Rick Toone, Luthier - <AUTHOR> http://ricktoone.com/ <comment><USER3> It's a little strange for me to see this here, in that I live in a world of instrument makers and luthiers, being a folk musician in the UK, and therefore interesting luthiers are pretty much my normal exposure to instrument makers. I even go to what is technically a festival of luthiers in France, which is fun!

Instrument making is very interesting, in that automation and export of production to China isn't really hurting the artisan makers. Obviously no-one can hand-make a guitar in the west for £150 and turn a profit, but the fact those instruments exist allows more people to enter the market, and eventually some of them will yearn for something unique, tailored to them, and probably expensive :D

The guitar is easy to take up, and very affordable, which means there's so many musicians there to appeal to as a luthier. The instruments I play (diatonic accordion/melodeon and concertina) are unfortunately immensely expensive by comparison, but even still the market is very viable for small makers to get going and selling their own inventions. I recently bought one made by a guy I know who's here in Wales, which is very cool :)

Being able to build individual one-off instruments is something the big factories cannot do, and I know a lot of makers who are all doing decent business in that niche. They might never be rich, but the ones I know love what they do and take great satisfaction from it.

<comment><USER4> Another annual visitor to of Le Son Continu and its predecessor (I'm guessing that's what you were alluding to) checking in. There are, indeed, dozens of us.

<comment><USER5> Dozens maybe, but apparently all on Hacker News! Clearly I've been looking in the wrong places to organise lift shares, when it could have been "Ask HN: Who's going to LSC?" ;-)

<comment><USER3> Haha, I thought it might be obscure around here, but I suppose it's not too surprising to find out that computer nerds are also instrument nerds ;)

It's such a fun festival, though rather dangerous for your wallet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Other significant modern luthiers:

Ken Parker: [http://www.kenparkerarchtops.com/](http://www.kenparkerarchtops.com/)

Michihiro Matsuda: [http://www.matsudaguitars.com/gallery.htm](http://www.matsudaguitars.com/gallery.htm)

Ola Strandberg: [https://strandbergguitars.com/](https://strandbergguitars.com/)

Linda Mantzer: [http://www.manzer.com/guitars/](http://www.manzer.com/guitars/)

Last but not least, the Stradivarius of the steel-string guitar, Ervin Somogyi: [http://www.esomogyi.com/](http://www.esomogyi.com/)

<comment><USER7> Allow me to add some luthiers for Spanish classic guitars

Conde Brothers : [http://www.condehermanos.com/](http://www.condehermanos.com/)

Alberto Martín: [http://albertomartinluthier.com/](http://albertomartinluthier.com/)

René Aguilera: [https://reneaguilera.com/](https://reneaguilera.com/)

Manuel Contreras: [http://www.manuelcontreras.com/](http://www.manuelcontreras.com/)

<comment><USER8> I have a Manuel Contreras classical guitar I bought in Madrid about 45 years ago; if I recall correctly, it cost me about $150. I can't imagine what a guitar like that would cost me today.

<comment><USER9> Depending on the wood anywhere from a few thousand to ten thousand and up. Really nice to see you still have it that many years later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guitar players, as a whole, are a very conservative bunch when it comes to their instruments. Most luthiers are simply building very careful copies of designs that have existed for over 50 years. This is true from both a visual and a mechanical/electrical perspective. We're inspired by our heroes, and want to play what they played.

I have a custom made guitar myself - an acoustic by Running Dog Guitars (now defunct, I think the builder retired), a quasi-original design modeled after certain Gibson models from the 1930s. Different woods, more careful construction, but... it's an acoustic guitar, with the same X-bracing that Martin developed over a century ago.

On the other hand, there's no good reason for guitar technology to improve, either. They work really well. Modernist guitars like these are still relying on traditional electronics - these pictures have modern copies of PAF pickups designed by Gibson in the 1950s! Even active electronics are something of anathema to most guitarists. Visually, these are modernist - but technically, they're not much more advanced than what Gibson and Fender were building 60+ years ago.

Even amplification, which unlike guitars, _has_ improved since the 1950s, is pretty static. We still buy tube amps - often slavish copies of amps from 50 or more years ago. I personally play a 1977 Mesa amp, tubes and all. I can't find a modern solid-state amp that touches it tonally. But then again, my tastes are kind of conservative. I am, after all, a guitarist.

<comment><USER11> I think that's slowly starting to change. Over the last decade or so both headless guitars and multi-scale (fanned fret) designs have become semi- mainstream.

Sure, you won't see such designs from Gibson or Fender, but companies like Kiesel are making them widely available and relatively affordable.

I've personally also moved away from traditional amps to an all-digital full range modeler. The gap between modeling and tubes is pretty narrow these days.

<comment><USER10> Modeling suffers a lot from bad interface design. It's not the digital that's the problem, it's the interface.

I recently picked up a Boss SY-300 guitar synth. It sounds great, but I hate it. It's almost impossible to manipulate its behavior in realtime. It really needs a computer plugged in, and a lot of clicking around with a mouse. It's completely outside my music-brain. I don't have these problems with a traditional analog synth, with knobs for everything (I play an Arturia Microbrute regularly).

It CAN be done, though. I use a digital tape-modeling delay, and it works beautifully and sounds amazing. It just respects how we work things with our hands.

<comment><USER11> The Line 6 Helix UI is pretty great. That's the unit I'm running. Everything easily tweakable from the unit, or connect it to a PC via USB and use the their software which is even easier since you have a mouse, drag and drop, etc. Way way better than, say, Fractal.

This video shows what the UI on the unit itself is like...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-i_i1nrRy0&t=295](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-i_i1nrRy0&t=295)

<comment><USER10> A bandmate of mine was using a Helix (with an electric cello). He replaced it with a board full of cheap Chinese mini-pedals and analog amp sims. It definitely sounded better than anything else of its ilk I've heard, though.

<comment><USER11> THe thing I really like it not having to deal with a board full of pedals, and all the cabling, power supplies, etc.

<comment><USER10> I wish I could be there. But I'm too fussy about the tone of my drive systems (amp and pedals), and too into knob-level manipulation of delay and reverb pedals.

<comment><USER11> Actually for knob-fiddling the helix is great... you can have up to 3 expression pedals, and ANY parameter can be mapped to them - so you could have say delay time on one pedal (with user definable bottom and top range), and a wet/dry blend on another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also positively surprised to see this here. Beautiful work.

Since it's HN, may a suggest to ones with the required skill: I think a lot of us would pay a crazy amount of money for a handcrafted, custom built to please all of one's idiosyncrasys, keyboard. Computer keyboard I mean.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might ask around the geekhack[1] forums. Some folks there do custom builds to order, others sell bespoke keyboards, kits, or small-batch production runs.

[1]: [https://geekhack.org/](https://geekhack.org/)

<comment><USER12> Nice, didn't know that site. Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love to see people pushing the design of musical instruments. In the guitar world I've been really interested in some of the newer pickup designs like the Fishman Fluence[0] and Lace Alumitone[1].

[0]: [https://www.fishman.com/products/series/fluence/](https://www.fishman.com/products/series/fluence/)

[1]: [http://www.lacemusic.com/alumitone_humbucker.php](http://www.lacemusic.com/alumitone_humbucker.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite low-impedance pickup forum thread (which has been going on for almost 10 years!)

[http://music-electronics-forum.com/t5447-8/](http://music-electronics- forum.com/t5447-8/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> ah it's so fun when worlds collide. i own a strandberg ([https://strandbergguitars.com/](https://strandbergguitars.com/)) - <USER2> believe there is a huge amount of room for technical advancement in this space.

</comment><comment><USER15> Surprised to see this here. Toone has been working on a production model for ~4 years now — hopefully it will arrive soon, as the customs are usually made of fine recovered woods, aluminum and unobtanium.

Although a Stratocaster (of any brand) can play perfectly—and every guitarist should own a strat—I'm very curious about drastic innovations. A guitar being a guitar, to make the smallest incremental progress in playability and tone, beyond what was achieved by the '90s, drastic things have to be done.

It seems to me that Toone breaks the cost/benefit threshold. However, I'm interested :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> For something a little more off-beat, see Matthias Wandel's experiments with a "home made" ukelele: [https://woodgears.ca/ukulele/](https://woodgears.ca/ukulele/)

<comment><USER17> And his wooden pipe organ! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5baNcgIA8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5baNcgIA8o)

<comment><USER18> Or you can see what it could have become, if Wandel had any real passion for it: Raphi Giangiulio's home-built pipe organ.

