Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age? - <AUTHOR> I've been programming for nearly 40 years and it is still my favorite thing to do. A while back I was reorganized out of the job I had been in for the previous eight years and found myself, for the first time in my career, without a job.
After taking a break and working on a non-technology passion project for several months I am now starting to get back into software development. I have read a bit here and there about alleged age discrimination and wonder if a) that's a real thing and b) if it is a real thing what can I do to minimize the adverse effect on my job search.
So, assuming the truth, more or less, of (b) I am trying to figure out how to present myself during the initial contact with potential employers. One one hand (hand one!) I'm tempted to try to avoid clues in my resume as to my age, but on the other hand I think that the right employer will see my age and experience as an asset.
Hand One might have the advantage of getting me in to a face-to-face interview where I believe I can show that I have desirable traits. But on the other hand I'm not sure I would want to work at a company where ageism is an issue.
Comments?
ps. I had more than one recruiter ask me for my birthdate: "Just Month and Day". I suppose they don't know that I know that it's obvious that my age could be easily determined (+- a bit) if armed with my Birthdate Month and Day, Name, and Location. <comment><USER3> I've built a number of teams, and have repeatedly had the fortune of anchoring the back-end with a senior engineer over age 50. Experience matters, and it helps the entire team from a morale, design, and process perspective. You don't want to work for someone who doesn't recognize that anyway...

I wish I could be so lucky to attract senior candidates at my current gig; they're hard to come by at a trendy downtown-SF mobile commerce pre-series-A startup. Instead, I'm inundated with fresh code-bootcamp graduates. I'd be much more comfortable hiring those junior developers if I knew they would be able to sit next to a reliable senior teammate...

That said, if you're worried about being hired, start by building something on your own! You'll make yourself much more marketable if you show that you can pick up new technologies and actually release something.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. I have had the pleasure of being the junior person sitting next to someone who was close to retirement. His perspective of, "Ok, what are we really trying to do here?" was invaluable. The best teams are always genuinely diverse and seek to really get to know what's special about each other.

One suggestion: don't worry about dating yourself by talking about old tech you once worked on. For some reason the older developers I've worked with take a while to getting around to telling you about the time they wrote LISP in Genera on a Symbolics 3640 for cutting edge CAD/CAM/simulation tools at Boeing in the mid 80s or whatever (such cred!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Also, outside of SF, the ageism is much much milder_

Agreed, it seems outside the cultural bubble of the Bay Area the entire technical workforce seems to be aging. I see fewer and fewer of the younger generations entering tech outside of a few markets like the Bay Area and Austin.

I have a theory, that it is due to the work force being more mobile, as well as the younger work force having less to tie them down. There was also, consolidation of the start-up markets and a lot of other markets lost ground while the Bay Area gained. I think this creates a natural draw for the younger portions of our workforce.

Most of the individuals I run across outside of a few specific markets are mid-30's to mid 50's and age seems to be a less relevant factor.

<comment><USER6> My theory is that having roommates only works when you're young. When you're married and/or have children, you need your own place. That makes it much harder to stay in the most expensive city in the U.S., rent wise.

<comment><USER7> I believe this is the case also. There is a Quora thread on the pros and cons on raising kids in the bay area[1].

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Is-Silicon-Valley-a-good-place-to- raise...](http://www.quora.com/Is-Silicon-Valley-a-good-place-to-raise- children-Why)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't give out SSN or Birthdate information until after an on-site interview when you're at the offer stage. Someone dishonest can use that information for identity theft.

I'm already starting to be concerned about age discrimination, and I'm only 40 years old! It's very disturbing when you go on an interview and you're the oldest person there by 10+ years.

The only way out is to start your own business. Do you have enough savings? If you do, consider trying to bootstrap your own thing instead of going back to being an employee.

<comment><USER9> Thats 1) A bit depressing - you seem to be conveying that there is no other possibility 2) Starting a new business is not everyone's cup of tea. Even for a young person. Its loaded with risks.

I do face this as well. Age does slow down a person. But age also helps us make haste slowly. I've seen younger engineers scattering their energy around, and then coming to realize that the common sense option was the best. And older programmers (like me) might be too set in our ways.

Can an old dog be taught new tricks? I'd say to test that, make sure you learn a new programming language every year. Show it with non-trivial projects on your github or other profile. Thats proof that you're still sharp.

Edit : Also _adopt_ a new editor every year. That shows you can step out of your comfort zone. (I need to kick that emacs habit).

<comment><USER10> I think one of the advantages of being older is that it gives one the wisdom to be more selective about tools. I'm an expert in the tools I use (C, C++ and Python, mostly, although I know a dozen-odd languages well enough to crash a program in them) and not hugely keen on learning new ones. I poke around at new languages now and then but quickly learn they are either a) so much like ones I know there's nothing special or b) Haskell or Erlang, which I've run at a couple of times hard enough to be convinced there is something interesting there but not hard enough to really have learned much.

So rather than learn a new language every year I aim to learn something about the languages I already spend most of my time in. Functional techniques in Python, the new features in C++14... things like that.

Nor do I see any value in learning a new editor. Really, editing is a solved problem and if you're familiar with vi, teco, emacs, VisualStudio, Eclipse and that other one whose name I don't remember that Microchip based MPLABX on you've covered enough ground that anything you encounter is going to look basically familiar.

I've met programmers young and old who won't leave their comfort zone that I acknowledge it's a real problem, but I don't think you need to spend too much time very far afield of your core expertise to keep current.

<comment><USER11> The editor thing can be kind of important. People who stick with emacs or vim tend to be horrible with following coding standards and being able to review and navigate code efficiently. There's nothing like an editor from Jetbrains for tooling (Eclipse works too, but seriously the Jetbrains line is the best).

I have never used emacs, but vim is horribly limited in what it can truly do in terms of handling code. You can add all the nifty little plugins you want, but it just isn't efficient. The mistake people make moving to a full IDE is installing the vim plugin to add some familiarity. I've seen coworkers take literally _5 minutes_ to hammer out the vim keystrokes to refactor a block of code that can be done in 15-30 seconds with 2-3 native IDE keyboard shortcuts and a mouse click or two. It's important to know how to use vim or similar for remote command-line work. When developing though, the functionality and built- in tools provided by a full-fledged IDE are priceless.

There was a time I didn't judge new developers for using vim to edit code - and a long time ago I was one of them. I used to see these people as "true developers" for mastering an editor like vim. Now, after years of encountering developers with hampered productivity and ability to work on a team with coding standards, I see a vim/emacs person as someone who is stuck in their ways, refusing to even try to modernize their workflow.

Just a random example: in PHP projects, my teams use CodeSniffer for coding standards validation. The settings for common IDEs are committed to the VCS so they are automatically in place for new developers cloning the project. In any modern IDE, notices/warnings are instantly and unobtrusively made available as you type code. You can also run the inspection against the entire codebase or files you have modified since last VCS update to catch anything you missed.

What do Vim users do? They write code for hours or days at a time without validating what they are writing. When done, they either a) commit without running their code against CodeSniffer while egotistically proclaiming that their personal coding style is clean and doesn't need to match what the rest of the team abides by; or b) they spend hours running the command-line version manually, ridiculously trying to parse the output and hunt each problem down.

This is the real problem with vim/emacs users. Nearly none of them are capable of following the same coding practices as the rest of the team who are sharing a set of project settings in modern IDEs. The worst I've seen was a team that had once had amazing code quality completely abandon all forms of coding standards when two new senior developers were hired who both used vim. They refused to follow the standards because vim simply doesn't contain the necessary tooling. The entire codebase went from being beautifully clean to a complete mess, all because the new guys used vim. That was the job I walked away from so fast after fighting over the ridiculousness and then learning that both new developers were basically hired for the simple reason they went to the same university as the hiring manager.

tldr; Use vim/emacs if you want; but if you're not going to be as productive as, or match the code quality of, your teammates - that's a problem.

<comment><USER12> This is kind of ridiculous. You are indicting vim and emacs users for some alleged major catastrophe at your organization. You realize very large and well written software projects, probably my h larger than your's, have been built by people using vim and emacs and not having JetBrains did not hamper them.

Honestly, I have seen so many developers fumbling around with their "intellisense" and the kinda of things you are talking about, it makes me sleepy watching them. I feel like if only spent time learning how to program than their code completion and refactoring tools, they might produce better, more efficient work.

<comment><USER13> The linux kernal an GNU tools were built by emacs and vim users. That software is running the world from android phones to servers.

Python, Ruby, and Javascript were built by emacs users. All the modern goodies the new hip people rave about.

Web browsers were created by emacs users. The entire industry we make a living in came from the belly of emacs.

But 2 guys at some company refused to follow coding standards, so yeah...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My advice is to play up the experience, but play down some details of that experience. For instance, 40 years of COBOL and C++ has some signalling issues (not completely unreasonably, what with carpenters blaming shoddy tools). I'd probably not talk about the technical nature of the experience at all -- just say the industry it was for and what the tool was used for, and not name- dropping old technologies.

