Ask HN: What if I'm not good enough? - <AUTHOR>

(This is posted from a throw-away account)
For a long time, I've considered running a business (of ones own creation) to be the best possible occupation. Over the last few years, I have become very interested in the idea of starting a startup. If I had the choice of any path for the next years of my life, I would choose starting a startup with no question.
But, what if I'm not good enough? I would like to apply to YC S2012, but I don't think I have any chance at all of getting in. Firstly, I have the problem of having no idea and no co-founder. But also, personally, I'm just not good enough.
Let me go question-by-question on the YC application form to show what I mean (I'll skip background information questions).

    > Please tell us in one or two sentences about the most impressive
    > thing that each founder has built or achieved.
 I haven't achieved or build anything that impressive yet. Sure, I have played with algorithms and build cool little projects with them. I have even presented at an undergraduate research conference (NCUR - a joke, btw), but I don't have any real, useful accomplishments. None worthy of YC at any rate.

    > Please tell us about the time you, <<real HN account>>, most
    > successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.
 I really haven't done this either. I have been a play-by-the-rules type my whole life, and I haven't really interfaced with many systems (at least not to the extent to have any reason to "hack" them).

    > Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside
    > of class or work, that two or more of you created together.
    > Include urls if possible
 Well, without a co-founder, the "two or more of you" part clearly is not going to work. I have a few interesting (for some value of interesting) projects up on github, but they are the sort of things that I imagine that the kind of people who are accepted into YC build in high school (I had no one to teach me how to program in high school).

    > Where do you live now, and where would the company be
    > based after YC?
 Now: A small college town in a less 'forward-thinking' part of the country. Company: Anywhere YC likes.

    > Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you
    > has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)
 Anything that I can think to put here ("some professors are much better to learn from than others" or "no programming language has everything you want") were surprising to me when I learned it, but would not be surprising in general. I really haven't been in a position to discover surprising things.
<comment></comment><comment>
The university from which I am about to graduate is better known for football than for academics. The CS department is tucked in the free space between the chemistry, astronomy, and physics departments in a single building on campus. It is small enough that most all the professors know me on a first-name basis. The curriculum is really not challenging (for instance, no where is a y-combinator even mentioned), and the my fellow students are generally mediocre - not co-founder material. No one there reads HN (afaik).
I haven't had any internships or the like at any of the "cool" places (Fog Creek, Hack NY, etc), and not for lack of trying. I haven't built anything that impressive, and I haven't played with today's most popular alphabet soup yet (Reddis or Node.js or what ever it is right now).
Yes, I have read all the posts about impostor syndrome, but I don't think that that what I'm going through. I know that I am good at CS; my grades and understanding confirm this fact. I feel that, given better opportunities (perhaps having someone to teach me to program as a teen), I might have crossed some proverbial "tipping point" after which I would build more interesting things and get accepted into the cool programs, and I would look substantially more impressive.
Having read HN for a number of years now, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the scale of things built by the people who go on to start startups. I can look at their history, and see that they came from impressive schools, where no doubt they met other people who helped sharpen their talents. They had internships at all the right places. The build things in college. They knew people. I don't have any of that, but I still want to start a startup.
tl;dr Haven't done anything that impressive, still want to start a startup.
HN: What should I do? </comment><comment><USER2> Even the people who have been accepted into YC and have impressive resumes have their self-doubt: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655582>

Here's an idea: write down the questions from the YC application form and treat them as a todo list. These things look insurmountable at first sight, but I think achieving them simply takes a sustained application of effort. I say "I think" because I haven't checked off all the boxes myself yet :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you need to learn leadership. You need to learn how to lead. First yourself, and then others. If you haven't done anything on the application, and you want to apply, then start doing them. Lead yourself down the path that will make you get there.

All the problems you mention are solvable by yourself. You can find a co- founder outside your school. In your community, heck, here on HN. Its done all the time. You can buy a scale model bus, a router and a LCD screen and create your own bus schedule timer if you want to hack something like some guy just did: [http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/ambient-bus-arrival-monitor- from...](http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/ambient-bus-arrival-monitor-from- hacked.html) (you know they don't mean hacking in the illegal sense right?)

I don't think the question you should be asking is "what if I'm not good enough," its "why haven't I been motivated to do something in my life yet."

That being said, don't worry if the answer is "I just haven't felt like it yet." Some people make it to the Olympics when they're teenagers, some people bloom late in life and decide to get off their ass. Its all up to you.

</comment><comment><USER4> "A man must love something very much to practice it not only without hope of fame or fortune but without hope of doing it well." -G.K. Chesterton

</comment><comment><USER5> It really all starts with you. You need to build up a little snowball effect.

Pick something you feel that is impressive & enjoyable & work on it for a while (set a deadline of a few weeks for a MVP)

Get your cool projects working on the web & gather links together, create a portfolio of your most interesting work, perhaps start a blog.

