Ask HN: If you think ideas are not worth a dime then post yours here - <AUTHOR>

This is probably one among the most cliched discussions but more often than not people just escape it either by talking in favor of it or against it. If someone seriously thinks that ideas are not worth a dime, then that idea should be out in public without any fear of being copied.
I personally think that ideas are more than a dime, unless it's an outright clone. And I am not saying it because of the fear of being cloned or copied; I  am rather saying it because discovering/inventing a useful idea is so rare. So  it's the scarcity which makes it valuable and not the fact that someone might steal it.
EDIT: Important point missed. The discussion applies more to the people who can implement their ideas on their own. <comment><USER2> 1/ Calculate which mobile subscription on the market would be cheaper based on your mobile activity of previous months. Needs a way to keep track of hundreds of subscription rules and way to easily scan and OCR paper invoices and/or pdf invoices.

2/ Offer free salary calculations. Charge employers for sending paper salary slips (PDF versions are for free) and employment related and legal counseling. Also offer free self-service portal for employers and employees. Barrier: requires a lot of knowledge of local employment, fiscal and social security regulations. Reward: if you can break the barrier you'll probably be the first and make a killing.

3/ Offer a service like square with the distinction that once a cent is converted to a online cent the entire history of that cent's online usage is freely accessible (radical transparency.) As soon as the cent is withdrawn that history will be lost of at least will be frozen for ever. This way when I want to accept a payment from you I - or my application - can scrutinize the history of the cents you offer me. If there's something in the history of a certain cent that I don't like - example: it's been used to buy X, Y or Z - I'll reject that cent. Other people can step in and tag transactions or even a party in a transaction in a certain way so that I can configure my application to reject those tags. This simple mechanism introduces a new negative feedback loop in our economy that we don't have but need in our economic system.

<comment><AUTHOR> >>Calculate which mobile subscription on the market would be cheaper based on your mobile activity of previous months

Is there a way to do that? From what you are saying it is like tracking the number of incoming and outgoing calls and keeping track of the bill. Wouldn't that be a privacy issue, and also do the service providers agree to provide such data ?

>>Offer a service like square with the distinction that once a cent is converted to a online cent

I like the idea, but what do you mean by online cent? Square takes the payment by credit card, so it goes directly to merchant account. Isn't it? So where does it get converted to online cent? Correct me if I am wrong! This can be compared better to paypal; that is where the money gets converted to online cent.

<comment><USER3> > Wouldn't that be a privacy issue, and also do the service providers agree to > provide such data?

There are a number of popular services which ask that you give them your passwords. Failing that, you could ask them to install an Android app or to have the user manually upload the data. Invoices were mentioned in devijvers's comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An idea is a starting point. If you were to have a race to success, having an idea would put you farther down the road than starting without one.

That being said, the idea is worthless if you don't actually start running. Building a team that can run much faster might eventually swamp any gains you get from having a good starting idea. That team might also discover a new path that leads to a new and much better goal, therefore leading you to choose to abandon your original idea.

A bad idea can ruin a good team by having them run in the wrong direction for too long.

You seem to believe that people don't value ideas enough and therefore are testing them. You _will_ often get free ideas from people who can't or have no intention to run with them. This does nothing to prove they have no value, they simply have little value to that particular person.

I think the idea vs. execution argument is the hacker version of the nature/nurture question. For most things that matter, both contribute to varying degrees.

<comment><AUTHOR> >>You seem to believe that people don't value ideas enough and therefore are testing them.

Kind of. While I am a programmer myself and agree with the fact that ideas might have little value compared to execution; this is more of a case where the person with idea does not know how to execute it. If the person is executioner himself, then I think that ideas are equally important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Okay, here is one:

You sign up with the company. You give them a bunch of different categories of budget, and whether or not its a hard budget that you can't go over or a soft budget that can.

They send you a _pack_ of credit/debit cards highlighting the category. Say a big red "Eating out" card, or a light blue "Groceries" card, etc.

All of these debit your bank account you've linked to the service (a la paypal). On the service you setup "sub accounts" (which I'll hereafter call accounts). These are debited when you use a card, but only up to the amount you've authorized for the month on hard accounts. If you have say "33.49" in luxuries, and you try to charge 36 bucks, it denies it and sends you a text, "You only have 33.49 left in luxuries". If you try to make a charge in a soft account (aka one you're okay going over, but that it takes out of a different budgets, say Groceries will take out of dinning out), the charge will go through, and take any of the excess amount out of the account specified as the overflow.

There would be a webapp and smartphone app that would show all these balances on all these accounts you set up so you could see up to the minute how much was left on the cards.

Basically, 21st century envelope budgeting with no book-keeping once you set the budgets, with cards that work on the web or in restaurants or at any store.

It would be useful to _everyone_ who's bad at balancing checkbooks, or money management in general, from teens to just people who are too busy to really worry about it.

Please oh please make this system :OD

<comment><USER6> Maybe it will be possible to make apps that work like that on mobile devices equipped for NFC payments, and the cards won't be needed?

<comment><USER5> NFC won't be near enough widespread for this sadly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So rather focused on my current company for anything to be fleshed out past the hand waving stage. Here are two that I would like to tackle but don't have the resources for. Both games which are not my field but which my daydream is to setup a small indie games company for when I one day do an exit and have some money...

First one is along the lines of a tower defence but instead of attackers you have a crowd wanting to protest. The 'people' are quite good sim's in that they should behave according to research - lots of people crammed in are more violent than a widely spaced crowd. You, the player, will get different scenarios - protecting a visiting dignitary, policing a conference centre, a town square etc. etc. an obviously your level ups will be increasingly heavy duty riot control equipment: vans, water hoses, helicopters etc.

Second one was a sandbox type game like minecraft or dwarf fortress with the addition of seriously mega threats. For example a dragon living in an area that cannot be defeated without either building and planning serious defences (over a period of days or weeks) or massive co-operation. Games are either too formulaic or immediate - but there are lots of people prepared to work on long term construction projects in these kind of games, would be interesting to tap into that.

I still think execution is 90% of the battle with an idea and I am going to have a crack at both of these given half a chance. Don't think either of them are million sellers but far too many games are clones of one another and it's good to introduce new concepts

<comment><USER8> #1 has been done at least once, but it's not very good. Lookie here: <http://asia.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/riotpolice/review.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1- As a heuristic, find an existing successful product (for example invoicing, accounting, crm...) and tailor it to a smaller national market (for example France, Germany...) or to a specific niche (accounting for trainers, invoicing for plumbers...). That should give you a lot of ideas!

2- a tool to conduct online interviews. Right now when recruiting companies use a phone screening before flying the candidate in. By conducting an interview online, you can (for example) have him code the solution to a problem in real-time, how he thinks about it etc. So much more efficient than phone interviews, and a much better predictor for candidate quality.

3- a service to outsource video making for webapps. people making webapps often need demos of their products, but would rather not spend valuable time learning how to make a video, voiceover etc.

There would be a lot more. Ideas are a dime a dozen :-)

<comment><USER10> I've seen <http://demogirl.com> do #3 (demo videos for apps) and #2 <http://interviewstreet.com>

For #1, I can upvote you only once. I've been having this idea for a while now. Customized accounting app for a niche audience. That's going to be my next app once I finish my current one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've had this idea of giving every person I meet a quarter. Naturally, this idea is worth far less than a dime.

But seriously, my real idea is that expressing quality with monetary terms is silly.

<comment><USER6> No, it's really value that is being referred to here. People say 'ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It really depends on the originality + depth of the idea. If you think of something like "a cool social network", then yeah, it's worth (less than) a dime. But if your idea is a somewhat detailed version of Google's search engine algorithm, and you're the first one to think of that, then it's probably more valuable than what the cliche prescribes.