Also, outside of SF, the ageism is much much milder. I've had people who had the up/down control on me getting hired not know my age to within 15 years at the time they make that choice (and they consistently guessed _older_ than I am). But interviews in SF seem to bring this topic to the table almost immediately. YMMV.

In terms of being uniquely identifiable (and therefore having few secrets) in the job application process, this is essentially unavoidable. I wouldn't worry about it.

<comment><USER15> _40 years of COBOL and C++ has some signalling issues_

Today is the first time I've seen C++ mentioned alongside COBOL. Today is a dark day...

<comment><USER14> To respond to this and the sibling comment: That was meant to be 40 years split in a first-COBOL-then-C++ type of way. I wasn't attempting to draw any technical equivalency per se, merely a quazi-cultural one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Recruiter here. I would absolutely recommend you not include any obvious indicators of age on your resume, at least in many parts of the country. Graduation dates are not required, and perhaps your first few jobs can be eliminated from the resume. A resume doesn't have to be a complete biography.

With 40 years of programming (not sure how many were hobby vs paid), you are likely to raise questions as to how many more years you would need to work. You can trim the appearance of some years off to get in the door and avoid the possibility of discrimination.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Recruiter,

I appreciate the value of what you have said but I wonder whether the deception by omission would count against me in the case that I get as far as the face-to-face interviews.

Thanks!

ps. The 40 years includes only the years I was paid. Prior to that I spent about a year learning how to program.

<comment><USER16> It depends on how much you omit. If you omit the last 35 years and your graduation date, you show up with the expectation of a 27 year old where you are likely in your 50s. That might be considered deceptive.

Graduation dates are usually the biggest issue, as older workers tend to drop their first jobs off the resume just to save space. So if your first listed job was in 1995, people will assume you are about 42 (we assume first job around 22 years old). But if you include a graduation date of 1985, we now know you are 52. So a graduation date makes a major difference there.

You can probably overcome any personal ethical issues by calling your experience section "relevant experience" if necessary. I personally don't find that necessary, as I don't think anyone has the right to assume a resume must contain every professional activity. Resumes from foreign countries often include photos, birthdates, and marital status, which is not recommended in the US (by employers or candidates).

Don't trim off too much - you want them to value your experience. But trim just enough where you are keeping most of the relevant work without sharing unnecessary and potentially unhelpful content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> just gonna be straight here, there are older people that are the really smart, savvy engineer types that school all us young folks, then there are the older people that learned Pascal in 1978 and never stepped outside of their comfort zone. We have an older person working in our office that, if it wasn't for him would practically be a zoo. He constantly schools us on all things tech, and keeps everyone in line. You are gonna be just fine.

The fact that you are on HN and able to have this kind of insight proves you are capable of hanging with the youngins.

<comment><USER18> On the flipside, I've personally witnessed a manager firing someone just because he was old. There is an ageism problem in the industry. Like racism or sexism, whether you see its effects depends on where you are.

<comment><USER19> surely there was more to the story. hard to believe it was only attributable to age without some context.

<comment><USER18> No, not really. It seemed quite strongly that the reason was due to his age, but the official reason was that he couldn't learn new skills very well. The problem was, he seemed to be learning them pretty decently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who has also been programming for 40 years (!), I find that although I don't work as hard, I get more done. I.e. one learns to program more efficiently, and make fewer mistakes. There's a lot less of uselessly thrashing about.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think you should not worry about your age, after all there is nothing you can do to end up younger. You should have confidence; you are much more experienced than the average 25 year old developer out there.

On the other hand, as others have stated, you better avoid making your age obvious.

In the end, you know what? In this life your time is limited and I think it's wise to avoid worrying about things you can't control. Don't make your age obvious but have confidence in your skills and experience!

</comment><comment><USER22> At 31, I feel like I am just now leaving the 'young talent' group, but not yet considered older. Standing in the middle, kinda, I think I can see both sides. To help deal with the agism issue, my hypothesis is that if you can zero in on the exact misconceptions they might have about you, or older programmers in general, and demonstrate that you don't fit that mold, you're in.

Some younger engineers will worry if older engineers lost their hunger for learning new technologies. In their position, they are well aware of what is fashionable, or even just current best practice. This is mostly because as new people they go straight to the new stuff. For example, new programmers don't learn SVN, they go straight to git, and github is a way of life.

So, right or wrong, it is a red flag to them if they see or hear about people advocating what they consider as outdated approaches.

But, importantly, they also read books by the folks who are 20-30 years older, but never lost that drive. They go to talks by these people and take notes, buy their screencasts, and brag about what they learned. They want luminaries to guide them. So, maybe, establishing expertise over what they consider important is a way around this misconception the youth has.

I imagine you could send positive signals by fixing or improving some popular open source project. Maybe write some interesting toy code, a game, or something that solves a development problem, and add that to a personal site or your github account. Any way to demonstrate what someone with 40 years experience can do, in a context they can see and interact with should do the trick.

<comment><USER23> I have to say, as a young engineer working at a startup full of cutting-edge technologies, this seems to be the best advice I've seen yet (if that type of environment is what you're looking for).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have recently been involved in a project where we are analyzing employment offers from companies in different markets (SF bay area being one of them).

We have found that one of the biggest factors in getting employment offers is how you position yourself. For instance right now if you are an enterprise engineer with extensive perl or .Net experience this will hurt you if you want to get into a young web company. On the other hand if you are an iOS or Node engineer in SF or can position yourself as an engineering manager then you're likely to find it easier to get job offers.

In general, the data that I've seen suggests that new companies are basically not interested in older technologies. I believe that the problem a lot of older engineers have is that they try to enter the current market by relying on their old skills and that mis-match is interpreted as ageism.

In my experience having experience (and age) is very valuable IF you're a strong engineer and you can apply that experience to the existing technology landscape. Make sure that you're presenting yourself to the right companies with skills in the right technologies and toolsets though or they will not even look at you.

<comment><USER12> It's pretty silly, though. Node is not a new "technology." It is framework for using Javascript. It is debatable if it is even good. What is more important is someone's grasp of core CS and programming concepts. If a code bootcamper with 6 months of using some fad framework is more valuable than someone with 30 years of experience, why is that? If the code bootcamper can use Nodr, presumably the person with 30 years experience could very easily, as well.

Maybe it's just better to not work at these kind of. Dry low technical skill SF "young web" startups. I dunno.

<comment><USER24> I completely agree. It's strange to me too... but that's what the data shows.

I think it makes sense in a way. If your technology is built on Node then hiring a guy who'd rather work in php or java is not going to be a good fit. He won't go home at night and play with Node to really understand it's strengths and weaknesses and he won't have excitement for the technology -- totally justifiable since at some point all these new frameworks start to feel like re-inventions of the same wheel over and over again.

In my experience there are nice things about working for SF startups --

You're surrounded by people passionate about technology. You're generally working on problems that are small enough where you can have big impact on them yourself. If you want to know how to build a company then it's really good experience.

That said, it's sort of a question of what scale you'd like to work at.

In my experience --

Contracting is fun because you build lots of small stuff and experiment with lots of different technologies and ideas

Startups are fun because you get to actually build and run a product but you have to build everything so sometimes you don't get to venture into those really interesting areas like massive scale or search quality

Enterprise (I haven't done a ton of enterprise work) seems fun because if you're part of the right enterprise then you get to work on problems that are much larger than a startup can work on and work with more resources and more exotic larger problems (wouldn't it be fun to work on self-driving cars?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I"m just a young guy here, not an employer, but I can share how I view your age in a candid way that might help you put your best foot forward.

My parents, born in the mid-1950s are currently in the job market looking for work, and they claim they feel the ageism/discrimination but it completely baffles me as a younger person.

As a person who celebrated Y2K in public school, now in the workforce blazing my own trail: I personally wouldnt have any issue with your age whatsoever. I gauge people based on results and performance, and so if you're an old dog I dont need to teach you any new tricks, you're probably a pro already!

I would be a little intimidated by your age, and it would be humbling and awkward for me to feel like you were my subordinate, but I would cherish your insight and experience (and hopefully mature reasoning skills) and I believe you may have a lot to offer!

I still prepare resumes and cover letters for my parents as they hunt for jobs, and I wish I could encourage you as well.

Age != youth

Age != ability

Age == how many pages have been turned in the 'Book of You'

Best of luck as you put yourself out there!

<comment><USER26> I enjoyed reading your encouraging words. I know it's not encouraged to post 1 up comments, so I have more to add, but before I do, I wanted to pass along that it's nice to hear how supportive you are with regard to your parents and others.

