Plan To Split California Into Six States Gets OK To Gather Signatures - <AUTHOR> http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/02/19/plan-to-split-california-into-six-states-gets-ok-to-gather-signatures/

<comment><USER2> I actually think that a lot of good could come from splitting up California. This would allow the intense stupidity of its politics to be less monolithic, and would permit more experimentation with policy, which might have a good outcome.

That said, as a former San Luis Obispan, the notion of being an adjunct of Los Angeles (see [http://www.sixcalifornias.info/](http://www.sixcalifornias.info/)) makes me shudder. And having Los Angeles and Orange County in separate states makes no sense. If you were going to carve up California along lines of economic and cultural interest, then I'd adjust the Six Californias as follows:

Jefferson (blue, in the far north) -- looks about right (and has a great history, worth reading about).

Northern California -- I'd swap Alpine, Mono, and Inyo counties into this state (from Central Valley), as this creates a state which is dominated by wilderness, tourism, and natural resources.

Central Valley (red) -- I'd take San Benito from Silicon Valley, to create a state which is unified by agriculture.

Silicon Valley (yellow) -- I'd shift San Benito to Central Valley and Monterrey to Central Coast (green), creating a more technology-centric state.

Central Coast (green) -- take Monterrey, but send Ventura and Los Angeles to Southern California. This is a rural area dominated by nature and tourism, and shouldn't be swallowed by Los Angeles politics.

Southern California (orange) -- take Ventura and Los Angeles from Central Coast, so as not to split up the overall conurbation.

Chances of this (or any version thereof) actually happening? Nil -- but it's kind of fun to think about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good luck convincing the rest of the country to give your region 10 new senators.

<comment><USER4> Stacking small states until you have CA's population, you have enough senators to sustain a filibuster. We have 2. This is both undemocratic and unreasonable.

<comment><USER5> The undemocratic part was considered a feature, not a bug.

As to unreasonable: It's a rare issue that unites the smaller states. From a national political perspective, Vermont and Wyoming couldn't be much further apart. So I am not persuaded by arguments that assume there is a threat of a small-state Senate alliance against the overwhelming wishes of the rest of the country.

On the other hand, if you want to argue that overuse of the filibuster has put an inordinate amount of legislative power in the hands of the Senate majority leader and a dozen middle-of-the-road Senators, I agree. But the solution to that problem is to fix the filibuster, not destroy the Constitutional balance between states and the Federal government.

<comment><USER4> Undemocratic is a feature and a bug. It shifts over firmly into "bug" territory when it gets too extreme.

 _" From a national political perspective, Vermont and Wyoming couldn't be much further apart."_

Vermont and Wyoming are strongly united on a number of issues (guns immediately springs to mind). I'm not the _least_ bit sure that Central California and Silicon Valley would be united on fewer. The notion that Vermont and New Hampshire should be separate; Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhodes Island should be separate; Maryland and Virginia should be separate; but Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all belong in the same state is _laughable_.

 _" But the solution to that problem is to fix the filibuster, not destroy the Constitutional balance between states and the Federal government."_

Right, because when they wrote the Constitution, Jefferson and Madison and friends carefully laid out California's borders.

When California entered the Union, its population was less than 1% of the total US population. Now it's well more than 10%. The borders that made sense when it was a state like Wyoming don't make sense anymore. It has population like the eastern seaboard, it has industry like the eastern seaboard, it should have borders more like the eastern seaboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Balance of Payments.

Bay Area and LA Area pay the bulk of the taxes in the state - there is a net transfer of money from the rich counties on the coast to the poorer ones in the north and east, in short, it would take counties that get many services paid for and supplied by the state as a whole, to a level that could possibly resemble a third world country.

California is unmanageable - but its because via the initiative process the voters have boxed everything into a corner.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't really see the point, is it for a more strong separation between rich and poor California?

edit: It seems they target to have a better ratio senators/californians and to get rid of the debt.

details: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/tim-draper-six- californias-...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/tim-draper-six-californias- secede-silicon-valley-ballot-initiative/)

<comment><USER8> It's for a more strong separation between rich and poor California. This plan would create the nation's poorest state by per capita income (Central California), and I think Jefferson would also be in the bottom 10.

[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/02/05/rich- stat...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/02/05/rich-state-poor- state-vcs-six.html?page=all) [http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us- pci.htm](http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm) (per capita income list as of 2012)

<comment><USER9> Actually, you think Central CA would be the poorest, although that's assuming policy remains unchanged. Imagine a conservative state within 1+ hr drive of the bay area, that could eliminate personal income tax attracting workers from Silicon Valley, affordable housing, better weather, water control (delta), and agriculture.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I do, because I'm from New England so I don't have to imagine those things. I've lived in New Hampshire: a conservative state within an hour drive of Boston with no personal income tax and housing that's way more affordable than Boston. These factors don't magically make it more affluent than Boston.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with the United States is that there are too many states rather than not enough of them. The states are too small and weak to solve their own problems (e.g, health care, high speed rail) so they have to rely on a dysfunctional federal government that can't solve any real problems these days (e.g., education, immigration, and of course health care).

<comment><USER11> Agreed. You should not be able to drive across a state in less than two hours.

<comment><USER12> Those managing the Delaware toll booths on I-95 seem to agree with you.

However, many eastern states can be traversed in on common travel routes in about that time. In clear traffic, you can do the Maryland stretch of I-95 in about two hours. Connecticut and Rhode Island are not particularly large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957282)

That discussion includes some breakdowns of possible voting numbers ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957513)). I don't think it would be a slam dunk for Republican senators but it would be a lot more likely. (dragonwriter's followup to my numbers analysis is important and accurate.)

</comment><comment><USER13> How do you convince a Republican to vote for this?

<comment><USER14> I would think the question is the other way around.

It's a step (possibly a small one) to diluting the DEM monolith that his California.

Today CA can be depended to field a DEM slate of senators, and send DEM electors to the electoral college [1]. If broken up, then some of the new senators would presumably go GOP, as would some of the electoral votes.

It would be fascinating to see the outcome of such a plan. The results would be interesting from poli sci, economics, and sociology perspectives.

[1] Is CA an all-or-nothing state, or is it proportional? I don't recall.

<comment><USER15> There is no way the other states would allow california to get 12 senators. Right?

<comment><USER16> Playing the long game, if the split was right, yep they would because then California could not pull some of the stunts it has in the past[1]. Textbook companies are another area that would change because of split CA.

1) latest one [http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/04/4798111/missouris- koste...](http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/04/4798111/missouris-koster-sues- california.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a good thing. If bigger states break up then there will be better representation in congress.

<comment><USER18> Except you know... they won't be the same state anymore. It won't be too many years before they act like six competing states because of competing interests.

By staying one state, California has the benefit of being one of the most powerful economies on the planet which, even without having things pass at the federal government, allows significant world power.

California's car efficiency standards over the years for instance basically forced every car company that sells a car in the US to up their efficiency. There is no chance that would happen if it was just 1/6th of California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess central CA would get to keep the bear on their flag. West CA could use a Range Rover as their symbol. South CA might use the Joshua Tree. Silicon Valley would have the iFlag...

</comment><comment><USER20> these proposals pop up every season - interesting that it looks like it could be reasonably balanced (from a senate perspective - central, west, and another could vote more 'red'), that means Democrats would lose a part of the gigantic electoral votes CA brings. All in all, probably not going to happen.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, every Democratic president for a long time would have still won their election if CA had gone the other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a joke, right?

I ain't buying new flags...

<comment><USER22> Not a joke, but probably very unlikely. There was recently a motion to split Colorado into 2 states with very strong support internally, and it went nowhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I imagine Silicon Valley turning into The Capitol in The Hunger Games.

</comment><comment><USER24> In other news MySpace wants to regain its lead over facebook.

