the article. [i did not either =p, but it still makes no sense.]

The laptop has much more of a chance of being distracting. Pen and paper can and does, such as old school IM (passing notes), but its about killing the slippery slope.

I personally support all bans on all (personal)technology in a classroom setting. This includes phones, laptops etc.

What happend to the Socratic method of teaching/learning? =(

<comment><USER36> Reminds me of an article in Byte magazine back in the 80s or early 90s. A student at Georgia Tech wrote his dissertation on a program he developed for a personal digital assistant program, hosted on a wearable computer. Partway through his dissertation defence, the examiners realized that he was using his dissertation to defend itself. Would you have voted his thesis up or down?

<comment><USER37> I would have voted him up if he was doing AI - the most impressive way to get a phd in AI would be to have your creation defend your thesis for you.

<comment><USER35> agreed, obviously if you are studying technology and specifically technological assistence interfaces/tools then those specific instances have a place in the classroom. I would think firearms are banned in classrooms right? What about at police academies or your local "weapons manufacturing trade school". See what I'm getting at?

I just see overwhelmingly more times than not students using aim/facebook/meebo/yahoo games/ during class. I'm sure there IS an argument to be made for people that actually use their laptops to "optimize" learning, but they are few and far between imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There is no question, laptop use is counter productive in most classes. Unfortunately, for the student there are many classes where a student might already know most/all of the material, but is still "forced" to attend the class. Then it is gaming, chatting, browsing time. In fact, teachers could use students' laptop use as barometer for how engaging their teaching methods are.

</comment><comment><USER39> And ban them in many meetings too ...

</comment><comment><USER40> What if your class is online?</comment>


Inside Pinterest and its ad sales operation - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-worth-11-billion-valuation-revenue-grow-5x-2015 <comment><USER2> speaking as someone who's actually purchased pinterest ads:

the review process is much more careful than facebook or google. they only really want content that would make sense organically on pinterest.

facebook and google are pretty loose about the "salesy-ness" of ads, but pinterest is pretty strict in comparison.

obviously with all these restrictions, agencies don't like it because they have to cater their message to pinterest instead copy and pasting the same noise on every platform.

pinterest probably won't kill google proper, but I could easily see pinterest killing google images.

When is the last time a company seriously decided to take on image search at google scale? Google doesn't even show ads in it's image search.

another reason agencies probably don't like pinterest is the high fixed-floor bids of 10 cents.

you could have lower effective cpcs, but your ads actually have to be engaging, and they have to get repins and shares.

bottom line: Pinterest simply demands more effort from advertisers, and they're pretty picky. Consequently, users don't mind their ads as much.

The best case scenario for pinterest's investors (in my mind) is an acquisition by facebook as part of a strategy to take on the web search market.

<comment><USER3> _easily see pinterest killing google images_

Not with their annoying interstitial it won't. And pinterest isn't great for finding images of things that aren't "products".

<comment> chestnut-tree _Not with their annoying interstitial it won 't_

This is my main gripe with Pinterest: the hostile and intrusive block on viewing the site unless you register first. This wasn't always the case. I'm guessing the permanent prompt to register turns many users away (I'm sure they're tracking this this to see how it's faring).

 _And pinterest isn 't great for finding images of things that aren't "products"._

Pinterest is a great resource for finding visual design inspiration, not just products. You'll find plenty of design examples no matter how broad or narrow your search: typography, graphic design, illustration, web design, mobile app design, book covers, comic book design, calligraphy, geometric patterns, packaging design, paper sculpture, origami - the list is endless. In fact, the site deliberately overwhelms you with related pins and pages that scroll forever to keep you browsing as long as possible.

If you are a designer or developer creating a web site or a mobile app, then you are missing out on lots of visual inspiration if you don't use Pinterest.

<comment><USER4> That blocking overlay drives absolutely insane when I stumble upon an image through Google, and it lands there. It's infuriating. I can't see how that encourages ANYONE to register.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pinterests recommender system algo (picture suggestions) is flawed/broken. It shows you always the same pictures, of the same k-mean group.

