Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2017) - <AUTHOR> Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format:

  Location:
  Remote:
  Willing to relocate:
  Technologies:
  Résumé/CV:
  Email:
 Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities. <comment><USER3> Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: C, C++, UNIX (Linux, *BSD), shell scripting (bash, dash), Lua, git.

Résumé/CV: [https://www.ondular.net/~tadeu/resume.pdf](https://www.ondular.net/~tadeu/resume.pdf)

Email: tadeu[AT]ondular.net

GitHub: [https://github.com/tmcb](https://github.com/tmcb)

Areas of interest: systems programming; operating systems; distributed systems; computer systems security; logic; embedded and firmware programming; parallel and concurrent programming; data communication networks.

M.Sc. graduate in Electrical Engineering with emphasis in Communication Systems. I have sound professional experience in C programming, and have contributed with small bugfixes and patches to projects like Debian <[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=631629>](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=631629>) and wget <[http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=26411>](http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=26411>).

</comment><comment> git-pull Location: USA (Central)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Django, Python, Linux, Javascript (ES5+6), Backbone, webpack, sass, spaCy, DRF, reStructuredText, AWS, Postgres, SQLAlchemy, handlebars/mustache, jinja2, Some C++.

Email: See GH/portfolio

CV: [https://stackoverflow.com/story/tony](https://stackoverflow.com/story/tony)

Portfolio: [https://www.git-pull.com](https://www.git-pull.com)

Github: [https://github.com/tony](https://github.com/tony)

Publications: [https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux](https://leanpub.com/the- tao-of-tmux)

Sample sites: [https://devel.tech](https://devel.tech), [https://www.hskflashcards.com](https://www.hskflashcards.com)

Sample projects: [https://cihai.git-pull.com](https://cihai.git-pull.com), [https://tmuxp.git-pull.com](https://tmuxp.git-pull.com), [https://unihan- etl.git-pull.com](https://unihan-etl.git-pull.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Location: Kyiv, Ukraine

Remote: Maybe

Willing to relocate: Yes, USA or Canada preferred

Technologies: Programming Languages: Python, R, C++, C#, Wolfram Mathematica; OS: GNU/Linux, Windows; data: MySQL, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch-LogStash- Kibana, InfluxDB; etc: Docker, Amazon AWS (EC2, SES, S3...) stack, ETL, data analysis, data science, data visualization, data manipulation (Python pandas, R tidyverse), basic Tableau experience

Résumé/CV: [https://cloud.andrewpro.me/s/85PjBwbb2FwPD1a/download](https://cloud.andrewpro.me/s/85PjBwbb2FwPD1a/download)

Email: email@example.com

LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprokh/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprokh/)

Data Scientist with a M.S. in Physics and strong math background, statistics and data analysis. Passionate on finding business insights from the raw data. Experienced with a few programming languages (including C++, Python, R and MATLAB) and SQL databases.

Started as a freelance Data Scientist, I've moved to remote job and now seeking for a full-time position abroad (somewhere in the USA, New York preferably or Canada).

</comment><comment><USER5> </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Location: UK

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Not right now

Technologies: Javascript, ES5/6, React, React-Native, Redux, CSS, SASS/SCSS, Stylus, Less, Webpack 1/2, HTML, jade/pug, CoffeeScript, gulp, grunt, Node, Angular, Backbone, marionette, MEAN stack, Riot, TDD, HTML5 Canvas, GSAP, Flux, SVG, WordPress etc.

Resume: available on request.

Contact: [https://jh3y.github.io](https://jh3y.github.io)

Github: [https://github.com/jh3y](https://github.com/jh3y)

Codepen: [https://codepen.io/jh3y](https://codepen.io/jh3y)

LinkedIn: [https://linkedin.com/in/jheytompkins](https://linkedin.com/in/jheytompkins)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

A front end developer with a huge passion for all things JavaScript and Front End! Keen to help people solve problems and create cool experiences! Fortunate enough to have worked with some big names and open to various types of opportunity(preferably freelance/contract atm) Check out my code/site and hope to hear from you. Don't hesitate to reach out, love a challenge!

</comment><comment><USER6> Location: Vancouver, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: HTML(5), CSS(3), Javascript (React.js, React Native, jQuery, Backbone.js, Angular.js), LESS/SASS, Git/SVN, Bower, Grunt, Protractor/Selenium, PHP (CakePHP, CodeIgniter, SlimPHP), Java, RESTful APIs, MongoDB, MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, HANA

Focus on web development technologies, with experience on both the front and back-end. More recently focusing on front-end work; having users happy to interact with something I've built is what keeps me motivated.

Recently, I've led a team to build a major government satellite project (RADARSAT Constellation Mission), further developed an asset management system and other tools for the movie industry, and am now attempting to build a real estate/housing application more successful than my first from a couple years back.

Looking for a great team focused on building a product (or products) users love, with minimal red tape.

Resume: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndnyqdr6phpoda4/Jay%20Huang%20-%20...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndnyqdr6phpoda4/Jay%20Huang%20-%20Resume.pdf?dl=0)

Email: See resume

</comment><comment><USER7> Location: Kansas, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Location dependent

Technologies: C++, Python, Linux, Git

Learning: Rust, Machine Learning

Résumé/CV: See link on my website [http://lfowles.org](http://lfowles.org)

Email: See website or use firstname.lastname@example.com

Looking for systems programming or other interesting software development opportunities. Previously wrote software for x86 and ARM embedded Linux radio testing equipment. Spent several months doing a deep dive into game development with Unreal Engine 4[0]. I'm a quick learner and am willing to pick up whatever tech is necessary for the position. My latest project was interpreting output from a Deskcycle to get cadence data[1]. Even if I'm not what you're looking for and you just want to chat about any of my projects, send me an email!

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wNXs3g0Bw&list=PLqJcvcLs4C...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wNXs3g0Bw&list=PLqJcvcLs4C-RmUZ5BYSw0AR- gUTkk2y0a)

[1]: [https://github.com/lfowles/deskcycle](https://github.com/lfowles/deskcycle)

</comment><comment><USER8> Location: Cologne, Germany

Remote: Yes, strongly preferred

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Embedded C++, Embedded C, Python, Electronics (design, layout, prototyping, testing), 3D printing, electromechanical and robotic design and prototyping

Résumé/CV: Email if needed

Email: kliment at 0xfb.com (yes, with a zero)

IRC: Kliment on the freenode network

I do custom electronics, robotics, and embedded software development - <USER2> specialize in quickly turning ideas into prototypes. I've built custom automation equipment for chemistry labs, sensors that are in use in household/utility applications, control circuitry for construction equipment, 3d printing electronics, data acquisition equipment. No project too small. Few projects too large. Deep discounts for open source hardware work.

I would also be happy to come over (anywhere in Europe) and teach any of the above skills to a small group of interested people. I've taught courses in electronic assembly (SMD), 3d printing (building/using printers, iterative 3d model design using programming) and robot design and construction. I've taught courses at several universities, hackspaces, and conferences.

</comment><comment><USER9> Location: Poland

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, Django, C#, Kotlin, Bash, AngularJS, PostgreSQL, Redis, Cassandra, MongoDB, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Machine Learning

Résumé/CV: [http://michallech.info/static/Michal-Lech- Resume.pdf](http://michallech.info/static/Michal-Lech-Resume.pdf)

Email: michal [AT] michallech.info

Website: [http://michallech.info](http://michallech.info)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

I am Full Stack Developer with 8+ years of commercial experience. My selling point is ability to prototype and execute rapidly due to extensive list of technologies I know and industries I've worked in.

I am open to consulting opportunities as well as long-term projects or employment in the areas of software architecture, tech leadership, backend, frontend development, data analysis, machine learning. The ideal position would leverage my extensive experience, software architecture knowledge, detail oriented approach and ability to execute fast.

I prefer remote/semi remote opportunities but I am willing to relocate for selected projects.

</comment><comment><USER10> Location: Panama City, Panama.

Remote: Yes.

Willing to relocate: Yes. Preferably Europe. Visa is not needed.

Technologies: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python. Tough, maybe I shouldn't include Python and Javascript since everything I've learned about programming has been forgotten. I spent the last six plus months learning CSS. CSS is a real pain.

Resume: Available upon request - but it pretty much has the same information as you can see in this comment.

Portofolio: [https://www.talescript.com](https://www.talescript.com)

github: [https://github.com/talescript/talescript](https://github.com/talescript/talescript)

Email: anthomelanous (at->) hotmail com

Self taught programmer, Psychology Graduate; trying hard to break into the programming world. What I lack in experience I make up with a - semi stoic - enthusiasm. Besides English, I also speak Spanish and conversational German.

I've been learning on my own for three years now. The only way I can accelerate that learning curve is by learning from others.

</comment><comment><USER11> Location: Chicago, IL

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes, within the US

Technologies:

* [WEB] JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, WebGL, React, Vue, Grunt

* [OTHER] C#, .NET, OpenGL, MonoGame, HLSL, GLSL, C++ (minimal)

Résumé/CV: Available upon request

Email: chris.cajas.m [-at-] gmail.com

Portfolio:

* [http://www.dwarfcorp.com/](http://www.dwarfcorp.com/) \- Open-source indie game, worked as a contract programmer, mainly optimizing code for procedural generation and shaders

* [http://ccajas.github.io/JS-TinyRenderer/](http://ccajas.github.io/JS-TinyRenderer/) \- Software 3D rasterizer in JavaScript emulating a shader pipeline, based off ssloy's C++ tutorials

===

Graduate in Electronic Media, professional web developer with brief contract experience in game development. Looking to dive deeper into parallel computing, or producing 3D visualizations for different applications. Areas of interests include graphics programming, some embedded programming, and space exploration.

</comment><comment><USER12> Location: Malaysia

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Web (JS, React, Webpack, CSS, Bootstrap, Bulma), Git, Perl, C, Java, learning ML during my free time. Willing to learn anything new on the job.