[http://www.rwgiangiulio.com/](http://www.rwgiangiulio.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very nice designs. It's been interesting to see the explosion of headless, fanned-fret guitars over the last few years. Kiesel and Strandberg seemed to be the only places to reliably find them a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's a good luthier subreddit if you like seeing interesting guitars:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Luthier/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Luthier/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I just had a new Kiesel guitar delivered a month ago. They can make custom guitars for you, and since they are factory direct, you can get a great deal. They are made in Southern California in Escondido.

<comment><USER22> Carvin Guitar on Sunset was a truly unique store and concept. You walk in, play some guitars, and buy everything a la carte. They would mainly sell you the parts, and you'd go home and build it yourself (though I guess they'd build it for you as well?). It was definitely higher end and those Carvins have a rabid fan base.

I'm not really sure if they had guitars prebuilt, but I'm bringing this up because Carvin turned into Kiesel.

<comment><USER23> AFAIK the prebuilt ones they carry in stock are basically just particular configurations of what you could have got through the custom-build route.

I've got an LB75 fretless bass, which is a joy. Though in my case I bought it pre-owned, because one came up on eBay that was almost exactly what I would have wished to order from them, but at a third of the price. Ten years on, I still think it's the best deal I ever got.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The bodies, though beautiful, look impractical. But some of the bridges and pickguards I find appealing.

</comment><comment><USER25> gorgeous. functional. art.

</comment><comment><USER26> nice but irrelevant, this is not reddit. flagged

<comment><USER27> > _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is > spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag > them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you > did._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


In pictures: The Prisoner at 50 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-37232329 <comment><USER2> As a long time fan of The Prisoner I bought the entire series on blu-ray a few years ago and was _astonished_ at the picture quality -- fully 1080 and 16x9. Turns out the show was filmed in full 35mm cinematic quality. Apparently McGoohan had sufficient clout and ambition to master the show with an eye to making it a work for the ages.

Today it looks better than most films. Thrilling.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that's good to know! I've had an itch for years to re-watch this, and this may be the final nudge I need.

So many old beloved TV shows just look really bad on a modern TV, and can be hard to get back into. (I never have that problem with old black-and-white movies, for some reason.)

<comment><USER2> Seeing the blu-ray version in all its glory was all the more of a shock since I still remember the show as I first saw it on our 19" B&W TV set on a local low power UHF station. Every episode took place in a snowstorm. Still they were unforgettable (esp. my favorite episode, "The Girl Who Was Death").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Highly recommended. This show was brilliant and weird.

People were so obsessed with it, that when the final episode aired, with its, uh, _interesting_ ending, actor/writer/director McCoohan fled the country for a couple weeks.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the final episode makes little if any sense.

<comment><USER6> Not so: people hate it because it goes meta (to a greater extent than most of the other episodes), because it retreats into allegory and humour and fourth- wall-breaking rather than providing a clever resolution on the spy-fiction level; but everything in it makes sense. McGoohan, evidently, had a Catholic attitude of fundamental pessimism about the human condition. He believed that the root problem with human society was human nature, and he didn't share a Randian belief that autarkic superman individualists were blameless, or a Star Trek utopian-socialist belief that the future would raise up a New Man to sort everything out, or a conviction that everything will be groovy once the Revolution comes. Given that, there's basically no one else that Number 1 could be (notice that Pris. doesn't look very surprised to find out), and no other way the series could end (nothing changes, basically).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Loved the show as a teenager in the UK (a repeat; I'm not old enough to have caught the original broadcast).

There's a great write up of an Apple II computer game of 1980 that was based on the show here:

[http://www.filfre.net/2011/11/the-prisoner- part-1/](http://www.filfre.net/2011/11/the-prisoner-part-1/) [http://www.filfre.net/2011/11/the-prisoner- part-2/](http://www.filfre.net/2011/11/the-prisoner-part-2/)

\- which makes a good claim for it being a very effective, early "art game" in that its primitive obtuseness all but forces you to hack into the game's code (in BASIC) in order to beat it - a subterfuge well in keeping with the spirit of the TV show.

Great stuff, and being an American game on a computer which didn't get much take up where I lived, a game that I had absolutely no idea existed until reading those articles.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's odd. Well into the '90s at least nearly all media coverage of _The Prisoner_ had a sneering tone; the journalist evidently felt the need to make sure you knew he wasn't taking it seriously. The success of _Lost_ may have been the thing which had the most to do with changing that.

<comment><USER8> TV wasn't taken seriously by most critics as an art form until the 00's, which is related to the massive uptick of quality at that point. _The Prisoner_ works as art, but it doesn't really work as escapist entertainment. Taking _The Prisoner_ seriously means conceding that TV can be an art form, and that instantly devalues the vast majority of content produced up until the 00's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been trying to watch this since my cousins introduced it to me (on bootleg Beta tapes!) in the mid '80s. I have the complete run, I've just never made it past episode 4 or 5.

EDIT: yeah, and if you're like me, don't read anything after the last photo in TFA, if you're still planning on watching it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was just watching season two of Manhattan, a fictionalization of the US atom bomb project. The writers looked like they borrowed elements of The Prisoner when the federal police are trying to break a potential spy. (I am only part way through)

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow! This was my absolutely favorite TV series as a child, but later I've never managed to find out the name of it. Thank you sir, I can finally watch it again.</comment>


Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself - <AUTHOR> https://danielvassallo.com/only-intrinsic-motivation-lasts/ <comment><USER2> _I'm going all in on independence, and I'm going to try to make a living with my own bare hands starting from nothing._

500k/year in your last year is "nothing", huh? It really undercuts the entire thrust of the post, because you're starting with a nice big war chest and a hell of a safety net, not "nothing".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I saved a lot. About $1M in liquid assets. But I meant that I'll start with no income, no product, no business. I'll write another post about how I set up my safety net.

<comment><USER3> I know you're looking for attention or validation, but I have a feeling you'll probably get more negative attention than positive when you seem to be equating having $1M in liquid assets to "starting with no income, no product, no business".

<comment><AUTHOR> Those two things are not equivalent to me. Yes I have savings, but I also have no income right now.

<comment><USER3> You are correct! But the way you phrased it makes it sound like you are experiencing a hardship, which I think most would disagree with. Don't get me wrong, I think you should be proud, you clearly did a lot to earn your savings, but you're trying to make it sound like retiring young with $1M in liquid assets part is the difficult part when its probably the easy part. You don't have to work for a very long time, or at all!

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all. I live a very comfortable life and I don't expect it to change. Wasn't my intention to make it sound like hardship. But I don't have infinite runway, so I do have to make something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I made $75K in my first year and that gradually grew to $511K by my last > year.

Wow, I'm envious of this rate of internal raises. Is this consistent within Amazon's culture, or other SV companies?

I've found (in the small-town Midwestern shops I frequent, not in the FAANG bubble) that I have to change employers to do better than a token 3-5% annual raise, even if my value to the company is increasing much more quickly.

I've even been heartily congratulated and thanked at my annual review for completing successful, profitable projects in my first year at one job, and offered a reward of a $1/hour raise. I was a bit shocked, as that represented a pay cut when you factored in inflation. They 'capitulated' to an increase of $1.50/hour, which was just about keeping up...had to go look elsewhere to do better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I got a big bump from $230K to $396K in 2016 when I got a competing offer and Amazon matched it so that I wouldn't leave. From then on, the growth from $400K to $500K happened because the AMZN stock nearly tripled in that time frame.

<comment><USER5> Well, this just illustrated why a company shouldn't play the matching game. What did Amazon get for matching the offer? They got to keep you for a couple more years at a premium. I'm sure you did some good things in those two years, but the accounting side would probably have a difficult time assessing the real value of those two years.

<comment><USER6> Huh? This seems like a non-sequitur. What does leaving in 2 years have to do with your worth this year? How many years would he have to stay to pay off this year?

By that logic hires are bad deals if they ever eventually leave because you "lost" the money of their last n years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I joined Amazon as an entry level developer. Within 3.5 years I had been > promoted twice to a senior engineer, and I was practically guaranteed > another promotion to principal engineer this year if I had stayed.

> My potential at the company was high, I was told.

> My esteem within the company grew along the years and I was regarded an > expert and a leader in my field.

> People looked up to me and respected me.

> I made $75K in my first year and that gradually grew to $511K by my last > year.

> I could have made another $1M if I stayed another couple of years.

> My work–life balance was good too, despite Amazon's reputation.

> I didn't need to prove myself anymore, and I could get everything done in 40 > hours a week.

> My team worked from home one day a week, and I rarely opened my laptop at > night or weekends.