And their nag screen to login/signup is as annoying as on Quora. Btw: Has Quora completed their pivot already, they joined YC like a year ago? [http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/09/meet-the-oldest-y- combinat...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/09/meet-the-oldest-y-combinator- startup-ever-quora/)

Glad to see _pg_ doesn't like the nag screen either: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217449) (full context: [https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Quora-join- the-2014-Y-Combinat...](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Quora-join- the-2014-Y-Combinator-batch) )

<comment><USER6> Pinterest's nagging panel is in my uBlock Origin rules... What a nice era we live in, where we can ban knee-jerk behavours.

<comment><USER7> It's an even better era than that: you don't even have to click on a link to Pinterest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _> So if you're a marketer with a budget, where do you allocate it? Put it on Google or Facebook, where there are tons and tons of users where you can target very well? Or on Pinterest, which is a much smaller audience, female, lower-income, where you can't target well? It's just not as efficient."_

This part is really interesting considering how other tech companies put a huge amount of effort into acquiring that exact female crowd from their mostly male mid-to-upper crowd.

<comment><USER9> "considering how other tech companies put a huge amount of effort into acquiring that exact female crowd"

Exactly this.

Pinterest caters to a niche. You can advertise to your target directly and probably spending less money

Much better than FB or Google "targeting"

<comment><USER10> ROAS numbers do not agree with you.

<comment><USER9> Do you have a quote for that? (Also might be an issue of not tailoring campaigns to Pinterest)

It seems to be getting behind Instagram, that's for sure [http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/new- social-s...](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/new-social- stratosphere-who-using-facebook-twitter-pinterest-tumblr-and- instagram-2015-and-beyond-1622)

<comment><USER10> The very same article we are commenting under, for one. And it's not an issue of not tailoring campagins. In fact, you are forced to make Pinterest-specific campaigns. It's an issue of inferior ad units, targeting and operations in comparison with FB and the same plus inferior monetization model in comparison with GOOG.

I don't know why you linked to that adweek article. It's about demogprahics and usage, not adspend efficiency.

<comment><USER9> Yes, however I pointed the niche potential of Pinterest, which is there regardless of their inefficiency in leveraging that, which seems to be the point of the article

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The visual scrapbook platform should be printing money. Its predominantly female audience browses Pinterest 's various boards for inspiration about their next fashion purchases, vacation destination, or on how to decorate a house — and they also act as free brand representatives by "pinning" their favorite products, making them visible to others._

It may come as a surprise to some, but making money is not important. That's why so many people lost their shirts shorting the 'unprofitable' Amazon.com

Rather, it's the the demonstrated ability to make money, which is more important. Should the time come to turn on the advertising money printing press, Pinterest and Snapchat, like Facebook, should have no difficulty making money. There's already a huge line of advertisers ready to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into Pinterest ads. Investors are patient, knowing that Pinterest will start printing money when the time is right. But right now, Pinterest is still building the userbase and perfecting their ad platform. Like Facebook, Pinterest's profit margins will be extremely high, and it would not surprise me if this company is worth $50 billion soon. But right now, Pinterest, like many web successful web 2.0 companies, is more interested in taking its time to build positive user and advertiser experience, than milking every user for every last dime.

<comment><USER12> > Investors are patient, knowing that Pinterest will start printing money when > the time is right.

 _Someone_ isn't patient, otherwise this article wouldn't have been written.

<comment><USER13> Not necessarily. It's trendy these days to bash unicorns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm bullish on Pinterest for two reasons:

1\. Limited number of advertising options that reach a broad audience - especially women. There just isn't a lot of inventory out of there that isn't cats and dogs. You've got Google and Facebook (Tier 1), Buzzfeed/Twitter/Yahoo/Bing (Tier 2/3) and then individual media properties (Business Insider et al) - the tiering here is fairly arbitrary. My point is that if you are a larger purchaser of advertising, there aren't that many top properties to go to - so Pinterest, with it's very good audience, is particularly interesting.