Personally, I believe that good ideas that result in successful businesses are worth keeping to yourself, as long as you plan on making something out of them.

</comment><comment><USER13> A tool to help small companies to find potential contracts with the government. The main issue here in my country is corruption, and how to gain enough traction.

Like <http://www.onvia.com/products> but for each country.

It's something I've been working some time, because I think the NLP involved in analyzing and extracting some structured metadata of the mandated docs is really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) Sub $100 3G handphone only for use with Skype. My thoughts on this. A fair number of people don't know how to use the computer and Skype for video conferencing (eg my daughter's grandparents). This handphone can fill in the void provided it is cheaper than the smart phone. How it can work.

Upon purchase of the phone and 3G plan, SkyPe log in details will be saved into the phone, eliminating the need to log in. Contacts from SkyPe will be shown on the address book and it can proceed to act as a normal phone.

2) 30 second Music sharing/sampling. Most of the time, it is only a certain section of a music that plays over and over in our head. The idea I have is to select 30 seconds (I believe this is the maximum to avoid infringement of copyright) of the part of the music I like and share it with my friends and say "Check out this song, it is great. This is the part I love".

It can also be used for song samples where the wisdom of the crowd determines which portion of the song is the one that people likes instead of the current way it is done, which is the music store determines the sample

Alright, just this two for now and see how it goes, unless anyone is interested in others that I have

</comment><comment><USER15> Go to the bank and get four $100 bills. Using a xacto knife, cut out all of the serial numbers of the bills. Then, cut off 1/4 of each bill in the follow method:

      * Cut 1/4 off the left hand side of the first bill.
      * Cut a rectangle out of the next bill using these coordinates:  Top: 1px, Height: 100%-2px, Left: 25%, Width: 25% ... where 1px is about 1/8 inch.
      * Cut a rectangle out of the third bill using these coordinates:  Top: 1px, Height: 100%-2px, Left: 50%, Width: 25%

You now have:

      * One bill with the left quadrant cut off.
      * One bill with a big rectangle cut out... but is still barely in tact.
      * Another bill with a big rectangle cut out.
      * Three 1/4 pieces that you tape together to create a 4th mutilated $100 bill.

Go to the bank, and retrieve your hard earned $400.

Source: [http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Will_a_bank_replace_a_half_ten_dol...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Will_a_bank_replace_a_half_ten_dollar_bill)

</comment><comment><USER16> I had the idea in 1997 that you could use a scanning tunneling microscope as a hardrive needle. Have a perfectly flat surface in a vacuum and divide it up into a grid. If a square has an atom sitting on it then it counts as a one and if not its a zero. Having a single atom as a bit would be a major milestone for storage. Unfortunately I only have a highschool education and not much money so never had any means to really pursue the idea. Intel and others are doing research on it now, but as far as I know no one was working on the idea at the time I thought of it.

I also had said a number of times to my girlfriend that i want a robot that could fold laundry. She would always look at me funny. Then I felt vindicated when colin angle (iRobot) said in an interview that the next task he would like solved with robots is folding laundry.

<comment><USER17> #1 sounds nice, but I'd guess we're limited by the mechanical precision of the needle to track single-atom wide surfaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> People introductions is a nascent field. Nobody has owned it yet as all the companies in the field are just getting started.

So far we've seen the trust model: <http://sonar.me> lets you know when your FB or Twitter friends of friends are in the room. Then there's the recommendations model, like okcupid.com recommends people to each other to date, but take the dating out of it and add foursquare checkins for location down to the venue level. Not sure if anyone is doing this model.

There's Agora (<http://agoraapp.com>), but I'm not really sure what they do to tell you whom to meet.

<http://grubwith.us> is doing an excellent job in the dining niche.

</comment><comment><USER19> execution matters, being first to execute is often an advantage, ideas without execution are worth no more than thoughts, but if you plan to execute on an idea then keeping it secret so others with more resources, speed, talent are less likely to execute on it first has (some) value.

</comment><comment><USER18> Put tourists in touch with locals. Couchsurfing.com without the couch, and marketed much better.

</comment><comment><USER20> Video Game Idea: I would love a really good co-op shooter scenario. If anyone ever played Rainbow Six, Crysis or any good single player FPS with a story line/scenarios that had AI help or felt like could use more players.

I would love to talk with friends or even strangers to do certain missions/scenarios.

OK guys, we need to rescue these hostages. There are between 20-30 terrorists holding them in the building. You can enter via doors, roof, sewers, vents, whatever. You come up with a strategy and chat in real time as you all execute. You can be together bursting into a giant gun fight or coordinate really well separately.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd say that ideas are not worth a dime unless it's actually implemented. I mean, if a person with a fantastic idea doesn't know how to implement it, or doesn't even try to- that idea's useless.

However, no matter how bad that idea is- as long as a person tries and implements it- that idea becomes priceless. I say priceless because every idea that you can turn into reality means that you've gained experience, and more in-depth knowledge about that particular idea. As cheesy as it sounds, knowledge is priceless.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think there's an opportunity to do any type of idea now that uses bitcoin and reduce the need to bootstrap altogether - just accept donations from bitcoiners (even without a prototype,) who would be happy to give a small portion of their stash if it means increasing the value of the remainder. Eg some site called bitcoinstartups.com could list them (something more streamlined than <http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?board=12.0>)

</comment><comment><USER23> My idea: Turn your challenge into a website were people can contribute and harvest ideas for free.

<comment><USER24> The best products solve niche problems that the solver is familiar with and is personally invested in solving. So if I have 3 good ideas, I'll do one and give the other 2 away - that way all my problems get solved!

This is called commerce, and it doesn't have to be the cutthroat fixed sum game that corporate culture has made it.

The goal of business should be quality of life and prioritizing problem solving, not getting richer than the next guy.

So there should totally be an idea exchange!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Create a database of every product in every store and make it searchable. Make a search engine that tells you where nearby the product is available for purchasing. Some of the bigger retailers provide this already on their own websites.

</comment><comment><USER18> Make a better calendar. There are plenty of ideas posted online on what makes for a better calendar.

</comment><comment><USER25> My idea: make hiring a team easier, stop using spreadsheets and emails to manage the process.

</comment><comment><USER26> I want a blog where I can put in IP addresses of my family so they can't see certain posts..

<comment><USER27> I can do this. Are you ok with signing up for a blogging service that allows privacy control per post? Or, are you looking to use this on your own Wordpress like blog?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dating guidebook/flowchart app. Tap the situation you're in and it gives you some tips.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have a brilliant idea: I have found "the cure" for CF (cystic fibrosis) and it's a video game! (Now I just need to learn a programming language and write it.)

In this case, I don't think it can really be effectively copied/stolen. I have spent the last 10+ years getting myself well when doctor's claim it cannot be done. My oldest son has the same diagnosis and he is healthier than I am, so it is clearly replicable. The real reason I think the idea is important: I have spent at least five years trying to talk to people and put what I know into words on a website. And, for the most part, people just don't get it. I have concluded that I need a more information-dense delivery mode. I think writing a simulation (aka "game") will do the trick, or at least be far more effective than what I am doing currently.

Like with so many things, "the idea" may be just one piece of the tapestry of things which breathes life into a viable business or project. I was excited to hit upon this idea but remain frustrated at failing to execute (in part because getting myself healthier is still a big part of my life and I also have a full-time job). So I like this idea -- and it's so far not gotten me anywhere.

Peace.

<comment><USER29> Games which do more than entertain are exceptionnal which makes your idea exceptionnal too.

As CF is a genetic disease, how does a game help ?

<comment><USER28> _As CF is a genetic disease, how does a game help ?_

To teach lifestyle changes more effectively than the written word can.

Genes don't determine outcome by themselves. Environmental factors play a role, a more significant role than most people seem to realize. Ants and bees know this and use this information to create queens from normal larvae -- ie ants and bees are adept at taking the same genes and getting a vastly different outcome. So it can be done.