> Also, the people I worked with were exceptional. I had three managers in > total, and all were generous people with lots of empathy.

I can't fathom the number of people who would kill to have 1/3 of this list, myself included. I'm sure leaving all this behind is good for now, but, as someone else said, you're in for a rude awakening when you're back on the job market and you're grinding like the rest of us. Enjoy the vacation while it lasts.

<comment><USER8> He thinks all these things are attributable to his own performance, and that all he has to do is get hired by another FAANG and things will be just the same. Later, he may well be hirable but this type of advancement doesn't happen without a serious amount of timing/Luck and those stock market gains aren't typical either.

I guess you could look at it as an act of generosity. the more people quit from those jobs, the more there is for everyone else. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm totally fine not getting back the same compensation, level, company, etc, if I had to get a job again. I'm relying on being able to find a job that covers my expenses though, which I'm reasonably confident in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like lots of comments here are negative. I hope it doesn't deter you or get you down. It's tough to leave a high paying job to pursue something different and I wish you all the best.

It's interesting timing to quit now. If you have 45 years to work, why not work a few more years to have a much longer runway?

Safe withdrawal rate now is $40k...if you did 3 more years to and saved $2 mill, that's a double of your safe withdrawal rate to $80k. You're doing 40 hours a week on a good team...

Also I saw you put your health insurance is $1.2k per month...Amazon's health insurance../sucks?

<comment><AUTHOR> > why not work a few more years to have a much longer runway?

Because I didn't want to keep postponing. There will always be something that I could be waiting for.

PS. Regarding health insurance. No $1.2K/month is from the ACA marketplace. I could have continued Amazon's through cobra for 1 year, but it was about $1.5K. When I was with Amazon, I think I only paid $300/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well I sure hope going off on your own helps you gain some humility. This whole post just reeks of first world problems™

Yes you can still be miserable with a ton of cash but I'd rather cry in a Corvette than on a bus. Hoping to see a follow up post from OP after they've gained some perspective.

My spidey sense tells me the op just needed a reality check, a long vacation and some introspection.

</comment><comment><USER11> Most of the comments seem to not understand that he wasn't developing per se anymore. He was managing, which explains the larger payout.

In addition, I greatly dislike how the top post is negative on the story: it disregards the idea behind the post and instead replicates the typical "you have things good so fuck you" response.

</comment><comment><USER12> > When I first hit $100K income, I would take a peek at my W2 for a few days > admiring the six digits, but then it wore off. When I hit $200K, $300K, > $400K, and $500K, it was the same thing. I would be delusional to think that > earning $1M, or $10M would suddenly make it different.

>What is out there that I could do that would make me excited waking up every day for the next 45 years that could also earn me enough money to cover my expenses?

At $500k, with UK tax rates (probably higher than US), you'd have $275k net. If you remove generous expenses, you have $200k a year in savings. Five years working would get you $1M.

With $1M, you would probably never have to work again (~$40k in safe withdrawal per year).

Then you'd have the ability to pick any job, irrespective of pay. Go help charities, help with research, spend all your time on open source projects, whatever you want.

<comment><USER13> > you'd have $275k net. If you remove generous expenses, you have $200k a year > in savings.

In Seattle Washington? You'd have an extremely hard time making ends meet on $75K, it certainly isn't "generous." For example median home value in Seattle is $725K.

<comment><AUTHOR> My expenses are about $150K a year.

Fixed costs per month:

* $5K mortgage

* $1.2K health insurance

* $300 life and disability insurance

* $800 utilities

* $2K home services: nanny, sitter, cleaner

* $800 school / preschool and kids activities

* $2K groceries, essentials, etc

I have a family, two small kids (4 and 2), and live a comfortable life in Seattle. I could obviously adjust my standard of living, move somewhere cheaper, etc, but I didn't want my family to have to change anything from this experiment I'm doing with my life.

<comment><USER14> I live a comfortable life in Seattle and my mortgage is $3k a month including taxes, in a house that's too big for us to keep clean. I think "comfortable" might be understating things.

If I moved into my neighborhood _now_ it might be closer to $5k (without a bigger down payment) but I wouldn't recommend it.

<comment><AUTHOR> $5K includes property taxes, HOA, and home insurance. The total was $4K originally when I bought a $850K townhouse in 2015. But I refinanced recently to get some cash out and that got it to $5K.

<comment><USER15> As someone trying to do something similar in 5 years (not nearly in the same situation), I'm having a hard time imagining why you would refinance and take money out (and not the opposite, refinance and pay things down or pay off your mortgage completely).

A lot of the things in your post resonated with me, but seeing this in the comments really got me curious about your math.

Good luck with your endeavor!

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't need the cash out, but it adds a bit of a safety margin. Liquid cash gives you optionality. For example, if things don't work out as I hope, I could use that cash to try to buy another small business, or something like that. It would have been harder (or impossible) to refinance without a steady paycheck, so I planned for that while I still had the job.

My mortgage interest rate is 4% and I've put the cash I've withdrawn in short term US treasures at 2.5%, so that cash is only costing me 1.5%.

Another reason I did a refinance was that when I bought my house I had only been in the US for 2.5 years and my credit score wasn't great (in the 600s IIRC). I could only get an 5/1 ARM loan that was about to start becoming variable at a higher interest rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OP is getting crapped on a bit here, but I think he's doing the right thing for himself. I've not done as well, but well enough to realize that past a certain point, money just isn't worth as much as a lot of other things in life. And if having money doesn't buy you the freedom to take some risks or time off, it might be worth even less than we think.

It's worth asking yourself regularly not only "Am I being paid enough?" but also "Am I being paid too much?".

</comment><comment><USER17> Everyone here is bent by the $500k, but nobody is mentioning working for yourself can lead to less autonomy as you have to take on lame projects just to pay the bills, or the product your customers actually will pay for is not he one you want to build.

Ideal autonomy is getting corporate patronage to mange your open source project.

<comment><USER18> Until you're bored of it. It's the same kind of handcuffs as freelancing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why not stay there and milk it for a few years? Once you have that safety net built up, there is little reason to care. So do as little as possible... Come in late, leave early. Do this a little bit at a time. With your good reputation, you can probably get another mil out of them.

<comment><USER20> Yeah. Or like why not build something on the side first? If he was in fact only working 40 hours (which is mind blowing, but I guess there's no reason to lie), he could have easily bootstrapped an idea to revenue in 6-12 months all while making that insane amazon money.

<comment><USER21> Amazon has a policy that they own all the code you write unless you get it signed off by them as a project that is not related to ANY of their businesses. With Amazon being in so many businesses, they will almost certainly deny whatever idea you want to work on because they have something they claim is related.

He could still do it but that is risky as he could get sued later and I have even heard that it can block any future sale until it gets ironed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've heard of Amazon paying between $200 and $300K for software engineers, but this is the first time I've heard of them paying $500K! Goodness, I don't have any work/life balance now, so it really makes me wonder if I shouldn't start applying at Amazon.

<comment><USER23> the 500k is due to Amazon's stock value going up. The amount of stock you'll be receiving is set several years out and is frequently a major portion of your salary. Amazon's stock tripling has put many people at high salaries.

OP is an SDE3, which levels.fyi puts at $154,259 base, $150,648 stock, $19,227 bonus. The stock goes up 3x in the years between the grant and when you vest, you are making tons of money. Most people don't expect Amazon's stock to triple again in the next few years.

<comment><USER22> Thank you for clarifying!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Holy fuck, the cynicism and negativity here is totally out of control. What started as a very interesting post on the merits of extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation has turned into "let's shit on somebody for pursuing their dream". This is pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm going to suggest earning 500k in the previous year opens up this as an option

</comment><comment><USER26> The golden handcuffs are real.

From my own experience feeling trapped in a job that makes significantly less than $500k, and those of several friends, sure it may be a privileged position to be in, but the human mind doesn't care whether it should be feeling a huge mental burden.

Taking the leap and giving up a well paying but soul crushing job is hard. And it can feel really isolating and guilt inducing, when you certainly can't talk about it to your friend who is barely making ends meet and yet has a job seemingly less soul crushing. I'm sure they would tell you to go cry in your pile of money.

But work is most of life and I basically see finding work you like as a primary means to happiness. I've been scoping out interest for a coaching business around this topic lately and it seems that a lot of people have this problem. Heck, the "is freelancing the best thing ever or your worst nightmare" posts seem to come up every other day. I'm glad we are taking about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. Just for the record though, I wasn't in a soul crushing position. Things were good, but I'm vastly more excited about the new path I'm about to take.