2\. User information from Pinterest is very different from other venues. Google can show purchase intent based on search criteria - excellent for immediate purchases. Facebook can show ads based on demographics, location and behavior. Pinterest can show what users are interested in buying in the future, or what their wants are - a very unique dataset and one that is very interesting to a lot of advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER15> > The visual scrapbook platform should be printing money. Its predominantly > female audience browses Pinterest's various boards for inspiration about > their next fashion purchases, vacation destination, or on how to decorate a > house — and they also act as free brand representatives by "pinning" their > favorite products, making them visible to others.

Pinterest tried skimlinking, but the some of the userbase _hated_ that, claiming it was hurting their business.

When I used Pinterest I would not have cared if they had used skimlinks for anything I posted, but it doesn't seem to be an option I can turn on. And I want Pinterest to protect me from people posting their own affiliate links. A bunch of people post low quality content and stuff it full of affiliate links. Pinterest is worse with those people on the platform. One thing it could do is skimlink everything, and charge for people who want to use their own affiliate links. Most services provided to businesses are charged for, and allowing someone to run an affiliate marketing business on Pinterest is a service that Pinterest should charge for.

> You have a lot of lower-income, middle-America people on Pinterest than you > do on other sites, and it's very female-centric. So if you're a marketer > with a budget, where do you allocate it? Put it on Google or Facebook, where > there are tons and tons of users where you can target very well? Or on > Pinterest, which is a much smaller audience, female, lower-income, where you > can't target well? It's just not as efficient."

Wait what? I see people pinning stuff for weddings (average cost of US wedding is $26k) or home redecoration (average cost of US kitchen remodeling is over $15k) so these may be lower income people, but they have something that they're saving up for and are prepared to spend considerable amounts of money on.

Carefully placed ads could be amazing for that market.

The real problems with Pinterest are the _awful_ _awful_ _awful_ mobile experience which is very hostile to the user. Almost embarrassing. I don't post any links to Pinterest anywhere because of that hateful experience.

<comment><USER14> "The real problems with Pinterest are the awful awful awful mobile experience which is very hostile to the user. Almost embarrassing. I don't post any links to Pinterest anywhere because of that hateful experience."

What's awful about it?

<comment><USER16> Try browsing it while not logged-in. You'll never want to come back to it again.

<comment><USER14> So you regard the experience as bad because they don't offer an experience that doesn't require logging in?

<comment><USER16> They make you taste the product then slap you in the face one second after. Yes, putting a nag up over content (especially which you don't own) while someone is looking at it is the mental equivalent to slapping that person on the face.

Only on the internet does this seem to be a best practice.

(Furthermore there's nothing inherent to the experience's design that prevents it from being delivered to non logged-in users, the block is artificial, not a design constraint)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, sounds to me that Pinterest is on the right track.

F#ck the CPM sales "community", focus on the product.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, fuck the people who pay you.

<comment><USER18> So many assumptions in one short sentence.

Why do you think CPM-people pay him? He might as well work in a company that does not rely on marketing/advertising industry. Those do exist.

Even if he was paid by CPM-people - so what? A lot of people work for money, not because they like their employers or share same views.

<comment><USER19> The "you" he's referring to is Pinterest, not the commenter.

<comment><USER18> Don't quite see the issue. If Pinterest cares about what kind of advertising to show. If they are interested in a quality curated advertising that fits the content of the website instead of mindless ads where you only care about CPM - I'd say great for them and for their users.

> The "you" he's referring to is Pinterest, not the commenter.

It is a commenter that said: "F#ck the CPM sales "community", focus on the product.". Don't see where is he trying to portray the words as if they were coming from Pinterest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like some VCs really desperate to dump the IPO on the market before everything implodes (hence pushing this submarine article), some butthurt sales monkeys who didn't get their commissions, and oh hey there's Pinterest doing what they've always done, being really careful about building a great product.