I agree with your comment and I think the thought of ageism is what is intimidating. There is nothing that cannot be accomplished when a person sets their mind to it, regardless of age, but there is a time and energy cost. Young people have more energy, so more effort is required on the part of an older person to appear energetic and desirable. I am 46 and have worked in five different careers. Experience can be demonstrated and comes across as impressive if it is concise and on point, regardless of age. Being both energetic and concise is an art form. But I highly recommend it as a strategy when seeking employment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For me, when I've interviewed older developers, my main concern is that they have too much experience for the role we are interviewing for and may be bored and want to leave.

It probably depends on the job description, but sometimes more experienced candidates get rejected for this exact reason.

I'd love to hear how other people handle this type of situation.

<comment> at-fates-hands I can totally validate this concern.

I have a really good friend who's a Javascript pro. Like mad scientist Douglas Crockford good. He's also in his early 50's. He's been hired at some of the largest corporations and has done some absolutely amazing work.

But he never sticks around longer than 6-8 months for the very reason you cite.

Just like in his current gig with a huge financial institute where he completely rewrote all their tools in Angular and Node in four months, and then basically said he was bored and the company was moving too slow for him!

He's currently looking at starting his own app development company and doing his own thing finally, which he really needs. He just has so much talent and experience, he had a hard time finding anything challenging anymore. And since Javascript developers are in such high demand, he can come and go when he wants to - something his experience and talents allow him to do. Something someone in their 20's or 30's just can't compete with.

We both currently work in the midwest, and the tech scene here is really vibrant.

</comment></comment><comment> old-soft-man Great discussion here, although so much of it presumes that people whose hiring prowess mistakes CV crafting skills for CS wisdom are worth working for.

Okay, I'm lucky to be at a point where I squeezed enough blood from the software development rock to carry on even if I never wrote another line of code again.

But I can hardly express how much happier I've been in a (relative to "rock star" and/or "ninja" mindsets) silly, part time "data specialist" position for a local non-profit that really needs someone who can spin useful utilities and disparate systems connectivity from any available silk (or dirty kite string) than I've ever been slaving away in the usual "headless chickens" environments managed by the usual clowns whose management training consisted of little more than proving themselves useless at software development itself - <USER2> training, of course, tends to result in the aforementioned hiring prowess to boot.

Good bleeping riddance!

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd like to express a somewhat different view while being in the same boat. I am 35 and working as a dev for years now. My recent teammates (small team) include a senior very experienced developer who started coding with punch cards for the British gov. That seemed cool at first but now I am trying to maintain some software he wrote from 2004-now. The software has really bad code in it, the kind you wouldn't expect some experienced guy to produce. It has no testing, it has serious OO flaws. Maybe its this particular guy that was just not very good, but its creeping me out when we talk about things and I realise he is comprehending much slower than the rest. I was wondering if that's just normal age degradation. I would love to code 40 years from now. I am just worried.

</comment><comment><USER29> First of all, I have never... and I do mean _never_ had a recruiter ask me for my birthdate. I've been in the industry for 20 years now (not 40, congrats on almost hitting THAT milestone!), so it's not like I just have low exposure.

Secondly, my advice is to do nothing special. Yes, filter your resume for things you think the company would be interested in -- you would do that regardless of your age. In general a one-pager resume is greatly appreciated by everyone. If it comes up that you've been around the block more than most, fine. You don't want to work for companies that would discriminate against you based on age anyway -- they are probably going to fail due to stupidity like not appreciating expertise learned from experience.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

I'm proud of the skills I've acquired over the years and the projects I've worked on. And I never think my skills are enough, lately I've worked with meteor, zero-copy packet architectures, iPhone apps, and some security-related issues.

I'm not going to try to hide my age and I'm not going to try to make it a desirable trait. I will hope that bit of ambiguity gets me in for a face-to- face interview which I am very confident will turn out well.

Companies which are so rigid as to wonder whether I'm "young enough" are probably not places I'd like to work anyway.

</comment><comment><USER30> I dunno, this is kind of creeping up on me. I just turned 35 at the end of January and I'm in the middle of a job search because my last startup is shutting down. I've only done a handful of onsites so far and I've been a little worried about perceptions. I'm overweight and because of genetics, I'm much greyer in hair and beard than a lot of other people my age. So far it doesn't seem to be an issue, even when I'm talking to people younger than me. I'd say the issue definitely exists, but so far it hasn't been an issue for me personally.

<comment><USER9> Thats yet another kind of discrimination - but I am sure (and hope) there are many who will treat you fairly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Have you considered freelancing or running a small consulting business?

I admit that if I was faced with the opportunity of hiring someone a lot older and experienced than me I'd have two immediate thoughts: "This guy would be a great asset, we need him" and "I think I'd be way too intimidated and nervous being his boss, can't do it".

Doing consulting work solves the second question since it changes the boss- employee dynamic to a more business-to-business like one.

Now, I am not in a position to hire anyone so take my introspection with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER32> 1\. Where are you.

2\. Don't be paranoid but don't play it up.

3\. There's no way to hide your age, realistically. You have to answer questions like the year you graduated from college, the year of your first job.

4\. There are a bunch of people that age I would kill to work with (35 year programmer), we have half a dozen people in our office with that much experience. We're a C shop and we write very, very high performance code. WORK YOUR FRIENDS, you must have friends, those friends have jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm in LA, if you're into high performance networking then you might want to see [https://github.com/pfq/PFQ](https://github.com/pfq/PFQ) , if you haven't already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a startup founder who anticipates hiring some time this year, my feeling is that all things equal I would vastly prefer someone who has been programming for 40 years and still loves it. You're likely to have far more experience, knowledge, and superior work habits vs a fresh grad. However I doubt you would be willing to join a risky startup for lower wages than you could get elsewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, due to the fact that my kids are grown up and out on their own, I am not nearly as concerned about getting top dollar (or climbing some career track) as I am about working on something interesting and having done something I can look back on 10 years from now and feel that my time was well spent.

<comment><USER33> That's cool, I like that attitude! Maybe once I am ready to hire I will reach out. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Honestly, it's more about finding a results based org. I've worked with a lot of different companies and some are very culture fit and some are very results oriented. You will never get a shot at the culture fit crowd so go for the results based crowd. Flood your resume not with experience as much as real results and value you have created.

</comment><comment><USER35> Life is short.

Why would you want to work somewhere that allows or encourages discrimination on age or anything else?

Let assholes filter themselves out of your life.

<comment><USER36> Actually life is long, too long work for assholes.

I usually phrase it "No, I don't want to do that, life is too long to write C++," or whatever thing I'm declining to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> No, of course you shouldn't downplay your age. If such prejudice exists, you are perpetuating it by downplaying your age.

</comment><comment><USER38> >>I've been programming for nearly 40 years

Instead of being 59 you will be 49? I don't think it will help. Instead, put a spin on it and sell yourself as experienced in technical matters.

</comment><comment> old-soft-man It's all poker, especially the part about not needing to have a strong hand to win. Play the game to win, your 40-year-old jack of all trades high notwithstanding. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER39> "We've been consistently recognized as one of the best places to work for Gen Y", read an ad that I saw recently.

</comment><comment><USER40> The coin has been in hand 2 all along.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tend to see it that way too.</comment></comment>


Are you an Engineer or a Nigger? - <AUTHOR>

From 12 years a slave..
I can relate with that question even in modern times. With the occasional stare I get from my superior during brain storming sessions. Like how could you possible get such insight being Black? Followed by refutations that defies logic.
It does have an awful effect on your morale, and in most cases one has to persistently prove one's competency to break down the walls of prejudice.
I wonder if other Software Engineers of African descent or other ethnic minorities in the West have similar experiences.
How do you scale through such hoops? <comment><USER2> Not black but: I'm a teenager (and I look 13/14), so getting anyone at all to listen to me is a PITA and in my last job [helpdesk], I've had multiple veteran employees outright tell me "who the fuck are you and who do you think you are blocking my facebook use", things like that.

Dunno what to do ati that point other than go to HR/their superior and file a proper complaint. Assuming your coworkers aren't some best-friends-5ever thing and your HR is competent, you could always claim hostile work environment

<comment><AUTHOR> I have done that before in a previous job, the end result is I was further alienated. Members of the team distanced themselves from me for fear of saying something wrong or reported. In the end, I had to change jobs because I couldn't fit in.

I suppose its not a problem of race, but a problem of just being different from others, like Age in you case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lol victim mentality give me a break.</comment>


Wall Street Banks Warn Downturn Is Coming - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-22/wall-street-banks-warn-winter-is-coming-as-business-cycle-peaks <comment><USER2> The pattern of boom/bust cycles over the past century is alarmingly consistent, especially for a field like economics that is famously unpredictable. Just look at the graph in Exhibit 7 of this article. It's almost perfectly periodic. According to investopedia [0], "there have been 11 business cycles from 1945 to 2009, with the average length of a cycle lasting about 69 months, or a little less than six years." By this logic, we're definitely "due" for a downturn very soon.

Does anyone who understands finance have any insight on why this pattern seems so predictable? Is it due to fundamental economic drivers, or is it merely correlated with major historical events (internet 2000s, globalization 1990s, deregulation 1980s, post-WW2 society 1950s, etc)?