About the handcuffs, tbh it's not just the money. There's also other intangibles. I had built a lot of connections and a good reputation inside the company, and by leaving I've lost access to that. I could reason about the money in a spreadsheet, but the other things were harder to value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The declining motivation with increasing scope really resonates with me. I often feel the same.

And I feel that his career trajectory is pretty typical - you start building cool stuff in a small team and you end up trying to coordinate large groups of people (who a typically the managers of the people who will build the cool stuff).

</comment><comment><USER8> That's great if you can earn a lot of money and save up for early retirement. But, that's not what's happening here. It looks like by his own admission of "running out", that he really hasn't been saving aggressively and will be back in the job market in a few years, possibly with a rude awakening. I see these types all the time: making a ton a money thinking they're on top of the world, the same ones saying how they don't mind higher taxes.

I don't know how long the good times will last, but I don't think we can just count on super high demand for developers forever. There will come a day when the market balances out the supply and demand in favor of employers and when that happens people like this guy are going to really regret their earlier choices.

</comment><comment><USER28> > The last couple of years, however, were quite different. I was leading the > most important project in the history of my department, with many > stakeholders and complex goals.

Well yeah dude - you started at 75K and now you make 500K - bigger salary = bigger obligations.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a very common theme. Once you reach a certain threshold of income (not everybody though) you start valuing freedom, flexibility, traveling and start looking beyond work. This is primarily because money has lost its forcing function. Even if you have the best setup in terms of work, compensation, co- workers, you lose motivation and drift away. This isn't true of everybody though, most successful entrepreneurs despite earning massive amounts of money, are still as hungry, motivated, and dedicated to their work as the first day.

<comment><USER30> The idea of "enough" in the book by Joe Dominguez.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love these kind of articles where people are transparent about their salaries. I don't quite understand the envy and the backlash the author receives. With such a negative reaction, I doubt we'll see too many articles like this in the future (who needs all the negativity?).

I'm a software developer myself for +10 years and haven't made $500k in my whole career and for some reason I don't feel any envy for him. On the contrary, I am glad that we're in an industry where people can earn this big.

</comment><comment><USER32> I do think this is stupid on the surface, but better overall for the economy.

If people have the ability to make things themselves and build a business, then should pursue this under the banner of providing greater choice to consumers.

Particularly if the entire industry is bifurcating between a few enormous, ossifying tech conglomerates.

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone who did something similar and blew through a lot of money I would now recommend to milk this for a few years until you are truly financially independent. If your business doesn't go well it may be hard to jump back on the gravy train.

</comment><comment><USER34> Now the hard part will be finding a way to be disruptive/innovative after so many years of monotonous work and so much time being brainwashed by the solopreneur propaganda/filter bubble.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I don't need to be disruptive though. I just need to earn enough to cover my expenses. It can even take a couple of years until I break even.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This might just be envy speaking, but I don't feel like this was a very tough decision (not that it needs to be!). Either way, congrats on the early retirement!

</comment><comment><USER35> If you are making $500K an year. By many a definition, you are already on a way to NOT needing to work ever in a few years, than even working for yourself.

Why would you throwaway an opportunity to amass like $5 million in 10 years, and then put it in a retirement fund and just retire. Instead of throwing it all away and starting all over again on something that is known to work in only exceptional cases(start up lottery).

Looks good on paper and all. But not a smart move.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no interest in retiring. I like working, and I would miss it if I stopped. And I'm not a believer of the traditional deferred life plan. I prefer doing it now rather than in 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "My target is to cover my family's expenses before I run out of savings"

On the one hand I applaud people chasing their dreams, taking risks to start something new etc, but on the other hand, it seems like he's putting a lot of risk on the family and even seems a bit selfish to me.

Wouldn't he be better off starting a fulfilling hobby, or trying to negotiate a 3 or 4-day work-week and starting a side business, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't do a side business while working from Amazon. My employment contract prevented it.

But even if I was allowed, I probably still would have left first. It's hard working full-time, raising kids, and doing a side-business. If the circumstances were drastically different I could have done that, but I didn't need to.

About risk to the family: If I don't manage to pull this off for whatever reason (run out of money, get bored, find it too hard, etc), I'll just go back on the job market. I promised my family that our lifestyle won't change, and if our savings drop below a certain threshold I'll get a job and make sure our expenses are covered. For catastrophic stuff I got abundant insurance (life, disability, health) to protect the family. If we end up spending all our savings, we can consider it an advance from retirement and I'll make up for it later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

Presumably, the answer is "because I already earned all the money I wanted to earn".

</comment><comment> tyler- What kind of companies pay software engineers 300k+? Is it realistic to make 500k-1 million+ at these companies as a developer? What sort of title/level are these developers at? How much is it in stocks/rsus vs salary at that point? Can someone lay out a traditional example at this level? What skillsets do these people have?

<comment><USER38> 300k+ is senior. The higher ranges would be principal / individual contributor. This is a pretty common pay scale in the Bay Area. [https://levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi)

<comment> tyler- Thanks! Roughly, what does is the difference between a senior and principle engineer? How common is it to reach senior for a normal dev vs principle?

<comment><USER39> Senior at a lot of the larger companies I've interacted with is often a kind of a "terminal level", meaning that you're not expected to rise above it, and can comfortably spend most of your career at that level.

Staff, sr staff, principle and other monikers are usually about affecting change at the scale larger than your team, operating at larger scope, and growing people around you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm currently working alone making less than 10K per year. My networking is not great and I wasn't able to land a job in many smaller than Amazon companies. I wouldn't leave even a 50K job, let alone an order of magnitude of that.

It's his life and his choices, but many of us have it quite hard.

</comment><comment><USER41> We have saying in Czechia along the lines "he is dissatisfied because he has it too good".

I've had friend of a friend like this who ended up in suicide, because he was unable to replicate his success in big company.

I wish him luck regardless.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sucks. I'm okay if I never reach the same income as I had though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> How do you make 500K at Amazon, is that 200K base, 50K bonus and 250K in stock ?

<comment><AUTHOR> My base was $160K for a long time. I think it's the max at Amazon. The rest was stock. I got lucky that AMZN stock grew a lot in the last few years. Without the growth it would have been about $380K/year (i.e. that's what I was granted originally before the stock grew).

<comment><USER43> I'm not following how $380k is the baseline. Were the grants based in dollars or in AMZN shares? I assume it was based in shares and if the stock had fallen you'd have made less?

<comment><AUTHOR> The grants were based in AMZN shares. Yes, if the stock had fallen I would have make less. If it falls significantly (happened only once in 2014-2015 when I was there) the company typically tops you up with the difference (or part of it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Seems like classic case of lack of empowerment. If you find most of your energy getting spent in convincing "stockholders" all the time that you are doing the right thing then your org has much bigger issue.

</comment><comment><USER45> Time and dreams are more important than money, if you are smart enough to make 500k, i'm sure even in the worst case scenario, you will do OK. Solider on brother.

</comment><comment><USER46> The tl;dr is that when someone is paying you $500k a year then the work itself might not be all that motivating. However, within time, the money isn't enough to motivate you either.

You gotta wonder, though, what the rest of the world would think if they stumbled across this kind of blog post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Agree. But I bet most of the audience here is already earning enough. Once you cover the basics, the returns of additional income diminish quickly. I chose to say how much I was earning just to emphasize that everything was really going well at my job, including compensation.

<comment><USER47> No offense, but there are people all over the world reading HN. We're not all living in a country that can pay SW engineers such large salaries. Good for you and all the best, but please try to think of us living with 15k€ per year. The reason you're getting a lot of negativity and envy is because we're living in different environments and we can't relate to what you're describing. Anyhow, I hope your decision plays out and you finally find what you're looking for, even if I don't agree with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> None taken. I grew up and worked in Europe in a country with a median household income of $20K. I understand and been through different circumstances. However this happened to be my situation and I'm describing it as it happened. I think my general point still stands though, that motivation through rewards wears off quickly after clearing a certain level of necessities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What are your plans now? How are you going to get started? Any direction you want to take or will you first take a few weeks/months off to re-direct?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will spend a couple of months exploring some idea. Then will test something in the market and iterate/change based on market feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Interesting read, I think you'll make a great open source developer!

> Now that I can use Twitter without being subject to Amazon's social media > policy

What _is_ their policy?

</comment><comment><USER50> > doing things that I'd rather not do

What were these things?

Do you think you would be able to avoid these things at your new business?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to disagree and commit sometimes or commit to a compromise that I didn't like. I didn't mean anything nefarious. Just the usual stuff that happens when doing something with a group of people and many stakeholders.