Go to some meetups, travel if you have to. Stay longer than the 'event' to chat with other folks - ask what they are working on.

If you can afford, pick a couple of new startups that you think are cool & offer your time/help to them.

Within a matter of months you have projects created & curated, they're visible to those you connect with.

Putting yourself in these situations leads to serendipitous moments that would be impossible to engineer.

You have the main thing - the ability. People are interested in what you do with that & where you take it!

</comment><comment><USER6> I would consider getting a position at a very young start-up.

A small start-up would appreciate the cheap labor and the enthusiasm for the field that you bring. You will appreciate the chance to sharpen your skills and get experience in all of the tasks that come with being a part of a start- up. If you have some programming knowledge and a solid work ethic you will be a welcome member to some organization. They are taking a risk hiring someone without a deep background and you are taking a risk working for cheap with a company that may not succeed.

Second, I ran across a quote from Linus Torvalds that was along the lines of 'Do you keep track of what Windows is up to when you are working on Linux?' Linus: 'No, I simply do the best that I can.'. I think you need to keep this in mind as you self analyze.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't think, just do.

The measure of you being good enough isn't whether you get into YC.

The measure of you being good enough is creating a successful business that is profitable and will hopefully run itself when you leave it.

You're not going to get there without failing a few times and learning some hard lessons, but you can get there if you give it a shot. So what if your first, second, or third business doesn't get accepted into YC? Don't run a business with the goal of getting into YC. Run it because you love the idea and would rather do that than anything else; anywhere.

Like I said earlier... Don't think, just do.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm disappointed you ask whether you're not good enough to get into YC.. Why not ask whether you're good enough to start a profitable business instead? If you're good enough for YC, that just means you can impress others, that's all.

</comment><comment><USER9> The CS department at my university had nothing about Y Combinator either. It had the largest, most prestigious tech companies handing out job offers and well-known grad programs handing out admission letters instead.

Frankly, not everyone is meant for the Silicon Valley rat race. Not everyone's cool idea can be canned into a website or a mobile-phone app. Some people think differently.

I encourage you to try it. Don't believe in Y Combinator. Don't believe in Silicon Valley and its silly "startup" culture (SV-style start-ups make up the vocal minority of all _actual_ start-ups). What is it _you_ want to do? Believe in _yourself_.

Giga Drill Breakers will follow.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey, not being good enough can be an awesome motivator.

There's a saying that goes it's better to be the worst musician in a band rather than be the best. More room to grow.</comment>


The Persistence of Nahua Culture - <AUTHOR> http://publications.newberry.org/aztecs/section_4_home.html <comment><USER2> "Nahua" as in "Nahuatl", the language of the Aztecs, although maybe it's a more general term which includes related languages and peoples.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Cheers to my fellow Mexicans! (:

</comment><comment><USER4> thanks for sharing!</comment>


Ask HN: How do I create that mental reset effect Monday has on me? - <AUTHOR> For the past year or so, I have discovered that my motivation levels are super high(relatively speaking) on a Monday morning. That is true even when I didn't really have a good week or weekend prior to that. True even when I didn't have enough sleep the night before. I am just up with a resolve to fix things that didn't go my way. I experience more of self-compassion.
I have heard people talk about Monday blues and have experienced it myself for several years when I was working regular tech job. Now, I work on my own startup and it's not like it is doing great esp. in current times. In-spite of that I experience the above quite often.
Do other people feel the same ? Is it just normal 'stuck at job' vs 'excitement at startup' effect ? How long will this last ? I feel like there is more to it. I wished I had a way of creating this effect when I was working at a job. Do people have productivity hacks to trick your brains into recreating this mid- week ? Does this effect have a name in psychology literature ? <comment><USER2> If you work at a job where you don't feel the agency of your decision making and output, if you're working for "the man", it can be relatively demotivating.

If you're working for yourself, and you know why you're doing something, and how you'll benefit from your labor, you'll have a more direct link to your motivation.

If you're working for an institution and you don't feel that agency, you might need a meta-objective. This is where people look to climb the ladder, or learn a skill that allows them to bounce to another institution for more pay and responsibility, etc. If you can't see any of those paths, it can be very difficult to feel the motivation, unless you're intrinsically motivated and all the work you have in front of you feeds your needs.

<comment><USER3> Very interesting observation. So for folks who find no intrinsic value in the actual output of their jobs, they seek out other forms of motivation to keep from feeling bad about working in such a demoralizing field.

Not to toss around stereotypes but this sounds like every single MBA I've ever met.

<comment><USER4> > Not to toss around stereotypes but [..] like every single [..]

:eyeroll: are my eyes rolling out of my sockets or am i too drunk to be shitposting on hn?

<comment><USER3> I should have rephrased as "disclaimer: what follows is a stereotype, but..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this depends on a lot of factors.