</comment><comment><USER11> Businessinsider is a notorious click-bait aggregator, spinning minutia into hype.

Reminds be of the Uber California court report they hyped last year, which predictably didn't really anywhere [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/business/uber-contests- cal...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/business/uber-contests-california- labor-ruling-that-says-drivers-should-be-employees.html?_r=0)

That was seven months ago and Uber didn't die as many predicted it would

Some people so badly want for this to be 2000 all over again they they have to make things up. They have to turn molehills into mountains.

<comment><USER21> > Some people so badly want for this to be 2000 all over again they they have > to make things up.

Why do you think this is the case?

<comment><USER22> It's just human nature. Misery loves company.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Disclaimer: I'm pretty bullish in Pinterest. I wish I could put money into it, even at the $11B valuation.

 _and it 's not all good_

Well.. now I've read the article I'd agree. But there was nothing in that article that I found particularly concerning - indeed, the fact they are focused on product at the expense of monetisation makes me even more bullish.

The thing that does concern me wasn't mentioned though. Their growth seems to have leveled off, albeit after very fast initial growth[1][2].

[1] [https://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=pinterest%2C%20sn...](https://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=pinterest%2C%20snapchat%2C%20ebay&date=1%2F2011%2061m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-10%3A30)

[2] [https://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=pinterest%2C%20sn...](https://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=pinterest%2C%20snapchat%2C%20ebay&date=1%2F2011%2061m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-10%3A30)

</comment><comment><USER10> Buyable pins reported to be an (embarrassing) flop, according to an article on qz.

<comment><USER24> I think those buyable-button-like initiatives are inherently flawed from ground up.

Clicking ads, comparing to viewing them, is rare enough, with a lot of are done by mistakes, so what makes those people think their users could make a decision of purchase, which often takes several rounds of researching, comparing ,hesitating to make the final stride, by randomly scrolling through something might bot even be relevant, is totally beyond me.

Even if the user happens to like the item in the ads, the actual action would come after several hours, do they expect user to come back to app, find the ad, then click the buy button?

<comment><USER25> Quote from OP

 _" Most notably, Kendall also led the move to narrow Pinterest's ad focus on just two categories, retailers and consumer-packaged-goods brands, as The Wall Street Journal first reported in December."_

Smallish purchases (music, books, household items, some aspects of holiday spending): I tend to go with the first thing I find that _looks right_. I could imagine using a 'buy' button next to an entry in a discovery system such as Pinterest, although I'm not in their majority demographic.

Larger purchases (stage piano, new laptop &c): yes, I research and have a bias towards places where I can try stuff out (I'm old).

This organisation seems to want to specialise.

<comment><USER26> As I believe they should. I got on Pinterest really early, one of the first waves of, "you are on the list" invites.

What amazed me is the number of professional women who use Pinterest very regularly. Often, it's not casual use either. They will get on, and use it hard for a good long time. Lunch, burning a little time at the end of the day, various casual times...

The whole thing works a lot like window shopping with friends, and the lists of things they want and like keeps building. These people want stuff, and they use Pinterest to refine that want down to a science, at which point they will be willing to pay easily for things at the top of those lists.

Because it has that shopping, but not really shopping look and feel combined with the essence of scrapbook creating and sharing activity, careful analysis and great care is going to be needed to keep it light and as immersive as it is.

Right now, most users I've had a chance to observe and talk to about Pinterest, love it. It meets some basic need they have and they will be willing to help Pinterest make money, so long as that need gets met with a great experience.

Otherwise, may as well go shopping elsewhere...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I got 'page not found' and had to go here instead: [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pinterest- worth-11-billion...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pinterest- worth-11-billion-valuation-revenue-grow-5x-2015-2016-1)

</comment><comment><USER28> I use Pinterest mostly for concept art. I don't think I'd use it at all if it became overrun by in-your-face ads. Of course, I'm just one user.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article appears to have been pulled. Anyone else getting a page not found error?