I plan to avoid this by being in charge :) ... If in the future I hire employees or get a partner, some of this might still happen obviously. But I still expect it to be significantly less than at a corporate job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Do you support a wealth tax?

<comment><USER31> Would you, if you were him?

How much would you consider it to be your "fair share" out of those money?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "because i like hearing the sound of my own voice when i repeatedly reread my blog, even though, you know, i have nothing insightful to say really"

</comment><comment><USER53> TL;DR OP liked his job, but his motivation was decreasing. Could be possible earning much more in the next few years. Gonna build his own things from now on.

Long story short money is not everything. I understand it. I'm currently unemployed working on my own things and I pretty like it. Although I don't have that much money saved and probably I'm gonna find work soon, I've found out that I'm that kind of person, who wants to explore the world by myself and on my own terms.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is 500k due to stock appreciation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, about $100K of it was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> .... to get some sweet sweet HN Karma points ?

</comment><comment><USER56> Here we go. Another humblebrag.

<comment><USER57> What, you _also_ don't casually make half a million a year and think that's peasant salary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is one of the most yikes worthy posts I've ever seen on hacker news. I wonder what OP's wife thinks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I promised my family that our lifestyle won't change. If I don't make this work, I'll go back on the job market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> OP - what does your wife think of this decision?

<comment><AUTHOR> Neutral. I promised my family that our lifestyle won't change. If I don't make this work, I'll go back on the job market. If we end up spending our savings we can consider it an advance from retirement and I'll make up for it later. I got insurance to cover for catastrophic situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I shouldn't have to run JS from both your site and a 3rd party just to view a text blog post.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Just started with Wordpress and I'm still figuring out how to get rid of all the unnecessary stuff. I made sure I didn't have any creepy analytics though. The third-party JS is just fonts from Adobe.</comment></comment>


Why You Shouldn't Code Alone - <AUTHOR> http://steelcityrubyconf.org/blog/2012/05/04/why-you-shouldnt-code-alone/ <comment><USER2> When I graduated college (with a non cs degree and no programming knowledge), I basically locked myself in my bedroom for 5 months with one mission: to learn rails and hone my frontend skills. I cut off almost all social interaction. I had 3 roommates and our paths crossed maybe once a day - usually when they were leaving for class in the morning and I was still up from the night before. I neglected 'normal' sleep cycles and followed my internal clock. Depending on how focused I was, I was often awake for days at a time. It was crazy, and it was the most productive period of my life. Ideas in my head were coming to life before my very eyes. I was building a powerful skillset that would allow me to control my future. And I did it without anything except my own drive and the internet.

So yes, you absolutely can code and learn on your own. _Some_ people can't.

<comment><USER3> One thing about working while in touch with others who are either already experienced, or learning the ropes with you- sometimes you can save yourself hours, days, or even weeks worth of wasted time trying to understand something you could understand in five minutes with anothers' input.

<comment><USER2> > _sometimes you can save yourself hours, days, or even weeks worth of wasted > time trying to understand_

There's no such thing as wasted time when you're learning. In fact, I can't think of a better way to spend my time.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry to tickle your confirmation bias, but that's absolute nonsense. You can waste a lot of time learning the wrong things or learning the wrong way.

I remember learning assembly, Basic, Pascal, Modula, C... in the late 80s and early 90s, from childhood to college, and how many stupid long hours I wasted just for not having the right resource available anywhere, and having nobody to ask (before Uni). Spending days, weeks clueless simply because a certain book wasn't available or, later, because I couldn't get internet access to look stuff up at will.

One gets the wrong assumption that since Google and Wikipedia times everything is easily searchable and personal expert advice is obsolete. It's not. There's an excess of worthless content, even wrong/misleading content, and there are also many questions that Google cannot effectively answer.

Wasting time hitting dead ends is VERY costly. It takes away time and energy, might end up with you having wrong or worse-than-otherwise conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thats what it feels like to be a female programmer. only, when you ask for help you hear things like "that's okay, your a girl" or "why would you need to know that?". So you stop asking your stupid questions, and your self esteem is ruined forever.

<comment><USER6> This is what it feels like to be _me_ and I'm a male programmer. I get slightly different responses of course. Like "that's not smart; why do you need to know that?" and it has affected my self esteem during my entire career. When I've run against the same wall for hours and repeatedly received this response from co-workers, I finally decide to monopolize their time for half an hour explaining the problem. And we discover I was indeed headed down the right path and Mr. MoreExperienceThanYou didn't know the answer anyway. Nothing quite so frustrating as a group of "experienced" people jumping on the "n00b" and telling them that they're on the wrong path only to discover the neck-beard-wannabes couldn't think past their own limited codebase.

The industry is full of ego. And I've have to learn to code alone to avoid working with assholes.

<comment><USER7> I doubt that is specific to programming or really about ego. In the movie "Erin Brokovich", Erin gets treated that way when she asks questions. It turns out they most likely did not answer her because they had no explanation and it was just convenient to treat her like she was stupid rather than admit they were.

<comment><USER6> You are correct that it's not limited to our industry. I run into these kinds of people in many other places in my life. And if I've ever needed to spend any amount of time working with them, I prefer to work alone, interacting only when absolutely necessary.

As to Erin Brokovich, she's an excellent example of confidence without ego. It's been difficult for me to cultivate confidence in the presence of others - I was never actually _encouraged_ as a child (sometimes passively discouraged- "why would you want to do that? plenty of other people are doing that.") And apparently it's not common practice to encourage each other as adults.

<comment><USER7> FWIW: I was one of the most adorable 3 year olds in the history of the universe and a bit of a social butterfly. It helped me not one whit with such things. I still get told "you can't do that!" to which I often feel like replying "you keep using that word. Given I have already done it, I do not think it means what you think it means."

You have likely heard of "Imposter Syndrome". Excess competence might be part of your problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I already wrote about this[1] but the time period where I learned the fastest and the most programming knowledge was the winter of 2008 when my cofounder and I worked out of the computer science building, and various other buildings on campus. Having someone who could help me get unstuck made a huge difference. Same story even farther back when I was working with new frameworks for a different company; a more experienced person who was giving me feedback on my code was more help than I could have ever received on Freenode, Stack Exchange or from reading a book.

It's a lot like setting a new years resolution: it requires willpower and discipline to learn something difficult like programming (everyone has their own opinion on whether it's easy to learn or not, but I think it's easy to lose sight of all the advantages you had growing up with computers and incrementally learning vs. complete beginners). You need others to hold you to it and help you whenever you get stuck.

[1] [http://jmtame.posterous.com/this-is-how-you-actually- teach-p...](http://jmtame.posterous.com/this-is-how-you-actually-teach-people- to-prog)

<comment><USER9> On the flip side, I tried (and failed) to learn to code several times before it finally stuck. It took me days just to get the programming environment set up! What finally or me over the hump was working with a partner when I went back to school.

<comment><USER8> If you're on Windows, setting up Ruby on Rails and using it can be pretty difficult because you need a proper terminal, and Windows' Command Prompt sucks. We've used Vagrant virtual boxes with Ubuntu with our Windows users at Bloc.

There are also lots of other issues with running Ruby on Windows like character encoding, file paths, and particular gems not working properly, but overall the experience of setting it up is pretty painful for beginners and a huge deterrent to learning to program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is tangentially related to a question I've been thinking a lot about lately.

At many organizations, the amount of time you spend programming is inversely proportional to your skill as a developer. As you become a better developer, you end up spending more time mentoring less experienced developers, fighting fires, dealing with management, dealing with customers, and dealing with other tasks that are not programming. Not only are you spending less time programming, but you're also in a state of perpetual interruption. Maybe this is good for the team in the short term, but in the long term, I am convinced this approach will cause the talent level of your organization to converge to a pretty mediocre level.

What is the best solution to this problem?

<comment><USER11> I want to know a solution to this problem myself. I'm definitely the most skilled developer in my team right now. This sounds like arrogance, but it's the simple truth. I don't think I'm a great developer in general, but I'm just more skilled than my team mates who are really not that good.

I'm constantly interrupted. There are always questions.

It's such a drain. I want people who can show me things, who can validate my work, I feel like I'm working in a bubble. I'm stuck to online communities for feedback and input.

I recently suggested two things, a) a couple of hours per week where individual developers can learn new stuff on their own. b) a meeting every week where we can share knowledge and mentor each other. I'm just fed up with the knowledge gap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At my last company, I've worked as solo flash game developer. Within 2 years of active development, I've became one of the best in the region. Most of my interactions with other developers at the company (all Ruby guys) was about trying to explain to them that unit testing is absolutely not neccesary in my line of work (small games in impossible deadlines).