First off, I work for a large tech company, and I experience the excited-to- do-work-on-Monday effect you mention sometimes. Prior to working at this large tech company, I had worked for several startups, and came into work on Monday prepared for tedium sometimes. I don't think it's as easy as startup-vs-big- corp.

Second, it depends a lot on what excites you. One way I've heard it expressed is "Starters" vs. "Finishers." Some people love turning an idea into reality, but lack the patience to polish the experience. Some people prefer the polish work to starting with a blank slate. It helps to know if you are one or the other (or neither). In start-ups, you spend a lot more time in zero-to-reality rather than reality-to-polish mode. In big companies, it depends on what team/project you're on.

Sometimes, excitement levels increase by spending some time away from a task. If, for example, you schedule all your meetings on Wednesday, it will mean you've been away from any project work for 24 hours by the time you look at it on Thursday, potentially with a fresh set of eyes.

There's probably a lot of other factors at play in what makes someone excited for work. I think it involves knowing yourself (or having someone you work with who knows you well and willing to advise) in order to come up wtih a plan.

</comment><comment><USER6> Kanban has really helped me keep the Monday sense of urgency all week long. I feel very focused on Monday because people tend to schedule meetings, things get kicked off, there are clear next steps; you're usually not bringing the previous week's baggage into the new week. By Wednesday more things are in- flight, blocked, ramping up, ramping down; there's more mental baggage; it's harder to have mental clarity around what needs to be done and what I should prioritize.

Putting those things into kanban helps me get all of that juggling out of my head and onto a board where I don't have to be mentally burdened by it. It becomes easier to focus on what's at the top of my queue -- if something gets blocked I have a place to park it, and if I'm blocking someone I've got an appropriately-prioritized place in the backlog to park it until I can help. It also helps me limit the amount of "Work In Progress" so I can turn my full focus onto whatever my top priority is at that moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. Do you use it just for work stuff or even personal ? Sorry, I have about kanban but not very familiar.

<comment><USER7> Not OP, but I also have a personal kanban at work to get stuff out of my head. The team has a JIRA, but my personal kanban is explicitly separate and private, so that I don't have to redact what goes on there. Every little idea for a code refactoring or a library update can go in there without making a huge mess for others. The JIRA tickets assigned to me also go in there, and I use checklists to break down tickets into individual steps. (The kanban is in a private GitHub repo, so the checklists are those found in GitHub-flavored Markdown.)

If I ever find myself utterly stuck or blocked on the current task, I can pull up some small quick-win task from the backlog in my kanban to get my mind unstuck. Plus I'm always able to say that I accomplished at least something by the end of the day, even if 80% was spent hunting some elusive bug without producing anything to show for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I will try this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Try to introspect why. I'll make a suggestion to start you off.

On friday you have a number of problems that you can't see how to tackle properly and it's disheartening. Having two days to sleep on it, you've subconsciously seen a way forward so that block's gone.

It's probably not that but I'd urge you to look inwards and see what you find.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe an odd suggestion, but I do this during the day and find it refreshing: buy a pair of industrial-strength soundproof earmuffs and an eye cover (for sleeping.) Put both on and meditate for 10-15 minutes, or if possible, lay down on a couch or bed. I always feel refreshed after 'resetting' my sensory inputs in this manner.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. any particular meditation technique you recommend ?

<comment><USER9> Oh, just keep it simple. I like to focus on breathing because I find it easy/requires less mental preparation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I take time off from a job to literally soul-search: meditation, reading, spiritual practice. Doing things for no metric or goal at all except to feel good about myself through the experience. When my insides aren't OK, I can't perform on the outside.

</comment><comment><USER11> Take a day off in the middle of the week.

<comment><AUTHOR> sigh ! if only, that was possible at a job. Wonder if any companies have tried this. a day off midweek instead of two day weekend. That probably affects the momentum

<comment><USER12> It would also affect the weekend. It takes a day for the stress to disappear, and by Sunday 2pm it's back, but it's a glorious couple of hours Sunday morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really know this same Monday feeling. I'm ready for anything on Monday morning but often out of gas by Tuesday afternoon. I'm just now learning to be sensitive to this rhythm.

It doesn't always work with my schedule or the demands of the job, but most weeks I am able to build in some buffers following long, focused work periods.

Example: Monday, I'll start early, work long (often into the next morning), break only for meals or the bathroom, and accomplish much across multiple projects. Then, on Tuesday morning, I'll sip my coffee slowly, exercise, read leisurely, and eventually take care of administrative tasks like processing email or writing up project updates. When Wednesday comes around, I'm ready to work long and deep again.

I work best when I can take advantage of my most energized days and give myself space to recover following those days.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm also a startup founder and I try to stay disciplined in keeping a can-do attitude all week. The main principles I try to stick to are:

* Uplift with gratitude

* Take breaks

* Breakdown overwhelming tasks

* Celebrate small wins

* Be clear on your motivation

Breaking down tasks is one of the most important ones for me. I find that if a task isn't well-defined or small enough, I dread starting it. I've started doing "braindumps" on any task that isn't small and actionable until I get there.