If technological society does not continue to innovate at the pace of the last few decades, will boom/busts smooth out at a point of slower growth?

[0] [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/businesscycle.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/businesscycle.asp)

<comment><USER3> Anyone with a control systems background or even just audio experience will recognise what happens when you have an undamped feedback loop: it oscillates.

Technology can make the problem worse by reducing the time taken to economic changes, exaggerating the feedback loop. However there has been one big success of formal macroeconomic control modelling: inflation. Almost all the Western economies have a good system for controlling interest rates in order to maintain an inflation target.

I don't think anyone has really invalidated Keynes' work on business cycle theory, although it is recognised that it doesn't quite cope with a heavily financialised economy and there is huge political opposition to counter- cyclical fiscal policy.

<comment><USER4> The thing about Keynesian economics is that it isn't sustainable in the long term, because there is never a plan to pay off the debt accumulated during each recovery. In practice, keynesians talk about increasing spending during recessions but never speak of running equivalent surpluses during 'the good times.'

<comment><USER5> By itself this doesn't prove that it's unsustainable. In fact, there's plenty of evidence around us that it _is_ sustainable, since it's quite rare for states to collapse due to debt (that wasn't caused by exceptional catastrophic circumstances like war/revolution/highly-corrupt mismanagement/etc). State debt doesn't EVER need to be repayed in full, interest on it just needs to stay sustainable. (Which isn't to say debt is without its costs, just that the fact that it doesn't get aggressively paid down during good times doesn't imply inevitable disaster.)

<comment><USER6> This doesn't prove that it's sustainable in principle, only that the time to inevitable collapse is greater than the ~80 years since it's been widely implemented.

In practice, ever-increasing debt _absolutely requires_ ever-increasing growth in order to service it. We've so far been lucky, in that the period during which we've used this policy has coincided with the enormous productivity gains that came with the computer revolution. But rearranging our economy so that it's dependent on continual windfalls from external sources merely to stay afloat seems reckless at best.

<comment><USER7> If there was ever a point where our current run of innovation starting with the Industrial Revolution were to slow down or stop, then you are correct. However arguing that it's not proven to be sustainable because the fact that it hasn't collapsed in ~80 years only proves that its sustainable for 80 years is makes proving it sustainable impossible. Absent a better theory with better predictions Keynesianism is still the most successful economic theory. Moreover the scenario where innovation stops or slows down is a fairly unlikely scenario and if we're going to have a public policy debate I don't think it's wise to count on it.

<comment><USER6> Innovation in specific areas slows or stops all the time. The general run of technical progress in a specific area shows an S-curve, in which initial discoveries are made slowly, later progress accelerates as synergies are exploited and greater investment is made, and finally innovation decreases as low-hanging fruit is exhausted and the shape of available technology matches that of the problem domain. For an example of this, see aerospace; it took around sixty years to go from the field's inception to the moon landing and the Concorde, and in the fifty years since we've made mostly incremental progress over the technologies involved in both.

It seems that we're currently approaching the top of the S-curve for computation via integrated circuits; further increases going forward are likely to be incremental and margin-focused, as opposed to paradigm- shattering. Maintaining the 1950-2010 rate of productivity improvement will require new paradigm-shattering advances in some other field (machine learning? Internet of Things stuff?). It's possible that these are indeed forthcoming, and we can continue our absurd growth levels for another fifty years. It's also possible that we're nearing the edge of the problem space and we won't have any more easy order-of-magnitude productivity boosts. If the latter is true, then our economy will inevitably collapse with enormous collateral damage. As an economic system, this seems unstable at best.

<comment><USER8> This doesn't seem like a reasonable worry really. We will continue to innovate at a more rapid pace until we have real AI or there is a massive disaster(runaway global warming of 8-10 degrees or nuclear war are the most probable), I personally think it will be AI though because I suspect we might be looking at 20-30 years until that happens.

Once real AI comes I'm not really sure what will happen because it is unpredictable how the AI will be made, but if the past is any indication it will be made recklessly in a race between a bunch of companies. Idk how long our current world order will continue to exist and how much the AI works with us after that event. Hopefully the zoo it keeps us in will be nicer than the way we have treated animals, and hopefully that takes 20 years after the birth of real AI.

I wouldn't worry about innovation slowing down, I would worry about the end of meaningful human innovation that we are clearly headed towards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The nice thing is that if you predict enough downturns you'll eventually be right.

The cliché goes, "Economists have predicted nine of the last seven recessions," but I think the numerator is actually higher.

This article: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/12/why- wal...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/12/why-wall-street- always-blows-it/307147/) was published in 2008 but is still underrated.

<comment><USER10> The antithesis of predicting that the eventual downturn will happen is "it's different this time" claiming that the cycle has been broken and there is only upturns to come.

The former are always right and the latter are always wrong.

<comment><USER11> _until now_

<comment><USER12> invest everything in bitcoin

<comment><USER13> "invest"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I'm most excited to see in the event of a market downturn is how well Betterment and Wealthfront hang onto their clients.

I'm guessing that the average client of those firms hasn't really lived with a significant stock market investment during a bear market. Will these clients keep their money invested in a larger percentage than the typical ETF investor?

If so then I think that's a huge bullish signal for these new types of wealth management firms.

If not, then those companies are going to have to go out and raise money in a downturn.

If you can hold peoples money during a downturn, then I view that as a very positive investment signal, there has to be something more than the dollar, bitcoin, hedge funds, and gold that people can turn to in a downturn.

<comment><USER15> I'm about to open an account on one of those services. I'm 47 and am terrified that I'm not saving enough for retirement and am hoping that the service can give me some peace of mind or at least help me with a plan.

<comment><USER16> I'm a big fan of them. Some people hate on them for the 0.25% fee but I think for a lot of people it's well worth it (and better than paying more for an in person advisor that provides zero value).

They will set you up with a solid investment plan and rebalance for you, just don't get caught up in their tax-loss harvesting hype. Their value is in giving you the peace of mind that you seek, the tax loss harvesting benefit is overstated imo.

<comment><USER17> > (and better than paying more for an in person advisor that provides zero > value)

that isn't the only other alternative to betterment, etc. [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/) [https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target- retirement...](https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement/)

<comment><USER16> Yeah that's a fine option too to just put in a target fund and forget about it. It's debatable how much more value you get from a roboadvisor wrt rebalancing + diversification + tax loss harvesting.

<comment><USER18> I don't think Wealthfront etc. have any advantage w.r.t. diversification or rebalancing. Vanguard's target retirement funds seem to have target allocations (which change gradually as the retirement date approaches), and rebalance to stay in sync with those. E.g., VTTSX seems to maintain ~90% stocks and ~10% bonds, with ~60% of the stocks being domestic, and ~70% of the bonds being domestic.

They do have an advantage in tax loss harvesting, but the maximum annual savings is basically $3000 * (current marginal bracket for ordinary income - LTCG rate in retirement), which is about $600 for the typical investor. If you have more than 250k in Wealthfront, their annualized fee will be greater than $600.

<comment><USER16> The roboadvisors invest in market segments not included in the target retirment funds (like natural resources and REITS). If you were to do that on your own using various vanguard vehicles you'd then have to worry about rebalancing.

<comment><USER18> Well you still get exposure to companies in those segments, such as Monsanto and Equity Residential. If you just want "normal" positions in those companies (i.e. weighted by market cap), then Vanguard funds like VTSMX (a component of their retirement funds) are perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Figures. At age 41, I just last week went in debt for the first time in my life, moving my family from a home we owned in Michigan to the red-hot Seattle market for a job offer I couldn't turn down, spending well over a million to do so.

It's just starting to dawn on me now how precarious a situation we're in. Going in, it's like "awesome job, a million+ house will be worth 1.2M+ next year, maybe 1.4+ after that." Seemed reasonable.

My cynical side is just waiting for the market to implode now, our loan to be upside-down, and layoffs to start. Everything was so good six months ago. House paid off, a rainy-decade reserve. And now reality is sinking in that we could be homeless jobless and bankrupt in a month. Hopefully not. Hopefully the economy has a couple more years in it. I'd probably not make the same decision again.

<comment><USER20> Take a deep breath man. You'll be fine. Moving (especially across country like that) is always a stressful event. I think once you settle in and find a routine for your new career you'll realize you're not in as precarious a situation as you think. Best of luck. Cheers.

<comment><USER21> Exactly this. Former you sounds like a sound financial planner. Trust that he knew what he was doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is sensationalism at its best and repeats what people have been preaching for years, one big example being Ray Dalio [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0). The fact the US market is probably in the late cycle says nothing about how long that could last or about the state anywhere else in the world. Yes the Fed will be raising rates, yes money won't be as cheap but there are still companies making products and making a difference in the economy. There are still good investments to be made in emerging markets, which are less mature in their cycle, and even can be found in the US's more mature part of the cycle. I don't know how many fund managers invest strictly according the the cycle, I'd say 0, but instead use it as a piece of information to help make their decisions and help rationalize valuations, metrics, etc. Regardless, diversify your holdings from just US securities (again something that has been said forever) and if there is a market downturn, it will probably come back up eventually. It is, after all, a cycle.