</comment><comment><USER25> >>"Supporters of a plan to divide California into six sates"

I would take this news article a bit more seriously if they had spelled "states" correctly in the first sentence...

</comment><comment><USER26> Yay! More DMV franchises!

<comment><USER27> Would this mean everyone in CA would need to get new licenses?

<comment><USER16> Yes for all licenses with the possibility of different rules. The redone letterhead will be a major cost (no, I'm not joking).

<comment> jack-r-abbit Think about all the flags that the whole nation would have to replace.

<comment><USER16> Think of all the state drop-downs that need to be replaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This isn't about Dem versus GOP imo. It's about Silicon Valley against the rest of the world.</comment>


reddit would like to buy you a drink, san francisco - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2007/10/reddit-would-like-to-buy-you-drink-san.html

<comment><USER2> Events where I don't know anyone are usually horribly awkward. But what the hell -- that's what the open bar's for! See you all there.

<comment><USER3> But we'll be wearing nametags! With our usernames on them!!

We all know each other on the Internet ;)

Besides, there'll be lots of beer. Problem solved.</comment></comment>


Recruiting: Why you should alienate half of your candidates - <AUTHOR> http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/05/on-recruiting-make-sure-to-alienate-at-least-half-your-candidates/

<comment><USER2> Really, this is already being done on a larger scale -- by setting up shop in Seattle, you alienate (or, properly stated, created a hurdle for) people from Silicon Valley, New York, or London.

As long as you set up somewhere with a large enough talent pool to hire the number of people you need, you're fine. While Microsoft and Google are over in Redmond, Seattle proper has plenty of talented software types at companies like Amazon, Real Networks, and Boeing.

Locating your startup in Skykomish or Roslyn would be a different story.

<comment><USER3> Gus Mueller from Flying Meat is looking for a Mac developer who's willing to work in downtown Everett.

If I lived in Everett, I'd jump at the opportunity to skip the I-5/405 commutes. Of course, since I live in Capitol Hill I won't consider applying for his open position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They're not so much "alienating" candidates as they are targeting a niche, which is a fine strategy if you're a small company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes a slight exaggeration makes for a better headline :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I left Microsoft a few years ago to join a company in Seattle. Not having to cross those bridges any more was a HUGE part of the reason why I left. I cannot express how awful the commute is to and from Redmond.

Of course, getting a raise and working in a 15 person startup didn't hurt either... These days, I'm working out of a cafe two blocks from my apartment. My daily commute time has gone from 90 minutes by car to 30 minutes by bus to 5 minutes by foot.

<comment><USER5> Were you driving yourself? When I was at MSFT I used to take the 545 back and forth, and did a fair amount of reading, coding and movie watching in that bus.

Not that I wouldn't appreciate work within walking distance, but transit made it reasonably pleasant.

<comment><USER6> I live on Capitol hill. 545 in, and MS commuter bus back is fantastic. The ensured reading/downtime everyday is wonderful. The only downside is the restrictive times on the commuter bus and the lack of a vehicle at work to run errands. I'll shortly be moving to a house walking distance to MS and the reading time of my commute is something I'll greatly miss. I'm seriously thinking I might (on some days) take the 545 in to Seattle to get Vivace coffee and take it back to MS to get to work.

<comment><USER3> Or you could move into Brix or Joule, walk downstairs to Vivace and pick up the commuter bus on Broadway... ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like there should be an app for that. Talent in any industry could create a skill and geographic preference profile and then startups could see where all the talent wishes they could work.

They could integrate apps like the total cost of driving (<http://earliertcd.appspot.com/>) and show people concretely how much their time is worth.

</comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR: you should also 37Signals-ize your recruiting (take a stance, the extra filter is a _good_ thing)

<comment><USER9> Sorry, we don't appreciate that here.</comment></comment>


Training agents to invent a language - <AUTHOR> https://www.openai.com/blog/learning-to-communicate/ <comment><USER2> Luc Steels was doing this years ago (since mid-1990s IIRC):

[https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=luc+steels+inve...](https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=luc+steels+inventing+language&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest&gws_rd=ssl#spf=1)

Ah, yes, I see that a paper referenced on the website:

"A Paradigm for Situated and Goal-Driven Language Learning Jon Gauthier, Igor Mordatch"

grants a footnote to one of Steels' 2012 publications, stating:

"A related line of work in evolutionary linguistics constructs a similar language learning scenario entirely without fixed-language agents (Smith et al., 2003; Steels, 2012; Kirby et al., 2014). All of the agents in these environments construct a novel language simultaneously to accomplish some shared task. This is an interesting separate line of research, but ultimately a separate task from the understanding and acquisition problems discussed in this abstract."

<comment><USER3> It sounds like you're frustrated that deep learning is rediscovering stuff that your field discovered years ago. I've come to the conclusion that the only solution to that is to try to communicate more effectively; the reason they are not talking to us is that they can't understand what we're saying.

<comment><USER4> Why the frustration? We are progressing, are we not? A sign of us making no progress would be when the new guys keep disproving the old theories.

<comment><USER3> > when the new guys keep disproving the old theories

Most old theory seems to be incommensurable with deep learnings results, so it's hard to evaluate whether this might be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Implications:

\- Every Agent can have it's own language best suited for work in its domain. It can then auto-translate that to English at the end. This adds ambiguity once instead of at every step of the work if all of it was done in English. Like doing math with floating point then converting to int vs doing math in int the whole time. Concrete example: Law.

\- Agents could evolve a language that averages the Sapir-Whorf biases of known human languages. This new language would help humans understand each other better. Concretely, this language could be used as an intermediary in UN Meetings from which known languages could be auto-translated to while mitigating learned Sapir-Whorf biases.

\- As @amelius alluded to out, Agents could automate the process of learning alien languages: what we saw in the film Arrival (Dan's short story is so much better).

<comment><USER6> I certainly would love to read a list of Sapir-Whorf biases included in English!

<comment><USER7> Biases against what baseline? A language optimized to express a finite set of things?

<comment><USER5> Yeah there is no objective baseline. However, if the Agent could evolve a language that averages the biases of all human, that could be used as the baseline couldn't it?

<comment><USER7> Some humans can not make mouth sounds; some humans don't have arms. You already can't hit that baseline with one language.

As somebody who has done a great deal of idle bloviation about ideal languages, I can say that there are many obstacles. For example, you need to add a true noun because a new material is discovered and it's getting very popular. You want a short and efficient name for it, but all the space is allocated. So you add it to your table of weights, and suddenly every prefix- coded word is pronounced and written completely differently.

If you can't use prefix trees, how will you allocate the words efficiently?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like the introduction of "cost". Have you considered having a multi- variable time decay distribution function for all learning so that the agents need to reinforce every lesson?

Our brains forget over time because energy is limited and new connections take energy from older memories. So you could introduce a global set energy variable that is the ultimate denominator.

Lastly, have you considered connecting your agents in a one to one public channel where a person interacts with an agent that asks the person about "meaning of objects" and collects opinions from people to create it's own opinion?

<comment><USER9> Regarding memory/forgetting, this was published yesterday:

[https://deepmind.com/blog/enabling-continual-learning-in- neu...](https://deepmind.com/blog/enabling-continual-learning-in-neural- networks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also interesting:

[https://github.com/iassael/learning-to- communicate](https://github.com/iassael/learning-to-communicate)

and the paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.06676](https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.06676) "Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning"

<comment><USER11> Yes, they both seem to be focused on the differentiable inter-agent communication aspect. I wonder if this is related to the recent articles on how honey bees communicate to each other the learning required for pulling strings, rolling balls, etc. (e.g. on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13723645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13723645))

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So many opportunities here! What if they let the agents just spout out random characters and let the other agents listen?

They also talk about a lot of ways to get the agents to stop "cheating," but I think a better method would just be better goals.