(EDIT: There's a website listed in my profile which might give you some idea of what I do for my health. It doesn't convey enough though, so that's where a game would come in, assuming I can ever get there from here.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Twilio that works reliably for everyone in places like New Zealand.

<comment><USER31> Why doesn't Twilio work in New Zealand?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> xxx

</comment><comment><USER33> Darklight. A darknet which trades scalability and reliability for invisibility by masquerading as HTTPS, SFTP, SSH, and other cryptographically secure, common Internet protocols.

It's such a blindingly obvious idea that I assumed for three years that somebody had already come up with it and I just hadn't found it, and I think that it's not worth a dime because it's obvious and also the kind of thing that the open-source movement would have jumped onto immediately.

</comment><comment><USER34> Office/Lunch Hours

Have everyone make a profile with their "open hours" where they're free to have lunch or meet up with someone who wants to discuss things of interest with. Don't make it formal, just make it so that people can see what times you're free that week, and shoot an email if they want to talk about stuff. Leave it vague and general because you never know what utility this could serve - hell people might just want some companionship, not startup advice.

<comment><USER35> i thought this already existed. [googles...] here it is: <http://hnofficehours.com/>

<comment><USER34> Yeah, but I'm talking about something more general and less hacker nature. More like a dating/social thing than an expertise request. HNOfficehours seems more very rigid. Some people just want to meet new people, and make a potential friend. Hard to do that when the theme of the site is getting feedback from an expert about a specific topic. I'm talking about a site where you can list the times/days you're free and got nothing to do, and are open to doing something with someone - could be catching a ballgame, playing ping pong, practicing martial arts, etc... A Cross between Meetup + HNOfficeHours.</comment></comment></comment>


Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtoforge.com/virtual-users-domains-postfix-courier-mysql-squirrelmail-ubuntu8.04 <comment><USER2> install YC backed Virtualmin on debian and you can save all this.</comment>


Millennials Are Causing the U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/pursuits/2018/09/25/millennials-are-causing-the-u-s-divorce-rate-to-plummet <comment><USER2> They really buried the lede. There are two things happening here that can arguably be traced to one cause:

Educated millennials apparently see marriage as something you do _after_ you've finished establishing yourself. It is a goal, not a given.

Uneducated millennials apparently have the _same_ point of view, but they aren't established and therefore they aren't getting married.

Given that marriage often means you end up with the lower of the two credit scores, you're on the hook for debts, you're going to be paying jointly filed taxes regardless of future marital status, etc -- it absolutely makes sense not to get married until you're financially established. Now that the mystique of marriage is broken (thanks to those baby boomers get divorced in record numbers), it's no longer a rite of passage into adulthood.

<comment><USER3> > Given that marriage often means you end up with the lower of the two credit > scores

Does anyone actually think this way?? Honestly I can't imagibe ever thinking financially when I proposed.

<comment><USER4> Of course people think this way. It's foolish not to, especially when couples can commit to each other in so many ways other than legal marriage. I'm shocked there's someone on hacker news who doesn't.

<comment><USER5> A meta comment, this kind of thread is why I don't respect hackernews commenters anymore. It frequently goes like so:

\- Comment: Something \- Reply: But my experience says otherwise, why are you so wrong?

There is a persistent lack of ability to see other people's point of view. Surely it is not everyone here, but it's enough such that things get really boring here.

<comment><USER6> That's part of what I like about Hacker News. _They_ may not be able to see each other's POV, but _I_ can. I come out with a richer appreciation for the diversity of experience out there from reading it, even if all the participants do is argue.

<comment><USER7> I like his comment. I think what he's saying is not that he doesn't appreciate diversity, his complaint is the way in which people discuss these issues: instead of being respectful and level-headed, they act like extremists. I think this is common to people in this profession. There's some other forums where I see a similar dynamic, and then there's other forums where it's completely different. Let's just say that the forums where people are nicer and more respectful have few, if any, engineers.

Remember, there was a study a while back that showed that engineers have a greater propensity to become terrorists. People who gravitate toward engineering have much more black-and-white thinking, and with that comes a greater tendency towards extremism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Millennials are forced to be more careful, because they're climbing a difficult and important ladder into financial security. Most people I know who aren't looking to marry are just very aware that this is not the right time for them, neither finically nor in relation to achieving their professional goals.

<comment><USER9> Statistically though, married people have more money.

"married women can pay as much as $1 million less than their single counterparts over a lifetime"

"married men between 28 and 30 years old earn around $15,900 more a year in individual income compared to their single counterparts, while married men between 44 and 46 years old make $18,800 more than single men of the same ages"

\+ other benefits

[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-being-married-makes- you-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-being-married-makes-you-more- successful-2016-7)

<comment><USER10> Do married people have more money, or do more financially secure people get married?

<comment><USER11> It's cheaper to live with someone and split bills than live alone and pay all of the bills by yourself. So yes, married people have more money in general.

<comment><USER12> Many people still are living together and splitting bills without being married, so it's not all that relevant to the question.

<comment><USER13> It's pretty relevant if married people are _more_ likely to be living together and splitting bills, which is probably the case.

<comment><USER14> Not only that, but married people have lower costs vs the same two people simply cohabiting.

Lower insurance rates (home, auto)

(usually) lower health insurance rates (family plan rather than two single plans). My company doesn't even charge a premium for putting your non-working spouse on your plan.

(usually) Tax benefits

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> speaking as a millennial there is a big reason Marriage is overtaking divorce.

Health insurance. Most of us dont have jobs that afford us competent healthcare. Seriously, thank the gig economy. Affordable Care Act providers either do not exist in some states or are overpriced/worthless for what they do cover. There are still roughly 25 states that have not expanded medicare either. Getting married is a quick and simple way to either pick up good healthcare from a friend, or get a discount on your own for "being married."

<comment><USER16> > Most of us dont have jobs that afford us competent healthcare.

Is this true? I hear people say things like this but "most"? Seems too high.

<comment><USER17> Most might be a bit of an exaggeration but retail & food service industry definitely changed the way they operate just to avoid providing healthcare.

>A June 2016 study determined that 500,000 workers in the retail, hospitality and food service sectors were forced involuntarily into part-time employment as companies sought to circumvent the employer mandate

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/businesses-eliminated- hund...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/businesses-eliminated-hundreds-of- thousands-of-full-time-jobs-to-avoid-obamacare-mandate-2017-11-24)

<comment><USER18> I really have to wonder why this wasn't accounted for in the ACA. Like what business isn't going to decide if the administrative overhead of having more employees is less than the cost of providing healthcare and act accordingly? Would it have been that hard to require health insurance contributions in proportion to the employee's percentage FTE? Then it would actually be cheaper for businesses to hire full-time and someone working 40hr/wk at multiple jobs gets the same benefit as a salaried employee.

<comment><USER19> If we want to do something meaningful we would make it so nobody gets insurance from their employer. I don't like my insurance, in a competitive market the insurance I want would only be slightly cheaper - but I don't actually have that option because I would be throwing $1000/month (nobody will tell me the real numbers, but it is in that range) that my employer contributes away.

Those who can only work fast food will never have it easy, but as you point out making them work less hours isn't going to help them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Two things I would have liked to see: 1) is this just the U.S.? The Baby Boom happened in many nations, as did an increase in divorce at about the same time, how do their divorce rates compare? 2) couldn't one say equally well "the Baby Boom-fueled divorce explosion continues to recede"? This might not be about Millenials at all, but rather about the Baby Boom generation.

</comment><comment><USER21> It might be because people are getting married and having children later. I find that most people that I know that had parents that got divorced, it happened when their kids were in their mid to late teens. People now getting married at older ages and having kids later might get divorced now outside the 45 year old window.