<comment><USER29> Ah. Well that's rather stupid, they have detected I'm from Australia, so they redirect me to an Australian 404 error page. But then they suggest I look on the U.S. site. and get me to click on:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-worth-11-billion- va...](http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-worth-11-billion-valuation- revenue-grow-5x-2015?r=US&IR=T/?IR=T)

Dang or someone, could you update the link to this URL?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Fellas, that goose must be FILLED with golden eggs!

</comment><comment><USER31> So wait, the hyped investor valuations aren't going to match what the IPO valuation will be based on revenues. News at 11.</comment>


Ask HN: Tooling to skip/speed up CI steps? - <AUTHOR> Our repository is so large/active that our CI is painful. You could also say our build/test process is so slow that our CI is painful. I'm looking for tooling to reduce the load on our CI.
For example, if only documentation has been changed, there is no need to run the tests. If no documentation is changed there is no need to rebuild the Doxygen website. If only a one component is changed, the unit tests for the others need to be run. If only tests have been changed there is no need to deploy the software. If only build config is changed, there is no need to run the unit tests.
I'm not sure what to google for. Is there a name for such mechanisms? Buildpipe seems roughly the right idea but is not really applicable without Buildkite.
The configuration for such a tool is so complex that a Python library might make more sense than an executable? We are certainly not the first ones. Does everybody write this from scratch? It makes sense for monorepos but the awesome list does not contain anything.
https://github.com/korfuri/awesome-monorepo <comment><USER2> Depends the CI software obviously but for Azure DevOps/VSTS, they have just what you describe and seem to call it "triggers": [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/azure/devops/pipelines/buil...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/azure/devops/pipelines/build/triggers?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml)

I have seen similar things in other CI providers but basically you have two options:

1) Use a monorepo and filter out which steps or when to run the CI based on the conditions you describe using the features of the CI software. 2) Split up the repo and give each repo its own CI which runs when files in the subrepo change. For example the frontend CI would run the frontend tests and compile a static file which could just simply be downloaded by the main build.

Both will speed up your CI process, which one is best depends a lot on your application architecture and build and deployment process.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I get a C++ job with a lot of C# experience? - <AUTHOR> I have around 9 yrs experience as a C# developer, I'd really like to try something new and learn C++, ideally in a C++ environment. C# is great but the lower level stuff is starting to attract me.<p>Does anyone have any experience in crossing technology / language without commercial experience? <comment><USER2> I recruited a lot of C++ devs as a hiring manager in London between 1997 and 2010. I never hired a candidate without at least two years real day to day experience in a real commercial environment, shipping real code. The C++ learning curve is much steeper than C#, Java, Python simply because of pointers, memory management, and the greater complexity of compiling and linking. Back in the mid 90s C++ was a mainstream language. But the rise of C#, Java & Python means that C++ has rightly been abandoned for generic enterprise development, and is now only used where performance and low level integration requirements make it necessary: HFT, gaming, embedded, OS dev. Technical standards are high in those areas. There is another area where C++ is still used that may give you an "in": legacy systems. There are still a lot of old mid 90s Windows C++ MFC systems out there, and their owners often find that work hard to resource as it's so unglamorous. So I suggest trawling jobserve.com and indeed.co.uk for "C++ MFC C#", then sell yourself as a C#er keen to learn C++. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's excellent advice! With so much experience, do you think I would be crazy attempting to move. Perhaps I should look into a newer low level language.

I notice there's a lot of finance work in C++. Do you expect this trend to continue?

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. C++ will continue to be strong in finance for low latency high vol stuff like HFT. Also for quant numerical stuff. If you've got a maths or physics degree that's the way to go. New lang? Wish I had time to learn Rust...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of C++ code in the Crypto currency space on Github.

You could try getting some pull requests going to gain some experience.

You'll be able to figure out if it's a direction you really want to head in.