<comment><USER13> Yes that's mostly what they did. E.g. they adjusted the goal to favor fast communication, and then to impose a cost on exponential vocabularies. Both of these sound very reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting that a lot of added constraints mirror "real-world" scenarios. We don't have an intrinsic global co-ordinate system, and brevity/laziness is generally rewarded (which results in Zipf's Law in natural language).</comment>


Pretty girls may cause myopathy, diabetes, hypertension and impotency - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1270271/Beautiful-women-bad-health-raise-stress-hormones.html

<comment><USER2> It's the Daily Mail, I'm surprised they don't cause cancer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I didn't see any of those terms implied in the article. Sweaty palms, heightened cortisol -- sure. The title is plain misleading.</comment>


Genesis Foundation 5 Child Theme - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/g-kanoufi/genesis-foundation-child-theme <comment><AUTHOR> This is a child theme for the Genesis Framework empowered with all Zurb's Foundation 5 super powers. It's totally free to use/modify. Enjoy</comment>


The Command-And-Control Mindset Is Killing Companies - <AUTHOR> http://corporate-rebels.com/mindset/ <comment><USER2> I don't think the authors understand the term "command and control" as it is traditionally used. I'd infer from this article that they believe it means, "provide overly detailed instructions, then micromanage". In fact it's a military term of art describing how to manage large teams in a chaotic environment in which leaders never have all the information they'd like (e.g., combat).

The "command" part is leaders telling the people who work for them what end state they need them to achieve -- not only at the outset of the mission, but periodically throughout operations as the situation changes.

The "control" part is subordinate units/leaders providing real-time feedback. This might be something like, "we are carrying out the mission as planned" or it might be, "hey you told me to stay on the north side of the river but I need to cross it to accomplish the mission"; importantly, deviation from coordinating instructions in accomplishing the mission is a key feature of the mission orders-based warfighting doctrine currently in place in most major militaries.

In the words of US doctrine (which uses the common abbreviation for command and control): > C2 is not a one-way, top-down process that imposes control on subordinates. C2 is multidirectional, with feedback influencing commanders from below, from above, and laterally.[0]

0: [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/6-0/chap1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds great and all, but I've seen corporate rebels and how often they get fired. The most dangerous thing you can do at most companies is to disagree with your boss and be right. I was a rebel myself until I realized the risks.

The safe path to promotion is sucking up to the level of management right above your manager. Always show up early, look nice and busy, and make sure you're always presenting at meetings.

The true rebels will be seen contracting or running their own businesses. Or defeated and working in the dark corners of the corporate world just waiting for the day they can escape, real or imagined.

<comment><USER4> oftentimes in companies, a consultant will be brought in to create controlled rebellion - a consultant is basically a mercenary who will operate at the direction of one of the bosses inside the company, and the results of the consulting or research/development efforts can be discussed in terms of political strategy as well as actual results.

of course, the trade-off for being a consultant is that you're very well compensated but can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all, without any of the legal protections afforded an employee. this is a business model for management consulting firms but i've seen plenty of smaller outfits or individuals do this as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being a startup guy I come from the opposite side: one of the biggest challenges I've faced in growing startups is alignment. When you're 5 people in a room you can just kind of shout out what you're doing and everything is cool. When you get to 50 this leads to a lot of redundant effort and toe- stepping. If the culture is not evolved by 500 there's very little strategic direction at all.

I agree about the engagement part, but given that I've always worked in places where people were highly engaged, the next challenge is how to direct that engagement towards a common vision and purpose with efficient execution.

<comment><USER6> Why do you have to go past the 50? Or even past the 5 people in the room?

Isn't it just better to keep companies small? Maybe have/work on multiple companies, have companies interact better with other ones so they can accomplish more, but keep them smaller.

<comment><USER7> _> Maybe have/work on multiple companies, have companies interact better with other ones so they can accomplish more,_

Ronald Coase[1] explains why an integrated large company can be more productive and efficient than interacting individuals (or interacting small companies). Basically, internal transactions (departments) cost less than external transactions (contracts).

E.g. there is no way for Apple to sell an iPhone for $500 or Amazon AWS to offer EC2 compute for 1 penny per hour if those 100,000+ employees were split up into thousands of smaller 5-person companies.

It seems reasonable that many entrepreneurs have ideas that require more than 5 people to execute.

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

<comment><USER8> _Basically, internal transactions (departments) cost less than external transactions (contracts)._

It occurs to me that if we believe this, the USA as a country could make our entire economy more productive by making contracts less expensive. 5 seconds thought leads me to believe that "less expensive" might have a number of things involved, from simpler legal language that doesn't require a lawyer to understand, to a legal system that isn't set up to benefit lawyers, to less intellectual property restrictions, to a less adversarial legal system. Clearly much of this is impossible to implement.

<comment><USER9> It's not the cost of the contracts themselves that are so expensive it's the overhead of profit taking by the recipients of each contract. When you hire a contractor you avoid taking on capital expense and internal complexity overhead, but you are generally going to pay 15% or more above what it would cost you to do it in house. You accept this tradeoff with the understanding that people you contract with have to make some profit too. When you are small the complexity overhead can easily draw you off course. Month to month and on demand contracts can be paused rather easily to adjust to cash flows.

It's not the cost of drawing up the contract that adds a significant part of the cost. The contract work itself that adds overhead.

<comment><USER6> > You accept this tradeoff with the understanding that people you contract > with have to make some profit too.

Of course not. You accept the tradeoff because it is in your interest to abstract away risks. Part of the costs involved in this risk taking comes from how the contracts are set up.

For example, your employee doesn't have an actual contractual obligation to fulfill such and such goals every month, while an external contracted firm may have.

<comment><USER9> Ok. It is still not the _contract_ that is the major cost.

I didn't say the tradeoff is that other people make profit. The tradeoff is the overhead cost. Sure, that can be another tradeoff -- obliged fulfillment. Either way you're _paying the contractee_ a little more for that.

It's not the contract itself (the legal expense) that is the major cost in a contract. Yes it is some overhead, but is it really a significant part compared to the excess you are paying to have it contracted vs in house?

The point is. It's still going to cost you more, even if the legal cost is zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Struggling with this one a bit.

"The outcome of Gallup's study clearly shows the strong correlation between employee engagement and business performance. "

Good, the author says it's a correlation.

But the supporting graphic is titled:

"Employee engagement affects key business outcomes"

Which implies causality.

I can easily image a company that runs through early success, growth and profitability and the sense of prestige that would bring to the employees. Absenteeism, accidents, defects could be low because employees are engaged: They are winning in the market, everyone's getting bonuses, their acquaintances say, 'oh, wow!' when they mention where they are working.

Then, turn that company down, with the same employees, and you'd have the opposite effect. A scandal such as a LendingClub, Uber, Theranos, that changes the fortune suddenly, over night, with the same employee base, and I'd not be surprised if absenteeism, accidents and defects surged.

In that scenario, it's business performance affecting employee engagement.

<comment><USER11> The bottom of the article, and About - Team tells you all you need to know.

"If you're interested to learn more about how to reach The Promised Land, don't hesitate to contact us for an inspiring talk, rebellious workshop, or practical support during your organization's transformation."

These are management consultants. Their statistics are about as good as those from psychologists, except they are usually directly paid for getting particular outcomes with their statistics.

In this case, their case is that there is a major problem in every organisation ! And they can help ! For $xxxxx they'll "solve this problem" (with a one-time talk about it, in case you were wondering), and for $xxxxxx they'll give a workshop, which will surely allow any manager to prove to his director how engaged he is, while (hardly worth mentioning, really) also allowing him to go home earlier for a whole week and probably get a free, really fancy, dinner or two.

Keep this in mind when judging the value of what they're saying. Of course, I do think they have a point, but they're part of the problem, not the solution.