Post for more details: [https://link.medium.com/PSWM5I8Vo6](https://link.medium.com/PSWM5I8Vo6)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think you just described my last 18 months. As soon as December of 2018 hit my motivation died in IT. Having left tech taking a few months off, I feel great. Other projects around the house are fun ; things I used to hate doing are now enjoyable. As soon as the projects run out though, wondering what to do next to get back into it - job wise.

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess you have to find out what excites you! Does meaningfulness from work drive that sense of excitement? Perhaps it could be your own personal project that excites you. Personally, I enjoy what I learn from working as a software engineer and writing them down coherently as blog posts. This help to cement my understanding and also give me the ability to share with others. One example is my article regarding design patterns that I was learning just a week ago! Hope to share with you all (:

[https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-cloud- de...](https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-cloud-design- pattern)

Or perhaps you could start an active lifestyle again. Working out always helps to curb motivation issues at times. Give that a try!

</comment><comment><USER17> Do you think this could be sleep related? I still am guilty of sleeping a lot on the weekends (so Mondays feel great!) then running myself into the end of the ground by the end of week. Do not recommend for anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think so. It's just the feeling of starting fresh

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Think of it this way. Why can't you just go and write the code to solve all the big problems in one day?

Because of the context switch between problems. Each one requires more energy to think about and switch to.

Each night is like preparation for the next big context switch.

One thing I do that helps is I set little 10-30min timers and say "I'll do this in this time". Gaming your time helps a lot.

But things like coffee and drugs are just taking energy away that you would have later. So it's not a net gain.

Sleep/naps are the best reset mechanisms IMO.

</comment><comment><USER19> I experience the same thing and I think it's the result of subconscious processing over the weekend.

I find this is only true while I'm working on a job or project I care about, but I generally arrive Monday morning and it's like my fingers just know what to do all on their own. Problems that confounded me on Friday don't even seem like problems anymore. I know what to do and I know how to do it.

I catch myself thinking about work over the weekends often, and I suspect an even bigger part of it is subconscious.

</comment><comment><USER20> Meditation. Guided, unguided, silent, musical, 10 mins, an hour, Calm, Headspace, doesn't matter. Try it out, see what works for you, and see the results for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER21> I suggest regular 4-day weekends in which you silence work notifications completely.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here is something you can try that I find very useful.

The night before, plan out your biggest tasks. Then when Monday comes, you can hit the ground running. You know exactly what you need to focus on.

<comment><USER23> While your advice still applies, it seems you might've misread the thread: the asker already has Mondays nailed down, they're asking how to expand that elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Mostly I enjoy working on most stuff when there are no blockers. So I work on minimizing blockers so I am not getting interrupted by stuff I could have avoided.

</comment><comment><USER25> Take 2 days off.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you take every Monday off then this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

<comment><USER27> I don't think they're saying it's a problem.</comment></comment>


What Is the Chaos Communication Camp? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/svenreissmann/status/1167132987705761792 <comment><USER2> The art team at CCCamp19 pulled out all the stops these year. It was glorious!</comment>


Launch with bugs - <AUTHOR> http://scottmeade.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/launch-with-bugs-its-okay-really/

<comment><USER2> How many (and what type) bugs you can afford to let slide really depends on your users' needs:

As a biomedical technology, we have to demonstrate the scientific accuracy of the product we ship. We also have to be aware of the consequences of bugs to our users. While Facebook users may not mind a slightly finicky widget, laboratory technicians are much more sensitive.

I'm all for rapid iteration and product development, but I think it's important to ship things that are context-appropriate. I also feel that there's substantial, if intangible, value to being proud of what you ship.

I worry that a culture of shipping somewhat-broken things may end up doing us harm.

<comment><USER3> That was my first thought as well. I make unmanned helicopters -- it's cool to ship a half-ton flying machine with software bugs, right?

But the article did at least make it clear that the advice was targeted at smaller SaaS providers. Depending on the users needs, that might be okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sigh, more "everybody do this" writing. I guess the internet loves binaries and absolutely hates subtlety, but does shit like this really need to keep being brought up when the really appropriate answer is just do what your audience will put up with?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think whether or not it's a good idea to launch has to do with what those bugs are. The number of bugs is pretty much irrelevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. So, more accurately, don't let the fear that their just might be undiscovered small bugs prevent you from launching.

<comment><USER6> Not just undiscovered bugs but non-critical bugs. If it doesn't cause data corruption then I say launch and fix it later.

Fixing that bug is probably less valuable than getting the feature into the hands of users.

Also, don't stress about "losing" users. There are plenty of users and you'll be surprised how forgiving your users will be if you're open about bugs and fixing them.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. It's better to just get the product out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wasn't surprised to see this was a Rails developer.

