No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish - <AUTHOR> http://gregsavage.com.au/2010/06/07/no-you-are-not-%E2%80%98running-late%E2%80%99-you-are-rude-and-selfish/ <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of a talk at a medical conference about patient interaction.

The talk was scheduled. People showed up. No speaker was visible. The doors closed. People sat there. Finally someone got unhappy enough to leave. Discovered that the doors were locked. Soon the whole room was up in arms.

Then the speaker got up from the first row, went to the stage, and said, "I did this because no words are as effective as demonstrating the point. Yes, you are all busy people. But your patients are busy people as well. Many bill hourly so time is literally money to them. So don't waste their time and money by being late."

<comment><USER3> I wish more doctors followed this...Ive spent far too many hours of my life waiting in receptions or exam rooms at hospitals. Unfortunately they are kind of squeezed in to seeing more patients per day than they would probably like, and one delay ripples through the rest of the patients.

I wish there was some sort of system to know exactly how far behind (if at all) your doctor was running that you could check online to minimize lost time.

<comment><USER4> I've recently been seeing an Osteopath, and I've been really delighted that his administrative staff have twice contacted me a couple of hours before appointments to reschedule (by 30-40 minutes) as his schedule had slipped during the day. I haven't spent more than 1 or 2 minutes waiting for him. It's kind-of sad that this level of service is remarkable rather than customary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get a php error when I visit this page. I guess the server isn't running low on resources, it is rude & selfish. Or maybe just misconfigured :)

 _Error 403: Forbidden Your PHP settings have been disabled by an H-Sphere administrator.

Your current PHP configuration: \--> This configuration was changed: Please bring your PHP configuration in compliance with admin settings or request your administrator to re-enable support of your settings.

You don't have permissions to access this page. This usually means one of the following:

this file and directory permissions make them unavailable from the Internet. .htaccess contains instructions that prevent public access to this file or directory. Please check file and directory permissions and .htaccess configuration if you are able to do this. Otherwise, request your webmaster to grant you access._

<comment><USER6> Despite the sarcasm I think this is a great response on a serious level. Most people are not late by intention just as this site wasn't intended to crash.

<comment><USER7> If someone is late, that is no problem, stuff happens.

When someone is always late, that is rude and inconsiderate.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps the same way dyslectics (sp?) are inconsiderate by always being unable to spell correctly. From time to time, it would be acceptable.

Consider that for the person that is always late, it is probably a bigger problem than for you. She has to endure it in all parts of her life. Assuming that the problem is that she simply doesn't care is as ignorant as assuming that a dyslectic simply doesn't care to learn how to read or write correctly.

<comment><USER9> Analogy failure.

You can't just compare two things that on the surface may vaguely seem the same, and just assert they are the exact same thing.

Dyslexia is a recognized medical (psychological?) condition. Being chronically late is just rudeness, plain and simple. If you constantly lose track of the time, buy a watch. Set an alarm. Use a smartphone with a calendar that will remind you of things. Take responsibility for your actions and don't try to excuse the inexcusable as some sort of "condition."

<comment><USER8> This is a fact: My sister is chronically early. She often winds up arriving to meetings and places about 10-20 minutes ahead of the agreed time. The consequence is hers the bear: she always has to wait for other people, even those arriving on time. The problem is compounded by some of her friends having the opposite problem, always arriving late.

I'm fully aware that being chronically to early or to late is not a recognized medical condition. Research at this point merely concludes that the downsides of chronically lateness is too great for laziness or procrastination being the major driving force.

Dyslexia is categorized neither as a medical or psychological condition, but as a "learning disorder". It is my belief that research will come to a point where

You are correct that it is rude to be late. Rudeness is defines by culture and in my culture (and I suppose yours) it is rude to be late. It is not a universal thruth however, as other posters have stated, since cultural differences exist.

All of the above tells me that chronical lateness is not "just rude". There is more to it, which makes it a far more interesting phenomenon than most other kinds of rudeness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly, this is mostly an American (and a also a Western) problem. In most of the world (South America, Middle East, Africa, East Asia, etc), "on time" ranges anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 hours later.

We grade our personal productivity level much more than other cultures. Other cultures value other things such as community and relationships at a higher level than we do.

A story:

I was invited to an Indian friend's birthday party. It was going to be a huge party with hundreds of invited people (all Indian, except two people), musicians, a hire clown, and a full-fledged buffet. The invitation stated 6pm. I arrived at 6:30pm because, well, I expected them to start late.

Guess what, only two people were there: the birthday friend, because he had to set up the place, and a white guy, who was even more confused than me.

So the white guy and I helped our friend set up. Then we kicked the soccer ball around for a bit. Just waiting.

People started to slowly trickled in at about 8pm. I don't think we started eating at about 9pm. And it was all normal to them.

<comment><USER11> Don't compare "East Asians" disfavorably to American punctuality within earshot of a Japanese salaryman.

The line beginning with "other cultures" is untestable horsepuckey reminiscent of the absolute worst tripe in American multicultural studies. And I have a degree in that. It survives only because it flatters the preconceptions of an Ameican subculture in academia who prefers to have a ready critique of Western culture, as if such a thing existed.

<comment><USER12> Geez, everything is a liberal conspiracy to some people.

If you don't believe there are differences in punctuality between cultures then you just haven't experienced those cultures.

<comment><USER11> The line I called out was about "valuing relationships", which is both viscerally offensive to me _and_ has no defensibly true meaning. It is like saying whites love their kids more than blacks do. It is too poorly constructed to even be wrong.

<comment><USER12> Fair enough, upon further reflection I agree that line is a meaningless offensive generality.

I still don't get the non sequitur attack on academia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know why, but at some point I just stopped sweating this sort of thing. When others are late to a meeting, it doesn't really bother me. When someone cuts me off in traffic, whateva. These are all small things that just aren't worth the effort of getting upset.

 _I told her I have been coming to you for 15 years but don't take me for granted.

...

Me? Am I ever late? Sure, sometimes. That's inevitable even with the best intentions. But I never plan to be late. I never 'let time slide' because my stuff is more important than yours.

I am not talking about the odd occasion of lateness. I am talking about people who are routinely late. In fact, never on time._

You seem to give yourself much more slack than you allow others. You're not talking about people who are occasionally late, and yet you walked out on your dentist who was late once in 15 years, from the sound of it.

<comment><USER7> Dentists and doctors are always running late, if you go in the afternoons. They don't like sitting around idly, not earning money, so they set up the system this way.

Most patients are in and out, but a few take extra time, and they rarely know which ones, so they just assume they are all quick cases.

Always schedule meetings like this as early as you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two potential solutions:

1\. Plan around it - be somewhere where the person being late doesn't affect you. Have people meet you at your home or at a cafe where you're doing other work or reading a book and it doesn't adversely affect you. Oftentimes, if I'm traveling with a group of people, I give a time range - "Be there between 7:30PM and 8PM" - that lets the early birds get there at 7:30, and the "oh shoot! gotta run!" people ideally get there by 8PM, but the early birds don't get offended and feel disrespected (I'm more or less an early bird, I _hate_ being late - but I've got some friends and acquaintances who just aren't that way).

2\. If you really want to get people to cut it out, make real world consequences. Say "the meeting starts at 9:05 sharp, the doors will be shut and no one will be admitted after that." Think really hard if the situation calls for it, but it does work if you do stuff like that. If you're a professor, you could say to anyone coming in late - "get out. see you next week." You won't have people showing up late if you announce you're going to do that and follow through. Up to you to judge if you want that sort of environment, and you've got to really be on top of things and deliver straight out the gate if you're being hardcore that people have to be there. But it does work.

<comment><USER2> When I was teaching my solution was that homework which was not at the front of the table, at the start of class, was not accepted. I also graded people on only a certain number of homeworks, so missing a homework or two was not a big deal.

It worked. Class started on time, with the question and answer period that I thought was the most important part of class, but which the students probably didn't realize was that important. (Well they did partway into the course. But that is another story.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Personally i find being early more irritating than being late. When someone asks me to meet them at 2pm (eg: Job interview) I'll generally arrive in the vicinity 20-ish minutes early and hang out in a cafe or something and then walk into their office for 2-3 minutes before 2pm.

I've noted some people in my experience to consider this to be late, 15 minutes before stated time is what they consider to be on time. This pisses me off to no end. If you wanted me there at 1:45pm i'd have gladly appeared at that time, just dont say one thing and mean another. GRRRR

</comment><comment><USER16> No, really. I'm running late. My friends understand that we know are being a pain in the ass, but we just can't get it together. It is rude and selfish, but more than that, it's just because we can't get our act together in time. It's called "kids", man. Get over it.

<comment><USER17> My father worked long hours, and my mother managed four boys at once, and we were really too close in age for even the oldest to be much help with the youngest. She is the one who taught me that being late is impolite, if you need to get there a little early to be sure you're not late, then that's what you do. Kids appear to have become a great excuse for whiners and the perpetually incompetent, for almost anything they do, or don't do.

<comment><USER16> My wife and I can otherwise plan for ourselves and get to places on time.

With kids, even when we try to start getting ready an hour earlier, we tend to forget things because of the number of things required and all of the distractions caused by the kids, including them not doing what you tell them to do.

Do I rush around in the car at times telling the kids that we're running late again? Yes.