There was a survey I read which asked the question "would you prevent your employer from gaining a million dollar in profit if you personally got $500 out of it ?". Apparently 86% would, and a further 10% was undecided.

<comment><USER12> I good example of Management Consulting efficacy is the observation on how some well-respected consultancies have been failing businesses. DiamondCluster and A.T. Kearney would be at the top of the list, though dated examples from my consulting days. If they offer such good strategy, why is their company doing so poorly?

I once asked some outright, they explained that they are so busy helping clients they don't have any time to help themselves.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps, to paraphrase the old chestnut, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm curious if the European context of corporate "command and control" differs from the North American one. (edit: The authors are European. edit 2: I've heard anecdotes that European labor laws make management more "strict" with workers.) I also wonder if the profession and industry make a huge difference.

In my limited experience in North America as a software developer, there has been little "command and control", and far more "chaos", i.e. the businesses didn't seem to have any kind of control over their software development, and would tolerate a surprisingly low amount of predictability. This was almost always because non-technical types were in charge. (edit: Non-technical types often view software management as intractable, and tend to utilize vague approaches like "we'll ship something on this date".)

</comment><comment><USER15> Lack of "employee engagement" is not a new insight by far. It's just that implications of what it takes to address the root cause of it go down quite a deep rabbit hole.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation)

</comment><comment><USER16> Companies like Toyota have long understood that a more democratic workplace leads to better outcomes overall. But the reality is, barring a major cultural change or wide-scale labor organization, this kind of management system will never take hold in America.

We're a fundamentally authoritarian society who organizes all our systems like their mini-fiefdoms. I've never understood why a society that prides itself so much on its tradition of democracy would build within itself an economy of autocratic rulers, but I guess these kind of contradictions are as much a part of our culture as anything else.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know if I agree that employee engagement is a great thing to optimize. I feel like engagement is a side effect of wanting to get work done.

If I focus and engage and double my productivity, I don't get to spend half as much time at work, instead I get twice as much work. If I double my productivity and double my amount of work, I'm still not going to double my salary or double my PTO or anything like that.

Not to mention that most corporations have no problem whatsoever laying people off when it'll save them enough money. "Sorry you dedicated 80 hours a week and weekends to this project, but the economy's bad so we're canceling it and laying off your division. Oh, and BTW if you try to work on something similar after we lay you off, we'll sue you. Bye."

I think many people have realized at this point that corporations have very little respect for their employees and that spending significant mental energy being super engaged and efficient has mostly negative consequences (at most companies).

I bet a company could improve productivity quite a bit if they let employees take the rest of the week off once they finished the week's work. But that would require management to have an understanding of the work being done and to plan well, so it won't happen.

</comment><comment><USER18> The engagement meme is a nightmare.

1) Measure engagement - surveys, more surveys. Targets for managers of the surveyed, dismissal, removal of bonus. Survey manipulated, rendered political tool. Lieing all round. Disaster.

2) Targeting of dissent. "we've finished debating, now we're executing" "boss, there's a brick wall" "you're fired" "oh" "bang" "oh". Anyone who disagrees or complains about some aspect of central function in anyway it immediately branded disengaged and targetted for removal.

Here's a rule. No one can practices management consulting unless they have worked at a fortune 500 for 30 years.

Here's another one. No one can have a chair at a business school unless they've worked in the C suite of a fortune 500 for 30 years.

This would cut this rubbish right out.

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the sentiment, but let's be honest with ourselves; there aren't that many type-A people bumping around in most organizations whose talents are going untapped.

Regardless,

Engagement, in my view, is like a double-edged sword--it cuts both ways. On one hand, getting employees to "pull the wagon" can immensely add value to the organization. On the other hand, employees attaching too much of their self- worth to their work (a consequence of being highly engaged) can lead to employees' egos being of greater importance than the results.

Low engagement is probably just a symptom of some other organizational ill.

<comment><USER8> I'm going to suggest that in my experience with both smaller and larger companies, management (from those managing grunts to C-level) have more of what they consider fun in a low-engagement company, and the low employee engagement is a symptom of management having their version of fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The graph showing that companies rated highly by Glassdoor outperform the S&P 500 by a factor of 2.4 is significant. Is there a fund which invests that way? Vanguard should have a Glassdoor Index Fund.

<comment><USER21> The Parnassus Endeavour fund ([https://www.parnassus.com/parnassus-mutual- funds/endeavor/in...](https://www.parnassus.com/parnassus-mutual- funds/endeavor/investor-shares/)) is partially based on employee satisfaction.

Here is an excerpt from an interview [0] with the portfolio manager.

John Rotonti: How do you define a high-quality business?

Jerome Dodson: Parnassus Investments defines high-quality companies as those with competitive advantages, quality management, and responsible business practices. I believe a high-quality workplace is one of the indicators of company quality. That's why the Endeavor Fund, which was originally named the Workplace Fund, focuses on investing in good workplaces.

[0] ([https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/19/interview-with- jer...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/19/interview-with-jerome- dodson-of-parnassus-investme.aspx))

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We should just use Shift and Option

<comment><USER23> Shift yourself to a new job where you get options!

Or if you can't find an opportunity like that, some kind of meta escape?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What a fluff piece. It makes no points whatsoever, just pretends like it can make janitorial, secretarial, and waitering work fun and exciting but doesn't offer a single idea on how they plan to do so (because it's impossible). Talk about delusional! This reads like an ad because it is. No content whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Organizations like Kodak, Blackberry, Motorola, Lehman Brothers and Enron are but a few of the many companies that became overly comfortable and lost their battle."

This can be argued for the first three of these, but Lehman and especially Enron were slaughtered by the relentless pursuit of (financial) innovation and __absence __of effective control.

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triarchy_%28theory%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triarchy_%28theory%29) promotes thinking out of the box

</comment><comment><USER27> How about lowering CEO pay by about 90% and distributing that to employees, i.e. paying a fair wage adjusted for gains in productivity?

<comment><USER28> If you lowered the CEO of McDonalds's pay by 90% and distributed it to all the employees, they'd get less than $20 each. It doesn't exactly bump them up to a living wage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> sounds like the companies who get your soul in addition to your brain do better.</comment>


VeriFone Card Readers exploit found, can harvest card details - <AUTHOR> http://www.channel4.com/news/credit-card-readers-can-be-hacked-for-details

<comment><USER2> Previously, VeriFone mounted a FUD campaign against Square, arguing fake apps could steal your credit card numbers.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/verifone-takes-the- gloves-o...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/verifone-takes-the-gloves-off- accuses-square-of-serious-security-hole/)</comment>


Shopping for Confirmation: How Disconfirming Feedback Shapes Social Networks - <AUTHOR> https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/shopping-for-confirmation-how-disconfirming-feedback-shapes-social-networks?_sp=08926a10-0185-4f37-aa4b-2293b4534a1d.1515667015660 <comment><USER2> see [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo832...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo8324792.html)</comment>


I am open sourcing my high school APCS project - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/rweichler/wuigi <comment><USER2> Does anybody remember that fish tank simulation? Are they still doing that?

<comment><USER3> I had APCS around the time they were winding down C++ and ramping up Java. We had to implement BigInt, among other things, as part of our project (circa 2000). I believe the next years my friends had the fish simulation.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how long it'll take College Board to move to a more expressive language like Python or Ruby. The basicness of AP CS (learning loops, recursion, and simple OO) means students don't learn enough about programming for the benefits of Java to be apparent. I knew a lot of classmates who were put off of programming by APCS, not least because of the verbosity and density of Java.

<comment><USER5> I'd see them moving to something like C# before Python or Ruby, or even perhaps back to C++. (I think the formerly used Pascal is safely dead as an option.) For an indication of what they are most likely to prefer, I'd say look at what the most popular first-language-taught to beginner CS students in college is. There's also a bit more to the basic AP CS (I'm still sad they killed the AB program, which is the one I took) like sorting algorithms and the difference between a static array and an ArrayList...