<comment><USER12> It's not purely an examination of a cycle. They are talking about indicators, especially decoupling of economic dependencies.

For example, they cite that valuation is starting to diverge from corporate earnings, which _could_ indicate a coming correction (and therefore downturn).

<comment><USER22> But that has been happening for years during this cycle, investors willing to pay a premium for future earnings, Tesla, Amazon, the list could go on. On the other side companies with good earnings are still underpriced because people are pricing in other things. I see that as a good thing, people are being rational and not sticking to numbers. If the banks thought they were undervalued they'd be taking huge positions in those securities, not exposing them to the world.

The only really bit in this article was a shitty attempt at explaining the "economic cycle". Saying the "Downturn Is Coming" because we might be a peak was less helpful than explaining what the cycle is, what it means to be at this point and what that might mean to do about it. Saying the "Downturn Is Coming" to me says, "shit guys, sell all your securities right now". It is plain sensationalism.

To reiterate, I don't see much substance in this article and I expect a lot more from someone claiming the "Downturn Is Coming". If anyone can get their hands on a copy of Gloom Boom Doom [1] by Marc Faber and you see what quality analysis looks like of the current economic cycle. I believe his August edition goes into it but I don't have my copies to confirm.

[1] www.gloomboomdoom.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Okay let's look at the following chart:

[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iRECXe3ViYP...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iRECXe3ViYPI/v2/1000x-1.png)

While there have been "cycles", the cycle doesn't have a precise duration. The expansion period could be a "few years" or over a decade. The "dip" isn't predictable either.

Someone who was ready to buy the dip in 2010 might had to cut his losses because the decline was really steep that he might have believed the "sky is falling" news.

See the 1960-1970 period. We might still have 1-5 years of more "bull running" before seeing any correction. Given that we have little data too, it is possible that it turns into a 7-10 year of more "bull running" just for the fun of stretching the limits a little.

You'll have to be real patient not to buy stocks/assets for the next 5-10 years. That "crash" day will happen once everyone is confident that "things are the way it is and bull is normal".

</comment><comment><USER24> Of course we are due for a pull back in the stock market. Stocks are historically overvalued by many metrics, the most simple of which is the P/E ratio. Check out this website -- [http://www.multpl.com/](http://www.multpl.com/)

The question is not if stocks will pull back, its when. Bull markets can run for a long time even if they are over valued. The boom of the early 2000's and 2007 went way higher than average, and crashed hard.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is nonsense. Downturn is how you describe consecutive periods of lower prices _after they happen_. It's a trailing analysis! It's impossible to say with certainty that you are ever "in" a downturn for an instrument - a moment of consecutive successful buying(price increases) ends the downturn, the time you thought you were "in" it was actually the moment after it ended.

This type of trading mentality is why the 90/90/90 statistic exists. People read this, believe it, and become sellers when they would have been buyers or non-participants. The only thing that matters is _right now_ if you are trading. Yesterday is irrelevant, your [N]-period MA's, fib lines, gann fans, and other indicators are equally irrelevant. If you are on a commercial trading floor, ask the guy next to you "are we having a bull day/week/month/year or a bear one?". Either you get laughed at, or completely ignored. The people actually causing these numbers that people see visualized at charts aren't even looking at them! They likely aren't looking at charts at all! If that last statement seems too "oh no it can't really be that way, I see charts on MSNBC so they must be professional tools!" to you, then find a friend who works for a market-related institution, and ask them. You might be surprised at the answer.

Now the interesting part, is if you can get enough people to _believe_ they are in a "downturn", then you influence them into becoming sellers opposed to buyers. This only turns "down" if enough institutional size believes selling is more immediately profitable than buying or non-participation. A good way to incite this belief is to publish it to major news sites. Like bloomberg(another word that will cause hilarity and snark if uttered on the trading floor).

Do you know why your financial-news network is a free channel? They want you to see it. Anything that can encourage you to participate means there is more amateur liquidity available. Institutions _really like_ amateur liquidity. After consumption, your exit(at your loss and their gain) is assured, since your pain threshold is orders of magnitude lower than theirs.

One last bit about "patterns".... your brain is a pattern recognition machine. It's the reason you think you see "text" right now, instead of a purple giraffe. It's also the reason you see shapes in complete randomness: your brain _wants_ to categorize things it sees, and we call that categorization a pattern. Patterns are death to a day trader: 100% financial death. Repeat that to yourself each morning before you walk into the pit, or you will walk out bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER26> Whats scary is we are still basically in pump mode from the last recession. The gov will not have much power to "fix" the next one. Not to mention the major debt many states carry now such as IL.

<comment><USER27> Nope, especially since we'v been loath to raise the interest rates. Lowering rates is often used to stir economic growth. We've been near zero for quite a while now. If it hits soon, the fed won't have much water to put out the fire.

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest- rate](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate)

Note: Click the Max button on that chart for perspective of where the rate is now relative to historical rates.

<comment><USER28> That definitely puts some perspective on things. It's a little bit absurd it was at 0% and it stayed there for so long. Never in the previous history (at least of the graph history) did it stay at the same rate for so long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Keynesian economists triumphantly point to the massive QE that has occurred and the seemingly minimal resulting inflation and claim victory for stimulatory monetary policy.

How was the QE performed? Basically printing piles of money and giving it to banks. What have the banks done? Double or triple the value of every equity market. Hardly any of the money ended up in the pockets of regular people buying groceries and petrol. Yet our measures of inflation come from consumer goods, not equity markets. Is it any wonder that our bullshit measures of inflation have barely budged.

I think the coming bust (whenever it occurs) will be the last boom/bust cycle in which this shit flies anymore. We now, finally, have universal, non- inflationary currency of a type which can compete with the unproven conjecture of Keynesian economists. People have been complaining that about economic theories being hard to prove, well here is a battle between the old dogma and a new challenger.

<comment><USER30> > Keynesian economists triumphantly point to the massive QE that has occurred > and the seemingly minimal resulting inflation and claim victory for > stimulatory monetary policy.

Every Keynesian I've heard from seems to think QE was, _at best_ , the least bad option given the complete failure of those empowered to do so to adopt stimulatory _fiscal_ policy, and that it in many ways demonstrated the weakness of monetary policy in isolation.

I've seen _none_ cheering QE the way you describe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I called it a couple weeks ago:

[https://twitter.com/zachaysan/status/895197582586261504](https://twitter.com/zachaysan/status/895197582586261504)

Forward P/E, yields, EPS, everything is just too frothy right now in the US. In my home country (Canada) it's difficult to see how the short term oil market will turn out, since it's such an inelastic market, but in the medium term oil is effectively over - especially for resource intensive extractions like the Alberta oil/tar sands.

The only major company that I'm still in on is Facebook, but that's only until regulators start coming down harder on them. Even so, Facebook has a huge amount of growth ahead of them.

I've been able to make around 18% YoY, even after the fact that half my portfolio is in bonds and low-risk consumer staples. I don't do anything too fancy. I sell before busts (like in late 2006) I put a little money into put options on the S&P500 (SPY) well out of the money for an extra boost if I've timed it right, I move things into actual cash and then I wait until people are panicking and then I buy back in.

Split exposure to 1/3 USD, 1/3 CAD, 1/3 Other (basically Bitcoin, startups, bit of precious metals, Asian / Euro stocks) when things are undervalued and move most things into cash when things are scary.

When choosing investments I generally do:

1\. Tech I understand (in the past Amazon, Tesla, Apple, Google, Shopify)

2\. High dividends stocks (Apple, then a bunch of boring ones with no appreciable downside, since I don't like buying declining industries).

3\. Short term commodity plays (since in the long run clever humans invent better mining techniques).

4\. Strategies that anticipate the catchup effect. Last decade it was China this decade it will be India and Africa.

I'm not perfect (SQM and Etsy were two stocks I was quite confident in that didn't pay out for a number of reasons) but I'm confident and careful. I really think I would have been wealthier if I'd gone into finance instead of machine learning, since I seem to have a knack for it, but we'll see how the chips finally land in the future I guess.

</comment><comment><USER32> for those of us in the bottom 95% of incomes the downturn has been going on 30 years.

<comment><USER33> Citation? Most IS data shows flat to moderate increases for all quintiles. Top 5% has had greater % increases than any other cohort but that doesn't mean that the other 95% are experiencing negative growth in income.

<comment><USER12> You are completely correct of course, but I think he meant that the economy felt like downturn, rather than that actual wages were down. In that respect he's right, because as so many wages have stagnated, buying power has dropped due to inflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> People have been making this prediction consistently for a year. Meanwhile the market just keeps going up.