Résumé/CV: [https://1drv.ms/b/s!ArJVYO71M4zO2wrQgT2TU7_QDqlK](https://1drv.ms/b/s!ArJVYO71M4zO2wrQgT2TU7_QDqlK) (testimonial upon request)

Website: [http://weijiangan.me](http://weijiangan.me)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

I'm finishing university in December, will travel to UK/Europe from Christmas Eve to Feb 7, am happy to do a face-to-face interview during that period. I interned at Configura and am currently writing an e-commerce PWA for my final year project using Node, React, MySQL, HTTP/2, Socket.IO and ES2015+.

I have a strong attention to detail, and I like to focus on giving users a good experience. If you are looking for someone to solve non-routine problems, I'm your man.

</comment><comment><USER13> Front End Developer (React/Redux/MobX/FP/TypeScript)

Location: Dallas, Texas

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, ES6, ES7, ES8, Babel, Webpack, Flow, React, Sass, SCSS, Stylus, PostCSS, Gulp, React, Redux, MobX, Vue, Immutable, Node, Express, Koa, Mongo, Git, GitHub, HTML5, CSS3, REST, GraphQL, and... many more.

Résumé/CV: [https://www.cakeresume.com/colton- colcleasure](https://www.cakeresume.com/colton-colcleasure)

Email: email@example.com

GitHub: [https://github.com/colshacol](https://github.com/colshacol)

npm: [https://www.npmjs.com/~colshacol](https://www.npmjs.com/~colshacol)

Capable of full stack, but front-end focused. I believe in functional programming, type-safety, and writing great code.

I absolutely love what I do and I want to do it with others that are just as passionate.

<comment><USER14> Location: Toronto, Canada

Remote: Willing to consider

Willing to relocate: Depends on opportunity

Technologies: Python, Java, Android, C#, Perl, VBScript, Bash scripting, Flask, Django, SQLAlchemy, JSF, Servlets, ASP.NET, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, SQL, Postgres, MySQL, MS SQL, jQuery, JSON, REST, SVN, Git, Jira, Docker, VMware, Glassfish, Tomcat, Apache and others

Résumé/CV: Available on request

LinkedIn: [https://ca.linkedin.com/in/inderjeet- duggal-07915a50](https://ca.linkedin.com/in/inderjeet-duggal-07915a50)

Email: inderjeetd1[AT]gmail.com

MASc grad (Electrical Eng. - Linear Optimization Applications in Electricity Marktes) who switched over to software after grad school. I'm currently the lead developer helping build the network automation infrastructure for the biggest Canadian Telco. Over the past year or so, I've really enjoyed working with Python on several projects (network automation, full-stack web development etc.) and I'd like to continue working with Python. Having said that, I am pretty flexible and I'm open to considering whatever gets the job done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Location: Tel-Aviv, Israel

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Not right now

Technologies: .Net, C#, Asp.Net (& .Net Core), Angular 1/2, Knockout, VueJS, es6, html5, css3, sass, scss, node, php, building restful api's, Git, Gulp, Jenkins, TeamCity, Jira, MSSQL, Mysql, Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, AWS.

Resume: [http://ioni.solarz.me/cv_js.pdf](http://ioni.solarz.me/cv_js.pdf)

Website: [http://ioni.solarz.me](http://ioni.solarz.me)

Email: email@example.com

Linkedin: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ionisolarz/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ionisolarz/)

I'm a full-stack developer with 15+ years of experience in the field, having strong business development and leadership skills. I'm product-oriented with lots of experience managing a project from concept and design through completion.

</comment><comment><USER16> Location: Jacksonville, FL

Remote: yes (although willing to consider local positions)

Willing to relocate: no

Technologies: Python, relational databases (SQL Server, MySQL, Postgres), web crawling, GUI development, SQLAlchemy, ETL, Scheme, Prolog, etc (always eager to pick up new programming languages or technologies)

Resume/CV: [http://aquila.blue/misc/resume.html](http://aquila.blue/misc/resume.html)

Github: [http://github.com/zephyrfalcon](http://github.com/zephyrfalcon)

also: [http://bitbucket.org/zephyrfalcon](http://bitbucket.org/zephyrfalcon)

and: [http://gitlab.com/zephyrfalcon](http://gitlab.com/zephyrfalcon)

Email: zephyrfalcon at gmail.com

Note: Looking for part-time work if at all possible, but not unwilling to do full-time again.

</comment><comment><USER17> Location: Edinburgh

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python 2 & 3, Javascript, Ruby, Typescript, Swift, Java, HTML, CSS, SASS, PHP, Shell languages, MySQL, PostgreSQL, AngularJS, Django, Flask, Pyramid, Ruby on Rails, iOS, AWS, Heroku, Salesforce.

Résumé/CV: [https://rsmith.io/cv](https://rsmith.io/cv)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

I am a professional full-stack web/mobile developer based in Edinburgh with 6 years experience. I am experienced with a wide range of technologies and complex/technical business domains, and can get up to speed quickly. I am passionate about always doing a good job and great code design, balanced with pragmatism. I'm known for being really easy to work with and always keep clients in the loop with communications and updates. Please see my website for more details.

</comment><comment><USER18> I specialise in development and deployment of iOS, watchOS and tvOS apps and currently learning macOS app development and Swift programming language. I have a good understanding of Apple's user interface design paradigms (HIGs) and what makes a great app. I am always willing to explore and learn best possible technology for the job at hand. I am inclined towards growing as a software developer by enhancing my understanding of fundamental concepts and tools.

Location: Indore, India

Remote: Flexible

Willing to relocate: Flexible

Technologies: ANSI-C, Objective-C, Swift, Python, Cocoa-Touch, Git, Bash

Résumé/CV: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/1zxu8ylj6gxkbe6/Resume%20-%20Nimes...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/1zxu8ylj6gxkbe6/Resume%20-%20Nimesh%20Neema%20-%20iOS.pdf?dl=0&m=)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER19> Location: Remote, willing to relocate Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, Django, Mobile(iOS, Android), React, React-Native, Docker, Vagrant, Ansible, AWS, Golang, R, Hadoop, Spark, TensorFlow Resume: [http://www.linkedin.com/in/sidmitra](http://www.linkedin.com/in/sidmitra)

Homepage: [http://www.sidmitra.com](http://www.sidmitra.com)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

Portfolio:

* Airbase - Coming Soon. An app to manage hundreds of app subscriptions using virtual credit cards. [https://angel.co/airbase-1](https://angel.co/airbase-1)

* [http://www.moonliteapp.com](http://www.moonliteapp.com) \- An app for freelancers and clients to work together.

* [http://joypost.me](http://joypost.me) \- An app(with an SMS bot) to send beautiful printed postcards to your loved ones.

* [https://www.healthasaservice.co/](https://www.healthasaservice.co/) \- An HR analytics dashboard to manage company health events and employee health reports.

* [http://www.igrowfit.com](http://www.igrowfit.com) \- A corporate fitness subscription platform

* [http://www.grapevinelogic.com](http://www.grapevinelogic.com) \- A platform for advertisers to work with Youtube content creators.

* [http://publish.saxo.com](http://publish.saxo.com) \- publishing platform where anyone can publish e-books, and soon printed books (print on demand) and online courses.

* Intuit CPASelect - An online marketplace for tax experts. [Formerly Teaspiller]

* [http://www.hypedsound.com](http://www.hypedsound.com)

</comment><comment> fuzzy-logic Location: Seattle, WA

Remote: yes/exclusively

Willing to relocate: No, remote only please.

Fuzzy Logic - DevOps Process Consulting - Linux Systems Administration - Network Management

I help SaaS companies save money on hosting through extensive automation - infrastructure deployment, code-checking/deploy, CI/CD - and good-practices for on-premise or public cloud management.

Let's have a conversation about where your business is going and what we can do to get you there.

Contact Fuzzy Logic or its principal Lee Whalen:

\- [[https://www.fuzzy-logic.org/](https://www.fuzzy-logic.org/)]

\- hnhireme (at) fuzzy-logic.org

\- [https://www.fuzzy-logic.org/file/Lee_Whalen_Resume.pdf](https://www.fuzzy- logic.org/file/Lee_Whalen_Resume.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> Location: Virginia

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

I've been doing full-stack work for the past 6 years, with Python and Django on the back-end and HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery on the front-end. I've also worked with the Django REST Framework and React.js. I'm intimately familiar with schema and data migrations, including migrations between Django projects. I've worked extensively with startups and with distributed teams and am open to occasional travel.

Résumé: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8b4x4qzEFAOS0FFb1NhcDBOVkE...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8b4x4qzEFAOS0FFb1NhcDBOVkE/view)

Technologies: JavaScript, React, Python, Django, Django REST Framework, migrations

Email: dustan.bower at gmail

</comment><comment><USER21> Location: Omsk, Russia

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, Django, Django-rest-framework, RabbitMQ, Celery, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, JavaScript, jQuery, GIT, vagrant, docker

Résumé/CV: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariaknyazeva/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariaknyazeva/)

Email: email@example.com

My name is Daria, I am 37 years old. I am an experienced software developer (more than 12 years of mostly Python, Django). I am a responsible person, get along with people very well, love to work in teams. I am eager to bring an additional value to a company I will work at by taking Scrum Master chores (along with the development) or helping team lead with managing interactions.

</comment><comment><USER22> Location: EU (changes frequently)

Remote: Yes !

Willing to relocate: Maybe

Technologies:

* NodeJS/Meteor/SailsJS

* Serverless (going heavy on that one)

* Cloud technologies (AWS/Azure/GCP)

* Crypto/Blockchain - mostly the theoretical parts (understanding of different Proof of Stake algorithms, Solidity contracts) - Highly motivated to work with this.

* Wordpress/CodeIgniter/Yii/Drupal (Components, Hacks, Themes) - less motivated, unless truly cutting edge (or WP VIP projects)

* CI & Unit testing - Jenkins, Mocha & Karma for JS, Toast for PHP, as well as Selenium

* Django (general Python too) - to a lesser extent

Resume: Upon request

Email: dev (at) azdv.co

Looking for Challenging projects. Most recently worked extensively with Serverless & AWS APIs, building cloud-related prototypes, before that worked as an AngularJS specialist.