I think it's the responsibility of the professor and the district to offer a programming class separate from the APCS one, ideally in some other language(s) than Java, rather than trying to make the APCS class into a more "fun" class that's more about programming applications than about CS and understanding how programming actually works. An alternative course also makes for an interesting and knowledge-packed 9th- or 10th-grade computer course that can double as slight preparation for later; having passed Algebra 2 is typically required for APCS and hence most students won't even be allowed to take it until 11th or 12th. (My school had a C++ class, though when I was a senior and TAing I insisted on showing the students Python and PyGame near the end of the year. To my knowledge the professor has continued showing other languages/applications besides the one the class focuses on, once I even did a talk about Clojure to the AP kids while I was in the area visiting family.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> May I ask TempleOS (Who is better known as Losethos and is hellbanned due to having schizophrenia.) what that is a picture of?

EDIT: It'd be really nice if I could reply to hellbanned users, even if only they can see it.

<comment><USER7> It seems to be a CNC machine capable of printing frosting!

[http://www.templeos.org/images/Frosting.jpg](http://www.templeos.org/images/Frosting.jpg) [http://www.templeos.org/images/CttnTail.jpg](http://www.templeos.org/images/CttnTail.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, I wrote something similar my Senior year in HS. Learned a ton doing it. Had my friends do level, graphic, and sound design. It was a multiplayer networked shooter but it wasn't anywhere near perfect. Here's the link!

[https://github.com/bowmessage/Cantro](https://github.com/bowmessage/Cantro)

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome stuff for an APCS project! If you're interested in porting the game to iOS I'd recommend checking out our website MakeGamesWithUs ([https://www.makegameswith.us](https://www.makegameswith.us)), we teach people like you who know java how to build games for iPhone. We also have a really cool level hub feature set in our SDK which you might be interested in for this game. It allows users to build / share / play / upvote levels and discover new levels through their feed + top lists. If you're interested, shoot me an email at email@example.com and we can chat more!</comment>


Professionalism is for Amateurs - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/03/18/professionalism-is-for-amateurs/

<comment><USER3> Without defining "professionalism", this is a useless discussion.

Professionalism, to me, implies a certain standard of conduct: Delivering what you promise, when you promise it. Communicating clearly. Refusing unethical requests. Not flaking out at a critical moment. Keeping your cool even when you're a bit frustrated. Refraining from conduct that will discredit your employer, clients or partners. Being clear about your degree of expertise on a given topic.

Now, this sort of professionalism isn't the _only_ virtue in life: You also need to care passionately about what you do, speak plainly and honestly, and enjoy building stuff. Professionalism is never enough. But the opposite of "professional" isn't "amateur," it's "unprofessional." And I, for one, do not enjoy working with unprofessional colleagues or clients.

<comment><USER4> The opposite of amateur is expert.

<comment><USER5> An amateur can be very expert. An amateur is someone who does something because he wants to, for love of the work or subject. It has nothing to do with expertise or competence at the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This whole thing is a strawman. The author sets up a false dichotomy - <USER2> passionate amateur, or indifferent professional - and goes from there.

Here's a thought - how about someone who's a passionate professional?

<comment><USER7> "passionate professional" -- nailed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like the author is confusing professionalism with 'conventional wisdom'.

</comment><comment><USER9> I never use the term "professional" in the context of computing - it pretty much means nothing as far as I am concerned as to various people it can mean:

\- Wearing a suit, shirt and tie

\- Writing lots of documents that nobody reads

\- Having source control, automated build process and unit tests

\- Always saying yes to a customer

I also know quite a few "real" professionals (doctors, lawyers, professionally qualified engineers) - using those standards I'm quite happy to state that I'm _not_ a professional if anyone asks.

[Edit: Obviously I do think one of those points above is important!]

</comment><comment><USER10> First, "professional" and "amateur" should be defined to better make his point. Also, the examples are anecdotal.

<comment><USER11> _"First, "professional" and "amateur" should be defined to better make his point."_

I think that the whole article _is_ the definition, if not explicit than at least inferred from the examples. Not that I think that the only proper definition of 'professional' is: boring, limited, uninspiring (the author seems to suggest that).

On the contrary - there are some things that discern professional software development from unorganized mess and I'd rather have them in place: source control, automatic and repeatable build and deployment, regression tests etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Professionals do what they do for a living, amateurs don't.

<comment><USER13> "Professionals do what they do for a living..."

So do tradesmen.

<comment><USER12> How can you separate the two?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At first glance, I can easily agree with "professionalism is for amateurs," but the explanation is severely lacking. There's confusion between acting and behaving professional (professionalism) and being a professional (vs. an amateur).

You can act and behave like a pro and maintain the personality that the author's looking for. Being professional doesn't mean you're only subscribe to the conventional thought processes big business types may subscribe to.

</comment><comment><USER15> @jk215: This is junk. Did you consult your dictionary before you wrote this? It makes it look like you do not know what you are talking about. Here is a definition:

professional standards: the skill, competence, or character expected of a member of a highly trained profession

use of professionals: the use of professionals instead of amateurs

Maybe you mean "beaureaucrats", or some other word; but not "professionals"

<comment><USER16> He most definitely means bureaucrats, and I bet he owns a dictionary. But that would have been a reasonable title, and not a link bait. And if it is not link bait who will read it!

<comment><USER17> Which is why I read the comments for linkbait-y titles before giving them the clicks. I just wish HN made this possible to do from RSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author is definitely conflating skill with original thinking. When talking about professional vs. amateur it's about skill. The skill comes about through experience and purposeful learning. If we take skill to be a spectrum from high to low, the median for professionals is higher. (Of course, I'm strictly using anecdotal evidence.) But, there are still unskilled professionals as well as highly skilled amateurs.

Original thinking is a bit trickier to understand. Both examples in the post use companies with vested interests in supporting their existing business models. Having a vested interest tends to "color" views towards ideas that disrupt the model. Of course, this provides opportunity for someone with at least a moderate skill level and a lot of ambition to branch a market.

</comment><comment><USER19> Philip Greenspun's old article on professionalism, from 2000: [http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient- history/professionalism-...](http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient- history/professionalism-for-software-engineers)

> Curious to know what his definition of software engineering > _professionalism_ was after four years of MIT education, we probed a bit > deeper and established that the way that he thought about professionalism > did not differ from the thinking of a Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman: wear > nice clothes, drive a clean car, and don't say anything that might offend > anyone.

Philip may be hard to work with, but he's a great writer.

</comment><comment><USER20> Professionalism makes the difference between bad quality and reasonable quality. For creating something amazing professionalism is not enough. Following the rules just leads you to a certain level, after that you have to break some of them.

</comment><comment><USER21> Professional: doing the same work many times with the same result.

Amateur: comes from a French word meaning: "lover of".

<comment><USER22> Professional : comes from a french verb meaning, among other things, "to teach".