[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls)

</comment><comment><USER4> I learn languages best side-by-side. My basis for programming is Visual Basic, PHP, and JavaScript. A little Python in the mix too, but I can get an idea of how a programming language works by seeing what they look like side by side. They are all pretty much the same, with different syntax, and if you know one, you can pretty much grasp them all.

Of course I do stick to my preferences, but seeing how they compare is interesting.

Anyways, try Rosetta code: [https://rosetta.alhur.es/](https://rosetta.alhur.es/)

I'm pretty sure with a little training, it will just click for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do companies hire people without experience in a specific language?

<comment><USER4> It all depends on the hiring manager and if the company is willing to take a chance on you. For example, I got hired by a guy looking for a programmer to work on and fix bugs in his autobody shop software.

I had absolutely no professional experience, but I had taught myself Visual Basic. He took a chance on me, took 3 months to train me, and everything worked out for a while. Although I have moved on and gained a lot of experience since then, it was at his sole discretion to take that chance on me.

I would think if you have some knowledge in something, they could take a few months to get you up to speed. Most companies don't hire you expecting you to know everything immediately. So some training, and if after than, you just "don't get it", than they know they made a mistake. But if you spend a month or two in training... it is likely they will get you up to speed and you will get it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat an opposite here: experienced C++ engineer interested in taking React Native projects/jobs... :)

</comment><comment><USER6> C++ is the ultimate tech interview stump the chump quiz show language, it's huge old and has lots of gotchas. You say you want to learn, no ones going to hire you to teach you, I'd expect you to have significant side project experience with it, and you'd have to a e the tech interview for me to take a chance on you. There are lots of mediocre c++ devs no one wants another.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wise words Mark. I'm going to carry on learning. I think it makes me a better developer in general, and I like the complexity and history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you precisely define what do you mean by "lower level stuff"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Memory management, a closer connection to the compiler, ability to write embedded apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> no</comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so hard for social media/networking sites to monetize their users? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like the business plan for yet another social media / networking plan is as follows.
1. Create a interesting web app
2. Get people to use your application
3. ?????
4. Profit
Unfortunately, it seems like there isn't a method of getting to profit. When I asked the cofounders of reddit my question at pycon they said that advertisers don't understand web 2.0 companies. If that is true then maybe what is needed is a web 2.0 advertising company? <comment><USER2> That's not the whole story. Plentyoffish is _highly_ profitable. Why not other social networks? Because they have a less-effective ad model but think they can spend like a search engine.

A lot of people (whether or not they "get" Web2.0) have unreasonable expectations for demographic and behavioral targeting of ads. When you advertise on Google you are targeting not only a specific word, not only a specific person who is interested in that specific word, but _right at the moment they are looking for it_.

For this reason I believe search advertising will always be an order of magnitude more effective than demo-targeting, and at least a few times better than the loftiest pipe-dreams of behavioral targeting.

So. Your ad model is 0.1X as lucrative as search advertising, yet your infrastructure costs are comparable to a search engine. You lose. PoF wins because Markus doesn't have 100 employees.

<comment><USER3> PoF has another advantage.

If you are at PoF, you are searching for a date. PoF makes a lot of money selling ads for _better dating sites_ , something it's users are almost already looking for.

<comment><USER4> If PoF is a launchpad to premium dating sites, how do people end up on PoF in the first place? I assumed SEO, and I searched for "dating" and "online dating" but PoF didn't rank high. Maybe they go after more niche keywords.

<comment><USER5> Google search for "free dating" put PoF at #2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The one thing I can tell you for sure, having done affiliate marketing on the big 3 search engines and the big 2 social networks, is that users on social nets click often but don't convert. The click through rates are lower than you'll see on Google, but not as much lower as you might think if you do a good job with the ad and the demographic targeting. But the conversion rates are beyond abysmal.

That seriously depresses CPC bids, which will prevent Facebook/Myspace from really monetizing well from that source. It's a shame too, given that the reach is massive.