</comment><comment><USER23> Location: Italy

Remote: Yes (with remote experience)

Willing to relocate: Yes, for the right opportunity

Technologies: Fullstack LAMP/LEMP (Laravel 5.x, Symfony 2.x, PHP 7, MySQL, etc.)

Resume: I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and have been building web applications, and recently remotely, since 1999. The majority of my career has been full-stack web application development in both the United States and also Europe.

I am the author of Mastering Laravel (Packt) and other peer-reviewed publications, an invited speaker at phpDay, PHP UK, LaravelDay, and founder of the Palermo PHP User Group.

[http://linkedin.com/in/chrispecoraro](http://linkedin.com/in/chrispecoraro)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER24> Location: SE Asia

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: /primary/ Ruby, Python, Rust, C#, Haskell, Elixir; /secondary/ Perl 6, Assembly, Scala, C, SQL, JavaScript;

Résumé/CV: [https://gildedhonour.com](https://gildedhonour.com)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

Hi, I'm Alex.

I'll solve your problem in something related to programming: 1) web/mobile/desktop, 2) data science/machine learning, 3) security & 4) blockchain/bitcoin.

I'm stronger in the first 2 areas. And less, but pretty interested still in the last 2.

My projects [https://gildedhonour.com/projects](https://gildedhonour.com/projects)

Thanks && Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Location: Santiago, Chile.

Remote: Yes.

Willing to relocate: No, I can't.

Technologies: Java, JavaEE, Spring boot/framework, Tomcat/Jetty/Weblogic, CXF/JAXWS,JAXRS, JSF/JSP/Primefaces/SpringMVC, html5/js/css/jquery/angularjs, ant/maven/gradle, junit.

Resume/CV: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodrigo-antonio- villablanca-v%C3...](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodrigo-antonio- villablanca-v%C3%A1squez-93629031/)

Github: github.com/rvillablanca (no work projects, only self learning)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

I'm a full Java Web Developer based in Santiago, Chile looking for new remote opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER26> SEEKING WORK

Hello! I'm looking for contract jobs doing front end and/or full stack JS development. I've been working exclusively in React/Redux for the past year. Most recently I've been working on a React app with 3 main challenges: 1) run well on both web and Amazon Fire stick (HTML5 container) using a shared code base; 2) API driven video browser/player (like Netflix/Prime Instant Video) and 3) a WebRTC video implementation.

Location: Reno, NV, USA

Remote: Yes. Available for some travel.

Willing to relocate: No.

Technologies: React/Redux; Node; Angular 1; HTML/CSS; full stack JS, WebRTC, TDD, git, project management

Résumé/CV: www.andrewsamuelsen.com

Email: email@example.com

Rate: $100/hr

</comment><comment><USER27> Location: NYC (attempting to relocate from SF).

Remote: Yes, given SF or NYC salary.

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: AWS, CloudFormation, Python, Linux, Ansible, Chef, Docker, StackExchange, ServerFault, Google.

Résumé/CV: Email if needed

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

I would consider myself mid-level in the DevOps space and have been at this for 4 years or so full time. Primary focus is Infrastructure As Code with a very high preference for automating as much as possible using APIs and modules like Boto3 in Python for AWS. Also, I will not take part in HackerRank-style interview format. Preference is take home tests that allow realistic demonstration of skill/ability.

</comment><comment><USER28> Location: London

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies:Javascript, ReactJs, Jquery, Python, Flask, Django, HTML5/CSS3, MySql, Wordpress, Jekyll, TDD, Git, MongoDB

Résumé/CV: Available on request

Email: email@example.com

Github: [https://github.com/rayray1](https://github.com/rayray1)

Website: [http://www.rupiah.me/](http://www.rupiah.me/)

I am Raymond Rupiah, a results-oriented web application developer with considerable training and enterprise experience in web development and layout and in all stages of design, coding, and testing of web applications.

</comment><comment><USER29> Location: Hamedan, Iran

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: YES

Technologies: Python, Django, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, MySQL, Ubuntu, jQuery, Apache2, Wordpress, Joomla, Perstashop, vBulletin, IPBoard, Twitter Bootstrap, Zurb Foundation, Semantic UI, UI Kit, Browser Extension, Adobe CC (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, etc.)

Résumé/CV: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mojtahedi/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mojtahedi/)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

Looking jobs for: Web developer, UI / UX Designer, Motion Graphic, Managerial positions

Preferably: Senior and higher positions

</comment><comment><USER30> Location: Anywhere. USA citizen currently in Manila (Philippines)

Remote: Yes (with remote experience)

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Serverless, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, React.js, Vue.js

Resume/CV: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielkehoe/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielkehoe/)

Github: [https://github.com/RailsApps](https://github.com/RailsApps)

Email: email@example.com

Author of the popular book 'Learn Ruby on Rails', founder of the RailsApps open source project. Writer and developer.

</comment><comment><USER31> Location: Portland, Oregon

I currently develop FPGAs and ASICs in the aerospace industry. I'm interested in applying my skills to domains, including developing new methods and languages for hardware development.

Remote: Preferred.

Relocate: It would take a very special opportunity to convince me to relocate, but it's not impossible.

Technologies: VHDL, Verilog, SystemVerilog (design and verification), Most FPGA vendors, worked with a few foundries. Familiarity with C/C++, Clojure, Python, Perl, etc.

Resume/CV: on request

Email: spam [dot] tarpit [at] gmail com. Please include "Hacker News" in the subject.

</comment><comment><USER32> Location: Berkeley, CA

Remote: open to in-house or remote (experienced with both)

Willing to relocate: yes* (Portland or Seattle)

Technologies: Seasoned Front End Engineer (Full Stack Javascript) with 18 years of experience. My specialty is the front end and frameworks like React or Angular although I'm also skilled in Node.js, LEMP/LAMP, Drupal and Wordpress.

Résumé/CV: [https://jasongallagher.org](https://jasongallagher.org)

Email: email@example.com

Github: [https://github.com/unleashit](https://github.com/unleashit)

</comment><comment><USER33> Location: Sydney / Melbourne

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Maybe

Technologies: System Design & Architecture, Natural Language Processing, Java/JEE, Development Management, Scrum, Full Stack Development.

Software professional with 12 years of experience in application design & development, technology consulting and leading software development for various fortune 100 & top tier companies.

Looking for Development Lead / Senior Developer / Sr. Consultant roles.

Resume - [https://goo.gl/gtJuw8](https://goo.gl/gtJuw8)

Email - snarasim5 at gmail dot com.

</comment><comment><USER23> Location: Italy

Remote: Yes (with remote experience)

Willing to relocate: Yes, for the right opportunity

Technologies: Fullstack LAMP/LEMP (Laravel 5.x, Symfony 2.x, PHP 7, MySQL, etc.)

Resume: I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and have been building web applications, and recently remotely, since 1999. The majority of my career has been full-stack web application development in both the United States and also Europe. I am the author of Mastering Laravel (Packt) and other peer-reviewed publications, an invited speaker at phpDay, PHP UK, and founder of the Palermo PHP User Group.

</comment><comment><USER34> Location: Cincinnati OH, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Docker, Virtualization, Linux, Windows, Python/Powershell, Ansible, Chef, SaltStack, Networking technologies, PCI Compliance & Security.

Résumé/CV: [https://www.alucas.me](https://www.alucas.me) (resume on bottom)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

Website: [https://www.alucas.me](https://www.alucas.me)

Infrastructure/Network/Security Engineer Interested in:

\-- Automation, Configuration standardization, High Availability and Scalable solutions.

\-- Full time positions, looking to relocate.

</comment><comment><USER35> Location: San Diego, California

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: Yes, to San Francisco bay area as well as New York City

Technologies: machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, natural language processing, statistical ML, speech recognition

Resume: [http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~usimha/files/utkarshsimha_resume.pdf](http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~usimha/files/utkarshsimha_resume.pdf)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

GitHub: [http://github.com/utkarshsimha](http://github.com/utkarshsimha)

</comment><comment><USER36> Location: Los Angeles / NYC

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes (looking for positions only in NYC)

Technologies: JavaScript, Python, Git, React.js, Redux / Flux implementations, Angular.js, Node, Postgres, HTML/CSS, preprocessed CSS (SASS/LESS), modern build processes (Webpack), CircleCI. Opening to learning anything necessary for a position

Résumé/CV: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrymao/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrymao/)

Email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER37> Location: West Coast, USA. Currently in San Francisco.

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, C++/C, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, GroovySQL, Ruby on Rails, Django, MeteorJS, jQuery, Jenkins, MySQL

Résumé/CV: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/hb00t93jaxyrjne/istanfield_cv.pdf?...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hb00t93jaxyrjne/istanfield_cv.pdf?dl=0)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

Currently Reading: Site Reliability Engineering by Beyer, Jones, Petoff & Murphy (just for pleasure)

</comment><comment><USER38> Location: Toronto

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: yes

Technologies: LANGUAGES: C, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, TypeScript

BACKEND TECHNOLOGIES: ASP.Net Core, Django, Flask, NodeJs

FRONTEND TECHNOLOGIES: AngularJs, AurelliaJs, ReactJs, Redux, VueJs

MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES: Android, React‑Native, Xamarin.Forms

MISCELLANEOUS: AWS, Azure, elasticsearch, firebase, travisCI, OpenCV,MongoDB, Postgres, SQL Server

Resume: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/shrey- mahendru-2b125a113/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shrey-mahendru-2b125a113/)

Email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER39> Location: Los Angeles

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: NO

Technologies: Python, PostgreSQL, PL/pgSQL Clojure, some C,etc.