Now, this might sound contrary to the proposition in the title of article but it really isn't. I don't code alone. I do it with the entire cyberspace behind me. No beer with fellow coders competes with that.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have the proper technical background(the author says he does) then getting tips with a team is a most productive learning experience.

BUT.

If you do not have the proper theoretical background, then learning from peers without proper books and the "alone time" will most certainly turn you into a hack.

Even highly skilled coders like demoscene hackers and hardware specialists had to have some proper theoretical background. Linus Torvalds was in a good university and used Tanenbaum's books to later defy Tanenbaum himself. The fact is Linus didn't just crop out of nowhere and hacked Linux together, he had proper theory to go with his major league hacking foo.

Social interaction is great, fun and a wonderful way to learn and trade cards, but there is a time to code alone and it's a necessary one for you to improve.

<comment><USER14> I can agree with the need for alone time, but the ivory tower worship is a bit much. My professors set the right tone and pointed me in the right direction, but that's about it. Theoretical background? More like a loose set of principles mostly boiling down to an aversion for needless complexity and a desire for elegance through proper organization.

<comment><USER15> Isn't "complexity" just a euphemism for "the programmer did not understand the problem he was trying to solve"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Coding alone and coding in a team/with others shouldn't be considered mutually exclusive. You can learn valuable things from both. You will most likely prefer one over the other, though.

Alone, you might be able to spend more time with the theory behind what you're doing, or learning from books, or learning things in your own time that are beneficial to you but not immediately applicable. You may also have a vastly increased responsibility, _especially_ if by working alone you mean freelancing. This teaches you things you'd struggle to learn any other way.

But then you go to work, surrounded by colleagues, and in a team, and all of a sudden there are all these people, who have a similar skill-set to you but different ways of applying it, and different ways of thinking. You learn to ask questions, and learn how to answer other people's technical questions verbally. You may also learn that your way of doing something can be done better.

I prefer the team-work, personally, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't, or hated, working alone. I instead found that what I'd taught myself was greatly strengthened by the experiences and alternative approaches expressed by colleagues who thought differently. I understood design patterns and javascript after a colleague typed out and walked through examples. He understood the event-loop and blocking after I demonstrated that in practice and let him question what I was doing.

And, in reference to _guynamedloren_ 's post about burnout, working with others might allow them to give you some perspective on your own stresses and anxieties. They might have been there and understand, and help reassure you. They did for me, at work, but no one could stop me pushing myself too far when coding alone at home.

If it's not for you though, it's not for you.

<comment><USER17> I've worked alone for myself (freelancing), and alone for a startup (remotely), and together with business guys for a startup. Here's what I came up with: working alone for freelancing is usually fine because the freelance work that you get is usually not as complex and requires little to no fore- thought, you can just jump into requirements and go. Working alone for a startup has it's pros and cons, working alone is great for concentration but working together with others who share the same vision and discussing solutions to technical problems in non-technical terms is definitely valuable for all involved. The one thing that's an issue working with a team of strictly non-technical guys and being the only technical guy is explaining what is or isn't feasible in understandable terms. Having more than one technical person involved in a team of people who share the ultimate vision is probably ideal because technical issues can be discussed between each other to see if a solution can be found, sometimes I think you just need another point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I never code alone, the voices in my head tell me what to type.

<comment><USER7> Damn. If only I had not resolved my Multiple Personality Disorder...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm probably the strongest coder at my startup and I agree that it can feel lonely when you have a hard issue and you know that nobody is going to help you.

Meetup group are totally awesome, I was scarred as well at going to a meeting alone with no connection at all. There was a lot of other geeky people doing awesome thing in other companies. It feel good and it's also a best investment in case of job loss.

</comment><comment><USER20> Some people shouldn't code alone.

</comment><comment><USER21> Another great alternative is to join an open source project. Your learning will be skyrocketed comparing to what you'll learn by your self in a give amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not to be glib, but has this guy never heard of IRC? First thing I do if I'm learning a new language is join the IRC channel. Frankly, there are smarter people in there than you're likely to find at a local meetup.

It sounds more like the OP's problem was more along the lines of 'didn't have any coder friends', which is a much less universal problem.</comment>


CMU professor at forefront of machine learning research - <AUTHOR> http://www.post-gazette.com/news/science/2015/07/16/Carnegie-Mellon-professor-at-forefront-of-machine-learning-research/stories/201507160058

<comment><USER2> Sidenote: I highly recommend Tom Mitchell's (the professor) book as a general introduction to the topic.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Tom-M- Mitchell/dp/007...](http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Tom-M- Mitchell/dp/0070428077/ref=mt_hardcover)</comment>


Seth Godin's Thoughts on Social Networking - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandinfection.com/2009/08/01/seth-godin-on-social-networking/

<comment><AUTHOR> "It's worthless to have lots and lots of friends on Facebook 'cause they're not really your friends. They're just people who didn't want to offend you by pressing the ignore button"

<comment><USER2> I'd agree with the last part of that, about people not wanting to offend. I've done it myself many times. It's an issue I had with Facebook early on. There was no way to really differentiate my 'friends.' My closest friends had access and were placed on the same level as those who were just mere acquaintances. Facebook has taken steps to help users establish stronger connections with certain groups of people, with their filtered news feeds, and various profile viewing restrictions, but I don't think they emphasize that enough. I will admit, that the features they've implemented have made the service more valuable and meaningful to me, because I can now share media and stay up to date with those I care to do so with, not with those I met at a conference who seemed to have tracked down my profile.

So yah, you can 'friend' someone who's not really your friend on Facebook, but that person can be very easily distanced. And it's probably in Facebook's best interests to focus on allowing users to establish more meaningful connections, rather than just acquiring new users. I've heard lots of radio segments recently about interviewees being subject to a Facebook profile check, and to parents keeping close tabs on their children, which ultimately makes people very image conscious, reluctant to say and share things they would've otherwise said and shared behind closed doors with their friends. So, the way I see it, the more comfortable I am with sharing information with specific groups of people, the more I'll say and share, the more Facebook will understand about the type of person I am, and the more highly targeted I am with respects to adverts.

<comment><USER3> Seeems to me friends are interacted with more than acquaintances. So it would make sense, if a user's privacy settings allow it, to expose this metric so it's more apparent which relationships are meaningful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He's put that in to just the right words. While fake networking isn't that harmful, its something that wouldn't benefit you in anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, if they are kind enough not to ignore you, maybe they will develop to your friends.</comment>


Counting Pull-ups  - <AUTHOR>

Thanks for the lesson on how to get better in doing pull-ups. When done in tandem with the other timed exercises, and a GPS run this is where the calculus comes in and the sand bags go out! <comment><USER2> I don't understand this</comment>


Introducing Pytorch for fast.ai - <AUTHOR> http://www.fast.ai/2017/09/08/introducing-pytorch-for-fastai/ <comment><USER2> This is great! I really like PyTorch compared to TensorFlow; it's more straightforward and easier to debug with common Python tools. With TensorFlow I felt very disconnected from the model, like I was dealing with things through robotic arms rather than my own hands. When something went wrong it was often hard to isolate what caused it.</comment>


Gene Munster: Research In Motion Is Going 'Out Of Business' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/gene-munster-research-in-motion-is-going-to-go-bankrupt-2012-4

<comment><USER2> I find it hard to imagine RIM dying entirely with the new move to use android applications. BBM is incredibly popular in large parts of Canada and it's hard to say what they'll look like if they finally get a halfway decent OS out. RIM will probably start manufacturing under android entirely if their next OS fails probably converting BBM and some of the nice features of that platform into applications with model restrictions (to all models made by blackberry) that come native on the phone. There are lots of business models under which they survive well. Yes, they're in a bad spot and their market share will erode for some time but I see them being able to become part of the many manufacturers on Android.</comment>


Say good-bye to Linux on the PS3 - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10471356-17.html <comment><USER2> The really galling thing is how they spin this as a feature, using the most convoluted corporate doublespeak I've seen in a while. The phrase "Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining" comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought the "Linux on PS3" was just a scam Sony pursued to avoid a video game tax treatment in the EU. If I remember right they got sued about that (that the EU wanted to tax the PS3 as a video game) but I forget what came of that.

<comment><USER4> That was Yabasic on the PS2. And they didn't get away with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my roommates constantly uses Linux on the PS3 as his justification for why the PS3 is better than the Xbox (oddly he just says this, and hasn't actually loaded Linux on it from what I can tell).