<comment><USER22> Or you could take a more cynical view:

Women that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s aren't really thrilled with their dating prospects when they're fast approaching 40 and have a kid.

Men that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the idea of living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice and beans well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for child support.

If you get married and feel you've made the wrong choice later in life you have more motivation to "make it work" because your ability to "do better" is worse.

50yr ago it wasn't uncommon for people to get married in their early 20s and be divorced (with or without kids, usually with) by 30. Millennials may just have skipped that phase.

Edit: Never mind that last paragraph, it is contradicted by one of the graphs.

<comment><USER23> > Women that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't really > have great dating prospects when they're fast approaching 40 and have a kid.

Is there any need to gender that statement? It seems just as true of men as of women. With the possible exception of differing child-support rates in the sexes (for which I have not bothered to gather any data), probably even the same is true of:

> Men that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the > idea of living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice > and beans well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for child > support.

<comment><USER24> Child support payments are not the cause of women's financial woes after divorce, but you can absolutely look at the same general sentence: "Women that marry in their late 20s and have kids in their 30s don't like the idea of living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15yo Civic and eating rice and beans well into their 50s because they're getting bent over for" being women who had kids, often put their careers on the back burner, often were not aware of financial decision-making within the marriage, & got divorced without the ability to make as much money.

Yeah, it's complicated; you can see one paper here [1] that quantifies the post-divorce earnings gap. It is improving. Anyhow, divorce is a ludicrously bad economic decision for many women. Don't know if that's a factor in the changing rate.

[1] [https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2008-...](https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2008-07.pdf) A more recent book: [https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7519.html](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7519.html) There's a chapter on divorce & child support. Gets pretty mathy. An interesting survey from UBS (the numbers are buried) about female abdication of financial decision-making responsibility in marriages: [https://www.ubs.com/content/dam/WealthManagementAmericas/doc...](https://www.ubs.com/content/dam/WealthManagementAmericas/documents/2018-37666-UBS- Own-Your-Worth-report-R32.pdf)

<comment><USER25> > often put their careers on the back burner, often were not aware of > financial decision-making within the marriage, & got divorced without the > ability to make as much money.

It's interesting how some paint this picture of mothers who decided to be homemakers as women who are just too dumb to care the correct amount about climbing the career lader.

<comment><USER24> I think that's really unkind. It's not dumb. It is an economic decision in an economic system that does not reward caretakers.

<comment><USER25> A fault confessed is half redressed. After all, what you call "really unkind" isn't my opinion, it's yours.

<comment><USER24> What did I say that was unkind?

Maybe you're mad about the term "abdication of decision-making". It's a term of art. What's unkind about it?

Maybe you think it's unkind to say a woman is putting career on the back burner. But that's often accurate and a very conscious decision.

I think you don't like looking at the results of these decisions. That doesn't make the decisions themselves bad, or the people making them stupid, and describing those decisions accurately is not unkind. You are mad at the wrong people.

When I'm talking about these things I'm looking at my own bank account, as a woman who is hanging back in career so she can stay home with her kid a bit. It's just patronizing to pretend somehow magically I'm going to make more money because of this, or that when I'm 40+ I'll magically be able to jump into another tech job at an even higher pay grade. Like all the people we're talking about, I'm making decisions in an economic system that is not going to economically reward me for caretaking. I'm doing it anyway, trying to balance the present time with children with the necessity of supporting myself financially for another 50+ years given my family's longevity. I stand by everything I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Many poorer and less educated Americans are opting not to get married at all. . . . Marriage is becoming a more durable, but far more exclusive, institution."

How is it exclusive if it is by choice?

<comment><USER26> It's not entirely by choice. Getting married can have a significant impact on the benefits you are eligible to receive. Anecdotally, I knew a woman who lived with her boyfriend and children in section 8 housing through benefits she received for being low income. The boyfriend worked, but his income was not counted as household income because they weren't married. They eventually got married, and between his income and hers, their income was high enough to disqualify they for the section 8 benefits.

I don't know how common of a situation that is, but it is very possible to impact your public benefits with marriage.

<comment><USER27> I think this is quite common. Public benefits are a strange thing and have really odd loopholes at times.

For example: I had a friend that lived with her boyfriend and they had a child. The state wanted to take child support from his check to give to her for the child _even though they lived at the same address_.

I worked with a woman that kept below a certain amount of hours per week while working. This was simply because working any more meant that her benefits were cut so much she couldn't survive. The cut was more than the money she earned from working.

I'm guessing I've known a few people that weren't married for similar reasons as well, I just cannot think of a concrete example.

<comment><USER28> Yes, this is a very real problem. I'm close to someone who has to actively turn down freelance work past a certain point because they will no longer qualify for Medicaid and still be far short of affording an ACA plan. Obviously the "solution" is to get a lot more work all at once to get out of that financial gap, but it's hard to do.

<comment><USER27> Definitely is difficult and I personally think it is ridiculous to expect. The better solution would be to rework laws so that folks working come out ahead. I imagine this would include having benefits reduce more slowly than small income gains. If anything, the benefit losses should mirror the gains as it makes no sense to punish making $50 more with a $100 loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not sure if it's really millennials.

There was an article in the New York Times in 2014 stating that the divorce rate peaked in the 1980's and was at a near record low.

That was well before any Millennials were born.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce- surge-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is- over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Take a step back. Focus your attention on the 2nd graph and look at the 18-34 age range line. This is and always has been low. There is literally a 1%-2% drop. So you can't actually "blame" millennials on the US divorce rate plummeting, let alone by 8%. The article is also already admitting that the rate is dropping for ALL age groups ranges (read - people that are NOT millennials) for the past 10-15 years.

So if you look at that graph and look at the title of the article, you should realize that the overall trend is dropping, and it's not because of millennials. If anything that is an anecdotal feeling and the writer of this article is suggesting that as the reason, which is again, not backed up by the data.

Edit: take out the yell words ;)

<comment><USER31> After having looked at that graph I too was confused by the assertion that millennials are driving down divorce rates.

It appears that the divorce rates for 18-34 year olds has been flat, the changes are happening in other age brackets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> By this and other accounts, millennials appear to be a reaction to the excesses of the baby boomers. For example, millennials are more prudish than their parents,[1] more likely to identify as conservative than their parents were at the same age.[2]

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol- millennials-...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-millennials- less-sex-20160802-snap-story.html)

[2] [https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials- conservati...](https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials-conservative- generations/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Since millennials are marrying and having kids later, how do we know they won't get divorced later too?

</comment><comment><USER34> If people are getting married later, maybe they are just getting divorced later? I wonder what the change is for divorce after X amount of years of marriage.

</comment><comment><USER35> Another thing millennials are killing?

<comment><USER36> The bottom of the article says that they are also getting married less.

Basically, back when the Baby Boomers were young it was a major source of shame to have sex outside of marriage for a lot of people, so they got married early and then discovered that it wasn't a good match. Lucky for them the divorce option was available at least.

These days kids are much more free to experiment before they tie the knot and aren't forced into bad marriages as much. General availability of contraception also helps I suspect.

The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding them together.

So the ideal situation seems to be for kids to have lots of sexual partners using effective contraception before they settle down and get married to the partner they are most compatible with and then have kids. A policy that seems sensible from one angle, but sinful as hell from another.

<comment><USER37> > The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse > situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding > them together.

There's an unstated major premise here - that _any_ "two parents cohabitating" family, even an unhappy one, is better than a single-parent or separated- parents family.

Is that true?

<comment><USER38> Why not just Google for it? According to this study, an unhappy 2-parent family has about the same negative effect as being in a single parent family.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/)

Of course, other studies may differ so this shouldn't be taken as conclusive.

<comment><USER37> More generally, I don't like to take any observational studies based on cohort data like this to be useful for attributing any sort of causes.