Résumé/CV: [https://github.com/dt1/](https://github.com/dt1/)

Of particular interest is the source for butternotes.com and itemhut (no url)

I've strictly been a independent contractor for the past few years, working on all sorts of projects, though mainly stuff that is hard to work on (ie. impossible to fix). I'm good, but I'm not a magician.

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER40> Location: Gurgaon, India

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: Yes, preferably Canada.

Technologies: Java/JEE, JavaScript, ReactJS, Spring, Android, Web Services, MongoDB, AWS (S3/DynamoDB)

Resume/CV: [https://in.linkedin.com/in/yogeshpaul](https://in.linkedin.com/in/yogeshpaul)

Email:firstname.lastname@example.com

\-- MS from University of Florida, 8+ years work experience, working as full stack software developer using AWS(S3, DynamoDB), ES6, React-Redux, Java 8, Multithreading, Spring

</comment><comment><USER41> Location: Florida, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: JavaScript, React, Redux, Node.js, PostgreSQL, HTML, CSS (SCSS), Sketch

Résumé/CV: [http://keziyah.herokuapp.com/KeziyahResume.pdf](http://keziyah.herokuapp.com/KeziyahResume.pdf)

Email: hello[at]keziyah.com

Website: [http://keziyah.com](http://keziyah.com)

Full stack developer and designer. Interested in:

\-- A full time full stack or frontend engineering role, or design & development hybrid roles

\-- Freelance work

\-- NYC, DC, or remote.

</comment><comment><USER42> Location: San Francisco, CA

Remote: Yes (With experience)

Willing to relocate: Not right now

Technologies: Java, Spark, AWS, Groovy/Grails, Python, Git, MySQL, Impala

LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbagchi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbagchi)

I'm a Full-Stack / Big Data developer with 20+ years of experience. I've worked in startups and established technology companies, as well as finance and manufacturing companies.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm an applied statistician and data scientist with seven years of professional experience. I have extensive experience with statistical inference, time series analysis, and R programming.

      Location: Bay Area (CA)

      Remote: open

      Willing to relocate: open

      Technologies: R, SQL, Python

      Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abraham-mathew-21221b29/

      Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER44> Location: Regina, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to Relocate: Yes, within Canada.

Technologies: PHP (SlimPHP, Wordpress), Python, JS (Angular 1, jQuery, Bootstrap), Phonegap, Webpack, Ops.

Resume/CV: On request

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

I am a full stack web developer, writer and digital marketer from Regina, Canada. A highly experienced entrepreneur, I bootstrapped startups for years before my girlfriend and I had a baby. I still want to change the world, but I need just a little more stability than the bootstrapped life can provide.

</comment><comment><USER45> Location: La Paz, Bolivia

Remote: Yes.

Willing to relocate: Yes (USA, Germany) need visa sponsorship

Technologies: C#, C, Go, Python, Linux, shell/bash, SQL, PL/SQL, ETL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Data Modeling, Data Analysis.

Résumé/CV: [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzcivbTxH__cSXdQeVNHa1FOY0...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzcivbTxH__cSXdQeVNHa1FOY0..).

Email: ZGFuaWVscmJAbGl2ZS5jb20=

10+ years experience in development.

</comment><comment><USER46> Location: San Francisco (current) / Canada (permanent)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, C++, Java, Scala (in no particular order, and also willing to learn new programming languages too)

Résumé/CV: [https://tareqak.com](https://tareqak.com)

Email: tareqakhandaker AT gmail DOT com

Work authorization: Canadian citizen (would require a TN and/or would need to reactivate a dormant H1-B)

</comment><comment><USER47> Location: Mumbai, India

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: NodeJs (Core Member of NodeJS), React, Meteor, Python, React, AWS, Chatbots (Worked at Slack in SF), Automation, Scripting

Résumé/CV:

[https://gist.github.com/vicky002/92e7a1e3d6e058d40b1c54d3abe...](https://gist.github.com/vicky002/92e7a1e3d6e058d40b1c54d3abe7e703)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER48> iOS, 2x YC PORTFOLIO EXPERIENCE, LOCAL TO SF BAY AREA

\+ Location: SF, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, CA, US.

\+ Technologies: iOS, iOS, iOS. Swift. Native. iOS.

\+ Education: Computer Science / CS / C.S. bachelors degree.

\+ Experience: I've worked for 2 YC companies to date (1 hardware, 1 software). I've also worked for publicly-traded tech companies as a contractor and as a full-time employee.

\+ Time zone: I'm can be available locally in-person to sync with your team face-to-face during normal US business hours (no need to wake up at 3am remote team meeting.)

\+ Technologies: Python, Django, Ruby, Rails, jQuery, full-stack web, DevOps, Redis, LAMP, SQL, Parse, Postgres, Heroku, Objective-C, Obj-C.

\+ Résumé / CV / LinkedIn / Resume: (sensitive info) Please drop me an email and I'll respond with PDF.

\+ Work authorization: Full work authorization + US secret security clearance.

\+ Satisfied free-lance clients reference list upon request.

\+ Email: jayliew at jayliew ¤ com

\+ Remote: OK

</comment><comment><USER49> Location: Southern California

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Clojure, AngularJS, Express, Django, Ruby on Rails

Resume: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/3gg6ct6i8u0cgsh/cory_kitchens_resu...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3gg6ct6i8u0cgsh/cory_kitchens_resume.pdf?dl=0)

Email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER50> Location: London/Perth/Melbourne/Prague/EU possibly

Remote: Prefer no

Willing to relocate: Only to above places

Technologies: Python, PHP, JS, HTML/CSS, minor ops, Angular 1, node

Resume/CV: [https://github.com/paimoe/paimoe](https://github.com/paimoe/paimoe), full CV available if needed

Email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER51> Philadelphia or remote– firstname.lastname@example.com

Work history with screenshots: [http://www.hyperfiddle- consulting.com/](http://www.hyperfiddle-consulting.com/)

React.js, Redux, Javascript, ClojureScript

Clojure, Scala, Java

Meteor and MongoDB (migrating away)

Datomic (the functional database)

Postgres, RDBMS, distributed systems

Emerging languages and experimental architectures

</comment><comment><USER52> Location: Jamaica

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Javascript, Git, Angular 4, HTML/CSS, Native Android

Resume: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzu2zRVLsDQxX0w4dTR6UXpEN1U...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzu2zRVLsDQxX0w4dTR6UXpEN1U/view?usp=sharing)

Email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER53> Location: Anywhere (I'm in India)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies/Skills:

\- UI/UX design for web, iOS and Android

\- Information architecture

\- Interaction design

\- Visual design

\- Icon design

\- Brand Identity design

\- HTML & CSS

Portfolio: [http://radesign.in](http://radesign.in)

Email: [http://radesign.in/contact](http://radesign.in/contact)

</comment><comment><USER54> Location: Hanoi, Vietnam.

Remote: Yes.

Willing to relocate: None.

Technologies:Django, Python, Linux, Java, OpenCV, Automation Testing, SQL.

Github: github.com/hungle90.

Resume,CV: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunglethanh/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunglethanh/).

Email:email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER55> Location: Europe

Remote: Yes, as a contractor

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Go, C, C++, Assembler, Low-level, Embedded, RTOS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Linux, Git, Bash, Docker, Ansible

Résumé/CV: [https://dmitryfrank.com/dmitry_frank_resume.pdf](https://dmitryfrank.com/dmitry_frank_resume.pdf)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

Hi, my name is Dmitry. I'm a passionate software engineer with strong background in low-level (MCU real-time kernels, C, Assembler), and experienced in higher-level technologies as well: Go, C++, JavaScript, and many others. Author of the well-formed and carefully tested real-time kernel for 16- and 32-bit MCUs: TNeo: [https://github.com/dimonomid/tneo](https://github.com/dimonomid/tneo) , which is now used by several companies.

Apart from professional activities, I'm a hobbyist in Lisp, Ruby, Node.js, Angular.js. Learning internals of the Linux Kernel, since this is something I'm truly excited about.

One of my hobby projects is a geeky bookmarking service written in Go: [https://github.com/dimonomid/geekmarks](https://github.com/dimonomid/geekmarks)

Some of my articles:

\- How I ended up writing a new real-time kernel: [https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/how_i_ended_up_writing_my_o...](https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/how_i_ended_up_writing_my_own_kernel)

\- How do JavaScript closures work under the hood: [https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/js_closures](https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/js_closures)

\- Unit-testing (embedded) C applications with Ceedling: [https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/unit_testing_embedded_c_app...](https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/unit_testing_embedded_c_applications)

\- Object-oriented techniques in C: [https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/oop_in_c](https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/oop_in_c)

\- Here's why I love Go: [https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/i_love_go](https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/i_love_go)

</comment><comment><USER56>
      Location: New York, US
      Remote: Yes
      Willing to relocate: Yes
      Technologies: Python, Android, Java, Bash
      Résumé/CV: https://cloud.mdefrances.co/nextcloud/index.php/s/qumKxO6mlPsKsA8
      Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER57> Location: Boston, MA

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, JS, HTML, CSS, AngularJS, Python

Resume: [https://resume.creddle.io/review/14vc9ejsl30](https://resume.creddle.io/review/14vc9ejsl30)

email: email@example.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nick-pratt

Github: npratt0826

</comment><comment><USER58> Pragmatic engineer looking for contract/part time gigs.

Available on US timezones.

Location: Greece

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: JavaScript, Node.js, Python, Django, React.js, AWS

Résumé/CV: [https://sirodoht.xyz/resume/](https://sirodoht.xyz/resume/)

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER59> I've been building web apps since 2001, specializing in document creation and management applications that run on and offline.

Location: SW Missouri

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Maybe

Technologies: Perl, JS, CouchDB/PouchDB, HTML/CSS

Résumé/CV: upon request

Email: bill at cherrypc.com

</comment><comment><USER60> Location: Manhattan, NYC.

Contracts: No, full-time W2 only.

Remote: Yes.

Willing to relocate: Maybe.