</comment><comment><USER9> More appropriate title should have been "launch with lots of bugs and it is still ok" in the context of this post. "Launch with bugs" will have meaning when you could actually launch without bugs. Of course, any software will have bugs when launched or even if well matured.

</comment><comment><USER10> Works well when you control the patch/upgrade deployment. Not so good when you don't. And not so good when it stops your customer doing what they want to do.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is too general ... "Launch with bugs that are unimportant to the main features of your product" might be better.

<comment><USER12> Bingo. I've seen (and shipped...) a lot of shit software under the guise of "bugs are OK--done is better than perfect...right? ...guys?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's as if the author believes that Basecamp was released with +100 known bugs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nobody's perfect, you cannot choose, start with, or without bugs...</comment>


I Used to Want to Work for Google - <AUTHOR> https://blackhole12.blogspot.com/2017/09/i-used-to-want-to-work-for-google.html <comment><USER2> I also _used_ to want to work for Google, but for a different reason. Early in college, I had read the original Google whitepaper from the 90's, and I had a view of google doing lots of cool tech work and lots of open, beneficial research. I viewed them as a positive force on the industry.

Then, senior year, I ended up flying out to California for an onsite interview. The all day event included meeting many people for interviews, tours, and discussions. Not a single one was doing open research, or Android development, or anything similar.

They were all directly, or at least moderately involved, with Building and targeting ads "better".

That shattered my world view. I had always viewed working for large companies as a positive thing, a protective and supportive environment that could afford to invest in employees and their future and work with them to improve lives.

Nope, every member of google was a cog to either squeeze more ad revenue out of the world, or burn money to push their ad infrastructure into other markets.

The amount of money Google makes is mind numbing, and it nearly all comes from selling space on infrastructure for programs and software whose core design is to convince you to spend money, no exception.

The amount of money spent all around me every day just to attempt to bend my will, to convince me to spend my hard earned dollars on this or that, utterly terrifies me.

<comment><USER3> > or Android development

You've got lucky. Android catches up with internal Windows dev nowadays. Last time I met with Google engineers, they told me Android team was always on fire because of target release dates, infinite bug backlog and other similar stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I quit right before Windows 10 came out because I knew it was going to be a disaster."

What? This does not make much sense. The post, as a whole, reads immaturely. Microsoft also may have missed market opportunities, but to call the entire company and its employees incompetent is quite the claim to make. If he truly believes that, I fear there is no company that is moral, ethical, or full of enough smart employees to be deemed worthy of his talent. I hope he is working on being a capable entrepreneur, in this case.

<comment><USER5> Sense?! it's a Google bashing post; it'll do well here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> " _The problem is that there aren 't many other options. Google is evil, Facebook is evil, Apple is evil if you care about open hardware, Microsoft is too stupid to be evil but might at some point become evil again, and Amazon is probably evil and may or may not treat it's employees like shit depending on who you ask. At some point, you have to put food on the table._"

He is speaking as if there were only 4 or 5 technology companies working for in the _whole world_.

<comment><USER7> Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are the "Ivy League" companies. They are high ROI, you will work with a selective group of peers, these peers will remain an important part of your network after you "graduate", and putting Apple etc. on your resume will make you eminently hirable or foundable.

I know this list of companies from constant press exposure. I know this list of benefits from having gone to Apple from my (state) college, seeing the effect this has had on my career and opportunities, and comparing experiences with colleagues who went to name-brand schools.

Is there a comparable list for non-profits and social purpose and benefit organizations?

If someone wants to maximize their earnings, peer quality, technical challenge, and impact, they know where to turn. If they want to maximize their social impact instead of earnings, while still working on challenging problems with quality peers, the mainstream and technology media aren't giving them this guidance. Is there a guide for this?

IWBNI the decision process for working on positive impact projects were _easier_ than deciding to work for profit, given that one has to take a salary hit to do the former. (And maybe it is, and I just don't know where to advise that someone look.)

"There's a reason they call it compensation."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Apple is evil if you care about open hardware_

This seems like a really weird stretch, included to justify the narrative of the "big 5" being evil. Apple not caring about open hardware isn't _evil_. That's kind of like saying Starbucks is evil because they don't care about non-coffee-based energy drinks.

> _Microsoft is too stupid to be evil but might at some point become evil > again_

This is less of a stretch, but still pretty weak.

<comment><USER9> The various collusion incidents would have been better to bring up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Power once gained tends to be used. Google makes a lot of money, that translates into a lot of power, and that is going to be used to the advantage of Google's stakeholders, whether in soft ways or hard. That's not to say that all big and powerful companies do really obnoxious things. There are definitely differences between the morally compromised and the truly evil. But the tendency is toward worse, not better.

If you have a problem with that, you need to find an employer that is on the smaller side or in a market where there are lots of competitors. That way, the company just _can 't_ push around others all that much. But a company like that is probably running on very lean margins, so it can't afford to be generous to its employees.