Would some of you that are complaining about those that are late also be late if you had kids that had difficulty getting things done on time and you were more scatterbrained with kids than without? Yes.

People that procrastinate a bit, aren't type A, and tend to enjoy life rather than planning all the time, sometimes/often are late. It sucks, and it is rude and shows lack of planning and caring enough about being on-time.

You are on-time. That is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Similarly, taking great offense at someone who may very well just _be_ "running late" is rude and selfish, as it assumes your little _thing_ is more important than anything which may come up in their lives.

Context. Always context. If your event does not require strict adherence to starting times, don't require strict adherence to starting times. If it _does_ , keep your view of your importance in scope with theirs, and for God's sake _learn to adapt when things don't go flawlessly_ so glitches don't stop everything. Life is rarely flawless.

</comment><comment><USER19> This post is "very Sydney" as they say there. I lived there for 5 years and deliberate lateness was very much a part of the culture – a social signal that your time was more important than someone else's.

I fondly remember a quarterly kickoff meeting where my boss ripped one of the more pretentious reps a new one as she sidled in 30 minutes late. It didn't happen again.

Having said that - finding parking, catching public transport (oh God those trains – shudder) and just getting around Sydney in general is a _bitch_.

<comment><USER20> Off-topic, but what do you think makes public transport in Sydney so bad? You're suggesting that it's so bad that it creates a kind of built-in lateness for most events?

<comment><USER21> Cityrail is heavily unionised, to the extent that it's not that rare of an occurrence that you will see staff standing at the ticket machines when you go to buy a ticket to stop you from doing so ( this seems to be their alternative to striking ).

This is in response to wage and staff concerns mostly, and I believe that the fares for the train services at least in Sydney are mandated to be fixed at a certain level unless they pass some kind of bureaucratic process. So, the union won't let the budget slide in the direction of infrastructure spending rather than wages and staff spending, simultaneously the fare fixing keeps the pool of money for the system fairly static.

Thus, infrastructure projects in public transport are glacial / non existent depending on your point of view, for about the past fifteen years I have been hearing about a line being added between Epping and Parramatta that is still yet to be completed, I'm not sure it's even been started.

The fact that the public transport is so bad results in people that really need to keep a tight schedule attempting to minimise their reliance on said system, they'll get a car or move some place very close to their place of work (thus perhaps contributing to the ridiculous rents and real estate prices in Sydney). The less people use it, the less people complain about it, the less reason the tragically inefficient system has to actually improve, and frankly it would probably take the threat of armed invasion to get them to pull their shit together at any rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Lulz at "My dentist kept me waiting 50 minutes not long ago."

This is a pretty accurate measure of the value of a recruiter's time vs. a dentist's. Medicos maintain a queue to ensure almost full utilization for their valuable services.

</comment><comment><USER23> The meeting problem is not so hard to solve. Start at the appointed time. Close the door. If the person who organized the meeting is not there, adjourn. People will catch on soon enough. Organizations which have a chronic problem with people straggling into meetings 10 or 20 minutes late are likely enabling the behavior.

<comment><USER24> Indeed. Although what happens when the organizer is on time and the person they want to meet with is late? Leaving early only frees up the other person's time and does not solve the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A recruiter calling other people rude and selfish? Now I've seen everything...

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a huge pet-peeve of mine -- not just showing up late, but any action that communicates that you think your time is more valuable than mine. I view my time as my most valuable asset so I'm really sensitive to people disrespecting it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm chronically late. It's a problem. I'm working on it.

However I notice the poster talks about 9AM meetings. In every company I've worked for, there are people who have a habit of scheduling meetings at the very beginning of the working day, at 8 or 9AM. There are also programmers who have a habit of coming in later, at 10 or 11AM, which is fine except the days when there are meetings.

You can write and complain and admonish and discipline, but sooner or later you have to realize scheduling meetings first thing in the morning doesn't work for non-morning people. They will always be late, or slow, tired, and out of it. If you notice that about 1/3 of your staff never makes the 8AM meeting on time, it's the meeting time and not the staff that's the problem.

Also, making meetings very long and irrelevant encourages tardiness. You've decided to waste my time by making me go to a big group meeting where two people are going to argue about something that does not impact my work. Fine, but don't expect me to make an extra effort to rush to it. I can get some of my time back by being late.

</comment><comment><USER28> The strangest feature of chronic lateness is the view that meeting times can be gamed. Some avoid negative costs for early arrival, like waiting for tables. Others like the attention they get when they finally arrive. Yet others like that nothing happens until they appear.

Disentangling from the chronically late is worth the time. Some situations enforce punctuality. You can also pick a set-time activity for the meeting, like the start of a movie. You can also apply penalties: I once had a professor who allowed students to be as late as they want, but he would only collect homework until the start of class. Other situations, like travel, open the possibility of finding alternate arrangements. I have also resorted to giving earlier meeting times than the actual meeting time, but this has extra consequences.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just scanned the article... the bit about the dinner party is funny. I'm imagining the author fuming and sneaking looks at his watch as friends come progressively in later.

His girlfriend catches the look on his face while he's helping with the coats and hisses "not now!".

As the dinner party progresses, conversation remains strained as the last of their friends arrive "Sorry mate, traffic was awful", Greg mutters something under his breath while everybody pretends not to hear.

Later, once everyone's left it's same argument again: her friends are "productivity obstacles" while she chokes back the tears she asking why he won't just let it go. The anger, coiled like a spring in his stomach is still there though: this is important, why don't they realise... !?

</comment><comment><USER30> I agree in general. Being late, in a Western cultural context is just damn rude.

He had me until the dentist story. I don't think that a dentist actually plans to let patients wait, but it does happen. A dentist (mine at least) usually plans in contingency for emergencies, but it may still happen that he overshoots.

Question: Would you rather have your dentist hand out his cell phone # after treating you on a Friday and their _may_ be some complexities on the weekend for the price of waiting the occasional 20 minutes or a guaranteed punctual dentist who lets you wait for three weeks while you agonize in pain?

<comment><USER31> It's a false dichotomy - the solution to being able to handle emergencies quickly is the same as the solution to being able to see patients on time - have some slack in your schedule. Of course, that may mean that you need to charge more for your service, but I know plenty of people that would happily pay a surcharge of 20% or so on their doctor/dentist visits if it meant that they wouldn't have to be sitting around in a waiting room for an hour.

The curious thing about it is that it would only need to be about 20% to get everyone clear, but instead of that, nearly every patient ends up needing to wait for an hour, because there is _always_ an emergency that needs addressing each day. I wonder why we don't see doctor's surgeries or dentists doing this. Anyone have an idea?

<comment><USER30> Ummm

"the solution to being able to handle emergencies quickly is the same as the solution to being able to see patients on time"

That's exactly what I said; just with slightly different words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Scheduling a meeting at 9am is also rather inconsiderate towards me. Besides, why don't you just start without me? By scheduling it at 9am, you have made it clear that my attention is not really important to you.

<comment><USER33> What's wrong with 9am?

<comment><USER18> The part that says "am".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> While I agree with the comment in general, my norm is to immediately cancel and reschedule or go on without the person.

The victimization aspect (3 wasted hours) could also be avoided by not passively sitting and waiting to start.

<comment><USER29> Yeah - surely there were other things happening during that day, to do?

Also, mobile phones .. the person being late will generally call (and maybe during 3 hours (!!) the person waiting might ring and find out whats going on).

Waiting, doing nothing for 3 hours and then complaining about it seems a bit passive aggressive, I think I would wait an hour tops.

<comment><USER35> The three hours wasted was actually just 20 minutes of 10 people's time. Forcing people to sit and wait for 10 minutes is totally passive aggressive.

Also, not every employee can accomplish that much in 10 minutes. A support or business person could fire off an e-mail or two, but an engineer suffers when time is broken into small chunks. Engineers are also paid pretty well, so when you're talking about 3 hours of "engineer-time" wasted, the cost to the company adds up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can't agree more with this post. Oftentimes people want to make dinner plans with me and I ask for a time so that I can plan for things after. When these times become 30 - 40 minutes late it messes up my schedule for the rest of the night.

Similarly showing up on time and waiting some indefinite time for people to show up is a pain. I'm ashamed to admit it but I've started being a bit late to things because I find that almost always other people aren't on time either.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is what I got when I tried the page an hour after posting to Hacker News:

 _Error 403: Forbidden

Your PHP settings have been disabled by an H-Sphere administrator_

Now that is rude

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell If I agree to meet someone at a certain time, I make sure I arrive early so as not to keep them waiting. I'd rather arrive early and wait, then arrive late and keep the other person waiting.

That is the only polite way to behave when meeting up with somebody.

<comment> mike-cardwell Also, if an event finishes at a set time of say 8pm, and I'm being picked up. I don't tell the person to pick me up at 8pm. I add maybe 10 minutes on top to make sure I'm out and ready and waiting when they arrive.

<comment><USER38> You should like someone who puts absolutely everyone ahead of themselves (not making a judgment on if this is good or bad. It's definitely different then me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who's chronically early... If it involves travel of any kind in a US city (9am meetings imply that), sorry, lateness is a given. 10 am, 11am, etc, no problem being draconian, unless it actually involves inter-city travel (i.e. not employees - in the sense that they're people who know where they're going).

If you're asking people to go to a place that you're familiar with and they're not, just assume they're going to be twenty minutes to half an hour late.