Technologies: C/C++, C#, SQLite (team member), Tcl/Tk (maintainer), Win32, POSIX

Résumé/CV: Link and/or document available by request.

Email: joe [at] [put_my_user_name_here] [dot] com

</comment><comment><USER61> Location: Bulgaria

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, Django, Pyramid, Google App Engine, Flask, jQuery, Angular.js, HTML, CSS, Twitter Bootstrap, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, GQL, RabbitMQ, Redis

Portfolio: www.zahariev.co

Email: zahari(at)zahariev.co

</comment><comment><USER62> Location: Washington DC

Remote: No

Willing to relocate:Yes

Technologies:Python, Web

Résumé/CV: [http://www.gashok.com](http://www.gashok.com)

Email:email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER63> Location: WA, US

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: TypeScript + React preferred, JavaScript, Node.js, HTML, CSS, Python

Resume: Available upon request

Email: timkang [at] ucla.edu

</comment><comment><USER64> Location: Montevideo, Uruguay (GMT -3)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, Django, jQuery, Docker, LAMP

CV: Drop me an email for it.

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER65> Location: Boston

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Possibly

Technologies: iOS, Swift, Obj-C, Python

Examples: tonalapps.com

Email: mikeeggar g mail

</comment><comment><USER66> Location: boulder, USA Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: possible Technologies: python/ javascript/ objective c Resume: Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Résumé/CV: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qn11IeoCK8HLYPTBapzMEJuJ...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qn11IeoCK8HLYPTBapzMEJuJZdPR5TX0wETL8ebLda0) Email: email@example.com</comment>


The Surf Office Santa Cruz: Live and Work at the Beach - <AUTHOR> http://codam.io/the-surf-office-santa-cruz-live-and-work-at-the-beach/

<comment><USER2> This is awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes their concept is great, specially for digital nomads like me :)</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs on Average vs Best Software Developers - <AUTHOR> http://benlakey.com/2012/07/04/why-you-need-to-hire-great-developers-part-2/ <comment><USER3> A bit of a meta question: As someone who feels like a 'B' or even 'C' at times, what would it take to become an 'A' player? Is it predicated on pure talent alone, hard work, or experience?

Even though I know I'm still a junior developer (~1 yr exp), I feel hopeless at times that I'll never approach being 'A' status especially knowing that I have many peers my age that are already far and away better than me. How would I overcome that?

<comment><USER4> I believe that the top trait in A players is the same as in the top founders, which is determination [1]. That determination often manifests itself as the desire to understand how something really works, rather than glossing over the details, the drive to learn a new language well enough to use it to implement ideas, to take on the learning curve for a new tool or system, to automate something, or to test their code before releasing it into the wild.

I've seen less-than-enthusiastic programmers who release shoddy work, expend more effort moving work onto other's plates that they'd expend just doing it themselves, let bad ideas stand without a fight, and never bother to keep up with changes in technology.

I've also seen very smart developers who've constantly been taken in by the latest shiny new thing to cross their path, think that testing is for the weak, and have no real determination to get something up and running completely.

If I have to be honest, I would describe very few of the developers I've worked with as "dumb". But many of them are either too passive [2], or lack the determination or desire to really compete a project.

One thing I've done to grow is to not try very hard to gloss over the details. Software is supposed to abstract away details, but it's too easy to think "I'll never learn that." or "Who cares what's under the covers? It just works." Understanding the subtleties isn't just an intellectual pursuit. Knowing the internals of a system allows a developer to know the limitations and strengths of a system, so it can be built upon or even repaired and improved.

1\. <http://paulgraham.com/determination.html> 2\. Sadly, in some situations, these are people who've simply been overwhelmed by the bureaucracy of their workplace. Fortunately, we are currently in a job seeker's market, and determined people can find better work conditions.

<comment><USER5> I don't really think determination is the magic ingredient. Personally I think the process of writing software is very similar to writing a song. (is anybody here also a songwriter)? Because if you try to write a song before you're ready, it just doesn't work no matter how hard you try, but once the idea has fully formed inside your head, it's as if the song writes itself, i think software is the same way. i remember hearing jobs talk about how a lot of the A players would also write poetry.

when i think of A players i always think of the musician who is able to improvise with another A musician instinctively, without needed time to rehearse. A players are able to communicate faster with each other than with B or C players. a so-called "A" player who has a big ego and can't play with others isn't actually an A player, but has managed to convince others (and himself) that he is.

seriously, if you want to become a better hacker, learn how to write a song, it's pure creation (or try painting, but songwriting is more creative imo)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pretty romantic way of putting it, but I agree mostly. You're dead on about so-called 'A' players who have big egos and can't communicate or play well with others; They might even be 'A' in terms of technical expertise but that's not the whole picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      > it used to be the case in hardware

I think it's fair to say that Woz was a 50:1 or 100:1 guy.

Jobs isn't saying A players are as common as straight-A students (it comes across that they are extraordinarily rare; it takes " _incredible work_ " to find them), it's just that (as he plainly states), unlike in most other fields, instead of performing 30% better or twice as well, they can do x50 or x100 times as well.

Perhaps better examples are fields where output scales easily: e.g. one novelist can sell many more books than another. This performance is not related to not how quickly they type, but what they type. It reflects the old idea of "I'm sorry to write you such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a shorter one". The hard bit is in asking the right question, seeing the problem in the right way, redefining the problem - then, solving it is (comparatively) easy. It's about understanding what the problem actually is. Then, things can become radically simpler. Any sufficiently advanced understanding, if implemented as a technology, is indistinguishable from magic.

Programming dramatically rewards such understanding, because understanding can be realized so easily implemented in a working technology (i.e. a program).

</comment><comment><USER7> IMO truly great developers are not just developers. They are also software architects, UX and UI designers, network engineers, etc. "A" developers knock down learning curves and assimilate everything about software creation _innately_.

<comment><USER8> This is absolutely the right answer. I would add that the BEST developers are those that have some business or project management background.

That way they can put what they are doing in the greater context of the organisation. As well as add a lot more weighting to maintainability and future flexibility over the "latest cool thing".

<comment><USER9> At this point you're getting a little overgeneral, I think. One of Steve Jobs' A players was undoubtedly Bill Atkinson, but what he lacked in business knowledge, he more than made up for in technical skills. If you're an A player working in one of Intel or Microsoft's compilers teams, you win based on deep technical knowledge, not understanding the "greater context of the organisation".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think there is a lot of talk about hiring an "A" developer, but almost nothing on _what_ makes an A developer an A developer. More likely than not, it a continuum, and that a lot of engineers have the potential to be an A, but don't end up getting there due to one reason or another. It would be great to see some discussion on what environment could one provide that would enable A players to thrive and reach their potential.

<comment><USER11> _It would be great to see some discussion on what environment could one provide that would enable A players to thrive and reach their potential._

Pay them enough, give them an interesting problem, and lock them in a room with a bunch of other A players

<comment><AUTHOR> Pay is actually quite low on the list of things that a great developer will value when choosing where to work. And I think it's dangerous to just lock the A players in a room amongst themselves; they need to communicate closely with others in the organization, otherwise the value they try and add might be missing the target.

<comment><USER11> That's why I said "enough", not "a lot". Everybody has to eat food, have a place to sleep, etc.

I know, I was being somewhat facetious. More what I mean is, put them in a tight-knit group, and you are right- it is very important they interact with the rest of the organization too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Plus A players have a tendency to care a lot more about their own knowledge that it allowed Steve Jobs to yell at them to improve their efficiency.

If Jobs yelled at a typical B player or corporate drone, they would just take it and go on and maybe sit at the bar wallowing in their sorrows.

With A players, Jobs would tap into their insecurity that they might not be smart enough causing them to want to learn more to close that insecurity which then allows then to produce a better product. Their fear that they may not be smart enough would cause them to become even smarter.

Jobs needed A players otherwise his "motivational techniques" would fall flat.

</comment><comment><USER13> We hear this a lot and somehow feel it's true but there are no reliable metrics and little verifiable data so ultimately it's just talk.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, I'm getting kind of sick of these articles. It's like if the developer community here started posting fluff pieces about how you need to use the best programming languages and the most optimized frameworks.

Maybe I'm out of step with the recruiting community but are there people who are sitting around going "let's round up some really mediocre candidates?"

<comment><USER15> [Maybe I'm out of step with the recruiting community but are there people who are sitting around going "let's round up some really mediocre candidates?"]

There are a lot of people going "let's round up the cheapest candidates we can find".

Said cheap developers will eventually wind up costing the company more than they make back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of my mentors(Who also happens to be my Uncle) is a great guy. He is great Start upper, who has done some amazing things in Embedded electronics space. While making tons of money.

A while back, I saw him fixing some bugs in the code. I saw he had an editor open(Notepad basically). And I was like 'You still code?'. And he replied yeah, I like to do this work sometimes, sometimes not always. He told me he was not a very great programmer, but he had the quality 'To convert time into something which is useful and sell-able'. You will need to be good at programming to do that, but you don't have to be too great.

I think his advice and what I could take from him was, Never go fancy and too much into the tool religion. Begin with the end in mind, and execute. Do what it takes to achieve something. Be productive, plan and work on focused goals. Track and review your course. Getting a time table helps.

Provided you are productive you can learn and do anything. Focus on the big picture and try to solve problems that matter.

What will it take to be a great programmers. Its just the same thing that would take to be with any other profession. You have to just execute like crazy until you win.

Shipping and problems solved count. Everything else(Blogs, tweets, whining etc noise) is pointless.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been a developer for more than five years now, and I met a lot of brillant people that are more than a 100 times better than me. I also saw code and people that are so bad that I would qualify as a A player... Compared to them. I'm probably more than a 100 times better than them. So in my opinion, in software development, there is a much wider range than 100:1, and if you feel like you're an 'A' player, you're probably overestimating yourself. Likewise, if you feel you're a 'C' player and are worried about it, don't worry too much, go on StackOverflow, answer question, learn to get better, and be confident that maybe you're not an 'A' player, but you're pretty good and will be a 100 times better by next year.