Etymology's very deceptive. It's generally not a good idea to use it to discover the "true" meaning of a word, whatever quality that "true" meaning would have over the common acceptation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think what the author is really getting at is 'amateurs' tend to be people who are in it for the love and excitement of what they do and 'professionals' tend to see what they are doing just as a job.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ham radio operators are "amateurs" but they're a lot more "professional" in how they use two radios than the average person who uses 2-way radios for their work.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of an old pg essay: <http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html>

</comment><comment><USER26> Loading that page required an absurd number of HTTP requests for the amount of actual content.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ambition is the last refuge of failure. or Professionalism is the last refuge of the uninspired.</comment>


Google Launches Cloud Bigtable, a Very Fast NoSQL Database for the Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/06/google-launches-cloud-bigtable-a-highly-scalable-and-performant-nosql-database/ <comment><USER2> Another NoSQL database, just what we all need. Well at least it is compatible with _one_ other NoSQL API.</comment>


Herman Miller and Logitech Join to Create High-Performance Furniture for Gamers - <AUTHOR> https://www.hermanmiller.com/press/press-releases/herman-miller-and-logitech-g-join-forces-to-create-high-performance-furniture-solutions-for-gamers/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original title is "Herman Miller & Logitech G Join Forces to Create High- Performance Furniture Solutions for Gamers", but I had to cut a couple words to fit within the character limit. I'm curious if this means HM is entering the mid-tier desk chair market. Right now "gaming chairs" at that price point are mostly styled after race-car seats, which aren't very ergonomic. Hopefully this will result in more people being able to afford better chairs and healthier backs.

Worst case is we get an RGB Aeron.</comment>


Show HN: Shepherd – Get inside intros to dev teams with great culture - <AUTHOR> https://shepherd.com <comment><USER2> Apart from the mutually exclusive options, I'm sure a lot of companies claim lots of these. Is it entirely self reporting?

How does it not end up as a game of companies trying to pick the values they think are most in vogue?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure the point. You can't trust the company, and you _certainly_ can't trust the recruiters.

The only real way to get the data points for "great team culture" is to ask literally everyone _but_ the recruiters and managers.

<comment><USER4> Yep that is what we are trying to do, profile from the bottom up by surveying the entire engineering team every 3 to 4 months.

We also think it is important to show what the leadership team wants their culture to be, how they spend time/money on that, and how that is going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, OP here.

We were interviewing developers for a project and kept hearing how much they hated looking for a new job. We dug into why and it was usually because they couldn't find companies with the culture and work environment they wanted. They either had to invest a ton of time into research or trust a recruiter.

Our tool is different because it matches you with companies who have the culture and work environment you want. And, it skips the black hole that is the modern job application by having companies pitch you.

Privacy is very important to us and we built this so that you have complete control of when you share your personal info. You can anonymously ask interested engineering teams questions before you share anything.

Feedback requested: 1\. Would you use this? 2\. What are we missing when it comes to culture and dev environment?

<comment><USER5> > it skips the black hole that is the modern job application by having > companies pitch you

Like Hired, Vettery, A-list, and Triplebyte?

I assume you'd still need to do an interview.

<comment><USER6> It's worth noting a lot of these "skip the black hole" companies only work with web development positions. Vettery, in particular, contacted me repeatedly to try to schedule an interview when I was looking once. When I told the recruiter what it was that I did in software engineering she proceeded to ask me whether I was "full stack," "back-end" or "front-end." I had to try extremely hard to get her to understand that I worked with computers that are embedded inside of devices. So it was very much a waste of time. And even after that they kept trying to get in touch with me for months.

Contrast this with traditional recruiters who at least know something about the field they're recruiting into beyond what's in vogue in SFO.

<comment><USER4> Yep, we are aware and working to get past that limitation. Part of this is trying to make a more efficient and effective "resume" which brings in the right info while maintaining privacy.

So a company can only see candidates that are a high match for the culture and work environment they create. And, then they can see candidates who match the position they are hiring for, i.e. an embedded hardware/software position or so on.

<comment><USER6> The thing is that you don't have any embedded postings. So there are no companies to match us with. Your first recruiter was at least honest about that. But if you're only going for web developers you should be honest about that from the start, and when someone then expresses that they aren't a web developer you should have a way to handle that that doesn't involve pestering them relentlessly or filing a support ticket and hoping that your engineering team believes it's a real thing.

<comment><USER4> Sorry I am not sure I follow. This is for any developers or engineers.

What do you mean embedded postings?

We don't file any support tickets nor am I sure what you are talking about, can you please explain? Are you sure you have the right post?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just tried it. I like the idea.

\- I like the filters. \- Maybe use ranges for things like OPT? \- After filling the form out it ended abruptly.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, opt?

Oh weird, it should go to thank you page, checking!

<comment><USER7> Excuse me, I meant PTO.

<comment><USER4> gotcha!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> scrolling in Firefox on Android is really unpredictable and hard on this site. it seems like a nice idea, but I couldn't get past the first few choices.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've fixed this. Thanks for the bug report!</comment></comment>


GM Cruise snags Dropbox HR head to hire at least 1,000 engineers by end of year - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/gm-cruise-snags-dropbox-hr-head-to-hire-1000-engineers/ <comment><USER2> I'm currently doing a robotics/computer vision startup, minus the highly parameterised models fit using gradient decent because we don't need it just yet.

It's developments like this that give me confidence that I'll land on my feet regardless of what happens :)</comment>


Open hardware RISC-V microcontroller, pin-compatible to the ATmega32 - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/risc-v-microprocessor#/ <comment><USER2> I don't see anything in the Indiegogo page that shows that he's designed a chip before, and the github link goes to someone else's repo.

Googling his name turns up a blog here - [http://blog.the- leviathan.ch/](http://blog.the-leviathan.ch/) \- which has two mentions of RISC-V but not much else about relevant projects.

Has anyone else found any supporting documentation?

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a neat idea but I doubt it will happen. He has to build and test all the components, from MCU to I/O, plus fab it all for $20,000. By himself. I might believe it for a FPGA project but not an ASIC.

So, it's a good project. I've promoted doing a RISC-V dropin for Arduino's. I see the vision. He might just be better off tweaking some stuff on OpenCores, esp changing decoder for RISC-V, then integrating it. Get money some other way to cover testing the pieces in shuttle runs. Once they all work, then test the whole thing with a big run that produces a big batch of chips.

</comment><comment><USER4> Poorly documented campaign!

AVOID</comment>


Mozilla's CSS Remedy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozdevs/cssremedy <comment><USER2> I don't really understand the README. Is it a "sensible defaults" reset.css or a "break with old and wrong decisions how CSS works"? How far is it Cross- Browser? How am I supposed to use it as a web designer, in contrast to other reset.css attempts?</comment>


Show HN: New-Gen Pagespeed Analysis with A.I (2020) - <AUTHOR> https://screpy.app/login?demo <comment><USER2> Takes me to a prefilled login screen that loops and doesn't actually login</comment>


Ask HN: How to get into tech in your thirties? - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine runs a 1-man coffee stall. We were chatting last week and he mentioned how he has free time and "would like to get into tech" and asked if I could recommend any "bootcamps".
Honestly I wasn't quite sure what to say. He's early enough that he doesn't know what part of "tech" he wants to get into... just "something with coding". That makes it difficult to recommend a course on a specific topic (via edx or others), but a lot of the bootcamps come off to me as scammy (though Lambda school looks interesting) and many of the university programs command high fees for opaque value.
So what would you advise a friend in a similar predicament? <comment><USER2> I think the tech industry is going to be in a very different place by the end of the decade and so the advice we give to newcomers can't simply be the advice we wish we'd heard when we started out. It's hard to know where things will go but my money is on the low-code/no-code movement really picking up steam and starting to blur the lines between builders and developers.

Conventional wisdom says to find some good online resources like codecademy.com or freecodecamp.org (both of which are very good) and get as much experience as you can in your spare time. Code camps can be great for getting your foot in the door with an employer but the quality of teaching can vary massively. This is still good advice for someone who really wants to learn how to code.

If your friend is happy with a looser definition of "getting into tech", I'd suggest a better first step would be to become proficient with tools like Airtable, Webflow and Parabola. These are really useful tools to learn and help build computational thinking while also having an extremely low barrier to entry. I don't think they are the Killer Apps of the low-code movement but, before the Killer App arrives, I think it's a great place to start. There may even be jobs emerging specifically for these kinds of skills (see makerpad.co). Getting into more serious tech is always an option but starting here would give your friend a taste of what's possible with tech skills.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just specifically for your friend's situation; as it seems he has experience in running a business, dealing with customers, and doing it solo.