Bubbles never happen where or for what reason people think they will, and for good reason- bubbles are formed by market participants, so in order for one to exist, people by definition can't believe a bubble exists or that the market is due for a selloff.

</comment><comment><USER35> What do you think will happen to crypto currency during a recession? The next recession will be our first since Bitcoin was created. My prediction is you see a spike up early, as people get desperate for a profitable trade, then they all plummet as people flee for safety.

<comment><USER36> For certain millennials, crypto-currency already seems to hold the role that gold does for certain baby boomers. I would expect that phenomenon to grow during a bear market.

<comment><USER37> Man, I just see massive heartache and disappointment for them at some point in the future.

<comment><USER38> Yeah there have been quantifiable "bubble bursts" multiple times.

It's like multiple, concussive "Stock and awe" campaigns where the price has plummeted by $600 per coin. Everytime that happens, the subreddit for /r/bitcoin posts the national suicide hotline and the price rallies in 4 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Must be time to buy then. These free articles are always herding people in the opposite direction the market is really going so the traders can unload their stock or get in cheaply.

</comment><comment><USER40> This article mentions assets decoupling from the price of oil. I've found that the price of oil is generally useless: either people think it will cost more to move things and they then reduce their expectations, or they think the oil companies are driving the economy and will make more profit, and then they increase their expectations. This all seems to depend on which side of the bed they get up on.

<comment><USER41> Oil price these days is mostly politics, it has little to do with the free- market, supply/demand and such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This leads me to think that a real downturn is at least a couple years away.

<comment><USER43> The thing is, you never notice a "real downturn" until right at the point the bottom falls out. It just looks like market cyclicality at first -- a 10% drop in equities over 6 months is nothing to worry about until you hit a week where you lose 10-15%. Suddenly you're down 20-25% over 6 months and people start to say "oh crap, we're in a recession". But really, at that point you've been in the recession for six months.

This is why amateur investors do a lot of hand-wringing about market timing -- they think they can "time" the recessions. And of course you can in hindsight, but recessions are very difficult/impossible to see in real-time, even for experienced economists.

<comment><USER44> The downturn cycle is every ten years it seems. Is there a similar recession cycle? I can only think of 3 instances where the recession was substantial in both unemployment above 10%, big drop in GDP, and length of time it lasted:

\- The Great Depression (1930)

\- The 1980s recession (1980)

\- The Great Recession (2008)

<comment><USER43> My personal theory is that recessions are dependent on wealth inequality. It makes sense if you think about it on the personal level -- if there is high wealth inequality, a greater percentage of the country suffers during an economic downturn. That suffering puts a pinch on all non-essential spending for a larger percentage of the population than it would if there were a larger middle class.

A wealthy and prosperous middle class is thus essential to a stable economy. Without it, you get these boom-bust cycles and you condition people to "spend it while you got it" (aka the poverty mindset). This creates a feedback loop that the US had to work really hard to break out of in the early 20th century (the time between the Civil War and the first World War was extremely tumultuous economically because we were learning a lot of hard lessons about monetary policy).

We had some pretty bad economic downturns in the 50s, 60s and 70s as well. But they didn't reach recession level because the wealth gap wasn't as vast. My grandfather was a factory owner in the rust belt during that period and the richest man in his small town. He was wealthier than his employees, but not by a lot. But eventually he had to sell out to a large multinational because he simply couldn't match their prices in the market.

<comment><USER44> I see your point. Though, I'm not terribly convinced about wealth inequality being a major driver in this. I know it is a hot political topic, however, I don't think it is nearly as extreme (except for the very edges of the spectrum) nor as problematic as it is being portrayed. I read this paper recently that I thought was an interesting perspective: [https://cei.org/sites/default/files/Ryan%20Young%20and%20Iai...](https://cei.org/sites/default/files/Ryan%20Young%20and%20Iain%20Murray%20-%20People%20Not%20Ratios.pdf)

<comment><USER43> On a global level, you may be right -- but recessions and market forces strike nationally, and it's hard to tell an out-of-work coal miner that "Sorry, there are no factory jobs to fall back on because we gave them to some _really_ poor people in Honduras and now they're doing great!"

A middle class that is _relatively_ less wealthy than the upper class has less ability to soak up down markets. And down markets will always happen (I mean, it's cyclical) -- but the middle class in the US is leveraged up to its eyeballs just from trying to get to a middle-class lifestyle (college loans, medical bills, etc.) That means the slightest perturbation in the status quo sets off a chain reaction of default and money supply pinch.

I expect the next recession will trigger the student loan avalanche. There are students graduating with over $100k in debt -- and many like me who are well into lucrative careers without a ton in savings because so much of their income goes to servicing their student loans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I just want to point out that it's _really_ nice of HSBC, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley not to take any market positions before doing this, and just share their analysis in full as a public service.

What I mean, is that they could have very easily first taken short positions, then made this announcement. Or kept the analysis for themselves. But they didn't. They just did the analysis and shared it for free as a public service, which is a class act all the way.

I wish more Wall Street Banks looked out for investors this way. Sometimes big investment banks forget that there are people behind these pieces of paper.

<comment><USER46> I hope this is a tongue-in-cheek criticism.

</comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I'm not sure we can get a bust when all the major reserve banks (especially the US Federal Reserve) keep propping up the economy. The real question is how much longer can investors take advantage of this? We've basically been in QE since 2009 (almost a decade?). The real test, as said in other comments here, will be when the US Federal Reserve pulls back. If the markets can take the burden then it'll survive but maybe at a lower rate of growth. If they can't bare any burden I think we'll see it immediately.

</comment><comment><USER47> Valuations I think are massively pushed by the amount of quantitative easing, which the Fed said it is only going to start withdrawing in Sept:

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)

I think this could have some nasty impact on stocks, particularly if combined with an interest rise.

<comment><USER48> Currently, the Fed is maintaining the balance sheet at a high level by reinvesting funds from maturing bonds they hold. At some point they're going to stop reinvesting the funds, and let the balance drop. Which means the initial impact will be in long-term rates, esp. mortgage rates. It probably won't effect stocks too much directly in the near term, but eventually will. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on certain overheated coastal real estate markets.

<comment><USER47> There might be a month or two of lags but when you look at a 10y chart of the S&P vs the size of the Fed B/S, the correlation is striking.

<comment><USER49> Doesn't seem to be that correlated: [https://www.pragcap.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/stupid_ch...](https://www.pragcap.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/stupid_chart1.png)

<comment><USER47> Correlated from the introduction of QE of course. I made that chart a year ago:

[http://imgur.com/kOXtm8N](http://imgur.com/kOXtm8N)

The correlation only started to break a couple few months ago, with the S&P skyrocketing. But many suggest this is bubble territory.

<comment><USER49> Even during the same period, the two graphs of the Fed sheet don't seem to match up, do you know why? I'm not clear what CERBTTAL means.

<comment><USER47> It is just the bloomberg ticker for the weekly size of the Fed assets. What difference do you see? They both end up at about $4.5 trillons, they should be exactly the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Downturns usually happen sometime after GDP reaches the potential GDP. Timing the downturn is almost impossible. It relies too much on 'animal spirits'. Downturn within 1-5 years is very likely.

Illustrative picture:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=eQa9](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=eQa9)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'd say we are overdue for a decent size pull back/sell off BUT getting the timing WHEN exactly this will happen is the hardest part.

Typically before decent market corrections/crashes you do not hear on the "news" that it is coming. The point of the down move is to catch most market players off guard.

The fact that these "smart" guys are yelling "sell off" is coming tells me stay the course ... for now (where were they back in 2000 or 2008 warning general public??). But longer term i agree we will correct probably sooner than later. Market loves round numbers. 2000, 2500 ... 3000? who knows where and when it will stop this massive bull run.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is crap--someone is always warning about a downturn coming. The game is as the game has always been--scare the rubes into doing something stupid with their money so the people who know the play can keep making big bucks off the uninitiated.

</comment><comment><USER52> Don't try to time the market with gross predictions like this. Just keep investing as long as you are working, and keep investing in stocks as long as you are young. Invest regularly so that you spread out risk over time.

</comment><comment><USER53> The FED has already raised interest rates and has said they will continue to do so in the coming qtrs/years. The 2007 recession started about 2-3 years after greenspan started raising rates in the latter part of 2004.

Also, we generally get a recession every 7 to 10 years.

Do we really need wall street banks to tell me what is going to happen.

I still think we have 2 or 3 years of economic growth but sooner or later the hammer is gonna drop on us.

The growth of asset prices, the expansion of debt and the growth of FED balance sheet is quite interesting. And this isn't just the US - China, Europe, Japan, SK, etc are also interesting.

</comment><comment><USER54> A downturn is coming! You should sell! (To us)

</comment><comment><USER55> As someone who is graduating college in December and currently looking at starting a Roth IRA with money I saved from internships. Should I wait to invest until this downturn actually happens? Or does that not matter and the sooner I start investing the better?