I've lost track of the number of times my GPS has guided me around a circle for 15 minutes, or up to a detour sign, or to turn left on a no left turn sign.

<comment><USER17> Maybe you should learn to read a map, and actually, you know, _plan_ your route ahead of time. I wonder if trying to read a GPS while driving might be almost as bad as talking on a cell phone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I spend my life rushing to things. Probably some internal overestimation of quite how much can be done for some length of time. Sure, it would be nice to be on time for everything, but I was late every day to school (not for want of trying to be on time). I try to be on time, and often can be (altho arriving sweaty from running for the tube or bus). Other times it just doesn't happen. We have mobile phones these days so it's no big deal.. having to arrive for a hard and fast deadline is a lot less common than it used to be.

</comment><comment><USER40> Once upon a time, my very favorite manager wanted to review the high level schedule for his software product. So he called a meeting among all the managers who worked for him. At ten, maybe fifteen minutes past the hour, everyone had finally made it into the room, random issues with projectors and computers and missing files had been resolved, and everyone was ready to present.

The manager scowled. "People, if you can't run a meeting on time, I don't know how you're _ever_ going to run a program on time."

Attendance was prompt thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's helpful to define what "being late" means. My rule of thumb is 0-5 minutes late is "on time", 5-10 minutes late is "OK but not great", 10-15 minutes late is "somewhat rude" and 15+ minutes late is "very rude".

One thing that annoys me to no end: people who are very early. If I plan my schedule carefully around you being there at 2pm (or later) and you show up 20 minutes early, you are going to sit around for 20 minutes, and I'll feel like an asshole, even though it's your fault.

<comment><USER38> >and I'll feel like an asshole

Why? I would try to make it as uncomfortable for them as possible so they don't do that anymore.

<comment><USER29> Sounds like a great basis for friendship and personal relationships (although maybe these are "productivity obstacles" too?)

<comment><USER38> We all have our personality quirks and I'm old enough to not be ashamed of mine. I hate it when people get to things really early. My friends learn this about me, just as I learn their quirks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Agree wholeheartedly.

I've said for a while now that being late is making the statement that you don't value the other party's time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I also find doctors to be late in perpetuity, ive never in my life waited less than 10 minutes PAST the actual appointment time. This is both an easily identifiable problem and easy to fix, the receptionists could easily structure appointments more appropriately.

<comment><USER43> Well the problem may vary from provider to provider (and country to country), but after observing my wife's situation as a physician in the U.S., I can tell you that many doctors aren't late volitionally.

First, the problem isn't easily fixed. Here's the deal: At her HMO each doctor has a panel of several thousand patients. Each patient visit during a normal clinical day gets a 15 minute allocation with the MD. It used to be 20 minutes at her HMO but was recently reduced in order to increase the patient volume. Typically my wife's schedule is stacked appointment to appointment from 8-Noon and then again from 1-5pm. A couple of time slots are left unscheduled for high priority, emergent visits (if you've got a routine visit, forget it, you'll get something a month or two out into the future).

No as you can imagine, 15 minutes per patient isn't much time. Some patients require more time. With each successive visit, the wait will get longer and longer. This isn't because the doctor (at least some of them) is being a jerk or dismissive, it's because they're trying to do a thorough job with the time allocated. If they can't finish what they need to in 15 minutes, well, she goes over that time. It isn't too hard to realize how screwed up the schedule can get after a couple of tough back-to-back cases.

My wife then tries to catch up during lunch hour because she doesn't take lunch. After working through lunch, she kicks into the afternoon half of clinic hopefully caught up, but sometimes not. And the cycle repeats itself.

The receptionists can't "easily structure" the appointments more appropriately -- at least at the large providers -- b/c they're not the ones running the game.

I'm not going to defend the overall system. That's a much bigger problem and mess that a lot of smart people have looked at and have yet to solve. But I do think it's worth realizing that, yes, many doctors do think your time is valuable and don't purposefully try to waste your time. Many doctors are overworked and are doing the best they can within the parameters of what they've been given to practice medicine and that at some point you might be that person that has an appointment that goes over the time allocated (and when you do, hopefully you'll be happy the doctor ended up being attentive to those needs).

Just hoping to lend some extra perspective (especially as someone who used to feel the same way you do).

<comment><USER17> It was her choice to work in that situation, so I have very limited sympathy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> With the party thing, a lot of the time I am happy to get there right on time, gives more time to spend with friends before people leaving/ passing out. Unless it's a party I don't actually want to go to then I may make a late appearance.

</comment><comment><USER45> This comment may offend some bloggers, but I think anyone writing something that starts with a warning about how it might offend people is simply writing it for the shock value.

</comment><comment><USER46> In NYC, no one ever seems to be "on time."

</comment><comment><USER47> Actually, maybe I'm really busy, and doing the best I can. I value your time, but I value mine more. And obviously you're not as in demand as other people are. Sorry you can't appreciate that.

<comment><USER2> _Actually, maybe I'm really busy, and doing the best I can._

No.

No matter how busy you are, if you're good at planning you can routinely be on time. If you're bad at planning, then you'll have problems no matter how little you have to do. And if you make a point of surrounding yourself with people who are able to manage to be on time, then you'll all get more done.

 _I value your time, but I value mine more._

As my brother drilled into me a long time ago, "Yes, but..." is just a dishonest way to say "No". Your actions clearly say that you DON'T value other people's time. There is no need to bother pretending otherwise.

 _And obviously you're not as in demand as other people are._

No. It is called "planning". And not being rude and selfish. You might learn this "planning" thing. It could let you get more done without putting as much effort out.

 _Sorry you can't appreciate that._

Apparently you are aware that it is inconvenient when other people prove to have desires that are at odds with your selfishness. But you clearly don't let that bother you too much.

My attitude is that people like you are productivity obstacles to route around and avoid.

(For the record I am someone whose natural tendency is to be chronically late. But _not_ when someone else is depending on me.)

<comment><USER32> Can you plan to be on time to the minute, though? With traffic? Or does being on time mean you have to be early, to account for the possibility of travel delays. Then suddenly it becomes expensive to always be on time.

<comment><USER2> I have seen people be chronically late to meetings when they just have to walk from one room to another within a building. That I have no patience for.

With uncertain travel, you have a point. Still if you're a sales person who is supposed to pitch me, be on time or don't bother showing up. Sure, being on time is more expensive for you. But it is less expensive than a wasted trip, so don't make it a wasted trip. If the relationship is more even, then I understand travel delays but expect to see a reasonable attempt. If you're late half the time and early half the time, I'll be OK with it. If I have to consistently wait for you being late, that's going to be a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitHub is "experiencing major service outages" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/358199381389873153

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand why this is that big of a deal. Okay, I pay for github and they have downtime, that sucks. But git is designed to be distributed and your workflow can be partition tolerant. I honestly don't care if github goes down for a few hours; it doesn't stop anyone on my team from continuing to work. Now if they have days of downtime... that could be an issue and I would probably look to host repositories elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> > But git is designed to be distributed and your workflow can be partition > tolerant.

but issues are not distributed, as an example.

<comment><USER4> They are.

$ git add . $ git commit -m 'fixing #23'

<comment><USER3> the ability to write a commit with a number in it doesn't magically create a distributed issue system which is still hosted in ONE place, which is still down when ONE place is down, and which still demands you have an account registered in ONE provider where those issues are posted and discussed.

btw the auto-linking auto-fixing commit syntax is just a local convention, which isn't even compatible between the 2 biggest players, see [https://github.com/zzzeek/alembic/](https://github.com/zzzeek/alembic/) and [https://bitbucket.org/zzzeek/alembic/commits/all](https://bitbucket.org/zzzeek/alembic/commits/all) for example reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there very little someone can do to mitigate a DDoS attack?

Github just happens to be a very large target; BitBucket or alternatives are just as vulnerable.

<comment><USER6> The DDoS-proof solution is to put your repo on your own infrastructure.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you, I'm just refuting the claim that this is Github fault due to their own incompetence. What can Github realistically do except mitigate? What can _anyone_ do except mitigate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A nice reminder not to put all your eggs in one basket.

<comment><USER8> It was a DDoS attack. Nothing to do with their infrastructure.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but everything to do with their reputation. before 8 months ago, I never recommended Bitbucket to anyone. Now I do based on the knowledge that GitHub has a loss of connection at least once a month.

The company I worked for used GitHub as the source for its build systems releases. If you can't do releases because GitHub is down a few times, I'm sure the dev/ops team will start looking elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> The enterprise version of GitHub might be a middle ground.

<comment><USER11> GitHub enterprise has absolutely no dependencies on the mother ship, except for expiring license packs.

And, in my experience, they'll very freely give you 1-2 month temporary packs, even if you're late with the renewals. Very good customer service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gitlab is easy to set up and it works really well. It has a much cleaner and pleasant interface as well (especially since GitHub ruined theirs about a month ago).

<comment><USER11> Definitely agree. gitlab is just getting better and better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where I work we're slowly switching to Stash lately, a self-hosted GitHub-like (sans Issues) software by Atlassian. I took a look and it seems to cost $10 one-time for teams up to 10 people. Suspiciously low price—I guess they expect customers to add Jira integration for ticket management and make more money off that.