Whenever you've got people self-selecting into treatment populations, you need to be extremely careful about causality. For example, let's say that you've got a positive association between delinquent behavior and divorce, and that it seems to be stronger when the custodial parent stays single than it is when the custodial parent remarries. One story is that an unstable family situation causes delinquent behavior. Another equally plausible one is that difficult- to-rear kids stress their parents out, which causes them to divorce, and makes it harder for them to remarry.

It is possible to at least poke at these kinds of tangles, but you've got to be extremely diligent and careful about it. More careful than I think is possible in the "giant scattershot regression model" genre of observational study.

When I asked, "Is that true?", I meant it as a rhetorical question. I doubt anyone actually knows the answer. There's an idea, which I got from Green & Gerber's textbook on field experimentation, that some questions are just fundamentally unanswerable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's easier to get _divorced_ if you already own two houses, and can afford to pay alimony with your big fat salary

Edit: s/married/divorced

<comment><USER40> And you've technically been "divorced" (entered into cohabitation with a serious partner for some years and broke up) 1 or 2 times before making it official with the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Plummet' == 8%? Seems like the title is exaggerating a bit egregiously.

<comment><USER30> Actually beyond that it's a pretty awful study. The graph is showing rates levelling off for all groups. It makes sense for people that are old to have been divorced. The actual rate of divorce for people that are 18-34 right now isn't going to be known until they are 55-70. The data is already showing that they will have a lower rate that today's 55-70, but again, to blame the divorce rate drop on the 18-34 age range when it's across the board, is kinda ridiculous. If you look at the graph of the 18-34 chart going back to 1980 it's pretty much bouncing up and down from 11-13 percent consistently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Once upon a time, you were only able to have a stable relationship if you were married. A stable relationship being distinguished as being emotional rather than purely physical or economic or very short-term (one-night stands).

That all changed around the 1960s when it became common for people to live together even if unmarried leading to fewer recorded marriages. Many unmarried people can and have maintained stable relationships for decades.

Obviously, if there are less official marriages occurring, the number of divorces will also fall. That's purely a semantic distinction, and actually quite meaningless.

A better study would be to find the ratio between the total number of stable relationships (married or not being irrelevant) and the number of those which breakup.

What is the number of stable relationships? How many of those are breaking down? What is the ratio of the breakdowns to those which remain stable? Does that ratio agree or not with the current divorce-ratio?

</comment><comment><USER43> We're not getting divorced as much because we haven't had a lot of time to be married. I know it accounts for that in the article but it just seems silly to declare us better at marriage when we've barely had time to know whether we should get a divorce (I'm on the older side of millennials too).

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm not sure if the data here supports the conclusions at all. It looks like the divorce rate for millennials is roughly constant, albeit much lower than for older adults. So if more millennials are getting married and boomers are beginning to die off that would explain this trend nicely.

</comment><comment><USER45> This may have something to do with the fact that many millennials view long term partnership as only slightly (if at all) inferior to marriage. Those likely to divorce now just stay as boyfriend and girlfriend. May still have kids, etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how much cost plays in, I mean, my fiancée and I are adult middle class millennials and we've been saving for two years to have a wedding, and we're planning a relatively cheap one.

<comment><USER34> what's cheap? 70k?

<comment><USER47> Idk, most of the more memorable I have attended were maybe a few grand. Mostly for the venue and bar, with friends and family helping out. The impersonal 100k affairs are embarrasing to attend pesrsonally. I have friends still eatig ramen, living in debt, and fighting bitterly over finances thanks to a 'dream wedding' that a majority of their actual friends couldn't even afford to attend. To call it depressing is to undersell the effect in my eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well, I didn't get married until I was 30, which according to statistics is the average age of divorce in the US. Getting married later seems to be key here.

</comment><comment><USER49> Isn't a millennial getting married today only 18 years old? A career established person might have been born in 1980 or earlier.

<comment><USER50> Millennials are late 20s maybe even early 30s as upper bound. (My generation). We all get grouped and I see milenials between 22-32. That's my intuitive feel for it anyway. I don't know the actual society study on it. I know a lot in my circles getting married now too. Albeit it feels way later then our parents (many had kids when 19-21).

<comment><USER51> Millenials are, depending on definition, everyone up to the 1980 cohort. So millenials include mid-to-late-30s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> So...the free, modern, more liberal youth have more stable marriages and by proxy families than older conservatives who practiced traditional, more restrictive, family values (well really, they were actually religious values).

</comment><comment><USER53> The 2nd graph shows that the article is complete BS.

<comment><USER30> Downvoting because you didn't back that up. I think moreso the article's content is complete BS whereas that graph is probably based on actual factual data - which actually does not align with the content of the article at all.

<comment><USER53> Exactly my point, which I thought was obvious enough I didn't elaborate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Yes, it is hard to get divorced if you don't get married in the first place(or, later in life). I'm curious whether the age-controlled divorce rate is higher or lower for millenials.

<comment><USER55> I didnt understand why couples would get married if they were clashing while dating.

Now that I'm in my late 20s, Ive seen everything to cause people to get married. Now I understand the divorce rate.

<comment><USER56> Don't worry, if getting married didn't resolve their clashes they will have a kid or two. That should help. /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm a millennial and I got divorced a couple years ago.

<comment><USER58> Pack it in everyone, this guy's anecdote invalidates the country's data.

<comment><USER57> I never said that. I strongly advise you to not imply meaning where there is none.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: 1MileJobs - <AUTHOR>

HN, I have very much appreciated your feedback on variety of issues. Whether it's bitcoin or flappy bird, I have always come back to HN to gain insightful knowledge from comments. Me and my buddy have been working on a project for a while now. It's 1milejobs. Our primary audience is people for whom distance to a job location is the deal breaker. These might be either because of commuting costs or young people for whom it's safer to work close to home. Granted, one would be very lucky to find a 60K job within a couple of miles radius, it boils down to mostly low-paying jobs. On the good side, these are commodity jobs that can be produced and consumed by anyone. The website address is http://1milejobs.com and the app's URL is http://1milejobs.com:8080. I appreciate any input I can get. also put up a screenshot video http://youtu.be/rCCb-DwhLPE if you don't have time to signup. Thx. <comment><USER2> Also, you might want to edit your post. You have:

[http://1milejobs:8080](http://1milejobs:8080)

rather than:

[http://1milejobs.com:8080](http://1milejobs.com:8080)

The first thing I noticed was the use of "mile" in your domain and company name. Using "mile" is problematic since most of the world is on the metric system. I fired up a thesaurus to augment the tiny amount of imagination I have for this kind of thing, but the best suggestions I came up with that weren't already registered were:

No match for "NEIGHBORINGJOBS.COM"

No match for "CLOSEBYJOBS.COM"

Sadly, tons of domains with "jobs" in it are already taken.

Your faq says you've tested with recent browsers, but you need to put some effort into maintaining support for older browsers (yes, I know it's a pain, but such is web development). The following screen shot was done on Firefox 18:

[http://www.designtools.org/pix/1milejobs_app.png](http://www.designtools.org/pix/1milejobs_app.png)

It looks a better in chromium 24:

[http://www.designtools.org/pix/1milejobs_app_chrome.png](http://www.designtools.org/pix/1milejobs_app_chrome.png)

In Chromium, when loading over a slow-ish Internet connection, there's a flash of a set of icons with titles, but they disappear behind the above. I don't want to poke at it, but I'd bet if I toggled visibility, I might find something that you don't want accessible.

For your initial app display, I'd use geo-location to get the general location of the visitor, and display a few listings from that area, even a wider area than one mile if need be.

It's an interesting concept. Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks jcr for the comments. 1 mile is the goal. Not the starting point. I have not restricted the distance from the beginning until I get critical mass.