</comment><comment><USER18> I normally don't participate in these threads, but I watched the interview yesterday and I think Steve Jobs did a masterful job of explaining this phenomenon and it is getting lost in this conversation.

Fundamentally, and he talks about this, computer programming is a way of encapsulating _your thinking_ in code. You are transferring your thought processes into computer code. A computer program is, quite logically, an encapsulated and packaged thought process.

I don't think anyone can or should try to argue that everyone thinks the same. Hence, not everyone's code is the same. And it follows that some people's thought processes are more efficient or better structured than others. These are the 50x'ers and 100x'ers. The A players. And I feel that just understanding that what you are doing is packaging your thought processes helps immensely in becoming more efficient, just because of the way you approach the problem.

People who are the 50x'ers, or 100x'ers, just solve problems very efficiently and are very good at packaging that problem solving logic in code. They are probably not as good as the 1x'ers in other areas of life--perhaps they are not as good at loving people, or raising children, or writing, whatever. They can be (and in my experience often are) not as good at a million other areas of life, many of which are far more important than programming. But they are very good at problem solving and transferring that problem solving logic into computer code.

I agree with Steve.

<comment><USER19> The hard problems in software are not adding features or coming up with crafty efficient solutions. That is actually quite easy and I am constantly surprised how mediocre to poor developers can consistently come up with workable solutions.

The hard problem in software is writing code others can use. Everyone can write a solution that makes sense to themselves. Few can write one that makes sense to other developers. People who write code professionally will know what I mean. When you get someone else's work and realize it is better than anything you could have come up with. Not because it is extremely complex, but because it is perfectly simple.

I completely agree that people do not think the same. Where you went wrong is in believing an individuals thought process takes precedence over a teams. That is exactly the opposite of what is required and what software development spends a lot of time battling against.

<comment><USER18> I disagree... the highest-value problems are often VERY hard.

Think of things like natural language recognition, predictive analytics, statistical analysis, and so on. Things that seem like magic to the end user, that they've never seen before, are very hard before they're abstracted into something that B/C players can re-use. Woz, for example, worked some magic and packaged a computer circuit board into something that tons of less-talented people could build on. I would not even want to attempt what he did.

Yes, creating a feature like adding a Like button does not take complex thinking, but moving the needle forward significantly often does. I believe this is what Jobs was alluding to.

<comment><USER19> I feel like we are discussing this from very different perspectives. You raise hard computer science problems and a Woz example that is hardware related. The article was about software, not people who push the envelope of what is possible with computers.

If you are tackling problems like natural language recognition you don't need a superstar programmer. You need someone with a background in Computational linguistics.

Assuming we are discussing software. Hard computer science problems are, unfortunately, very infrequently brought up in a business setting. The biggest challenge in software is building the right thing. Change is inevitable and solutions are often large. This means you need to have teams of people working together building solutions that are very malleable.

Here is another way to consider it from my perspective. The article is about teams of 'A' players. I am guessing Linus meets your criteria, but you don't hire Linus. You don't have teams of Linus'. Linus is something else...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So what do B and C developers do? Not everyone can be in the A tier.

Wouldn't a better strategy for society be to focus on extracting maximum value and output from people of all capabilities? Just pay less capable people less, and give them smaller responsibilities.

<comment><USER21> _So what do B and C developers do?_

I suspect the ones at Apple develop iTunes for Windows

<comment><USER22> It's funny because it's true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> that's true for any task that is mostly bound by intellect rather than something else. The cab driver can only drive so much faster / better than everyone else because he is constrained by the traffic and the car. In the case of pure intellectual pursuits like writing a novel, or painting, there is a vast difference between the masters and the average person. Same thing for programming, it's part art, part science, mostly constrained by intellect.

<comment><USER24> I'd say it applies even more to great developers. Good programming greatly multiplies a single person's work. When great developers get together and all understand a set of best practices along with bringing in unique individual talents, then their creative output will be exponentially better than a group of lesser programmers.

<comment><USER23> wouldn't that be the case with any sort of group project? i.e. hard sciences

<comment><USER25> The bureaucracy in the institutions doing hard sciences eventually wears down even the sharpest mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> His response reminds me a lot of what I have read in Valve's employee handbook (<http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf>) in regards to their developer culture. By what I understand, Valve has established a self policing system in which every employee has complete autonomy over what they decide to work on or contribute to. Gabe Newell is emphatic about the flat hierarchy of Valve and its peer-review system that replaces the need for managers. I've struggled to understand why this has been successful for them as an influential video game company, but it appears Jobs' insight underlines a similar truth. Good developers are not only great problem solvers, but managers in themselves that comprehend the work needed to be done and are willing to work with those smarter than themselves to see it done.

<comment><USER27> Look at the story that was kicked around recently about the fired apple developer who snuck back in to complete his work. That's the way the best developers are. They are intensely passionate about their work, and very self- driven. You can't get them to stop working on projects they care about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is the meta-leaning here that you should not hire programmers in the Bay Area, until you can pay $120-200K + stock for experienced guys, and 80-90K for top college grads?

Maybe that sets a hard target when you know to grow your start-up to the third developer, when bootstrapping. Can you pay someone 100-200k per year? Time to grow.

<comment><USER29> No. For one, that was said 10 or 15 years ago and things change. Second, talented engineers (like everyone) value a variety of things other than money. Finally, other competencies are becoming as important or more so than raw engineering for a lot of companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree. Financial compensation is actually often much lower on the list of things software developers value at a company, particularly when they are 'A' players. Solving problems, working with other 'A' players, and stretching ones abilities become more important. You do have to pay competitively though.

<comment><USER30> I think "you have to pay competitively" is true and pretty much negates the claim that financial compensation is low priority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Video Game artists are 50 to 1, best to average. I've worked with 4-5 of best and 50-100 of the average. The best are prolific, get stuff done on or ahead of time and follow every technical detail required. They are technical enough to know what's needed to accomplish a given goal without needing to be hand held. Whether it's thinking through all the tiles need for a tile based 3/4 perspective game for making something beautiful with a limited polygon and/or texture budget.

They really do get way more done than the average artist. Unfortunately there just aren't enough of them so we do the best we can to help the average ones be as productive as possible and keep hoping to find more of the amazing ones.

</comment><comment><USER32> As much as I enjoy the hilarity of psuedoscience and anecdotal evidence - <USER2> oft-repeated plug has become tiring.

Will someone (other than Steve McConnell) who parrots these numbers ad nauseum please provide some evidence for your claims? Really, the best car is only 20% better than the average car? In what way? Define the best? Please, go on, explain your methodology.

Do the people who continue to spew forth this gibberish actually claim to have education and credentials of a scientific persuasion? Do they actually consider themselves professionals in a field that requires logical and critical thinking skills? Barf!

</comment><comment><USER33> You can see the Lost Interviews on Youku:

<http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzU4OTExMjY0.html>

<http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzU4OTExNjEy.html>

<http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzU4OTExMzk2.html>

<http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzU4OTExMjIw.html>

<http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzU4OTEwOTcy.html>

...

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also see them here: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008GJVAW4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008GJVAW4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=benlakeycom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B008GJVAW4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What amazed in those kind of post, is that people who actually work in the industry are not bother by the actual lack of evidence in those kind of claim. I respect the opinion of Ben Lakey and Steve Jobs but they are opinions not laws.

I mean seriously, regardless of the job or the level of awesomness of someone, who likes to work with incompetent collegues ?????

They are thousands of bad developpers out there ? Seriously ? How do you judge ?? How do you know ??

Personally I know tons of developpers who works on awesome things at home but do shit at work 365 days a year. Simply because that is what is required of them. Careful here, I am not saying that, this is the case for everyone and that I have explained everything. I'm just saying that it will be nice if in our industry we stopped putting so much ego in everything we are doing. If you are a A, A+, A++, S++X37 developper good for you, truly.

From my little experience ( ~= 5 years ) there is not much state of the art project going on in the industry. Most project sucks from a technical point of view.

Also from my little experience, recruitment is fucking hard. Ask Google.

<comment><USER34> You'll notice that I didn't talk about managment and the value that companies put (or don't put) in IT ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I believe there are many A players who perform on B or C level because they are managed by B or C players. Steve Jobs was an A-level CEO, who knew how to inspire his employees and ignite their potential to be 50 or 100 better. Not many CEOs are like that.

If an A-level developer can perform 50x or 100x better than average, I'd guess that an A-level CEO can perform 500x or 1000x better.

</comment><comment><USER36> The most important thing when trying to become an 'A' player in anything is to always ensure you're engaging in deliberate practice. The simple truth is that a very large majority of people switch to auto-pilot or stay within their comfort zone as soon as they become proficient at something. It's easy to think that the existing 'A' players were just born that way, when in fact they probably spent thousands of hours in deliberate practice. It's very hard to find an exception to this.

So if you do want to become an 'A' player:

\- Figure out a way to always be deliberately practicing.

\- Always be aware of whether you're doing something because you've always done it, or whether because it actually is the best way.

\- Be around other 'A' players and learn from them.

\- Continually stretch beyond your comfort/"knowledge" zone.

\- Continually learn new things.

\-----

Some reading material on the topic:

Bounce by Matthew Syed

Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

</comment><comment><USER37> I think it's not the right metaphor. In class, the difference between an A and a B is 10%. In, say, Chess, the difference between a master and a grandmaster is that a grandmaster will win almost every time. I think that's a better scale.

</comment><comment><USER38> Off-topic, this is one of the most readable sites I've ever visited. What is it, exactly, that makes that typesetting so pleasing to the eye?

<comment><USER39> Five reasons:

1\. Proper line height

2\. #404040 for text color instead of #000

3\. webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;

4\. text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;

5\. Steve Jobs quote

Wow is this guy a designer?

<comment><USER40> A designer would probably be a bit more consistent with the vertical grid. For instance, the margins are inconsistent with the line height etc.