So this makes you basically safe from DDoS-attacks, since you host it yourself, and costs much less than enterprise GitHub installation (which is $50K/year for up to 20 people). Judging by screenshots it seems pretty similar to GitHub—although, of course, closer to BitBucket. Haven't tried it myself yet.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know of a simple utility to host a remote on your local machine so that a small team can take advantage of git's DVCS in the event that a service like GitHub goes down?

<comment><USER13> Any local machine may be problematic (if you have a dynamic IP), but git is _really_ easy to host on a VPS or any box with a static IP -- just make sure you have everyone's SSH keys authorized (not on root unless you trust everyone with that), and use the following:

        $ git remote add origin2 user@your-ip:/path/to/repo.git

To create repo.git:

        $ mkdir repo.git
        $ cd repo.git
        $ git --bare init

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Someone didn't do their homework. -- Man, I'm not going to get this project done by morning. Hey I know, I'll take down github and say its checked in.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love how we put this on HN. Most likely everybody who sees this already knows about it - that's why their here (they can't work)

<comment><USER16> If you can't work because GitHub's down, you're doing git wrong. It's a minor annoyance that I can't access the issues but it's by no means unworkable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What else is new?

</comment><comment><USER18> Sad tradition - being down once a month. Oh, come on guys!</comment>


HALF of air passengers leave phones on - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/01/half_of_flyers_not_bothering_with_flight_mode/ <comment><USER2> "While most just forget, the rest think they know better."

And they're clearly correct, as the planes don't crash, no one scolds them for causing delays or equipment to malfunction. The planes take off and land just fine.</comment>


Bruce Willis to fight Apple over rights to music collection after his death - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/4517317/Bruce-Willis-to-fight-Apple-over-music-rights-after-his-death.html

<comment><USER2> Please don't ever post anything from The Sun. It's a worthless, sensationalist pit pandering in majority to festering idiots who live vicariously through a bizarre mix of celebrities and "real-life-tragedies".

[Edit - This is, perhaps, an extreme view, and The Sun is in no way alone in using this _modus operandi_. However, as a Brit I feel an impulsive need to warn those who didn't grow up with The Sun!]

<comment><USER3> I don't care, I'll judge on the article. This one does not seem to fit the characteristics you describe. I'll trust the community not to upvote drivel too much (they probably will, but it won't be your usual sun drivel).

<comment><USER4> Judging the article: it lists no sources and has no quotations from anyone regarding the headline claim. Doesn't seem that The Sun has presented any evidence whatsoever to back it up.

<comment><USER5> That is hardly "Sun" levels of bad journalism; you see similar from most mainstream publications these days.

<comment><USER4> I must disagree with this assessment. I have read dozens of news stories from "mainstream publications" in the past few days and not one of them had the singular lack of sourcing found in this article.

Regardless of whether "everyone does it" (which, again, is not true), it's irrelevant to trying to have higher standards for links from Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most young people won't get the reference, but before I clicked through to the OP, I was thinking this was referring to who would own the digital sales rights to "The Return of Bruno" after his death.

Shamefully, I admit to buying this CD as a teenager, just because it was on sale for $10 (very cheap at the time for a CD).

<comment><USER7> I had the _exact same_ reaction. I couldn't imagine that it's flying off the (digital) shelves, so I had to click through and read. Next up, Scott Baio?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really wish there were some other sources. All the tech blogs are also linking back to TheSun which I have a hard time taking seriously.

<comment><USER9> The story was also reported yesterday, with more detail, in the Sunday Times (<http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/>), which sits, ironically, behind a paywall. (I have the dead tree version here, which I guess I could photograph and upload.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No sources, no comment from any company or organization.

This is the kind of work you'd expect from the sun, trash paper.

</comment><comment><USER11> Aren't iTunes tracks all DRM-free now? Maybe Bruce has some old ones with DRM and hasn't paid to upgrade them to DRM-free.

<comment><USER12> What does DRM have to do with this though? Presumably the point isn't whether or not he can move these to another machine with a hardware/software dongle getting in the way. I take it that the point is that the Apple license prohibits him from legally giving/bequeathing these songs to anyone of his choosing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Postscript, so that HN has an accurate record: Bruce Willis Isn't Suing Apple Over iTunes Music Ownership Rights.

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/03/bruce-willis-itunes- music-l...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/03/bruce-willis-itunes-music- library/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Okay, I'm happy he's doing this, and I hope it doesn't mean he's having health problems.

But I doubt his daughters are interested in his music.

<comment><USER15> One of the most connecting things my son and I share is music.

Of the few things that I remember about my father, a large part is music.

Even if you don't like the music, it still helps you understand. Sometimes it just helps you.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The reason this is interesting is that finally someone twigged to the contradiction between the word "buying" and not being able to dispose of the property acquired.

This applies to iTunes, Amazon and the other app-stores around. No re-sale, no transmission of any kind beyond first buyer is contemplated. It's in fact a lifetime lease, with the "landlord" retaining some interesting rights, such as popping in and removing items. We discussed that here a couple of years ago when Amazon exercised that right to remove allegedly illegal copies of Nineteen Eighty Four it had sold.

The current situation may be temporarily good for profits, but the value for digital items may well depend on their having a secondary market like physical goods have. The sales of new houses or cars would suffer greatly if they were not resalable.

</comment><comment><USER16> A confused and zombified Bruce Willis was found in a Cupertino air conditioning duct late last night, in possession of a portable hard drive and a bad hangover.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is stupid.

<comment><USER18> Why? I think it is great that Bruce Willis brings attention to the topic. My father gave me his record collection. He was able to do so, because he owned it. Will current/next generations be able to do the same?</comment></comment>


From the gig economy to the creator economy to the participatory economy - <AUTHOR> https://sariazout.substack.com/p/check-your-pulse-48 <comment><USER2> I"m bullish on this and have been for about 12 months. Watching the growth of Twitch has really opened my eyes to the potential of a "participatory economy" (if that name sticks).

Youtube seems to me to be on the edge of a cliff. They are allowing advertisers to call all of the shots. You see videos all the time about how "Trending" tab or whatever other recommendation section on Youtube favours established/mainstream content. The reason is that brand friendliness is make- or-break for Youtube. If a big enough advertiser complains their ads are in front of CreatorZeke's videos then Youtube is going to do whatever necessary to appease the million dollar spender. That has a chilling effect across the platform as creators divine what kind of content gets the sweet ad $$$.

On Twitch, in comparison, some of the biggest creators don't even show ads. They exist very well on subscriptions and donations. This greatly reduces the effect advertisers have over shaping the content that is created. I think fans are starting to realize this and it will likely continue to generate a sense of freedom on Twitch when compared to Youtube.

It reminds me of the "100 True Fans" article on a16z [1]. It is reasonable for a creator to exist and thrive with 100 to 1000 devoted fans.

1\. [https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true- fans/](https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true-fans/)

<comment><USER3> First Bezos unbundles product search with Amazon from Google's core BU. Amazon US is earning an ARPU of 900 almost an order of magnitude higher than Google. Now Twitch unbundles the most profitable piece of Youtube while he bundles a Netflix video service in Amazon Prime at the same time.

What does Bezos eat for breakfast?

<comment><USER4> Pages from Machiavelli and Rockefeller's private diary?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just to entertain an introverted perspective, flexible exploitation models (gig), narcissistic tendencies (creator) and cult followings (participatory) have "bad haircut" written all over them (someone will sport them though, Just ask Karen).

The added ponzi feel of crypto (hot start, flat finish) would require some pretty keen foresight/vision to counter the fad status returns.

From an extroverted POV, it sounds like paradise and an opportunity to grow with an extended circle (of global friends, peers, mentors,etc) outside of your local scene, though that brochure has been popular for ages now (digitally).

If you can avoid the pitfalls of greed, "social economics" and mental illness podiums (social 1.0), you may very well provide an alternative to the previous economic models.

In the quest to seperate business from pleasure, I think the participatory economy leaves much to be desired, but even WFA is still working on that facet.

<comment><USER6> There's something deeply tragic about the idea that devising new ways to monetise and profit from activity is the definition of becoming more human.

We seem to have created an MBA-inspired nightmare where all social interactions become a meta-game of promotion, monetisation, and profit, and no activity can possibly have an intrinsic value unless it operates inside that context.

<comment><USER7> Most of these experiments come out of the US where there is overwhelming pressure by society that your value as a human is how well you can sell yourself. This is especially true as more and more people are priced out of broader economic participation by how high the cost of living is vs available income opportunity.

<comment><USER5> Are you in the US?

Nimby is a fickle mistress, though we can see in China as well as the US that property ownership is part of a warped mating ritual/tradition and has distorted "occupant owned" dwelling statistics (just as much as reits have). 3 for me, none for you was a different economic experiment afaic.

Are you listening to "I don't want to be you anymore" by Billie Eilish? The pressure you speak of may have a gender imbalance, but most guys are cool with a smooth operator (being good at what you do) and tend to avoid lip service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The mention of Onlyfans makes me sigh. Because they are in the beginning of the payment-enabler cycle, where they are delighted to let porn on their site. Once they grow past a certain point, they will inevitably come into conflict with anti-porn policies at the larger financial institutions they have to interface, and there will be a day when they start banning more and more kinds of porn, until it's all gone.