Not well versed in this subject, appreciate all advice:)

<comment><USER56> No.

:) You are asking about timing the market. No one can do it, it is said. (I think it can be done, but it would be through illegal means, i.e. insider trading, which I believe happens all of the time since it's too easy to do and too hard to catch). Also, you don't have to invest in stocks. You can buy and hold on to bonds (AGG or ACWI).

You might see your holdings value go way down. People sell then. It's normal psychology. It is so tough to see the dollar value of assets go down and sit on it. But if it's the best investment, you don't sell. Hold. The best investment has a holding period of forever. It will go back up--eventually. If it is a good investment and it does not go back up, money will not be very useful anyway (i.e. asteroid hits, etc.) This is why common advice is to only put money into stocks that you will not need for at least five years or more.

Some people have said that some of the biggest gains in the stock market are just before it drops. You do not want to miss out on these, since that is often where the 9.5% return on stocks comes from.

This is free advice and I am not licensed to advise. Oh, and good on you to start saving now. That's _your_ money that you worked for. Keep it yours. Get out a spreadsheet and run the numbers assuming different % returns and _consistent_ savings over time. You might see you can become a millionaire.

<comment><USER57> > Some people have said that some of the biggest gains in the stock market are > just before it drops. You do not want to miss out on these, since that is > often where the 9.5% return on stocks comes from.

This may sound like a stupid question but if you don't sell at that time (hold good investments forever etc), and you don't know that it's the peak at the time, how do you lock in those gains?

<comment><USER56> It is a good question. Locking in gains means selling. But you do not know the right time to do that unless you know something no one else does. Sell if you want less volatile returns to get a monthly income during retirement for example. Otherwise you are trying to time the market.

There may be some kind of magic options strategy to lock in those gains, but it also would include taking on other risks (interest rate changes, market risk, commodities etc.) and you have to have a big bank roll to play in that game to make it worth while--and now you have another job which could be full time to manage it all...

I guess to answer your question in another way, you lock in those gains by not trying to time the market, by paying the lowest commissions and fees possible. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Slow growth is the new normal. Even the weak modern post-recession market, is growing unsustainably fast.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's going to be interesting to see how cryptocurrencies react to a protracted financial crisis. Time to see if the money in crypto is a hedge or if it's a risk-on asset.

<comment><USER60> bitcoin is the new gold. Which is unfortunate, because the more it's treated like a commodity the less likely it will be used as an actual currency.

<comment><USER61> That's a good thing! Bitcoin is currently no scalable enough to be a world currency. It is a great digtal asset. Other alt coins might be better at being a digital currency like Lite Coin, Dash, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Starting in the United States from 1800, it seems there's one great financial 'panic' in 1857, and not another until 1910, shortly before the FED Reserve took control and started the fiatization and debasement of the currency. So about 50 years between crises.

It seems that the business or boom bust cycles is a relatively new phenomenon and it might just be related to the way the federal reserve handles the money.

Anyone feel free to correct or add info here as im not an authority on historical economics in the united states, but i have always found that the instillation of the federal reserve to be an 'epoch' of sorts for the US economically.

<comment><USER63> >Anyone feel free to correct or add info here as im not an authority on historical economics in the united states, but i have always found that the instillation of the federal reserve to be an 'epoch' of sorts for the US economically.

Sure, it's just totally untrue, this wikipedia article will help:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I know there's a longer cycle, but IIRC, there's also an economic lapse going into the fall as well, especially on years with high Atlantic hurricane levels

</comment><comment><USER65> Oh great. I'm sure that won't make politics even worse than they are.

<comment><USER66> It will, if nothing else, demonstrate the utter idiocy of thinking a real estate developer understood the economy better than a professional politician. Except that the evidence will be explained away by anyone who believed that in the first place.

Downturns do favour anti-establishment candidates, so I'd pay attention to the Bernie wing in the next few years.

<comment><USER10> Whether the economy tanks will have little to do with Trump, even if he is incompetent. Bernie is probably too old to be a serious contender next time.

<comment><USER66> I never replied to this, but I think the big challenge for the Bernie wing is showing they're bigger than one man. Hate the Trump wing all you want, but when he goes, there will be a replacement waiting in the wings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Oh good. Just in time to keep labor from having any pricing power. Excellent.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wonder if the price of Bitcoin will go up should there be a recession?

</comment><comment><USER69> downturn? compared to what? was there an upturn?

</comment><comment><USER70> Wonder how #45 will try to spin this when it hits. "Obama ...".

</comment><comment><USER61> Crypto Assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum will play a roll in this. I believe we will continue to see big gains in the crypto world and this will only make large institutions jump over when their typical markets start to make a down turn. The next 5 years will be VERY interesting as we turn into a more decentralized and digital asset world.

<comment><USER71> Is the goal of these posts showing up literally everywhere money happens to be discussed on the entire internet something along the lines of "if we spam it enough, maybe it will come true"?

Sometimes the best thing to do with a heavy bag, is set it down. Trying to convince everyone around you that the contents of said bag are more valuable than they are, just ends up annoying people.

<comment><USER72> Not at all, it is very topical to discuss cryptocurrency in step with a market downturn. Reason being is that cryptocurrencies are less vulnerable to the market fluctuations we see with government backed currency (read: I'm not saying their impervious to corrections, just those related to the U.S. stock market).

Directly related to the article? No. But it has merit because cryptocurrency didn't truly exist during the last major downturn and it will be interesting to see how people value it during such a scenario.

<comment><USER13> They're less vulnerable to market fluctuations because they're backed by nothing besides speculative demand and the online drug trade.

<comment><USER72> You could say the say the same thing about the U.S. Dollar but just add a military to the list.

<comment><USER13> Actually, taxation plays a large role in giving a currency value. The US government only accepts payment in US dollars. They require everyone to pay taxes in US dollars, which means we all seek US dollars. Add onto that the fact that the government has and uses tools to control inflation and deflation means we have a relatively stable currency. We know that the US government's long term intention is its continuity. (We do not know the intention of the Chinese mining pools that control large portions of Bitcoin, though, we can assume profit and not stability.) Tie all that into one of the strongest economies in the world and you have yourself a reserve currency.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://semver.org/ <comment><USER2> This appears to be from 2013: [https://github.com/mojombo/semver/commits/v2.0.0](https://github.com/mojombo/semver/commits/v2.0.0)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been at so many companies where someone is pushing to adopt semantic versioning without actually following step 1 in the spec...

> 1\. Software using Semantic Versioning MUST declare a public API. This API > could be declared in the code itself or exist strictly in documentation. > However it is done, it should be precise and comprehensive.

SemVer doesn't even make sense if you don't have a public API. SemVer doesn't make sense for end user products that don't have an API. I really wish people would stop trying to abuse it.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure they mean "API" in its true sense. An API for a module or a library, not necessarily a Web API. It's not unusual for an organization to maintain several projects/libraries/services that interact internally via their APIs (sometimes over HTTP, sometimes directly as a library), SemVer makes perfect sense for this use case.

<comment><USER5> They mean API in the sense of anything that someone can declare a dependency against.

Whether it's a web service or a library is immaterial; the point of the thing is to be able to update something and formally tell any downstream dependencies whether the update breaks compatibility or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See [https://github.com/mojombo/semver/compare/v1.0.0...v2.0.0](https://github.com/mojombo/semver/compare/v1.0.0...v2.0.0) for the changelog.

Edit: Changes, that is, not a changelog.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's a changelog. That is a collection of git commits, where the intended audience is primarily the developers of the work.

A changelog, by comparison, is meant for clients who use the work.

See also [https://github.com/mojombo/semver/issues/387](https://github.com/mojombo/semver/issues/387) and [http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/](http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/)

<comment><USER6> Yes, you're correct, it's not a changelog - rather, it is the changes.

Click "Files changed" for an actual diff. I am not sure what makes it v2.0.0, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We probably need a changelog

<comment><USER9> [http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/](http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Check out Compatible Versioning 1.0 (2016): [https://github.com/staltz/comver](https://github.com/staltz/comver)

</comment><comment><USER11> Are there any projects that follow this specification strictly? It seems like most projects are willing to do backwards-incompatible "bug fixes" to the behavior of their API without incrementing the major version. These are usually harmless in practice, but technically break rule 8. It seems difficult to me to prove that any given set of changes can't break someone else's code (even allocating an extra byte of memory has the potential to do this).

<comment><USER12> The thing I find most frustrating about semantic version is that even under the strictest adoption it overly legitimizes breaking changes across major versions.

I see far too much refactoring of JS library APIs that is essentially aesthetic across major versions - D3 and Angular spring immediately to mind (I understand the scalability justification for Angular; I just don't really believe it).

To me, having an elegant API is not the highest concern because what I'm interested in is building products, and from that point of view stability is much more important. I _do not_ appreciate a committee of J Random JavaScript Developers randomly dumping extra work into my product backlog because they didn't like the cut of an API's jib, especially when these people have gone absolutely out of their way to drive adoption in the first place.