I would point him in the direction of learning tech skills that compliment him in an entrepreneural sense, versus aiming for an outright switch in his career.

Good examples would be web and frontend design, server administration, e-commerce and payments, etc. Those are the kinds of things he can use to automate his business and even make inroads within his "industry" — with the added benefit of not having an extremely steep learning curve for producing something useful at the end of the day.</comment>


Yes, Google Drive Is Coming. For Real This Time. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/24/google-drive-is-coming/

<comment><USER2> I guess the question here is, will it be encrypted (like wuala) or not (like Dropbox)? If google needs to monetize this by reading txt and targeting ads, my guess is the second... which would make it a no-go for many business.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess they'll certainly make a Google Apps version of it for business. For me the main question is how many GB for free?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder (especially if this takes place before launch.)" - Dropbox application

Well at least they could not steal dropbox's thunder :) Now its time for dropbox to kick ass - "Getting love from early adopters will be important" They already have that, I guess they just need to add newer features now... All the best

</comment><comment><USER3> Google wants everything... Web, OS, handset, carrier next i guess they will be fighting for oil also :).... Now dropbox... One company cant do so many things well... Learn from Microsoft</comment>


PyPI Notifier: Watches your requirements.txt files - <AUTHOR> http://www.pypi-notifier.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am the author. If you want to contribute pull requests are welcome: [https://github.com/cenkalti/pypi-notifier](https://github.com/cenkalti/pypi- notifier)

</comment><comment><USER2> While it's a good idea. Some times if something is not broken, there is no need to fix/upgrade it</comment>


Peter Seibel's Coders At Work available for pre-order - <AUTHOR> http://www.gigamonkeys.com/blog/2009/08/04/coders-at-work-pub-date.html

<comment><USER2> <pedant>Seibel.</pedant>

<comment><AUTHOR> You are absolutely right--sorry, and sorry to Mr Seibel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He should release these interviews as an audio book...I would buy that.</comment>


Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job? - <AUTHOR> http://chenzihui.com/49/is-this-the-dreaded-burn-out

<comment><USER2> It maybe just normal depression. It reads a little to me like you have lost the feeling of control and feel like everything slipping away... and that maybe manifesting as a coping mechanism as a form of depression.

To quote the intro from wikipedia, see if this is familiar:

\</comment><comment>

Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless. They may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable, experience loss of appetite or overeating, or problems concentrating, remembering details or making decisions; and may contemplate or attempt suicide. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, fatigue, loss of energy, or aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present.

\</comment><comment>

And most importantly also from wikipedia "Depressed mood is a normal reaction to certain life events" i.e. things have happened which have caused the fun to disappear. Remember if it depression, it happens to everyone and huge percentage of people reading this would have the same reaction to your situation.

I'm no expert on depression and its probably unwise for me to give any more advise but as far as I'm aware talking is always a start, and anecdotally its worked wonders for me in the past. Even just the process of explaining it someone else can bring perspective to things that seem out of control, the blog post may have already helped with this.

It might be a time for a catch up with a friend or your parents or something.

Or take up a completely different activity. I had a friend that studied psychology and one thing he said that stuck with me was "your mind gets stuck in loops, when you are in a mood you will only have thoughts related to that mood".

So an easy way to break the mental cycle can be do something else that takes your mind off it. I found squash good for this, its so fast, frantic, and full of surprises that for 30 minutes you are in a completely other world, and during that time your mind can relax, or process its outstanding stress.

<comment><USER3> It is sad that depression seems to have become a four-letter word. Too many people are afraid to talk about it or unaware about what depression really is.

Your suggestion about taking up another activity is spot on. When you define yourself by your work it is difficult to ever stop thinking about it. I still have problems putting work to the back of my brain when I walk home every night. I've taken up running and plan to take up airsoft in an effort to expand my horizons beyond just "how do I write that next line of code".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think in the next year or two we're going to see this more and more.

Degree qualified, startup fresh out of university with no post-grad work experience, failed startup, making ends meet with freelancing with little hope of rejoining a career track.

Now don't get me wrong, were all beating the Fuck Big Corp drum here, but you can't beat big corp for a relatively stable income and ratable work experience.

That's why my advice to kids is: Get that degree, get some work experience (1 year say), THEN work on that startup. That way, you have a fallback option.

<comment><USER5> For developers, getting on a "career track" is as simple as finding a relatively high profile open source project that interests them and getting some commits in. Instant resume, code examples and you've jump-started your networking for a particular technology.

Edited to add: I have no idea why this is getting downvoted. If you disagree with my assertion then by all means leave a comment. Hitting the down arrow and wandering off does us both a disservice.

<comment><USER6> Not a downvoter, but this can sound like a standard "man-up" type of answer.

Its easy to suggest and might come easy to some, but it's way out of reach for most young developers trying to get on the career track. Making a notable contribution to an impactful project requires a lot of time and understanding. Even if a project could use the help, jumping in head first like that is quite daunting.

<comment><USER5> I appreciate your response, and I agree that upon reflection this pretty much is the standard man-up answer. That being said the only other way I know to get stuff accomplished is throw money at the problem, not typically an option for devs straight out of college.

I understand what you're saying when you say it's daunting, but this doesn't have to be a big deal. I'm not advocating someone run right out and start cutting kernel patches straight out of school. The Open Source space is enormous and it should be possible to pick a project that's in line with your abilities. Example: there are at least three CMS projects I know of that are well documented and very accessible to new developers looking to help out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've noticed there is a general malaise around a lot of people at the moment, and I think it has nothing to do with personal circumstances, and more to do with the "impending end of the world scenario" that's been in the media now for nigh on 4 years.

I've also notced people are having real trouble making decisions that 5 years ago would have been snap ones. It's as if there are a lot of people whose thought processes are being befuddled because they worry that in a few months time the world could be turned on its head.ie confusion arises when decisions made today may need to be revised in the very near future in an unknown way.

Of course I worry about that too, and the last years have been the hardest I have ever known for finding freelance work (yes to pay the bills), but I tell you what, I've completely let go of any hopes of trying to protect myself from any "world crisis" on the basis that if the worst does happen, we'll all suffer equally, and you'll be in the same boat as me.

So give up trying to control it and things will start to look better already. And decisions will be easier too.

<comment><USER8> >and more to do with the "impending end of the world scenario" that's been in the media now for nigh on 4 years.

Agreed. I don't watch the news anymore (besides industry news) and I'm no longer politically involved. Ignorance _is_ bliss.

</comment></comment><comment> buff-a _I don't even know what I am working for at the moment since everything seems so unpredictable. Every feature that I design and code may just get changed or scraped upon completion. Even if I do complete it, when am I going to get paid for it? Or will I even get paid?_

You are not burnt out. You are just living in fear. I totally understand. You are going to have to confront a different fear to change this situation: your fear of sticking up for yourself in contract negotiation. Bottom line: if someone owes you money, its your fault. If you don't know if you will get paid, its your fault.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most people who do creative/analytical, solitary "desk job" work burn out at some point. Writers get writers block, composers go mad, mathematicians solve the Poincare Conjecture then disappear off the face of the earth.

Programmers have the worst burnout potential, because in addition to the unpleasant parts of the job itself, you have to deal with some of the most obnoxious personality types on the planet, and do all your work on a machine that is conspiring to ensure you never get anything done. It's assumed other solitary creative/analytical types are oddballs who take tons of time off to recuperate between projects, but programmers are expected to produce day in and day out. There's also the looming archetypes of the superhuman guy who writes 3D engines in his spare time and the billionaire PHP programmer, making you feel bad about both your abilities and bank balance.