I'm an artist on Patreon, so are a lot of my friends. Patreon's somewhere in the middle of this cycle. You can still put some kinds of horny stuff up, and that's still some of their top earners IIRC even though they don't like to admit it. But other stuff is banned - if you're an adult performer who wants to post clips of you Doing Horny Things, Patreon doesn't want you any more. All my friends who draw horny art have a little twitch of fear every time Patreon announces a policy change, is this gonna be the one that means Patreon kicks them off?

<comment><USER9> I don't think you're right. The majority owner of onlyfans also owns MyFreeCams which has existed for almost 20 years making money off pornography. OnlyFans started as a creator website but pivoted to porn in part because of Radvinsky. This is a site built around decades of sex work financial knowledge.

<comment><USER8> I will be delighted to see my expectations disproven.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In the gig economy, users who contribute time and data are rewarded linearly, while platforms grow exponentially.

In the creator economy, people regain control and creators earn an asymmetric return on their time.

In the forthcoming "participatory economy" both creators and fans participate in a creator's success.

<comment><USER10> This doesn't seem to hold true as a rule for the creator economy if they are reliant on platforms that control pricing and can change it at a whim (or via algorithm).

<comment><USER11> To reference something recent, Dr. Disrespect still doesnt know why he was banned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How do fans participate in the creators financial success? The money has to come from somewhere (the fans) and go to somewhere else (the fans and the creator?). I don't see how such a system could work.

<comment><USER13> In theory?

Advertisers pay because the creator has content worth watching, and so can deliver watchers. The creator and watchers can find an equilibrium where it is in everyone's interest to take the advertisers $, in exchange for something like 50% for the creator, 50% for the viewers. Top twitch streamers, say Ninja, DrD, Shroud (none of which are on the platform currently- LUL) could earn awesome normal people incomes ($250k/annum??), while their viewers get modest income ($10-$30/month?? based on a few assumptions).

In reality, like most situations like this, the creator will be rent-seeking, and have the power to demand more and more of the $ that would otherwise go to the watcher, such that ultimately only the platform and creator get $ (which is sadly the case now).

My guess is that there are already Phds in Economics showing this is true.

<comment><USER14> I don't think anyone's going to earn $10-$30 a month to watch media content containing the occasional ad, especially not given the obvious adverse selection problem: audiences whose media consumption is influenced by micropayouts probably doesn't have enough disposable income to buy what the advertiser is selling.

Creators generate ad revenues from volume in the order of fractions of cents per viewer. Viewers watch because the media itself has value to them, so it really isn't rent-seeking for the content creators to regard themselves as the value creators and generally keep the money. And if creators think a selective wealth giveaway will help grow their audience or encourage creative contributions from their community they can [and often do] already give selected fans meaningful rewards without a layer of crypto-MLM bullshit on top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The "participatory economy" seems like a gross gamification of online social interaction. It's important that people have aspects of there lives that aren't driven by financial incentives. I would argue that online communities, especially more niche, subscription-based ones, are driven and should be driven primarily by interest. Why do participants need to be "compensated" for their engagement?

> What if instead the community took a portion of the fee stream and > distributed it to the members who most positively impacted the community?

I think it's arrogant to think we can develop a reward system that can both accurately match reward to real-world impact (how do you even quantify that?) and also avoid the trap of influencing users' behavior toward optimizing their virtual rewards (participatory income?) over engaging with their community authentically.

Subscription-based online platforms like Twitch and Patreon already work, what is the great improvement that a "participatory economy" brings?

<comment><USER16> Rating systems can be gamed, but micro-rewards and reward-limiters could subdue this effect if tied to some proof-of-individual system which also enhances the community. IRL; standup comedians get rewards, and patrons add to the entertainment thru feedback and therefore enhance the event.

But to your main point; Are creators/contributors more authentic when struggling to survive, or more authentic when their time/reward matches their basic needs? Are we motivated by rewards, or does lack thereof restrict our production? It depends on individual circumstance or character, or some raw potential of the network effect which has few winners if poorly designed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like a multi-level marketing scheme for content

<comment><USER18> This description really does sound like MLM:

> "A seed button will pop up where you can choose how much you give that > creator on a monthly basis. You will receive a portion of all seeds given > after yours."

[https://beta.cent.co/](https://beta.cent.co/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Suppose somebody was making an indie video game and wanted to use this idea to build a community. How would that even work? Do you create custom forum software to detect contributors, or just use something like fig to pay supporters if you succeed?

<comment><USER20> Based on the article, you would create your own cryptocurrency $INDIEGAME (through a platform like Roll or Rally) and give out those cryptocurrencies as points for community participation. Players of your game could then accumulate such points by spreading the word, and exchange those points for some in-game items / benefits, for instance.

<comment><USER4> So the whole refer your friend and get a free loot box angle

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is the difference between a "fan who positively impacts the community and is rewarded for it" and an "influencer who is paid marketing dollars"?

</comment><comment><USER21> uber and airbnb replaced by an open sourced platform with a community driven control structure. also, a peer to peer network would destroy facebook and the like as advertisers would deal directly with the users. ie, users would get paid for their data and get paid to watch adverts if they choose.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would receiving dividends from stocks count as participatory economy?</comment>


Study Finds Quitting Facebook Makes You Happier and Less Stressed - <AUTHOR> http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/10779/study-finds-quitting-facebook-makes-you-happier-and-less-stressed <comment><USER2> I still have my account but I've pretty much cut back my time to a few minutes, two or three times a week. That's basically just to check private messages as well, as I have some friends who send messages primarily through Facebook messenger rather than SMS.

I didn't make a conscious attempt to use it less and less over time, it just happened. I grew tired of the News Feed and all the inane food and baby posts and reactionary or downright misinformed 'political' posts from people I would have otherwise expected to be capable of critical thinking. I removed all of my family and work colleagues from my friends list years ago, nothing good ever came from them knowing what my friends were like or what I was doing with them in my social time haha.

Plus I have major problems with Facebook as a company and its practices, advertising and tracking. I'm kind of a hypocrite for using it in the first place.

I found myself hiding more and more people over time, and then gradually using it less and less to the point where I now just fire up the Tinfoil app on my phone two or three times a week, checking messages from my closest friends who are usually trying to organise a board game day or some drinks in town.

Can't say my life has been negatively affected in any way, in fact I feel better for not having this extra thing to think about that was basically just a task or chore to me. I'm starting to think the next logical step is to just stop using it altogether. I don't believe I'm going to be negatively affected in any way.

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't say what they did instead, so this might just mean that TV and Netflix produces more happiness than Facebook.</comment>


Things I Don't Get Notifications For - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@indica/things-i-dont-get-notifications-for-f491999c97f9 <comment><AUTHOR> I found this to be beautiful. Maybe someone will get a notification for it now that I'm sharing it here.</comment>


Show HN: StoryScroll – Turn web pages into scrolling videos for Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://nealshyam.com/app/ <comment><AUTHOR> I built this because i wanted to make my career advice blog [https://nealshyam.com/advice](https://nealshyam.com/advice) more engaging on social and realized, why even both with clicks?

You can't post links on Instagram unless you're verified or have 10,000 followers. And even then, every link is a roadblock.

Frankly, long form content is at disadvantage on social media, because these platforms prioritize video and advertisements. So, I decided to turn my blog posts into videos. No clicks, no distracting sound, no friction. Just a clean, lean-back, and engaging experience.

It has a few limitations - infinite scroll is hard. It might not work well on a super JS heavy site like CNN. But for static site or square space / word press blog, you should be fine.

And yes, I know the icon is dumb. I'll change it :)

<comment><USER2> I know videos do better in engagement than static content, but is there any evidence that screencasting a webpage gives you better engagement?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing other than anecdata. My audience has reacted positively to StoryScrolls. I've made a some app sales. People have asked me to share the app with them.

IMO, it's a lot easier to like & follow a video that plays without interaction than to like something you have to clickthrough to learn more about.</comment></comment></comment>


Air conditioner 'in a patch' provides portable cooling - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01576-x <comment><USER2> I read an article [1] years ago about how exercising with a glove that had coolant flowing through it enabled both athletes and regular exercisers to have longer lasting sessions because they could cool down more efficiently.

Since then, I've thought that something like a simple strap for the hand which had a copper plate for the palm and a bunch of heat dispersal fins like on a GPU on back of the hand, with some sort of liquid running through it to help pull out the heat would probably help quite a lot to help cool you down while exercising...

1\. [https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps- ath...](https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps-athletes- patients/)

<comment><USER3> I still think about this article. I was hoping to see some affordable product to come out of it, but haven't seen anything yet.

Although... 2017? Hmm. I thought I remembered reading about it 5-10 years ago. Maybe an earlier step in the research?

<comment><USER2> Oh, yeah. they've been working on it for years [1]. You're probably thinking about the same articles I am, from 2012 when all the blogs picked it up as "better than steroids" [2]. I'm with you - I thought they'd have a consumer product out by now. Also, there's some debate about whether this actually works, but I did some personal testing years ago when I had access to a treadmill and was able to jog longer with my hand cooled.

1\. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041006085310.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041006085310.htm)

2\. [https://gizmodo.com/stanford-is-building-a-body-cooling- glov...](https://gizmodo.com/stanford-is-building-a-body-cooling-glove-that- might-wo-5939295)

<comment><USER3> Yep, I bet that's it—thanks! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember reading an article years ago (wired?) where someone developed a system to maintain a good body temperature in hot or cold.

I think the end result was a boot that lowered the pressure of the foot, then circulated warm water against it. The person could stay in 32F water indefinitely.