Sony seems to be notorious for what they allow as features on their system. SACD optical out playing, PS2 support and Linux support seem to flip back and forth between hardware and software versions.

<comment><USER6> that's because, there no real difference (experience wise) and in the end it's decided on stupid things like this. There isn't much competition in the console space so they all pretty much do the same thing.

The only real advantage sony has is the nice bluray player but with the price of bluray players right now, it's a very moot point now.

I like the talk about the (now defunct :() Linux feature just cause it lets me call my xbox owning friends Microsoft groupies ;p

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sony is just buying time. Sooner or later someone is going to hack the PS3 and users will be able to install whatever they want.

<comment><USER8> One of the Wii hackers who gave a presentation at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin said that the only reason the PS3 hadn't been completely hacked yet is that you could already do most of what the hackers and homebrewers wanted, without modchips or removing the hypervisor. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/55502932@N00/4314288066/sizes/o...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/55502932@N00/4314288066/sizes/o/) Now that you can't boot other OS's, the PS3 hacks are only going to get more intense.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. My assumption was mostly that piracy motivated the hacks, and running "homebrew" was a minor aside. This was mostly the case with the PSP custom firmware scene, at the very least.

<comment><USER8> Homebrewers and pirates are surprisingly distinct groups. A couple small examples: <http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Team_Twiizers#Philosophy> and <http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/WarezInstaller/information>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well this is just absurd. I bought my PS3 in a large part to support this open(ish) hardware notion amongst console makers. What a lot of good that did.

<comment><USER11> So... What will you do? Buy an Xbox 360? ;-)

It's not like you have a whole lot of choice...

And yes, it sucks.

I would like an inexpensive non-x86 desktop. A Cell-based box would be interesting, as would be a SPARC or a many-core ARM thingie. I find this x86-only world boring.

<comment><USER10> Nah, ill just buy a media center pc and put boxee or something on it. I don't play a lot of games, in fact, one of the motivators for buying the PS3 was to see if I would be interested in more gaming on newer systems. Turns out I'm still not much of a gamer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This appears to be in response to the announcements of PS3 hypervisor exploits that rely on the use of OtherOS (specifically, Linux), since in the past Sony has insisted that they had no plans to ever deprecate Linux support, let alone force it in this manner:

[http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss- dev/2009-August/00...](http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss- dev/2009-August/006965.html)

Allowing people to opt out of the firmware update isn't as nice as it sounds, since you can't have a damaged PS3 serviced without getting it updated to the latest firmware. A few PS3 devs I follow on twitter have already discussed buying extra 'fat' PS3s to use as replacements in case their current ones die.

Kind of a short-sighted decision, since a lot of people who do development on PS3 software use this feature - getting a real devkit for use at home isn't particularly easy, and PS3 linux lets you do a lot of Cell hacking on inexpensive hardware.

<comment><USER11> > PS3 linux lets you do a lot of Cell hacking on inexpensive hardware.

This benefits mostly IBM, who sells Cell-based blade servers. Sony sells PS3 consoles at a loss. Any use that does not include buying a couple games means a bad quarterly report.

<comment><USER13> Are they still selling them at a loss?

That's how it starts out, before serious cost reduction.

Also, hasn't IBM capped the Cell line?

<comment><USER14> Yes, still at a loss from the what I last read over at gamasutra and game developer. SONY anticipated turning a profit with the release of the PS3 slim but that apparently did not pan out.

<comment><USER11> The Slim has no Linux capability and allowing Linux on older PS3's holds no benefit for Sony. It made a little sense in the beginning, teaching some Cell skills to developers who could get interested into developing for the machine, but none now (or they would allow it on the slim). What makes sense is the idea Sony fears exploits coming from the Linux side could compromise the signing keys and allow bootleg/homebrew software to run on the consoles.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WSJ - 6 Interesting New Financial Web Sites - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703478704574612661587448696.html <comment><AUTHOR> SharesPost looks particularly interesting as far as potential impact to liquidity from early stage ventures.

Trefis is an intriguing way of looking at stocks - modeling the impact to share price from individual products

kaChing looks like a cool way to have your portfolio automatically model that of investing pros. I often thought something similar to this would be useful for those that subscribe to services like Cramer's ActionAlertsPlus service.</comment>


Apple - worst customer service ever - <AUTHOR> http://mariusandra.com/blog/2012/08/apple-worst-customer-service-ever/

<comment><USER2> "To be fair, I'm dealing with a "Premium" Apple Reseller, not Apple themselves. However as a customer I couldn't care less. To me they are Apple"

And to anyone else it's an independent store that happens to sell Apple products.

If you buy a piece of candy in the grocery store and the clerk is rude, do you blame the candy company? I doubt it.

Complaining to Apple is a good strategy; if they get too many complaints they're likely to drop the reseller. However, claiming that the reseller IS Apple is just disingenuous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quoting a comment on the blog post by Priit Roosimägi: "If Apple has granted a retailer "Premium" status and it is the one place, which represents Apple in the whole country, the reseller does become one with Apple in all consumers' eyes and Apple should take the blame."

They are the ONLY place in Estonia that is an authorized reseller and the ONLY one that has physical stores. Thus, by all means, they ARE Apple for the people living here.

<comment><USER3> You now have also <http://www.valgeklaar.ee/> ( not sure if they are any better but lets hope so....)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I bought a retina macbook pro off apple's webstore and it was fine. My credit card number got stolen in between placing the order and them charging, and was resolved in a quick phone and they sent me a follow up email so when I got the new card I could sort it out quickly. They also didnt try charge the card until it was actually ready to ship, so was not stuck in limbo.

I also had a problem with some updates, again a call to support and the service was about as good as it could be, knowledgeable staff, timely responses, follow ups etc. A+ would shop again.

It sounds like the re-seller just isn't very good.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree and know the company myself. Not good service and little or no knowledge. Went for a interview at their main office for a service technician job, was told since i did not know the language it would be difficult to hire me(also they offerd me around 600 € pr month). I have 2 years of experiance as an ACMT with certification, Told theme NO thank you.</comment>


I need some advise about honesty - dirty-ex-smoker I live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal and I have just graduated from college with a degree in computer science.
While I was completing my degree I used marijuana to relax and and help with my anxiety. I quit for good at the end of the term. My thinking was that it would take me a month or two to find a job in the field, and that there was going to be enough time for any evidence to leave my system. To my surprise I was given an offer in less than a week.
I'm truly excited about the company, the work they do, and the people that I will be working with. During the pre-interview contact with the manager I got a really good vibe and we seemed to hit it off. When I went to the office for and interview I got along great with everyone and it just felt right being there.
They made a great offer, but now I'm terrified because I will need to submit to a drug screen that I will not pass. I will not cheat the screen because I feel like that is unethical, but I don't know how to handle this situation. I want to be up-front and honest about my past use and the fact the I quit for good after I graduated, but I'm scared that the offer will be reneged.
How should I handle this situation? Should I come clean about my past use? Should I take the test, not say anything and wait to see what happens? Thank you in advance for any advice the community here might have. <comment><AUTHOR> What company is doing anything interesting that drug tests? If you tell anyone at the company that you have in the past or do now do drugs or try to stall you won't get the job. Second, who cares if they reneg on the job? There are literally tens of thousands of companies at which to work. Every single company on the face of the planet wants CS people. The only course of action if you want the job is don't say anything and just do the test. Otherwise don't waste your time or theirs.

</comment><comment><USER2> > I will not cheat the screen because I feel like that is unethical

Is it ethical for them to require your pee so that they can assess your performance based on it? What's next, full medical checkup? Installing a camera in your appartment to see if you're getting enough sleep (instead of say binging on video games during the night)?

<comment><USER3> Could you imagine the uproar it would bring if Google announced tomorrow that they would be testing people for alcohol consumption?

The fact that marijuana is considered unethical/immoral, and to be a Drug, while alcohol is not, is entirely arbitrary.

Furthermore, as others have said, maybe the unethical issue at hand is actually the fact that your employer is requesting to collect information about you about what you do with your own personal free time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ask for a change of start date. It is not their business what you do with your personal life. All you have to say is you had something personal come up and you need to move your stuff out by a month.

You run the risk of them rejecting you, but otherwise it seems the company policies will have rejected you anyways. Most companies are willing to wait for an employee they've already agreed to.

Also it is very possible that they're looking for things other than marijuana. You should find out what the type of test is.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cheat the test, drink lots of fluids (you'll find detailed information if you google it).

There is no possible scenario where you tell these people that you're/were smoking and then you land the job (or at least damage your reputation before even starting there).