I agree, it's really a pain to maintain older browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the concept, but the interface is not usable. You chose to try to make it cool instead of usable. Just make it more normal. The kinds of people who will be using your website will not be comfortable with the interface.

Start the app with content first, the first thing I should see is the data on jobs around me that you have. It should try to look up my location using any available APIs. Whether mobile GPS apis, or looking up the location via geoip at the worst. Then, it should let me enter my location for finer grained selection.

If you need data for the jobs you could scrape other websites or something. The user should be able to add jobs too. Start it for free then when your site becomes popular you can charge them to post.

Just because it's called 1 mile jobs doesn't mean you can't have other ranges. Let the user select to expand this.

You will want to look into using a stored procedure for checking the radius against other geolocations. In server side code it will be too slow.

Don't color the radio button in solid black. It just makes it look broken. Use typical and idiomatic colors and patterns that users expect. If you're not a design god, then use a bootstrap 3 or foundation theme.

You need to have hover effects and click effects when a link is engaged. This lets the user know something is clickable. I almost thought I couldn't click your buttons. When I did, the first time I didn't press the mouse hard enough and it made me think it wasn't even a working button.

The text is too close to the icons on the bottom. It is hard to look at.

<comment><AUTHOR> readme, Thanks for the extensive feedback. On the content, I now have indeed publisher account to get the data legally and even earn commission. CL doesn't expose any public API and their TOS explicitly bans screen scraping.

Some of the issues on the UI is because I am using app framework which promises it working on most mobile devices.

If it were just web, I would go with bootstrap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love love love the concept. Commutes suck. Employees that live nearby are happier and don't leave. Let's all walk to work.

In reality, if you aren't tapping into the existing job listings (e.g. linkedin or even craigslist), and instead require jobs posters to use your site, you'll never get the critical mass to keep this going.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @brent_noorda, I am aware of this. I am thinking of modifying the code to do that. CL is such an inspiration!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> TIL: Cookies are retained across ports, I never even thought about it before.

Oh yeah, awesome concept (the 1milejobs thing).

</comment><comment><USER6> It starts with user registration? Why not make it work without registration?

<comment><AUTHOR> This application needs userid for many other additional functionality and so has to track who the user is. That has always been the reason why logins are needed in applications. If you just doing a onetime request like a google search then no login is needed. Even a simple blog requires login to track your comments. Thats the way the web goes. Thats until someone comes up with a solution like single-sign-on.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, these are the insights we are looking at.</comment>


A Mathematician's Lament [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdf <comment><USER2> Lockhart later published a mathematics book partly inspired by these ideas:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15701297-measurement](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15701297-measurement)</comment>


Numerical Algorithms for Computing Eigenvectors - <AUTHOR> https://marckhoury.github.io/numerical-algorithms-for-computing-eigenvectors/ <comment><USER2> nb: The algorithms that people use in practice (e.g. in MATLAB) are even more sophisticated and based on ARnoldi iterations, an entirely different set of algorithms, through the ARPACK set of numerical routines.</comment>


Ask HN: How much do professors make on books they author? - <AUTHOR>

Hey Folks, Does anyone know how much money does a professor/researcher/scientist/techie make on a book he/she authors. Do publishers get most of the dough? <comment><USER2> In my humanities field (history) I've heard that hardcover books from university presses yield virtually nothing in royalties (on the order of a couple hundred dollars) but that if a book is reprinted as a paperback aimed at undergraduate courses, it can be an order of magnitude more. I've also heard that textbooks are the only scholarly publishing outlet that actually makes healthy royalties - i.e. letting you pay a down payment on a house as opposed to paying for a couple nice dinners out. In terms of hours spent (in the thousands) to money earned (in the hundreds of dollars), writing a typical university press hardcover has got to be one of the lowest-paying professional activities in existence.

As for non-fiction popular press books, I've been told that a typical advance can range from less than 10k to around 50k-60k - the idea being that this money will sustain the author for the 6 months to a year or so it takes to finish the manuscript. (Would that this were feasible for academic books!)

<comment><USER3> In my field (English / English Lit) one of the motivations for the monograph is tenure. That's likely worth more than any royalties off the actual book sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It varies wildly. Some professors such as those from top tier universities are basically best selling authors in their own right so therefore they make a ton. Then you have other staff who are a huge risk by the publisher and they barely make anything.

The real reason college textbooks are out of control has nothing to do with professors getting rich, they aren't. They're out of control because publishers are doing professor's grading in exchange for the professor just assigning the book.

Instead of a publisher selling a book for e.g. $70, they sell it for $100 and bundle with it a "one time use code." This code allows students to log into a publisher run website and turn in assignments, complete problems, and so on.

So effectively the professor has outsourced a large chunk of grading to a third party and better still (for them) it is "free." And all they have to do is assign the $100 book instead of the $70 one, then just log into a free portal and collect all of the grades for the semester.

Publishers naturally get very rich off of this. They only have to set up a web-site once and then they can resell it to dozens of different schools, hundreds of classes. Plus they really cut corners with the grading and questions too (often out-sourcing those to the original authors of the book as part of the contract to update the book annually).

The only way to solve this is to put pressure on colleges, departments, and professors. Publishers are doing what they're meant to: trying to make every cent they can. It is professors and colleges which are failing in their duty and effectively outsourcing part of student's education to a third party for a fee (which the student pays).

The only other thing I can see resolving it is states stepping in and essentially making rules which say that the tuition fees must be all inclusive (e.g. you must get given the textbooks on the first day of class, but the cost of those is included into the main fee so there is nothing hidden).

So even if this scheme continued it would all be out in the open, and students could accurately compare the fee structure between two schools, one that is taking part, and one which is not...

</comment><comment><USER5> Unless you're a rock star (figuratively speaking of course) the publisher keeps the lion's share.

<comment><USER6> How much do publishers pay folks who are writing books?

<comment><USER7> ~10% net receipts is fairly standard I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An extreme outlier, but feed into Google "The house that math built". Very interesting story.</comment>


To Those Who Want To Drop Out of School - <AUTHOR> http://chetansurpur.com/blog/2014/03/dropout.html

<comment><USER2> I grew up in a small town, and after school many days I'd go read books at an alternative bookstore. I was able to give myself an autodidactic education in everything from feminism to anarchism to labour politics and more.

One day I decided to sample from the "education" section, an area which I'd been avoiding. As fate would have it, I started with The Teenage Liberation Handbook.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Teenage-Liberation-Handbook- Educat...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Teenage-Liberation-Handbook- Education/dp/0962959170/)

It was written by a disgruntled former English teacher and explained that the education system robbed children of their creativity to turn out a constant stream of factory workers that wouldn't talk or waste time. School was to keep kids out of gangs.

What really got me, however, was the idea that 75% of what we were doing was in fact "make work". We were in a glorified day care. The only reason they cared about truancy was because the school gets paid based on the number of classes we attend.

I was furious; basically I became a walking Rage Against The Machine song for about two years.

There are pictures.

I'm 35 now, and my only regret about dropping out of high school is that I didn't do it 2 years earlier. All of the people who told me that I was throwing my life away now come to me for life advice. I have started several companies and to date have never woken up in a ditch. I am not plagued with a sense of wonder about what I could have accomplished had I just written those last few exams.

I told my principle and the other students that I did not want the school to take credit for my future success. I was a bit of a shit, sure. But I wasn't entirely wrong, either.

These days, seeing kids like this gives me hope for the future:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY)

<comment><USER3> I loved that book! It really managed to give a voice to the frustrations that I felt with my school, and how I was being taught. The on thing that I would like to emphasize though is that the book isn't advocating just dropping out of highschool, it is talking about replacing the school system's stifling attempts at education with teaching yourself what you want to learn. Make no mistake, you won't be getting out of work by dropping out, but you will be actually spending your time and effort on learning something important and helpful instead of wasting it on recieving a 'standardized' education that only exists to make sure that all the grunts have at least a base level of knowledge about 'stuff'. While it is much easier to just sit in school and be spoonfed information, it is ultimately a waste of your time. Your time would be better spent going out and learning about the stuff that interests you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or, turn it the other way around, don't let bad schooling take years of the best period of your life.