But the article also talked about core body temperature and exercise. High core temperature was a limit on endurance. With a device to keep your core body temperature even, you could basically exercise at high levels for long periods of time.

I don't know why batman doesn't have something like this on his utility belt, especially when he runs around in heavy black clothing on hot sunny days.

<comment><USER5> I remember seeing articles about a glove version if anyone's interested: [https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps- ath...](https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps-athletes- patients/)

<comment><USER6> One of the first things I do post training is stick both my wrists/hands under cold running water. Works great

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://embrlabs.com/](https://embrlabs.com/) has created a watch like device that I think is the same idea.

<comment><USER8> I believe these are distinct concepts. One cycles on/off to trick your body into thinking it's not hot.

The other is just just pumping away heat.

Pumping away heat is probably better than fooling your brains thermoregulation algorithms. But maybe heatstroke is your thing.

<comment><USER9> I'd be fine with the latter if it also had a way to sense when you were overdoing it, and either warn the user or disable itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So a flexible peltier? I think peltiers are really interesting, they certainly aren't very efficient, but I'm excited that innovation is happening in that space. Heat pumps without moving parts will always be interesting to me.

<comment><USER11> Heat pumps are more efficient than a compressor and are more effective than a radiator. You could power it with a solar panel to get power when you need cooling the most.

<comment><USER12> A compressor is a heat pump. Peltiers are much much less efficient than compressor driven heat pumps. Its why we don't really use them for much, but use compressor a/c and refrigeration for everything.

<comment><USER13> Peltier units are used where compressors are too large or expensive.

For example, those $20 in-car cool boxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting, this is a similar idea to whats been used in motorsports for driver cooling systems for a long time. I just got in my new setup from Chillout Systems [1] this week. Since I live in Texas, even many of the club racers like myself invest in these types of systems since it's so hot here during the Summer.

[1]: [https://www.chilloutsystems.com/](https://www.chilloutsystems.com/)

<comment><USER15> We use to race here in CO (which gets hot but not as hot as Texas admittedly) by dipping our Nomex suits in ice water and racing with ice bags in the suit that leaked so two cooling mechanisms in action. Works for 45 mins. It was great to get out with a completely dry suit after a race. Nothing like cool balls during the race.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Being a large fan of the Dune novels, I'm looking forward to the day a manufacturer creates a real world Stillsuit

<comment><USER17> I'm not looking forward to them being necessary, but given the news that bits of the world may move past unaugmented survivability, due to wet bulb temp, I have been giving some thought to the cheapest version. So far I have been looking at a solar panelled conical hat, similar to the traditional chinese farmer hats, with a curtain of layers of mosquito net. The layers are seperated and cotain a water condenser that feeds to a storage tube at the bottom that also acts as a weight and a cool environment is kept within the circle under the hat by the air being blown through the condenser.

<comment><USER18> If you had the cone made of slightly rotated PV strips within a stationary brim and rotated them like a propeller hat you could do convention cooling in an incredibly _stylish_ piece of headgear. X~D

<comment><USER17> Fantastic idea, you can also then cosplay as a jet engine.

I keep meaning to tidy up my design work for this and stick it online under some sort of open source licence. I'm not sure what the best one is for hardware projects, though the GPL will presumably do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it basically just a Peltier cooler? I thought those things had terrible efficiency?

<comment><USER20> Yes, but you make up for the efficiency by cooling a single person, rather than an entire room. At least, that is what it looks like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone have advice on staying cool at night? Now that it's getting warmer I'm having a hard time sleeping at night. I don't want to just turn the air down really low since others in my house wouldn't like it. I don't want to run a fan all night either. This tech doesn't really seem to be there yet

<comment><USER22> What's the problem with running a fan all night? Legitimate question, as it's never occurred to me not to do that in the warmer months.

<comment><USER23> I also find the white noise from a fan helps me sleep...ymmv.

<comment><USER24> sometimes i find even having a ceiling fan on low speed, slightly dries out my eyes overnight/when I wake up in the morning. It may be all in my head, but I seem to remember reading something that your eyes either flicker or don't always close all the way shut while sleeping. so no fan for me at night ( I just generally keep other AC vents closed a tad so that more pressure comes into my bedroom AC vent and i have thermostat thermostat schedule to be a few degrees lower at night while I sleep, then a few degrees higher around an hour or so before I need to wake up, the heat/warmer temp helps wake me up kind of like an alarm clock )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I expected more from Nature.

The core of this device is a Peltier heat pump.

I'm sure it's great for keeping cool in the summer, but there is no way they'll ever work out for cooling buildings. They're fundamentally inefficient due to needing to be built of materials that conduct heat in one direction and insulate in another, while simultaneously conducting electricity and having a large bandgap. Such materials have not been found and are unlikely to exist.

Anyone technical proofing the article should have been aware of that, and should not have allowed such claims to get into the article.

Single phase gas turbine refrigeration can theoretically get to the Carnot efficiency limit, and in reality gets close to it.

<comment><USER25> You misread the article. They want to save energy by cooling the individual, not the room.

> The use of such devices could reduce the _demand_ for energy to power > central air conditioning by 20% in typical buildings, and enhance a wearer's > comfort outdoors, the authors say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have embraced a large wet bandana on my forehead / neck / arm / etc. Evaporative cooling for the price of $5 (and the effort of carrying around a bottle of water). Dunno about 10C reduction, but it makes a lot of difference. It also made me question the wisdom of having spent the prior years in unnecessary suffering.

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately that won't work for everyone. There are some places, where 90% humidity is a regular occurrence.

<comment><USER26> Good point, I was thinking mostly about Las Vegas when I typed that (have to go there every year mid summer).

Well then, another contribution: a few years ago I have found that several months of strenuous cargo exercise made me not care about heat, even the wet heat. I would still sweat and all, but it wouldn't be nearly as bothersome as it was earlier.

<comment><USER28> The appropriateness of being a sweaty mess makes a big difference. Having a big sweat circle on the back of your shirt in an office is more uncomfortable than being soaked to the bone in your own back yard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What is the SWAP for this device? Not so interesting if it requires a large battery.

</comment><comment><USER30> It takes a lot of energy to heat/cool stuff. How much cooling could such battery powered device provide? Is it even better than a cheap usb fan?</comment>


Google Memo on Cost Cuts Sparks Heated Debate Inside Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-26/google-memo-on-cost-cuts-sparks-heated-debate-inside-company <comment><USER2> I've heard that getting promoted at Google is kind of a shitshow -- that your manager can't vouch for you and it's basically up to how well you summarize and present your work to a faceless promotion committee (i.e. how well you play politics). I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, per se. In light of this memo, however, I wonder if the layered bureaucracy of the promotion process is an intentional way of not promoting promotion-worthy employees and keeping costs down.

<comment><USER3> Xoogler here: I was promoted L5 -> L6 (senior -> staff SWE) in 2015, so I can talk a bit about this.

Your manager can actually be helpful, but the process is byzantine. In my case, my promo committee approved my promo. However, at L6 there was an automatic review of all promos to that level by a 2nd committee. The review committee denied my promo. My manager came in at this point and lodged an appeal on my behalf to the review committee's decision. That appeal took the promo to a 3rd committee that ultimately approved it.

I did not know any of the details of what was happening. I only learned what happened in my 1:1 with my manager when he told me the whole story. He was so happy and proud of himself that he managed to help me get promoted. The sad thing is that this was the 1:1 where I told him that I was leaving for Netflix (much better offer due to non-monetary factors).

The truly kafka-esque part of this: Since promo at Google is a huge deal, and since you if you are hired back, you retain the level at which you departed at, I really wanted to leave as a L6. So I delayed my start at Netflix until my promo went through. I resigned effective a day after the effective promo date. However, in the HR system, the resignation cancelled the promo. So I had to jump through some hoops to get the promo re-instated. I know it went through, because I had friends check go/epitaphs and I eventually got my promo jacket..

<comment><USER4> > However, in the HR system, the resignation cancelled the promo.

Can I ask you about occurrences of fence post errors?

There was a very important eng who was basically a sole contributor on a difficult component in a system. He announced his retirement date well in advance, but after the bonus payout period. HR terminated him early, denying him the bonus and leaving the team to scramble and organize a mini-summit to do knowledge transfer. The team itself had no control over the date. I believe it was a similar company.

<comment><USER5> I left my last company the day after our quarterly bonus and HR managed to reverse the transaction. To be honest I didn't even realize te bonus was due that day and I gave my usual 2 week notice. They could have not even deposited the amount and I would have not noticed. HR leadership used be a lot kinder at that company until there was a shift to a new HR director.

<comment><USER6> That sounds illegal.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't matter if its illegal or not, if he wants to dispute it, it will probably go through binding arbitration.

Arbitrators do not need to have any understanding of the law, and are notoriously employer-friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Perhaps the most significant change in the proposal called for trimming the rate of promotions. Each year, a certain number of employees are up for promotions based on performance and other metrics. The slide deck suggested reducing this by 2 percentage points. The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because workers didn't know what the existing rate was, so wouldn't notice if it declined._

That last sentence is quite telling about Google's attitude toward its employees.

<comment><USER9> It also said that Google doesn't have enough higher level work for people if it promoted them (because the promo rate is so much higher than industry average, and Google has shifted right in levels) but just about everyone ignored that.