<comment><USER9> > ...that is going to be used to the advantage of Google's stakeholders...

Except the censorship things Google is doing aren't in the best interest of the stockholders. Various _stakeholders_ (senior level execs) may be _interested_ in censoring people, but those interests are at odds with being a politically boring company that uses its marketing muscles to sell its products.

</comment></comment><comment> compiler-guy During the nineties, plenty of people thought Microsoft did plenty of evil things. Truly evil things, so I'm not sure the argument that Microsoft is incompetent, instead of evil, is very persusasive.

An outsider often sees evil where an insider sees good reasons.

<comment><USER11> He didn't say that Microsoft had never done anything evil, he said they hadn't done anything evil while he was at Microsoft. In fact, he said this:

 _This is evil. This is horrifying. This is the kind of stuff Microsoft did in the 90s that made everyone hate it so much they still have to fight against the repercussions of decisions made two decades ago because of the sheer amount of damage they did and lives they ruined._

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well they can take you for a one month long intensive recruitment ride only to dismiss you with a false negative (they can afford it on all fronts). At the end of the day Google is just an ad company. Everyone hates ads. I don't claim to be above it and if I had a serious offer from Google I would consider it, but it ceased to be my dream or even a goal long time ago.

BTW The corporate promotion of multiculturalism and sexual minorities has very primitive motivation. It just happens that most of the cheap workforce is mostly male, from various south Asian regions, plus there is justified black guilt in the Anglosphere. The cheap workforce has to be agreeable and inner fights or conflicts are undesired.

</comment><comment><USER13> Agree or disagree with his reasoning, but this is the crux:

> This is the kind of stuff Microsoft did in the 90s that made everyone hate > it so much they still have to fight against the repercussions of decisions > made two decades ago...

The grumblings that, only a year ago, were reserved for the hardliners have now started to gain steam amongst the general in-the-know developer population.

Soon, technologists will start thinking of alternates to Google when choosing what products and APIs to use. Eventually whole companies will sprout up just to provide competitive products that only serve the need of not being in the Google ecosystem.

It's the circle of life.

</comment><comment><USER14> > This is evil. (...) This is the kind of stuff Microsoft did in the 90s

and

> at no point did I think Microsoft was doing something evil

It honestly seems like the author is lacking empathy and looking for a way to justify going back to Microsoft.

I sympathize with his point that Google seems to be doing many things that aren't "good" but outright calling the entire company "evil" is not productive.

And I also turned down an offer from them, in part from the increased focus on share value, but I don't consider them outright evil. Companies are complex and should never just be reduced to "evil".

</comment><comment><USER15> Why work for a big evil company when you can work for a small evil startup?

</comment><comment><USER16> I share some reservations with the author of this post but this reads like a rambling rant more than a coherent piece of thought.

I don't want to work for companies where the toxicity permeates through the culture, and I assume that that feeling is close to how the author feels when he mentions now wanting to work for "evil" companies.

But the fact is that whole institutions aren't really evil or good - they are merely reflections of the people who are incharge of them at that moment. You can see that in any company that has gone through massive managerial changes - the company's culture & outlook has changed with them. Microsoft is the most prominent example of that.

So is Google evil or is it just that its policies as dictated by the current managerial top layer contradicts with your morality?

I guess any sufficiently large company will quickly start pushing the boundaries of ethics just by the virtue of being powerful enough to influence other people.

To avoid working at such companies you can always choose to work at the second fiddle tech shops - which provide just as much of an engineering competence (if that is what you care about primarily) without the power of influencing policies. Then you can be sufficiently happy.

Also it is hilarious to talk about putting food on the table at this day and age - yes compensation between companies can heavily vary but even a moderately competent software developer today makes more than they need just to make ends meet.

</comment><comment><USER17> Google used to want me to work for them, but some years ago, the fairly frequent recruiting attempts became less frequent and then dried up.

</comment><comment><USER18> All those companies named there can be considered "evil"(operating with their interest in mind) in one way or the other and yes Amazon is. They stopped selling the Chromecast and Apple TV because it competed with its own product, the FireTV.

If Google decided to pull all Amazon's apps that competed with its own in the Play Store people would have been running around with their pitch fork at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway.

People sometimes also dont care to work for a company because of the company's altruistic nature but for "selfish" reasons like, the prestige, paycheck and perks. There are non profits for those who care solely for this kind of thing.

I am not condoning or criticizing people for working wherever they please but not everyone wants the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why was this post flagged? Yes it's a bit of a rant, but overall the topic is definitely valid. And most of the author's basic observations (if not his overly charged moral characterizations) seem reasonably valid, also.

<comment><USER20> Though I didn't flag it myself, this is just bad writing.

The post is so over-the-top inflammatory I can't take anything seriously. That's what people are likely reacting to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So don't. Isn't it that simple?

</comment><comment><USER22> It's an advertising company. Those tend to be bad.