</comment><comment><USER6> Great question ! Couple of points:

If the job is in the same state as you went to college, then they shouldn't be able to reject you because of a positive test for marijuana. They might be more concerned about other drugs.

Unless you were a heavy user, you might be below detectable levels already.

My suggestion: Chill man! Delay taking the test if you can, but not too much. Take the test. If you pass the test - then you were worried about nothing. If you don't pass the test, then you have a nice easy chat with the manager you had the good interview with. At that time explain as you did here, it was for a reason and you have gone off it. Offer to do another test at the end of your probation period to confirm that you've kept your promise.

</comment><comment><USER7> Go to the test while being high. Turn your bright red eyes to your interviewer, and say : "I smoked the most I could ! Can't fail your test".

</comment><comment><USER8> Take the test. If they deny based on it, try an appeal.

Don't stress out either way. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Do a search on reddit (lots of pot smokers over there) on how long pot takes to clear your system or if there is anything you can do to accelerate the process. You might already be safe. If you are still in the detectable time period accept the job but say you can't report till X date because you have some personal matters to tend to where X is long enough to test negative. If this is not feasible talk to your hiring manager (i.e. not HR) and explain that you don't normally smoke pot but had a few puffs (and didn't inhale just like a former President) during some recent graduation parties and that it is legal in your state and maybe the test can be delayed or you can retake it in a month if it comes up positive. If your manager has any company "juice" he can get you past this hurdle. Ideally you want to test negative so its not in your permanent record.

</comment><comment><USER10> Odds are that you are not the first person that's smoked weed and pissed in a cup when applying. Odds are that they won't care if the job does not entail high security clearances or operating heavy equipment or driving company vehicles. I mean they're hiring recent college grads.

My random internet advice is assume "don't ask, don't tell" is in everyone's interest. If the company asks, point out it is legal where you live.

Otherwise demonstrate discretion because that's more important to the company than an occasional bonger.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> They are doing pre-employment drug screens because it gets them a break on their corporate insurance rates.

I want to be clear here: _There is no way that you will get the offer if you either tell them you 've recently used, or fail the test._ They almost certainly don't have any leeway here because it's an all-or-nothing thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Recreational marijuana is legal in your state? That means getting a medicinal marijuana card would not be all that hard. Do you have chronic migranes and trouble sleeping? That's probably enough.

Drink 5-6L water a day (which you already should be doing, American!) and hope for the best. If not, explain you medicate for sleep. I think you're fine.

<comment><USER13> Getting a medicinal marijuana card requires a prescription; whether or not that's "hard" depends a lot on the doctor. Of course, if it's legal, it's not _required_.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My new side project is live. It is city guide for best foods - <AUTHOR> https://foodieadvice.com <comment><AUTHOR> @grif-fin Thank you for your comments and feedbacks

\- I got all pictures from free stock photo websites so far.

\- We are trying to add description to all dishes. Also adding ingredients is on my plans.

\- I will add feature to see best places to eat some food in next phase. It is coming soon.

\- I will convert it to mobile app also but it is not priority at the moment. I am expecting users to find us from Google actually.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

\- Monetization:

      - I am planning to build an api and make a monthly subscription for it.

      - Advertisement also an option.

Q: How come you went for cities/countries and not just country?

A: I will also suggest places to eat for specific foods in cities. So I build it in a way that I can link places to food. And also for some countries, there are differences between foods in cities. But for most of countries foods are same. This point is still in my mind. I believe for clear design it is good to separate

<comment> grif-fin I am surprised you managed to find all of those quality pictures from free stock photo webs.

Just wondering, what sort of API do you think can get you monthly subscriptions?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.pexels.com/](https://www.pexels.com/) is especilly a great source.

After sharing this project on Twitter I got some feedbacks about requirement for api. I think if I will get more requests I will build an api and give access to it with monthly subscription.

My Tweet: [https://twitter.com/faridmovsumov/status/1079005727354687488](https://twitter.com/faridmovsumov/status/1079005727354687488)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> grif-fin Well done on deploying your side project. Looks shiny.

\+ The quality of the pictures really pay off, how did you get access to such good quality photoes?

\- The descriptions are missing for some dishes. Maybe adding some ingridients would help?

\- If I like a food I would like to know which resturant makes them well near me. You don't have that feature yet. That makes me think, what is the purpose of foodieadvice? Just national dishes?

\- Most likely I as a tourist am looking for the food while touring, doesn't this make more sense to be a mobile app?

Qs:

* How are you planning to make money? Linking resturnats as an add to a dish would be the obvious way, have you thought of that?

* How come you went for cities/countries and not just country?

</comment><comment><USER2> Site looks great. I'd shrink the footer.

Content wise it's hard to know how to judge it. London has decent restaurants from nearly everywhere, but some of the best are not central (New Malden for Korean, Green Lanes for Turkish).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for feedback. I was thinking about footer same thing actually but waiting someone else to give this feedback to shrink it actually :)

I will make instagram picture heights smaller than it will be good I think.

Goal in the end to show all content based on community decisions. So I believe content will be better with time. But we try to make good researches about cities to fill initial content. Then it will improve with feedbacks.

<comment><USER3> I can suggest "Haringey" in London for Turkish food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice. What is your tech stack? Is this on github? Have you thought of adding some mapping to this, maybe suggesting locations where these dishes can be found? I might could help you out with that if you had any interest. Good Job.

<comment><AUTHOR> In next phase of project I am planning to start adding locations and allow users suggest best locations to eat foods in cities. It is very nice to hear people wants to contribute. I will let you know when location suggestion feature is ready. Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It would be very nice to get some feedback</comment>


We made a mistake - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/12/21/we-made-a-mistake/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think something like this has happened to just about every developer I know. I remember when I was getting ready to launch a revamped version of a service I was working on, the night before launch, when I was migrating all the users from the old version to the new, I accidentally left emails turned on, and fired off about 9,000 welcome emails (which were only supposed to go out to new members) before realizing what was going on. The next day was not so happy. Even with a follow-up email explaining the error, a few users decided to leave the service because of that (harmless) mistake.

</comment><comment><USER2> > By mistake, we also included a limited number of our other customer's email > addresses in the To: field of those emails.

That's never a mistake. E-mails should never have more than one visible address, and this cannot happen by accident. More here:

<http://arachnoid.com/opinion/help_the_crooks.html>

> ... and the number of email addresses that was included in the To: field was > 5,511.

Jesus Christ. This is like calling the Hindenburg disaster an aerial mishap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, if they're using systems like Amazon SES for delivery, they might've been trying to save some processing time and bandwidth by combining multiple recipients in one email (this is a perfectly normal way to send group emails). The key, though, is to put the extra recipients in the BCC field. My speculation is that this was a rookie mistake (maybe an intern or new hire tasked with the Christmas email?), or maybe Pingdom isn't used to sending marketing/mass emails. (Most of their emails are transactional, at least as far as I know).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Mistakes happen.</comment>


10XGrowthHacker – setbacks, failures and successes growth hacking for 10 years - <AUTHOR> http://10xgrowthhacker.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be honest, I've never done this before...I've never really talked about my failures. I recently noticed that everyone writes about successes which I personally have done a bunch of, I've written articles such as "How I grew a startup from 0 to 40M and got it acquired by Google", etc, tons of these, not going to talk about them.

All these articles suck! I think by talking about successes entrepreneurs paint an inaccurate picture that gives other entrepreneurs a false hope that they can also get lucky and become successful without too many setbacks. This is 100% not true.

So I sat down and wrote down a personal account of the biggest failures, setbacks, struggles which actually happened to me and my friends during my 10 years of growth hacking. To give you an idea I talk about:

 _Getting the product market fit wrong and almost losing an entire app then taking a year to turn it around to 40M pageviews and getting acquired by Google_ Running out of money because of outsourcing and losing $1M and firing 100 employees and then having to turn the company around. *Focusing on traffic vs. conversion which cost me a fortune</comment>


A fast and modern static website generator as a service - <AUTHOR> https://appernetic.io <comment><USER2> I was a little skeptical about what this offered via just running Hugo locally, but this does have some nice features. I like the "pay what it's worth to you" price approach. Hope it's effective.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree that one can question why you should use Hugo as a Service.

One obvious use for my SaaS is when you don't have your developer box or laptop with all your DevOps pipelines and tools and just want to write a post on the run on your mobile.

Also, if you are not a developer and want an introduction to static websites and blogging without a steep learning curve I think it could be useful.

I have improved a lot of things, but still it can be a challenge to have a theme behave as one would like.

Thanks for the comment!</comment></comment>