You can't create larger scope/etc roles out of thin air (you actually have to need the work done), and levels always seem to right shift over time.

<comment><USER10> Then maybe Google needs to stop advertising that it needs and has the most intelligent engineers in the industry. If they don't have enough work to feed them, they don't need to have them.

<comment><USER11> Does Google hire them to work at Google, or to not work somewhere else?

<comment><USER12> This is the key insight that many people ignore, straight out of The Monopoly Operating Manual. When you are Google size, many of your investments are, and should be, wisely targeted at buying insurance against risks to future revenues and cash flows, not just growing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > One worker asked why Pichai was paid hundreds of millions of dollars, while > some Google employees struggle to afford to live in Silicon Valley

I mean I understand getting upset at the income gap between CEO's and regular people, but it seems kind of strange to be complaining about your salary as a Google employee, where you are almost certainly making well over $100k, and walk past rows of camper trailers and homeless people on the way to work. Saying that you are struggling to afford to live in Silicon Valley seems like a bit of a stretch if you are an engineer at Google. I can sympathize with non-tech workers at Google who are probably making less though.

<comment><USER14> You haven't looked at housing prices in Mountain View recently. If your goal in life is simply to own your own home (which seems reasonable to me), then even lower-level engineers are struggling.

<comment><USER15> That wouldn't really be affected by how much Google pays its engineers, though. There's a fixed supply of single-family housing in Mountain View, and >>> available supply seeks to live there. Under those conditions, housing prices adjust upwards until they reach the amount that the Nth bidder (where N = houses for sale <<< Google employees in Mountain View) is willing to pay. Increase salaries and you just increase the amount that everyone is willing to pay, and then you still get outbid by your coworkers.

Assuming that owning a single-family home is non-negotiable, the _only_ ways out of this are a.) get all your coworkers fired or b.) move out of the Bay Area. Mountain View (and the rest of the Bay Area) is basically fully built- out: there simply is no more land for 1/4 acre lots.

(If you're willing to compromise on "single family home", there's another alternative: build up. This is the most realistic solution, but requires that people give up on the idea of a detached house with a yard and settle for condos instead.)

<comment> brown9-2 > There's a fixed supply of single-family housing in Mountain View

Well, that is the whole problem right there. It doesn't have to be fixed.

<comment><USER16> Single family housing? That generally refers to a detached home so yes the supply is very much fixed.

Even if we're talking about multi-family housing, there is still a limit on space, resources, traffic capacity, etc.

<comment> brown9-2 Then let's start building vertically.

It is a social choice to limit housing like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The document also discussed how the proposals could be best presented to > employees to minimize frustration, according to one of the people.

> The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because > workers didn't know what the existing rate was, so wouldn't notice if it > declined.

I really don't know what they expected. You're cutting the salaries of your employees; the _best case_ , yet highly unlikely scenario is that nobody notices. More likely, your attrition rate will increase as Google becomes slightly less attractive for employees to stay at, or the worst case but highly likely scenario is that you have these slides get out and now everyone is unhappy because they're being paid less _and_ having information willfully hidden from them.

<comment><USER18> GF worked at a game company. When she started they'd give bonuses based on the profits. Later they changed bonuses based on how well the company beat Wall Streets expectations.

Really demoralizing when the company posts a fat profit, the top managers take home a large bonus, you you get nothing because the quarterly profit was a little under expectations.

<comment><USER19> I'd be surprised if there haven't been economic studies on this type of action. So either the executives don't care, as they know people are replaceable and it won't hurt the company either way, or they don't care as they know they will be moving on soon enough, and they just want to milk their positiion for what they can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is only semi-related, but I just finished Bad Blood (Theranos book) and started looking up some of the characters on LinkedIn to see what they were up to. The infamous HR person (Balwani's right hand person) just started a new position at no other than Google less than 2 months ago!

<comment><USER21> That is indeed troubling. Keep in mind, though, that lots of great people worked at Theranos - I've hired one and she's the standout on an already very talented team. And of course, I would hire Tyler Schultz without a second thought.

<comment><USER20> Sure, would have no issue with an IC or someone not cozy with management, but this was a specific senior HR person close to Balwani who was complicit in intimidating/spying on employees and trying to get them to sign shady NDAs, among other atrocities. And Google still hired them.

IMO it speaks to the "skills" that big tech want in their HR people. The fact that they did all these things is exactly what they look for in "good" HR people e.g. protect the company at all cost and no mercy for employees.

<comment><USER22> any regime needs the same police.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It seems to me like Google is slowly becoming another one of these huge corporations that one works for simply to simply pay the bills. I mean, sure, it may not be such at this particular moment, but that's what it seems they are heading towards. Though they still have an amazing reputation, I don't buy it anymore.

<comment><USER24> It already looked this way to me when I interviewed with them 8 years ago. But it takes time for public perception to catch up with the reality. When they scaled up and hired tens of thousands, they became yet another faceless corporate entity. Perhaps not intentionally; I feel this is simply a factor of growing and having to establish the same corporate bureaucracy as all the rest.

<comment><USER25> This reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinsons "Three Californias" trilogy. One of them is set in a future where to counter many of the effects of large corporations, companies are strictly restricted in terms of number of employees and other things. No company in the novel can have more than 100 employees. For projects that require more, companies have to establish consortia, but each company remained independent.

I have no opinion on whether that'd be viable or beneficial, but it's a fascinating idea to think about the consequences of, both externally in terms of effects on wider society, and what it'd mean for corporate cultures.

<comment><USER26> You may be interested in reading the economic paper, "The Nature of the Firm." Here's a link to a summary: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm)

Thinking along those lines would suggest we need to reduce a lot of legal and communication friction or else capping corporations will make everything much more expensive. It'd certainly be worth improving those things regardless of the end goal. Whether we would naturally see average company size reduce is unknown, but the theory that they would recognize the financial incentive to do so is plausible.

<comment><USER27> I reference this paper, at least mentally, when explaining to colleagues why using their tech needs to be better for me than using off the shelf tech. If I'm only using in house tech because I can't fire them or if I have to do more work to adopt them compared to using an off the shelf option, they're wasting money, time, and energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe I need to stop reading Google related articles on HN. I'm joining Google in less than a month, and some of the comments in threads like these get me worried.

I graduated less than a year ago and have been working at a startup in my hometown since then, and didn't bother applying to Google because I thought I'd never make it. Actually it was a thread on HN that convinced me to go for it. I'm moving away from everything and everyone I've ever known because I've always heard that Google is the place to be to really grow as an engineer.

I'm still excited, and I was nervous with or without reading these threads, but can someone chime in and give me some hope?

<comment><USER29> All my friends at Google are happy. You're going to be fine and you'll find that your work will probably be enjoyable.

If you listened to the Internet, my town of San Francisco is a faeces filled shithole where people will mug you at every corner. My other home in London is a bastion of knife crime and Sharia law with a bit of terrorism mixed in. I should live in perpetual fear that my life may be ended at any moment by actively malicious people bent upon religious and culture war.

In truth, life is pretty good in both these places. I love them both.

What you actually should do is stop giving these people any credence. Any fool can write a blog. And recycled news like this article is usually written by bottom feeders.

The world is a lovely place. Don't let the losers keep you down.

<comment><USER30> A vocal tiny majority has gotten hold of the loudest most annoying sound box. It's hard to even close your ears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> To me, it feels like people not getting the promotions they think they deserve is an extremely mundane problem. That's fine though, since I can see how such a thing might be of legitimate concern for many of us and is worth discussing overall.

What mainly bothers me mostly, is how click-baity this article is. Such a heavy emphasis on drama and controversy, with every attempt to garner as much divisiveness as possible. It's annoying, and I notice Bloomberg is notorious for almost always putting out these types of highly charged articles.

Do authors get bonuses for releasing fiery volatile articles at Bloomberg or something?

<comment><USER32> > To me, it feels like people not getting the promotions they think they > deserve is an extremely mundane problem.

Google management to this day claims that eligibility for promotion is based solely on whether or not an employee is consistently performing at the next level on a well defined job ladder. If they are, they're promoted.

The problem is not the lack of promotions. The problem is that introducing promotion quotas or limits directly conflicts with the merit-ONLY-based promotion system that management claims exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> _" Most of the cost cuts that emerged since then have focused on divisions outside the core internet business, such as drones, wearable devices and other "moonshots."_

Google/Alphabet is still doing badly at anything consumer-facing that isn't ad-supported. Not for lack of trying. Google Fiber, Google Express, etc. They've had some success at enterprise apps and cloud services, but they're not the major player in that space. The self-driving car thing is not going as well as expected. Ads are still 94% of Google revenue, and they're probably overstaffed for that business.

<comment><USER34> The entire ad industry is overstaffed. Could easily remove 50% and have no effect, or actually improve results.

<comment><USER35> You're now the dictator of the industry. Which 50% needs to go and how do you identify them? How do you prevent your metrics from being gamed?

<comment><USER36> For every new hire two people have to be fired or quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > The document also discussed how the proposals could be best presented to > employees to minimize frustration, according to one of the people. That > caused the most anger among some staff after the document was circulated, > said this person.

Not leaking this slide deck was rather important to minimize frustration.