<comment><USER23> Exactly. At its essence, advertising is manipulation. There is no _good_ manipulation, at least not from a corporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> isn't blogspot.com a google owned product?

<comment><USER25> Yep, they bought it in 2003. Funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is all so hyperbolic it's hard to do anything but laugh.

Google has made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. Evil? Nah.

<comment><USER19> I agree that the post was overly hyperbolic.

But unfortunately by this point it's beyond dispute that Google has engaged in some seriously questionable behavior, on ethical fronts -- such that to refer to this conduct as a serious "mistakes" smacks of denial, or whitewashing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What even Erik is talking about? Why is it wrong? Can someone explain if you have a view?

</comment><comment><USER28> At this point, the large compensation package offered at these places is starting to look like hush money to keep your mouth shut and to turn a blind eye towards anything that looks from the outside like some kind of systematic manipulation (e.g. of public opinion, suppression of disconcerting viewpoints).

</comment><comment><USER29> "flagged" Gooooooooooglllllllerrrrrrsssssss Time to find a website that isn't infected by a virus.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love this. Posted at 1:04 in the AM. Seemingly a drunken rant (kudos if it isn't). I love the internet =)

</comment><comment><USER31> Gay rights aren't stupid</comment>


SiriusXM to Acquire Pandora - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pandora.com/us/siriusxm-to-acquire-pandora-creating-worlds-largest-audio-entertainment-company/ <comment><USER2> I haven't had a chance to rant about this in a while, so, I'll warn you that a rant is ahead.

I get the sense that the pendulum is going to start swinging back again soon. The media companies have almost won control again, and they're going to repeat the same mistakes that they made before. The difference now is that they have the internet under fuller control. PirateBay, Grooveshark, Limewire, Napster. Those are the music distribution channels that I grew up with because the media companies squeezed too hard. I'm happy to pay for music, but I'm not happy to pay 5 different subscriptions to listen to a small amount of their libraries. When I buy music, I want it to be mine. I don't want to have access to someone else's music. It's my collection. My impression is that people haven't realized this yet, but they will.

Soundcloud is a zombie - effectively dead. They abandoned their business model so they could grow more, and ceded power to the large record labels.

Try looking for Jay-Z's "The Blueprint" on Spotify.

How many people do you know who have a Deezer account?

SiriusXM's acquisition of Pandora is like Verizon's acquisition of AOL. They're grabbing the long tail of users and platform integrations so that they have the negotiating power with Universal, WB, and Sony to push out the same music that our parents (and now, even their parents) listened to.

I, for one, welcome the consolidation. The harder you lock the sidewalks down, the richer the underground becomes. And the underground is where creativity thrives.

The solutions to illegally acquired music will have different technical implementations, but the same effect (ipv6 feels like it will be necessary in this), and my suspicion is that we'll start heading back that way in the next few years.

<comment><USER3> > When I buy music, I want it to be mine.

For me, Bandcamp has been the best site that holds true to this idea. My favorite band started releasing all of their music through Bandcamp because the pricing is fair for artists. And as a listener, I can download the music to my machine or stream it from the app after I have purchased it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I try to search artists I find on Bandcamp first.

Also, CDBaby and Magnatune are still great sites for their respective niches.

(CDBaby started as a more traditional CD distributor and has moved increasingly into digital distribution, as opposed to Bandcamp starting with digital distribution and moving to physical distribution. Anyway, CDBaby has a larger back catalog of "older" stuff, and still some cases of for instance bands don't have digital distribution rights to their own stuff, but piles of old CDs to sell.)

(Magnatune is a "not evil" record label. So their content is limited to just stuff they've "signed", but it's a beautiful, eclectic mix of stuff. Much of which you'll see reused in small to medium projects such as the videogame Braid's soundtrack, because their licensing has a good spectrum from non- commercial Creative Commons usage to relatively affordable commercial usage.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only amazing music streaming product I've seen was already acquired and killed off: Rdio.

It was heads and shoulders above the rest, especially when it came to international content and recommendations. Their recommendations were amazing.

<comment><USER6> I miss Grooveshark.

<comment><USER7> Don't get me wrong Gooveshark had possibly the best UI of all the streaming services but it was largely successful because all the content was pirated.

<comment><USER6> I know. I wish they had been able to go legit. As someone who went to UF (for CS) soon after they closed, I missed having a company like that in the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My gripe with SiriusXM is their pricing model (worse than the cable company). You only buy it when they have a special which makes it 50% off, that is actually a fair price. However in 6 months it will auto-renew at the public rate, snd they hope you won't notice or you'll be too lazy to call.

Their call center is horrendous but at least if you threaten to cancel they will magically find another special that's good for 6 months. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Don't even get me started with their additional fees that they try and mask as being regulatory/licensing. That's their freaking business, to license content so they can broadcast it. Just like the airlines, it pisses me off when they try and pass their cost of doing business (actually the whole basis of the product) off as an additional fee.