I dropped out after 3-4'ish years of AI, and now I'm working on AI projects year round.

I think it's slightly patronising and playing it safe to say people should consider staying just because they might not ever get the chance to learn these things later in life. For one, that's _their_ responsibility. The knowledge you pick up at a university can deprecate just as much (if its not already). If you don't continue to pick things up later in life, that's your own fault. Secondly, grades and bureaucracy, in my opinion, instil competition and stress in the areas where it doesn't matter. Universities should be concerned with obtaining knowledge.</comment>


Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that - <AUTHOR> http://codeinpython.blogspot.com/2015/10/wanna-quit-your-job-and-become.html <comment><USER2> This is all wrong.

Click-bait title. Some thoughts by a discouraged person in a globalised world and a general conclusion that doesn't make any sense if you read the article.

Maybe the OP shouldn't look for projects in oDesk-type websites. I don't do that and I'm really happy working as a freelancer.

For anyone wondering how to find freelance projects. You should go and look for local clients, networking, contact companies that look for developers and try to persuade them that they can count on you too, etc.

It's a really, really, really big sea of possibilities nowadays for developers.

<comment><USER3> The page's actual title is "...become Upwork freelancer", which is fairly specific and not click-baity IMO. (It looks like the HN title is the same now, changed from just "become a freelancer.")

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, just updated title, because my post about upwork experience, not freelance in general, as many people pointed in comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working as a freelancer for a bit more than a year now and let me offer a counter perspective.

This article is a report from the absolute bottom. Part of the problem is the clientele: data scraping jobs are the shadiest, worst-paid jobs you can take on as a programmer. Also, offering the client to pay what they think is fair is a monumentally bad idea.

The bigger problem is the perception of value. I regularly get requests for doing insane amounts of work (usually it involves cloning a multi-million dollar site or app) for less than I charge for a single day. There are "idea people" out there, who think the goal to success is paying someone 300 bucks to implement a clone of the Android app store. It's a real example by the way. I mainly get my work through the _Who Is Hiring_ thread on HN, and although the overall client quality has been high, it's unavoidable that over half of all requests are absolute bogus.

I suspect I'm not the only one having this experience. Now, these inquiries can be effortlessly ignored (I usually do answer them back with or without a short statement why I'm not taking the job) - however, if _you 're just scraping by_, these "gigs" can totally demoralize you.

To an average person, programming is not a valuable thing, and they do not view it as skilled labour. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. After high school, twenty years ago, a friend and I got into freelancing. A lot of inquiries were pretty much the same as they are now. My friend used to say we should rebrand ourselves as the Web Sherpas, named after the local people who often get hired for grating or dangerous work on behalf of tourists yet receive little compensation for it.

To the freelancer just starting out I say: don't get suckered into these kinds of debates, be friendly but firm in rejecting malicious "job offers". Holding out until the right client comes along can be tough, and you're going to need a financial buffer to do this. But it's definitely the only way to go. People taking $15/hour data scraping jobs are part of the problem because they help distort the value perception of our profession (plus they help making the internet a worse place). Don't be that person.

<comment><USER5> It looks like most of the jobs on HN are full time gigs. Are you pinging them to ask about freelance work?

<comment><USER4> I mistyped, too late to edit it now: I meant to say the "Freelancer" thread. I don't have to contact anyone myself. In fact, I never had much success getting business from people who didn't contact me first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you can write a scraper which performs against any real world data, your new rate is $100 per hour [+]. Your first month you spend 140 hours of pounding the virtual pavement looking for clients outside of the markets for lemons that are the freelancing sites. You spend 20 hours on delivery. Now you have the same $2k that you'd have if you killed yourself working on PayPeanutsGetMonkeys.com _and_ you have the nascent beginnings of an actual freelancing business -- a pipeline, people who are interested in working with you but might not have a project at the moment, a happy client who you can do additional work for and solicit for introductions to peers, etc. Three months later you're at 70% utilization and you start working up your rates.

And yes, this works from the Philippines almost exactly as well as it works from Gifu. There a mere one hour off each other and there is no social advantage that the Japanese engineering community gives you that you cannot trivially duplicate from any cafe in southeast Asia with reliable Internet.

[ + ] Journeyman rates for programming work, trivially paid by a variety of businesses across the first world capable of hiring professionals. This is far under the going rate for people whose primary skill is writing concisely threatening letters, for example.

<comment><USER7> _Your first month you spend 140 hours of pounding the virtual pavement looking for clients outside of the markets for lemons that are the freelancing sites._

This is the part many people have problems with, myself included. Any tips?

<comment><USER8> Firstly, don't take advice that impacts your ability to feed your kids from random guys on the Internet.

Having said that, sell yourself as a niche provider, and act surprised when asked to do generic stuff.

The simplest niche to start with is "lives in the same town as me". not London or NY that does not count - think town of 100k.

Now choose three business needs (sales funnel management, tickets on smartphones, GPS tracking of goods or RFID in a warehouse.). They must be clear things. Things you could plan your architecture for just from hearing the sentence.

Write a blog post on each of them and how they can be solved or improved by software - and software is what you have experience in writing (even if not in this niche.)

PS you are probably thinking this is dodgy now - well spend a day or two making a ticket scanning app on an iPhone. Make sure the essence is there. You will even be able to write another new knowledgable article about how the focal point of smartphone cameras makes ticket scanning difficult / easy / costly whatever

Now find your local business meetups - chambers of commerce, networking meetings. Go to them, and at each of them say "I am looking for businesses that are looking for software developed to solve their problems in sales funnels / tickets on smartphones. Some networking meetups actually expect this of everyone at the meet, some you have to do this on every handshake.

(Pro tip: set up a mailchimp list called "software in middle of nowhere-vile". At the met up say "hey can I get your mail address onto my list ... ". Just push an article onto the list every so often - try monthly.

The key here is to inject a specific need into the existing network of businesses. They will take this around with them and somewhere in the next six weeks will meet someone who is trying to sell tickets and ... They will remember you. Mostly they will have forgotten your contact details but Google for your blog / search your email list will solve that.

It's painful. And it works a lot lot better if you are also calling the likely businesses yourself, contacting their CTOs. (Ps as an ex CTO I _always_ took cold calls, but I always asked "what are you selling". The good ones could tell me.)

But sell a particular niche, and be prepared for the "I know this is not what you usually do but what if ..." That way you are really selling your "generic I can do coding me" but in not a lame and totally forgettable way.

So, have a niche, have an online presence, and sell the niche so that eventually you will be asked to step outside the niche.

Also find local government - hard to get into, pay is regular though.

<comment><USER9> >Firstly, don't take advice that impacts your ability to feed your kids from random guys on the Internet

I'd normally agree but anyone on HN worth their salt knows who Patrick McKenzie is.

<comment><USER8> I meant me :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The trick is to avoid looking for work on platforms like oDesk (now Upwork) where the world is underbidding you. It's a positioning and deal flow issue. Ideally you want clients to refer you on to other clients. And maybe you should call yourself a contractor, agency, solo developer—something like that—instead of a "freelancer."

So it's possible to do well if you quit your job and work as a freelancer, but you need to spend time handling the business side of things: marketing (e.g. social media presence, open source contributions, writing articles, attending events) and sales (getting referrals, closing leads, etc.)

<comment><USER11> Are you speaking from experience? I've found plenty of great gigs on these freelancing sites. You just have to dig a bit and know what the "crap" jobs are, so you can avoid them altogether. The world is not underbidding you. Most times, you negotiate directly with the client and the bids are just a formality.