As a general salve, I turn off the internet for days at a time, spend time with friends as much as possible and go to the gym. However, none of that is as effective as not working with bozos, and not working on projects I don't care about.

</comment><comment><USER10> You need to get better at the administration side of your business pronto. What's getting you down is that you are apparently unable to control the relationship with your customers, both financially and with respect to the scope and definition of the work and that can become a real drag.

Once you have that under control I think you're ready for a re-evaluation of being burnt out or not. When I work real hard and don't get paid I feel miserable, when I work real hard and money flows in to my bank account I feel a lot better. Ditto for working really hard and seeing the work discarded or re-done several times. Inefficiencies like that can really get you down as well.

Being burnt out goes quite a bit deeper than this.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think your burnout is because you enjoy working hard, but have trouble knowing when to find that balance between productivity and happiness.

In my 7 years since college, I've worked at two tech companies, and I've experienced burnout at both at one time or another.

I'm dealing with it by:

1) managing expectations - people are generally reasonable when they're aware of your work load and can sympathize with your need for leisure time

2) don't be a roadblock, but you can say "NO" more often - when I was younger, I'd chase small wins here and there, but overall it did not impact my external performance metrics much. It would have been more productive if I focused on more impactful changes and leave some smaller tasks for newer team members (and use it as an opportunity to transfer knowledge + teach)

3) there's always more work to do - one more email, one more changelist, one more code blog to read, one more framework to learn, one more person to meet. I have accepted that I cannot possibly exhaust my mental todo list. Anyone out there who says they accomplish 100% of what they want to do is either lying or have a short list.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for taking time to read and offering your thoughts on my situation.

For the past few years, I've been working alone from home, locked away in my room for the most part, and well lurking on HN.

I feel lifted to see the responses here.

My other problem now is that I have too much work on my plate that I have trouble completing. Previously I naively took on new projects as the older ones seem to be taking forever just to sign off on deliverables.

And honestly, there was the greed factor too - it was nice to receive the deposit to kickoff a new project since I've not been getting a salary for the past few years.

But now they are all coming back at the same time and I'm overwhelmed.

And with my diminishing interest in backend programming, I'm hoping to partner with a backend developer to help me out. Do drop me an email (email@example.com) if you are keen.

All in all, I feel really foolish about a lot of the mistakes I made during this freelancing period. I will be joining a VC funded startup for a full-time job after I'm done with my current contracts, hopefully that will put my career back on track.

</comment><comment><USER12> In general, working sucks. Having to work, that is.

<comment><USER13> "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar." Drew Carey

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is why I stopped freelancing and moved onto making my own products. It's not worth the hassle of chasing down clients.

<comment><USER5> I feel you. I bailed on doing side gigs about a year ago. Even with good rates the tradeoff between that extra bit of cash and losing most of my spare time wasn't worth it.

These days I charge an inflated consulting rate to come off the bench. So far I haven't encountered a client willing to pony up, which is kind of nice since I have my spare time to work on renovating my house and practice my blacksmithing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reading this brings up a lot of uneasy feelings for me. I am a designer, and recent graduate with a job right out of school. I love what I do, and wouldn't want to be doing anything different, but recently I've been hearing more and more stories like this. It generally goes: the young, inspired designer/hacker works his/her ass off for 3-4 years, then (poof!) "burns out."

I can't help but feel worried for myself. On average I happily work around 60 hours/week, and would probably do more if I didn't stop myself (I do need some sleep, after all). Am I in that "3-4 years" stage? I want to do design the rest of my life, but maybe I'm just shooting myself in the foot.

<comment><USER16> You'll be fine. You may find out that after a while you hate the _type_ of design you do but you'll probably still love designing - it's why we got into it.

I graduated 6 years ago back when they hardly taught any web/UI work. I started out in print and at first loved it, but quickly grew to hate it. I learned enough about myself that it was clear that it was time to move on. Then I finally accidentally landed a job at a startup and found what I really loved - UX/UI. Then did that really well, and now I'm on to product design and business.

Long story short, you're pretty likely to have an evolving set of interests and that will allow you to get really good at a number of facets. You should still be doing 60 hours a week or more if you want to be making big leaps forward. Once you get burnt out on working your ass off doing that one thing, you'll find something else really interesting and inspiring. Then go chase that.

There are always new things to learn, so make sure you've got supporting network to chat about your challenges with so that you know you're not alone. A lot of times, there are little things you can do to keep your zeal for life even though what you're hammering on may not be as interesting as it used to be. But when it becomes downright depressing to go to work every day for 1-2 weeks, you better quit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I went through this phase recently. And there was a surprisingly easy solution out of it. Finding new clients and get into a habit of working out. Both these activities have given me a new lease of energy to approach problems. As the clients have right to fire you, you have the rights to fire the client as well. We all want to be nice to our clients but sometimes our decency is mistaken for gullibility and they tend to take advantage of these situations. Working out releases the necessary endorphins to combat the depression. Just a 30 minute jog everyday can make a world of a difference to your life.

</comment><comment><USER18> You might be burning out, but this is the "good" case of burnout in that there's an obvious cause, and if that cause is attacked head-on, your passion for your work will probably return. It's obvious that your clients are treating you badly. Not paying for work completed is _never_ acceptable. It doesn't matter if "we didn't use the code". You did the work and should be paid.

Get an attorney immediately. I'm not saying you should sue previous clients. If the amounts of money are small, it's not worth it. But in the future, he will save you a lot more money than he costs. Every serious freelancer has one, for exactly the reason you've discovered. Get firm contracts written with unambiguous terms regarding project scope and payment, or you will be dealing with this for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am chasing one client for 2 months now. He didn't pay me. The problem is he is father of one of my best friends, who I know since early childhood. Everytime I call him he postpones our conversation. And this is one of the numerous examples of me chasing clients. I know how you feel, even if its 10$ job, you still feel crappy if you are not payed at the end of the day as negotiated. 2 years of freelancing experience here, I guess I'll quit soon. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER20> How are you finding your clients?

In my experience, the best clients seem to come from relationships and networking. Clients don't screw people they got from valuable friends and partners. They do, however, screw people who are little more than an email address they got from a Craigslist ad.

Look for more leverage with clients by using networking - also, take the advice others gave and stand up to them with stricter contracts and hourly pricing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Burning out is a terrible feeling. As someone who got a job before finishing school, I spent the first few years of my career working literally 16 hour days. I felt the need to prove myself, and I worked hard to do it. After 3 or 4 years my life changed in some big ways, and the life style started to affect me extremely negatively. I continued to try to work more hours but I wasn't getting anything more done. It was like I had no more ambition to work. On one particular project I hit a big dip. I became depressed, I started neglecting things like laundry, or brushing my teeth, or eating. When the project ended, I got some time to recover a bit (but not fully) a year or so later I was on another stressful project. I think I hit my low during that. I almost became completely separated from reality for lack of a better description. I started having deep almost philosophical thoughts about what the point of life even is. Again my productivity dropped lower (and also my quality of work, and my communication) I tried to make up for it with extra hours, but it only made things worse. Eventually I quit, and found a better job that has been pretty strictly 9-5. Additionally I also stopped working on side projects for a while. I think a really important part is realizing that the situation I was in was not going to get better, and a complete change was necessary.

</comment><comment><USER22> its not burn out, if you still like developing, your subconscious has just realised before you have that you are wasting your time. Burnout is when you cant do fruitful things, and the remedy is simple. Step away from the computer, eat well get some fresh air and plenty of sleep. Works every time ;-)</comment>


Estonian e-voting shouldn't be used in European elections, say security experts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/12/estonian-e-voting-security-warning-european-elections-research

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the actual report:

[https://estoniaevoting.org/](https://estoniaevoting.org/)

Peer reviewed paper:

[https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/ivoting- ccs14.pdf](https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/ivoting-ccs14.pdf)</comment>