I will never do business with them again due to these deceptive practices. Hopefully I'm not the only one.

<comment><USER9> You could replace "SiriusXM" in your comment with "<insert your ISP here>" and it would still be 100% relevant. Fortunately for you, SiriusXM is easily replaceable ... your ISP? Not so much.

<comment><USER10> My ISP doesn't have anywhere near as shady marketing practices. Does yours regularly ignore do-not-call and do-not-mail requests? Do they send misleading envelopes that don't have their brand on the outside? Mine (AT&T) doesn't.

<comment><USER9> I was speaking specifically to their predatory "intro rates" and added fees which obscure the actual price of the service.

<comment><USER11> Comcast most definitely does this in my area, and even withholds higher speed tiers unless you bundle with TV and phone.

Luckily, I have the choice of getting gfiber for 1/3 the cost of comcast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SiriusXM is more than a music service that competes with Apple Music, Google Play Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify. It is currently the only streaming service where I can get news and a wide range of live event programming via one app and/or the head unit in my car.

Acquiring Pandora could be huge for SiriusXM provided they integrate Pandora into the SiriusXM app and don't raise SiriusXM packages beyond the historic rate of package price increases.

</comment><comment><USER13> Both services seem like great ideas that have largely gone extinct. Radio that you never lose reception with... streaming music with a user-seeded playlist... just hard to get excited about in 2018. Or 2008 really.

<comment><USER14> > _Radio that you never lose reception with_

And sadly this isn't even the case. I recently purchased a new car that came with the SiriusXM 3-month trial. We drop reception in the country and in town (among tall buildings). In fact, it drops more often than mobile internet (why doesn't XM have 10s buffer?).

The subscription is also more expensive than Apple Music or Google Play Music and the car comes with Android Auto and CarPlay. How they expect to compete is beyond me. I guess that's why they bought Pandora.

<comment><USER9> > why doesn't XM have 10s buffer?

It's odd because some of the first generation Sirius radios touted "DVR" like functionality, which makes it clear that buffering is possible. I would imagine they started to phase out that element of the hardware because of cost (especially since most are bundled with the vehicle)

In the same line of thinking, my navigation apps (Google Maps and Waze) also glitch out when driving through extended length tunnels (under Boston for example). I find this odd given that the app knows my route, and these tunnels are used by millions each year.

<comment><USER15> I worked on some of those XM radios with the DVR/buffering capability, before the merger.

Really, it was just limited to the amount of storage you had. I think the one I did allowed up to 30 minutes but of course you lost it when you switched channels.

The music is so insanely compressed (the _best_ channels were 32 kbit AAC+) and RAM/Flash is so much cheaper now, it could really be anything you wanted these days.

The satellite signal itself has a bit of time diversity in it (in case one of the birds disappears), like about 1500 mSec worth, as well as terrestrial backup transmitters in most cities (SXM's dirty little secret), so if you really have loss of signal you must be underground for a while.

<comment><USER16> I lose reception in the forests outside my metro area. Exactly the place I would most want to use it since I have more than a few enjoyable radio stations available to me in the city. When I lose reception on them, I also tend to lose reception on XM. At least enough to be annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Discussed earlier today here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18058748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18058748)

</comment><comment><USER18> Pandora used to have a CLI that I would use daily - I could hop into a tab and + or - a song and get a constantly updating playlist. I haven't used it in years though.

<comment><USER7> Pianobar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this will be a good thing, it shows SiriusXM is going to extend their online presence which currently runs for $10 a month. If this price point starts to includes Pandora it's pretty compelling. Nice channels that are curated with a dj if you like or a well developed algorithmic playlist. As a business it's good they realize groth won't be coming much from their satellite network.

</comment><comment><USER20> To be honest, I haven't seriously used Pandora since around 2006 or 2007. It was wonderful for music discovery before the rise of smartphones and streaming services. I've had the Pandora app on my phone for years, but I rarely ever use it. I don't see how it can compete these days. So Sirius XM totally makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really like Pandora as a discovery service, for some reason Spotify's Radio feature isn't quite as good yet.

<comment> kyle-rb Agreed; I discovered a lot of music through Pandora. In my experience Spotify tends to stagnate on the artist you seed the radio station with, whereas Pandora introduces more variety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is everyone reporting this deal is worth 3.5B. It's worth 2.5B.

<comment><USER23> Pandora's press release says so [http://blog.pandora.com/us/siriusxm-to- acquire-pandora-creat...](http://blog.pandora.com/us/siriusxm-to-acquire- pandora-creating-worlds-largest-audio-entertainment-company/) "we announced that we've entered into an agreement to be acquired by SiriusXM, in an all- stock transaction, valued at approximately $3.5 billion"

They're presumably paying a premium on the current stock price.

<comment><USER22> Do the math yourself.</comment></comment></comment>