I think it's because people just go to social networks to hang out. They specifically don't want to buy stuff, and when you try, you're like a telemarketer calling a college kid at a frat party.

I was really on the fence about whether or not Facebook would ever be able to somehow find a business model that didn't involve people whipping out a credit card somewhere (i.e. not freemium, virtual goods, etc.) until I tried that experiment.

<comment><USER2> That's exactly it. Before all of this interweb stuff the highest-margin ad venue was the phone book. Every business and trade professional spent at least 50 bucks and every lawyer, national chain, auto dealer, etc splashed out for more. YPPA are still pulling about $10B per year.

The phone book is kind of the upper bound for behavioral and demo targeting: everyone who sees your ad wants to buy what you are selling right now. The only question is which ad they see first.

A social network simply does not have that kind of audience. A site that is not in the business of telling people things they want to know is never going to make the same margins from ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a way to get profitable, companies like Twitter, Digg and Facebook haven't figured it out, yet, and it gives the whole web 2.0 business a bad rap.

MySpace is quite profitable to the tune of pushing $1 Billion in 2008: <http://bit.ly/PJPc2>

Dogster has been doing quite well in the advertising space: <http://bit.ly/7WZL> and <http://bit.ly/ytNf> They've been able to be profitable by hiring their own advertising sales team. They are getting CPM's of $20-40 for their email newsletter: <http://bit.ly/p9nB>

CuteOverload.com is profitable. icanhascheezburger.com is profitable.

Part of the problem with web 2.0 companies, is that a lot of them don't realize that they are media companies. Mainstream media companies figured out the monetization bit years ago. They make money by selling the content (Movies, Music, print media), selling advertising space on the content (TV, print media), or by branding and merchandising themselves (Star Wars, Saturday Morning Cartoons). __* _See Footnote_

Mainstream media has also learned a long time ago, that you can charge a premium for delivering a targeted demographic. If you were able to launch a Social News site devoted to the people interested in buying car insurance, or people intersted in investing in day-trading stocks, your CPMs would sky rocket.

Dogster is making money because they figured out the setting up their own ad network and selling ad space on it was much better than using Adsense. TV stations, radio stations all have their own sales teams that sell ads on their networks.

 __* Newspapers and Print media are really struggling because their overhead is so high, and can no longer compete with online media. But, for years, these companies have been cash cows. Just look at how Rupert Murdock made his money.

<comment><USER8> I second that. Having their own ad network has worked out great for cafemom.com a ssn for mothers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> People don't like ads interfering with their social interactions. It's much more intrusive to be hanging out with your best bud and see an ad for Old Navy than it is to be shopping for stuff and see an ad for Old Navy.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://andrewchenblog.com/2007/09/26/5-things-that-make- your...](http://andrewchenblog.com/2007/09/26/5-things-that-make-your-social- network-monetize-like-crap/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Advertisers want two things: people to buy stuff via some conversion funnel that starts with the ad, or "brand lift".

The best way to get people to buy stuff is to find intenders - those people who are about to buy something in your category. Think google adwords. This doesn't work too well on social media, because people are interested in hanging out, not on thinking about some purchasing decision.

"brand lift" - advertisers in this bucket are super sensitive to their brand image, and they won't be getting the lift they want if it's next to some random comment stream.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not. It's hard to to monetize with advertising which is all most sites even try. Virtual goods, premium accounts, merchandising those are methods that work.

Also thinking it in terms of monetizing _users_ instead of monetizing your site/products is symptom of failed thinking. Users aren't cogs in your money making machine, they resent being used/abused for your profit. Do something your users want, offer something they will pay for.

</comment><comment><USER13> How do websites in general make money? (Or do they? Do they have revenues but not have earnings?)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542656>

</comment><comment><USER14> because people go on a social networking site to socialize, they focus their attention on their profile page, most people won't even let their eyes wander to the ad portion of the page

</comment><comment><USER15> Because they try to profit through traditional business channels. By effectively leveraging social pressure, these things could be a gold-mine.</comment>