To give a counter-example: .NET code I wrote in the mid-noughties whilst working at Red Gate still runs today, substantially unmodified. Some of that stuff is 11 or 12 years old. SQL Dependency Tracker is the most obvious example, because the product hasn't changed much since 2006, except for additions to support new object types in new versions of SQL Server. The fact that new .NET versions haven't broken the product has obviously made it _much_ easier to support through the years.

<comment><USER13> That is the entire point of the major version. The fact is, developers sometimes make breaking changes (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad), and we want a standard way of documenting that. If you don't make breaking changes, than stay on 1.X.Y forever. If your project is only a year old and already on version 10.0.0, you are probably doing something wrong; but at least documenting it in your version numbers.

<comment><USER12> Certainly take your point, and maybe it's in part down to my background, where a new major version generally includes some large chunk of new functionality (regardless of whether or not there are breaking changes).

And really I suppose you don't ever _need_ to go beyond version 1.x.y. Window Maker is quite a good example of this: latest version is 0.95.8 after 20 years of development.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Terrapattern: a visual search tool for satellite imagery - <AUTHOR> http://www.terrapattern.com <comment><USER2> I helped out with this project, happy to answer any questions. I was involved from the beginning, but my biggest contribution was on the deep learning side that does the tile-matching. I helped with the initial prototype using DIGITS, Caffe, and a bunch of Python. Then Aman Tiwari moved us to a more accurate 34-layer ResNet trained in TensorFlow, and a more efficient nearest neighbor lookup using a new implementation of CoverTree search.

<comment><USER3> Since you've opened up yourself to questioning :)...Thanks for sharing, I apologize for this very laymanny question:

I clicked on a swimming pool in New York City...there aren't a ton of them in NYC, but very few of the matches have even a spot of blue in them...I know the algorithm is more than just "look for more blue patches"...if I were to explain this to another layperson, what is the most obvious explanation for something that _seems_ more non-intuitive than expected?

Screenshot of my panel: [http://imgur.com/H0wo5jK](http://imgur.com/H0wo5jK)

[http://nyc.terrapattern.com/?_ga=1.84865689.1830936426.14642...](http://nyc.terrapattern.com/?_ga=1.84865689.1830936426.1464201975&lat=40.7256043&lng=-73.97539890000002)

<comment><USER4> Not Kyle, but another of the team involved in the project. When we built the training model, we used OpenStreetmap data to find locations of ~1,000,000 "things". A thousand churches, a thousand water towers, a thousand playgrounds, and so on. For each of those locations, we downloaded a satellite image.

The neural net was then trained to look for the things that make each one of those things distinct; what makes a playground different than a church? It could be patterns, it could be colors, it could be any number of things. (For more precise details, you'll need to talk to Aman or Kyle.) It compares lots of things to lots of things, makes some guesses, and then sees whether those guesses help it correctly determine what we told it was in each tile.

Once the model is trained, it's identified the 1024 "features" that are most significant in correctly distinguishing types of things from each other. We then run every tile of a geographical region through that feature determiner, which converts each tile into a point in our 1024 dimensional space. The search function then identifies a tile, looks up its location, and finds the 100 things closest to it within the 1024 dimensional space.

So, TL;dr: It's not looking for colors, it's looking for computable features, which may or may not be color-specific. (Actually, they're highly non-color- specific: the training model randomly "wiggles" the color to makes sure that it doesn't get too tied to a very precise color.)

<comment><USER5> In my experience in the USA, OpenStreetMap data that comes from TIGER (?) imports, like heliports, are close but wrong. Playgrounds and watertowers are usually accurate because someone added them by hand. Churches are mixed. Other items are confusing; a hospital is typically a single point, but they tend to be some of the largest buildings in small towns.

Any thoughts on how that affects your model?

<comment><USER4> We found the same—using OSM data that just had points was problematic, both because of accuracy and because it tended to often be the front door, not the centroid of the object.

I believe we limited our model generation to selecting places that had outlines, and computed the centroid of that outline. One of the benefits of our technique is that we didn't need to be comprehensive—we can throw out lots of places and still have enough to be useful for the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see that the satellite pictures come from openstreetmap, but I'm not familiar how often those pictures are updated, anybody know?

When they are updated, does Terrapattern recognize the change an update the corresponding photos?

<comment><USER7> The imagery in their demo is coming from Google Maps, but if you look at the copyright you can see what companies it is coming from. The USDA shoots, if I remember correctly, the whole country every 3 years, and that data is public domain. The commercial sites are constantly shooting new stuff, but it depends on how often Google wants to pay for it. With their purchase of Skybox though, they will likely start getting imagery updated on an extremely frequent basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is quite fun, thanks for sharing. I would be interested in trying it out with different tile sizes too. I keep trying to pick objects that are on the corners of tiles.

</comment><comment><USER8> awesome, very, works great on sports fields [http://sf.terrapattern.com/?_ga=1.257993994.1025291016.14642...](http://sf.terrapattern.com/?_ga=1.257993994.1025291016.1464207852&lat=37.6480227&lng=-122.4246675)</comment>


Ivory seizures hit record levels last year, report says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-41727132 <comment><USER2> The stupidest thing about ivory seizures is that they destroy the ivory (sometimes millions of dollars in a blaze), creating market scarcity and fuelling further poaching by thus subsidizing prices. Elephants should be farmed and their Ivory should be harvested periodically. Obviously prohibition has not and will not work.

<comment><USER3> "Farmed"? No.

But attacking the supply side has only made the remaining poaching more profitable.

A better approach would be a certification program for ivory collected from elephants experiencing death by natural causes, including posting of DNA markers so that any given piece of ivory would be DNA-checked against the roster of legally-harvested "donors". Other ivory sales should be discouraged like with conflict diamonds. The proceeds of the legal trade could be used for habitat and protection of wild elephants and for rescue/rehabilitation of orphaned elephants.

<comment><USER2> I am not sure if at this time the (south) East Asian buyers of ivory care about its provenance (i.e. if it is morally sourced). Do tusks have DNA anyway? Maybe in the future they will (care about sustainable sourcing). Why not farm elephants? People have farmed Rhinos and stockpiled the horns but cannot legally sell them due to prohibition. So wild Rhinos are still poached. Correction I guess it is now legal to sell farmed Rhino horns in SA.

[https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/wildlife- watch-r...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/wildlife-watch-rhino- horn-south-africa-auction/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone using a visual programming language? - <AUTHOR> Lately I've become very interested in visual programming languages. Has anyone had any experience writing applications in a visual language? If so, what did you think of the experience? What different kinds of challenges come up? <comment><USER2> Scratch is 100% a success in the sense of being fun and educational.

Visual languages like LabView were a big deal in experimental physics when I was a grad student in the 1990s. Many data analysts do work with tools like KNIME and Alteryx and from time to time they've handed a model off to me which I would package up so it could be built into a client or server application.

Way back in the day I worked for a web development shop that had a language called Tango that would let you define the logic of a web application by snapping blocks together, and then you edit web termplates in a side window.

Tango may have compared favorably with ColdFusion, plain PHP and other tools from its time but it lacked the model-view-controller, model based kind of thinking that came in with Ruby on Rails...

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a subject I find interesting. Successes are rare though.

LabView is nice. Yahoo pipes was pretty cool.

Neither is a general purpose programming language.

The Russian space agency had a visual programming language called Drakon -- obviously I never used it. Looks interesting.

I've been tinkering on my own for a while. It will also be unsuccessful more than likely (but I don't care -- still interesting).</comment>


Google capital for startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.co.za/intl/en/umbono/program.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. Time to pull my socks up and submit some of the ideas I've had and prototyped. Any other SA entrepreneurs who need a tech co-founder? I'm a good programmer in need of a business co-founder. Let me know.

<comment><USER3> i have some tech background (java, perl) but am more business savvy. i am based in USA but will def make the move to SA

<comment><USER2> my email is in my profile. pop me a mail if you would like to chat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. Is this the first time a big tech company is offering startup funds or is there any other such instances previously?

Also, Did anyone know the reasons behind why they choice i.e South Africa for the pilot program? Edit: Hasty reply before completing the FAQ! Checked 'Why Cape Town'. :)

<comment><USER5> <http://www.google.co.za/intl/en/umbono/faq.html>

"Cape Town is in the process of positioning itself as a hub for innovation and technology, as evidenced by: the Cape IT Initiative, the Bandwidth Barn, the presence of a growing tech industry in Cape Town and Stellenbosch, strong University computer science programs (UCT Stellenbosch, UWC, CPUT, etc), and the formation of the Silicon Cape network. We feel that all of these factors are key to the development of a sustainable, entrepreneurial environment in the technology sector." - FAQ 17.

<comment><USER6> The Bandwidth Barn? I'd like to see this barn and maybe borrow some, because bandwidth is something I don't see much of here in Cape Town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> thank you.</comment>