<comment><USER38> "In case of employees having knowledge of those slides, ..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > The brainstorming deck also proposed reducing wage bumps when workers get > promoted. It also suggested changing Google's approach to "spot bonuses," > sums that managers can award at any time of year. Managers receive emails > reminding them to dispense this money. The slide deck proposed ending the > emails, arguing that few people would notice. The proposal also included > converting holiday gifts to staff into charitable donations -- something > Google did at the end of 2016.

As someone that works at a notoriously "resource efficient" company the fact that people would be mad about this is absolutely _hysterical_.

<comment><USER40> As a former Googler, the way the company ended holiday gifts was irritating just because of the pretense. Leadership spun it as "we're redirecting the funds into Chromebook donations". As if money wasn't fungible, and the decision to donate Chromebooks was somehow intertwined with the decision to end the holiday gift.

<comment><USER10> Yep most of us would have just been fine with them just saying "you're all paid well enough, the company is too big, we're stopping the holiday gift". Instead it was a long slow process of "pick your charity from the list" w/ a song and dance around it.

<comment><USER41> Given the nearly continuous stream of internal shitshows getting leaked to the press by unhappy people, I'm pretty confident that the response wouldn't have been positive if they had said this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've worked in a large corporation before and getting promoted is not easy because you're just a tiny cog in a large machine so it's hard for people in position of giving out promotions to see that you're worth being given a promotion because you're seen as any other grunt in the company. You pretty much need to suck up to the managers and the managers need to suck up to their managers, etc till it reaches someone with promotion powers.

Working at a startup however is much easier because you work very closely with execs and people in positions that have power to give you promotions so the value you bring is easily visible and recognized.

<comment><USER43> The advice I've heard: if you want to grow professionally, work at a place that's growing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The tech boom is over. Now we should incentivise the restoration of the environment to keep both the economy afloat and us breathing.

</comment><comment><USER45> Weird that people are complaining about this now, but not a few years ago when $16m salaries (not bonuses) were a common thing at Waymo.

[https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&client=firefox-b-1...](https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&client=firefox-b-1-ab&ei=mFpMXNfdJtHCwQK43ryQAQ&q=google+self+driving+car+serious+fuck+you+money&oq=google+self+driving+car+serious+fuck+you+money&gs_l=psy- ab.3...6244.8133..8428...0.0..0.255.1632.0j4j4......0....1..gws- wiz.......0i71.HZCHol-cd6A)

<comment><USER46> > $16m salaries (not bonuses)

The second link in that search explicitly says they were bonuses, and the first strongly implies it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I would love to see more details on the actual compensation at Google.

My anecdotal feeling after discussing with multiple googlers is that the top performers are overly well paid, but most engineers are paid under what they could get at another company.

They use their marketing hype/PR and their brand name to be able to achieve this, with an unlimited supply of fanboys that want to get in even possibly while being paid under market rate.

<comment><USER48> This is not true. Google pays better than pretty much everybody except for fintech and Facebook.

<comment><USER49> I used to work in fintech, and yes, the pay was substantially better there (I'm at Google now - I took a pay cut to go across).

Likewise, I had an offer from Amazon around the same time as Google's offer - which was actually quite a bit higher. So from my own experience, and from friends, Amazon does indeed pay substantially more than Google.

I've heard other tech is sightly higher - however, I didn't go to Google for the pay (although I wouldn't say no to competitive pay, haha), but there were other drivers for me (work/life balance etc.).

<comment><USER50> Interesting, I've seen the opposite from Amazon (and ofc Amazon stock refreshes are worse), so in the long term Google is probably better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I know how much it hurts to have these kind of documents become known. It's an unfortunate reality in corporate structure that the incentives of employers are not aligned with the best interest of employees. That doesn't mean every employer is out to get employees--only that discussions of this type are a harsh reality among folks who are judged by how much they cut costs.

</comment><comment><USER52> Remember that Google pays Porat over $40 million per year to do what is probably one of the easier jobs at the company. If I was going to cut costs I know where I'd start.

<comment><USER53> Her job is not just to cut costs. And its not a simple job by any stretch.

<comment><USER52> Neither is writing optimizer passes for llvm, but the people doing that are making less than a million a year while having a huge impact on the company's bottom line. For some management clown to come along and suggest that those people should not get promoted so that Porat et al can continue taking helicopters to work is disgusting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is precisely why tech employees need to negotiate collectively. When your employer is posting record profits, but is lowering compensation, you have a much stronger negotiating position when you work as a team.

<comment><USER54> Only you don't.

If you go to a competitor and negotiate a 25% higher salary and bring it back to your current employer, either they give you a 25% raise or you leave. Either way you get 25% more money.

If you go to a union and ask for a raise, they go to the employer, the employer can't afford to give _everyone_ a 25% raise, so they give everyone a 2.5% raise. Then you have to quit and go work for the competitor. Only now they won't pay you 25% more because now they know your current salary based on where you work, your position and the terms of the union contract, so they know they only have to pay you 5% more. So either way you're making less.

Meanwhile the competitor is still offering more, so your current employer starts bleeding talent, which reduces revenue generation and thereby the amount of money they have to pay employees in the future.

It's not as if many people still aspire to work for GM.

<comment><USER55> But chances are, no matter who you are, at any given time, you _can 't_ negotiate a 25% higher salary from a competitor. If you could have done that, why did you take this job in the first place?

On the other hand, at any given time, the union is always going to be fighting for you to get reasonable raises based on your position, and will be available to help you show that you deserve a significant raise if your current compensation does not match the going rates for what you're actually doing.

This is ignoring all the other things unions do, that don't directly relate to compensation, like ensuring that employees aren't taken advantage of by the company in a variety of creative and quasi-legal ways.

Frankly, if software developers of various types unionized, I would be shocked if that union bore much resemblance to the propagandistically stereotyped picture of unions we've had painted for us over the past several decades. I think it's much more likely that, given the prevalence of attitudes such as yours, it would be primarily concerned with the aforementioned protections, as well as setting wage _floors_ for given levels of expected performance, while leaving the _ceiling_ free for people who, like you, think they can negotiate something better.

It's not like there's some "union rulebook" that all unions _must_ follow as soon as they come into existence, that says, "First, make sure absolutely everyone makes the same amount of money. Next, make _really crappy employees_ unfireable."

Unions are made up of people in the industry they represent—that's the whole damn point—and their goals are set _by_ those people. So in all likelihood, if there _were_ a programmers' union, and you were in it, and you're really as good as you seem to think, you'd have negotiated your way to a position where you have at least some say over union policy. Then, even if there _were,_ for some reason, union rules specifying that compensation for position title X could be no more than Y, you could work to change that.

<comment><USER56> At least in the UK, job markets are so wildly irrational that I doubled my salary twice in two years. Both the salaries I ended up having doubled were more-or-less the best thing available at the time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Programming book recommendations for autistic savant 7-year-old? - <AUTHOR> He likes minecraft and, I am told, reads at a college level and talks about general relativity. <comment><USER2> reddit.com/r/iamverysmart ?</comment>


Ask HN: Y Combinator Application Results Day is here finally  - <AUTHOR>

Ycombinator Application Results Day is here finally! Anyone receive any accepts / rejects yet? I am still waiting for the result. Please post if you had applied and have received anything! <comment><USER2> We have still not heard back, but I think I read in a YC alumnus blog that the emails are sent out in the afternoon/night. Don't recall if it's just when they got theirs or if it's like that for everyone. It may be something to keep in mind for those that are anxious to hear back...

Best of luck to all!

</comment><comment><USER3> Still waiting. They received about 2,000 applications and typically call in 80 to interview from what I've heard.

<comment><USER4> Interesting... Where did you find that number? While more than last year, it's not quite as many as I would have expected, given the new 150k incentive.

<comment><USER3> That's the rough estimate that Harjeet quoted. Certainly could be more or less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think i've ever been this excited/scared. Getting this means I can justify ditching uni.

</comment><comment><USER6> All the best to everyone! and specially to my best friend infosec_hacker!

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you know how many companies applied ?

</comment><comment><USER8> still waiting for results ..

</comment><comment><USER7> still waiting too :(</comment>


Ask HN: Why is there a black bar at the top of the site? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It honors the passing of someone important. In this case, that person is Stephen Hawking.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, the article about Hawking's death is now the most upvoted article ever on HN, beating Steve Jobs' obit by quite a wide margin:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Symbolic mourning of Stephen Hawking I believe.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know why it's there, but it's breaking my HN client app on iOS :-/</comment>


Is T-mobile pulling a fast one with the MyTouch 3g Slide? - <AUTHOR> http://karshenboym.com/?p=59

<comment><USER2> "and no flagship Android device available on T-Mobile excluding the Nexus one."

T-mobile has no flagship device except for their flagship device? I don't get it. The N1 is just as good as the HTC incredible which was just released on verizon. I don't think there's going to be better hardware than the Nexus on any carrier for at least 6 months

<comment><USER3> The reason to exclude the Nexus One is that T-Mobile isn't actually marketing it to normal customers. You can't find it on the T-Mobile web site or in T-Mobile retail stores, and many T-Mobile plans don't offer subsidized pricing on the Nexus One.

It's Google's flagship device, not T-Mobile's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. And not only that but the Nexus One is not truly a replacement for the G1 as it doesn't have a keyboard. I believe that a lot of people are holding out for a Nexus One - Corporate, or something along those lines. A modern Snapdragon beast with a physical keyboard.</comment></comment></comment>