<comment><USER39> I kid, a baseline grid is the least of his worries.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm most definitely not a designer. :-) If you're interested, it's just the 'Responsive' wordpress theme. <http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/responsive>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think this 100x rule is not unique to software. Consider athletes for example. The best athletes are much much better than the merely very good. For example, the top tennis player would defeat the 500th best every single time barely losing a single game. And the world no. 500 would defeat a good amateur 6-0 6-0 (as David Foster Wallace found out).

<comment><USER42> I think you're right about the disparity applying elsewhere, but I disagree with your example of athletes. Beating an opponent consistently is not the same as beating an opponent by a factor of 50. For example: I'm no sprinter, but Usain Bolt runs less than 2x faster than me. And there are thousands of athletes who are a few percent slower than the best. They don't even get to the Olympic qualifiers.

On the other hand, I've seen productivity vary drastically among knowledge workers. It would be interesting to see studies involving actual numbers, since I think 10x between average and best is an exaggeration. Worst and best, maybe. But a lot of that is because the worst programmers can cause more problems than they solve.

<comment><USER43> I'd argue that in the case of something like sprinting, looking at it in a linear way isn't going to get you much. I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that every time you cut X seconds off your time, it's that much harder to get down to X _2\. If you looked at it from some sort of a logarithmic basis, I find it really unlikely that Usain Bolt is_ just* 2x faster than you.

<comment><USER42> (I'm not really sure why I felt the need to write this rant. It was an itch I had to scratch.)

It may surprise you, but healthy adults don't differ much in terms of physical ability. If you measure watts output or steps per second or anything quantifiable, it's going to be less than an order of magnitude difference, never mind a 100x difference.

I can run 100 meters in 15 seconds. That's 6.7 meters per second. Usain Bolt can run 100 meters in 9 seconds. That's 11 meters per second. 11.11/6.67 = 1.67 times faster. If Usain could somehow cut 5 seconds off his time and do a 4-second 100 meter dash, he'd be moving along at 25 meters per second. That isn't quite 4x faster than me. Such a feat would certainly be much more than 4 times as _impressive_ as me running, but it wouldn't be more than 4 times as fast.

If you used some other yardstick, you could come up with some other number. Usain Bolt is the fastest sprinter alive. That makes him one in 7 billion. There are likely millions of faster runners than me. I'm maybe one in 100. 7 billion divided by 100 is 70 million, therefore Usain Bolt is 70 million times better at sprinting than me.

Sound silly? I think so too.

When measuring programming ability, we don't grade on a curve. It doesn't matter how much (or little) effort you had to expend. All that matters is the result and how long it took.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone who _aspires_ to do their job better, wants to learn, hangs out in places like Hacker News and Stack Exchange, takes an interest in at least reading about new ideas, loves what they do, and has an upbeat attitude...

...anyone who ticks all these boxes is at least a B+ player in my book.

</comment><comment><USER44> Considering this is a man who's built one of the world's most successful computer software and hardware companies, I think it's safe to say he knows whereof he speaks. And we can put this question to rest.

And I think the exact number or ratio is not important, and probably not measureable. But I bet anyone who's been around long enough, exposed to wide enough variety of programmers, will agree that there is a wide range of skill & talent. But of course when it comes to pay, salary-wise, working for somebody else, there really isn't. And that's a shame. Or at least an inefficiency.

<comment><USER32> I admire and respect Steve Jobs as a businessman. I don't admire and respect him as an engineer, and certainly don't admire and respect him as a scientist. The differences are subtle and staggering all at once.

I disagree that the question can be put to rest. Your logic follows from a fallacy known as 'Argument from Authority' or 'argumentum ad verecundiam'.

I understand that the comments on this board are derived from a wide variety of individuals, where there is a wide range of skill and talent. I completely agree with your 2nd paragraph.

<comment><USER44> Don't think in terms of "the rules of debate". Think in terms of evidence, experience and analysis. What I'm saying, and I think the place that Steve Jobs was speaking from, and I think others are speaking from, is from actual direct experience with lots of folks in the real world. Forget proper "data". Forget authority, personally. What I was saying was, look, for the folks that _do_ need an appeal to authority (because they have no experience themselves, or can't do the analysis themselves) the Jobs quote should be money for them. And it doesn't matter whether Jobs was an engineer or not. He worked closely with and led, and hired/fired hundreds of engineers over the years, starting with the Woz himself, and so he's seen firsthand the variety out there in terms of talent, knowledge, skill, attitude, work ethic, etc. It's irrelevant whether he's an engineer or scientist. By being an entrepreneurial business guy in the computer field over the course of 30+ years, at the helm of a company that "kicked ass and took names" in at least two distinct periods under his watch, there's a reasonable case to be made that he knows whereof he speaks. Could he be wrong? Could he be stupid? That's not the smart way to bet.

Also, related: one doesn't need to cite data or academic papers or construct airtight debate-worthy logical arguments to reach conclusions like, gosh, pizza comes in a wide variety of topping mixes, flavors and quality levels. Just experience a bunch of different pizza over the years! Done. :)</comment></comment></comment>


How to Make Wealth - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html <comment><USER2> I don't buy the argument that Gates became rich because of IBM's "blunder" with DOS. When Windows was released Microsoft almost had to start over again. They had both a good product and the right business model by horizontally integrating with ODM's and realizing that the value in software is in platform. Then he went and did it again with Microsoft Office.

Bill Gates created some of the most profitable and efficient business units that the world has ever seen, and he did it more than once.

It just happens that he took advantage of IBM's naivety the first time, but that was only a blunder with hindsight.

To add, I think being rich is overrated, and that it isn't a coincidence that the biggest influencers and successes in our industry don't care about money.

<comment><USER3> >To add, I think being rich is overrated, and that it isn't a coincidence that the biggest influencers and successes in our industry don't care about money.

The biggest influences and successes in our industry don't care about money _after they have their FU money_. I wouldn't either! Ironically, this tells me that being rich is absolutely not overrated but really important if you ever want to be able to forget about money.

<comment><USER4> Thank you.

I find very few poor or middle class people who continuously hold the belief that "money isn't important" or they "don't care about money". Once you've got that FU money - you can say FU - that's why it's called FU money!

The few that do may do so because of religious/spiritual beliefs, but almost everyone without enough money cares about it, because a) it's scarce and b) necessary to live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I liked these essays when I was young, because these were so encouraging. It treated us programmers as special snow flakes, and advertised us the romantic super exciting world of startups. Now as I got older and more experienced I find these essays trivial, boring or simply not true. I realized I no longer gain anything 'usable' for my life from such essays. (I find less and less interesting most essays from Joel and others also. I am more and more interested in actual business opportunities and connections, and less and less interested in general essays about enterpreneurship and programming.)

Creating wealth is relatively easy, but I don't care about it anymore (except as a hobby), I care about creating money, which is much harder. All the stuff about programmer productivity in this essay is first not true but more importantly not really important anymore in my opinion. At most startups and big companies programming is a commodity. By 2011 we programers are good enough, programming became matrue enough that it is really a commodity now. Not a cheap commodity, but a commodity: a $100.000 per year commodity. I argue that in 2011 (maybe not in 2004) you can find really good people for $100.000 per year if you know how to find these people. You can find much cheaper in Eastern Europe (where I live) if you are not so snob that you think programmers in the West are so special. So unless you work on something very deeply technical or technicall revolutionary (so you are not John Carmack working on the fastest rendering engine on the planet or you are not the engineer behind Gogle's superfast javascript engine) your value as a programmer is someting like $100.000 or something. There is no '36x multiplier because of programmer productivity.' I think if the market is quasy efficient that means if your startup would be about programming then the expected value of your earnings would be sometinng like this value ($100.000) in your startup. What kind of multipliers there really are:

\- There can be a multiplier because of your idea, your product, your marketing, and your connections. But not programming (in case of not technically deep startups. Technically deep startups are quite rare.) \- There is a factor which is related to how popular it is to create a startup. If it is super popular because of marketing essays like this, then it is possible that there are too much startups of constant sized markets, so that your expected value of earning could be even less than $100.000. At the time of this essay, when starting-up was not that popular we could not really speak of saturated markets, so that your expected value of earning was probably more than $100.000. The more people start-up the less attractive it will be to start-up. So the more successful PG's essays will be the less true they will be.

<comment><USER6> Can you give me an example of a specific sentence or passage in the essay that you believe is false?

<comment><USER7> One doesn't need to look very far. The first paragraph:

> If you wanted to get rich, how would you do it? I think your best bet would > be to start or join a startup. That's been a reliable way to get rich for > hundreds of years.

Startups are _not_ a reliable way to get rich. Or what failure rate would you still consider reliable?

That said, I do agree that working at a startup can mean that you can contribute more. That is not always the case however. Just like smart technology is leverage, a big company is leverage too. Even assuming that you'll be 36x less productive at a big company, you'll probably reach 36x more users simply because you're working on a product by a big company.

<comment><USER6> You seem to share a common statistical misconception about success rates. If 10% of startups succeed, that doesn't mean that if you start a startup, your chances of succeeding are 10%. They are either much higher or much lower.

This is clearer if you consider a statement like "10% of men are over 6 feet tall." There's no one who has actually has a 10% chance of being over 6 feet tall. 10% of people have a 100% chance, and the remaining 90% have a 0% chance.

For the sort of person who has sufficient drive to get rich at all, starting a startup is a much more reliable way to do it than the overall success rate implies.

<comment><USER7> The frequentist way you're doing probability in that comment is not valid since the success or failure of one particular startup is not a repeatable experiment. The only valid interpretations are (1) the frequentist probability across a group of startups and (2) the degree of belief, or bayesian probability of a single startup's success. In this framework it is entirely reasonable to assign a 10% probability of success to one particular startup. I agree that if you knew beforehand that you're in the small group of people whose success rate exceeds your standard for reliability, then for that person a startup would be a reliable way to get rich. The problem is, of course: how do you know which group you're in?

<comment><USER6> I didn't mean to imply that for the right sort of person the odds are 100%. But they're pretty good. Probably over 30% and maybe as high as 50%. And since failing is usually pretty quick you could easily try 3 startups in 5 years.

As it turns out there is an easy way to know which group you're in: ask us. Like all venture investors, it's our job to answer that question, and we work very hard to try to do it well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the problem with such essays is that the authors extrapolate their own experience and think it can be used as a template for everyone. We are told how to get rich, become successful, date a beautiful women, write the best programs, influence people and so on.

</comment><comment><USER9> "If a fairly good hacker is worth $80,000 a year at a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to do work worth about $3 million a year."

Wow, in hindsight this seems way too hacker-centric and elitist. The assumption is that all that other corporate stuff creates no value. I don't think that's true. I think that marketing, sales, etc., can be what enables the $80,000 salary and the combination of everything can be an overall multiplier. Otherwise, the proposition that a marketing firm can help you increase sales would not be true.

Contrast with Joel Spolsky's article about how managers are there to abstract away everything but the hacking problem at hand. There is value created there, and a good manager can multiply the value of a good hacker.

</comment><comment><USER4> "If a fairly good hacker is worth $80,000 a year at a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to do work worth about $3 million a year."

I'm not sure whether this was meant tongue-in-cheek or not, but ...

If someone's worth $80k to company X, they're worth $80k in the context of the value the provide to company working as part of the whole. At least some of the "corporate bullshit" is at least partially necessary to make the company run.

A developer "programming" outside the context of company X _might_ be able to provide more value to a wider audience, but not without some level of "corporate bullshit" (legal, financial, etc). And they're not going to create $3m of directly accessible money without a decent amount of "corporate bullshit".

The same skills that are worth $80k to company X might have nearly $0 value to anyone outside the context of company X.

<comment><USER10> I think you are under estimating the stench of corporate bullshit. Take how ever bad you think it is and multiply it by 10 then add a little bit and it's worse than that at the really bad places.

<comment><USER4> Show me people that were $80k corp developers who left, did nothing else except the exact same things they did as corp devs (minus corp redtape) who made millions. No one does. To function, more stuff than just programming needs to happen.

<comment><USER10> Yes more stuff besides programming needs to happen but in a large corp. doing all those ancillary things takes a lot longer than it needs to. For example if you needed to buy a larger hard drive for your dev machine as an individual you can just go to your favorite online retailer order it and have it in a day or two. At a large company you would have to deal with a litany of people forms and other nonsense that could stretch on for weeks if not months. If you've never experienced it you can't possibly imagine how bad it really is.

<comment><USER4> I have experienced it (event got yelled at at company X for upgrading my computer to 1g from 512m - just bought a 512meg chip at lunch for about $40). I still don't think that just being able to replace your own drive and such will allow someone to generate 10+ times their previous value. I'm not intentionally trivializing your point of view - we'll just have to agree to disagree. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's been a while since I've read this essay -- and I'm surprised by some of the reactions I'm reading in these comments!

The essay is just as good now as it was then.

The underlying ideas are not only correct, they're being actively validated in the increase in salaries for good programmers.

Someone in this thread says that programming is a commodity. Well, sure. Isn't everything?

But the key point in the essay is about making value directly, by making something people want.

Has that somehow become a dated notion? Isn't it, rather, being validated with every single startup that enriches its value-creating founders?

There's no 'magic' in the essay, of course. No secret key to success, no fairy dust; I'm sorry for anyone who felt there was, but such is youth.

The essay never said that all programmers will become millionaires.

What it said was that if you wanted to become rich, and you're a programmer, probably your best shot is to make a product that people want.

Google and Facebook and Twitter and more, they're all validating that argument by raising salaries for their best talent, to make creating value directly for the customer a less attractive option.

<comment><USER12> _The underlying ideas are not only correct, they're being actively validated in the increase in salaries for good programmers._

Then why do people complain about low wages and poor equity offers? Not everyone is a Google employee making $250k in salary + benefits.

 _But the key point in the essay is about making value directly, by making something people want. Has that somehow become a dated notion? Isn't it, rather, being validated with every single startup that enriches its value- creating founders?_

Where are all of these startups that magically print money for their founders? All I see on HN are people grinding away on their MVPs (or pushing a landing page as their MVP) while we discuss the same hot-shot startups (Square, Twitter, FB, etc.) over and over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> He's slipping. Marx is wrong, there's no labor theory of value. If working 24/7 was the ticket to riches then every mother would be a billionaire. The Mexicans who now your lawn and harvest your food work way harder than a 20-something at a startup. What's more, you can do all that work, and 9 times out of 10 you end up with nothing.

<comment><USER14> The essay is about how to _make_ wealth, not _capture_ it. Know the difference.

The importance of capture is skimmed over a bit too much in pg's essay, in my opinion. He writes "for much of human history... the only ways to acquire [wealth] rapidly [was] by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or confiscation. Naturally wealth had a bad reputation."

Wealth-by-confiscation is far from dead, and is in fact alive and kicking. Excepting the government, no one can print money; hence, the only way to get it is from other people, who don't part with it willingly. The separation of others from their money is the real business, and those who specialize in it or aid others in it (salesmen, advertisers [Google, Facebook], lawyers, marketers, those who provide marketplaces [Amazon, eBay, Viaweb], payment facilitators [PayPal, banks]) will find themselves much better paid than those who "merely" create wealth. The same is true for those who _guard_ wealth against those who would take it: tax accountants, lawyers, security system vendors (one of the more lucrative jobs in my town is sales _for_ a security systems company---double whammy), and defense contractors (on a national level).

Today I threw a kill switch on work I'd done for a client that was seemingly impervious to invoices. In two hours I had an email titled "Urgent Matter," and two hours later I had a check in hand (five minutes later the client's software was working just fine again, if you're curious).

So while I would much prefer to think of myself as a developer, today I got paid for being an extortioner instead.

<comment><USER15> Here, here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> two comments:

* this only applies if you are the FOUNDER or early employee. joining later and making your 0.14% of the company is good for learning a small part of how startups work, but it is unlikely to get you rich, especially after the discount you take for not working at Googlesoft (where salaries are at least 40% higher than startups). This essay is part of the story that early employees spin to convince you to work like crazy so they take home the majority of the rewards.

* the best way to make wealth consistently is to save money from your paycheck at a young age, invest it in low to moderate risk investments, and let it compound. this would actually argue for taking the higher paycheck from Googlesoft.

* getting rich isn't everything and work isn't everything. you'll be a much more interesting guy (and probably more effective, including at work) and you'll have a better chance of seeing something that is broken and needs a startup.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting that in this older essay pg suggests focusing on number of users as a good metric for adding value. Nowadays this is called a vanity metric and everyone is looking for actionable metrics based on cohort analysis etc. It shows how fast the best practices for startups are evolving.

</comment><comment><USER12> After spending over a year on HN, I really have to disagree with assertions about "corporate bullshit" for one reason:

Advertising.

Look at how HN is inundated with "Show HNs" for everyone's new web app. Many of these people bootstrap their own company and can't afford advertising. They're all fighting for attention in a market saturated with novel apps (Instapaper for videos! another iOS photo sharing app!). Many of these apps create wealth, and many won't survive into next June.

Now compare these tiny startups with any larger startup or corporation. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare have a lot of users, and they need to build out bizdev teams to continue growing (marginal cost and all that). They need HR departments to build out those teams--now we're halfway down the road to internal hierarchies and politics. Ugh, corporate bullshit!

However, these startups can also advertise and market like crazy and watch as their growth charts show exponential behavior.

Traction and user retention are economies of scale. As much as we hate corporate bullshit, that bullshit lets a company grow enough to trivialize all those marketing + bizdev concerns. Otherwise, how can you advertise your wealth creation when consumers are too busy looking at Tumblr or tweeting to pay attention to you?

</comment><comment><USER18> "If you're a good hacker in your mid twenties, you can get a job paying about $80,000 per year."

Wow, things change fast. Isn't there a thread talking about certain mid twenties in Google having $250k per year lately? It was written only 6 years ago.

<comment><USER19> Wouldnt the equivalent non top of the range amount be around 120k now? And it seems the dev market is a fair bit tighter than 6 years ago?

<comment><USER12> What do you mean by "tighter"?

<comment><USER20> A good programmer who can find a job in an urban market can earn $120K a year. But there are a lot of programmers who can't find jobs, and that puts significant downward pressure on salaries; and there are a lot of programmers in more rural markets who are willing to telecommute, and _that_ puts significant downward pressure on salaries as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Spooky coincidence: This is exactly the chapter I read yesterday in Hacker and Painters.

Blunder or not, and as much as I love Apple; like Steve said, "They've earned their success, for the most part."

On the other hand, because MS grew so big I feel people started taking software more seriously. It may have shaped how the industry looks at software now. This is only a hunch as I wasn't even around when it was the 80s.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just out of curiosity, is pg a millionaire? A billionaire?

<comment><USER23> The way YC is growing, PG could very well become a billionaire in the coming years.

<comment><USER24> At 3% equity, he would need either a really, really big hit or a lot of big successes to become a billionaire. From YC's modus operandum, I think pg cares more about shaking up Silicon Valley than he does about maximising return on investment.

<comment><USER25> maybe if YC were acquired by another VC firm, he might be able to get a large multiple off of his ownership stake.

either way, that would be cool to see pg become a billionaire. I wonder how he would shake up philanthropy? He might be able to find a better charity model than what currently exists today..

<comment><USER26> The most efficient way to help homeless people is to walk up to them on the street and give them money. Not much room there for innovation. On the other hand, the cheapest way for society to help "permanently" homeless people is to pay their rent on an apartment. That might be more interesting.

<comment><USER27> Give them anything but money.

<comment><USER26> It's a small pilot project but it went really well: <http://www.economist.com/node/17420321?story_id=17420321>

And, with the standard Malcolm Gladwell disclaimer, <http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html> seems to indicate than most homeless people aren't homeless for very long.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>