<comment><USER10> Fair point; although I've done a fair amount of work as an external developer I haven't actually tried to get work on those sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The next part is to set the price for the job. Usually I would say: Ok, data scrape will cost you $75._

That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago.

How about $7,500 for manual data scraping?

On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that would take 6 months to develop for a serious Full-Stack developer.

He works on a multi-billion dollar company but he wants the solution for himself to show off his productivity to his bosses. He wants it on a "$50" budget.

I'm guessing you have fallen at the same scenario where the lady is paying it from her pocket instead of big corp bank account.

<comment><USER13> People want stuff for free. The web is free. They expect next to free for skills that take at least 10 years to actually master. Skill level similar to a doctor.

<comment><USER14> >They expect next to free for skills that take at least 10 years to actually master.

You compare it to a doctor, but really it is more like that of a driver. Most of the people are only concerned about getting from point A to point B. They don't really care about proper cornering techniques or following the best line..

<comment><USER15> 99% of what a doctor does is repetitive. Every year the next batch of new parents come in with the same problems with their kids and get the same prescriptions, people break arms and legs, get flu, have headaches, etc etc. Most people just want to be told what pill to take, they don't care about neuropharmacology or myocardial infractions.

<comment> super-serial Unpopular opinion here... Anyone can be a doctor!

I've had multiple health problems over the years that I've cured by doing the proper research online. Most doctors wouldn't even consider the solutions that helped me because they're always just looking to prescribe a pill. They fix the symptoms and not the cause. You're better off acting as your own doctor, unless you have some traumatic injury that requires surgery.

Disclaimer: This comment is not medical advice. The information presented above is not presented with the intention of diagnosing or treating any disease or condition. This information is for educational purposes only. No responsibility is assumed by the author nor anyone connected with this website for the use of this information and no guarantees of any kind are made for the performance or effectiveness of the recommendations provided.

... and people have to leave a disclaimers like that when they say something like I did. Why don't non-programmers have to leave disclaimers? Our profession is more legit than modern medical practice. I can't wait until expert systems and robots replace doctors!

<comment><USER16> You're partway right. A real world example I had back in college - heartburn. Doc's solution is take a pill when needed (the part thats left over - for the rest of your life). The solution I found online is - change your diet. After a few years of experimenting, I fixed the root cause of my issue, and don't have to be reliant on pills as much as I was before. Obviously this is not applicable to all cases, but the point to take from this is that you need to manage your own health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "I studied CS.."

You asked someone who obviously has no clue what it takes to actually DO the work to value your work. Hence the response you got was someone thinking... "damn.. how hard is it to write a crawler, I can think that through in my head, step by step, easy as pie."

You learned a great lesson - value must be shown and substantiated, clearly and succinctly. People outside of your head have no idea the effort it took you to understand and do what you do. You're putting the onus on them to recognize the effort when it's YOUR responsibility to convey and stand by exactly that.

As you deal with more senior and exec management, you'll come to find that playing dumb is quite often a finely honed skill that preys upon situations exactly like this... which left unchecked, is setting yourself up for a sudden realization down the road you're killing yourself to deliver on a silly deadline at well below your normal rate.

Step back and breathe this lesson in, it's so much more to your benefit than simply defaulting to indignance.

</comment><comment><USER18> Upwork is basically where businesses and entrepreneurs go to outsource work to people living in countries with a lower cost of living. It's a place that's excellent for startups who know how to extract maximum value from foreign workers (I've seen people making upwards of 10,000+% profit from doing this which is honestly crazy) but terrible for the workers themselves. Well ... at least in some instances.

As far as I can tell: most of the jobs on offer at Upwork can be done by complete amateurs but that isn't necessarily the quality you can expect. They have some pretty amazing virtual assistants and not everyone there does mediocre work. Just don't expect to earn a Western wage there without substantial effort (there are US companies who hire in staff as needed but these jobs are like drops of water in the desert.)

<comment><USER19> Can you tell us more about these startups?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Freelancing in IT is kind of a fantastic global phenomenon really. It allows foreigners like this guy to work "in" another country without being blocked by the artificial market distortion of immigration restrictions. Perhaps there are plenty of freelancers willing to make a web scraper for $15. In that case, this guy's got to find what advantages he has over them so he can compete. Just because American employees get paid more doesn't mean everybody else doing the same type of work also deserves to be paid more if the market decides not to. American employees have a special value of being on site in person which is a service Russians and Filipinos can't provide.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is just one of those examples where experienced freelancer will see flag "avoid!" for such kind of clients.

The truth is that places like odesk/up work/anything is just big market. There are clients willing to hire low-rate developers and micro-manage them, but at the same time there are clients who want to hire top talents from the marketplace to deal with complex tasks and get really top solutions.

Somehow I could find really interesting work in high-load startups with 4M visits/m, OpenSource or even Y-combinator startups with good culture.

To be clear, during ~10 years of experience I was at both sides of barricades: hiring developers/designers/marketeers and being software developer/freelancer myself.

So it's just experience grew into skill when you had all that shit like non- paying/rude/time wasting clients and feel how to avoid that.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am Indian and taken back by your comment about Indians/Filipinos. I worked as a freelancer on oDesk; fulltime; around five years ago for more than a year. It was great. I was charging far higher than $15/hr

Probably you should bid for better jobs than scraping websites. I assure you, you be undercutting many Indians/Filipinos by your rate..

</comment><comment><USER23> It takes some effort to find jobs where clients are willing to pay a premium for quality.

I've used Upwork before - if you are experienced enough, you can easily filter the client by a combination of amount spent, average hourly rate paid, prior feedback by contractors, feedback given to contractors and their estimate price (or expertise) for the project. Apply/respond only if the client matches your filter.

But as others have mentioned here, it is cut-throat competition - you have to be patient and very choosy.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've worked remotely for some time(I'm from Brazil) and gave it up, it's not worth it. I burned out on one of the jobs. The sad truth is that the "remote worker dream"(for ppl not in the 1st World) is a lie, most good companies won't risk putting relevant work for remote workers to do and if they do it'll be because they're clueless or because they need REALLY CHEAP work. It's a suckers game, even if you win, you're losing. I'm now working locally and I started making more than I did with the _precious dollars_ at the first post- remote job and I also made friends, got more challenged, learned and growed more and basically my life became much more satisfying and with much more positive possibilities. My life improved immensely in everything, sane hours, respectful relations, less anxiety.. The effects really are innumerable.

In lame remote working there is a very clear power assymmetry going on, you're there because dollars are worth more than your currency and you'll accept subpar work and subpar pay because maybe it will pay off in the currency arbitrage, the employer knows that, trusts in your naive belief that there's gonna be quality work to do as you saw at the blogs, HN and 37signals-like stuff and he has and endless supply of willing(but maybe not capable) people, the hour-pay will always be at the lowest possible. Both sides of it have multiple reasons to not trust each other and will try to take the most value out of the transaction, and even when there's good faith on both ends there are still way too many pitfalls(e.g.: cultural stuff, deep prejudices) and the chance of success will remain low, then the good ones leave and the crap stays, it's toxic. If you're a good developer I think it's a waste of your life to be in this game, I'd only take it for "youre-gonna-retire- early/take-6-month-vacations" money(plus sane hours, weekends, holydays, relevant work, no micromanaging and other basic dignity stuff), absent that, I recommend exploring your local possibilities, even if it means learning to live with your country standards(or, middle class standard, since you're an IT worker), give up the illusion.

</comment><comment><USER25> I used to get contracts through oDesk/UpWork as well ( [https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~015eaccf9967b4f9f4](https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~015eaccf9967b4f9f4) ) However the quality of the jobs I can apply for are a continuously going backwards, even if the quality I am able to deliver is really high compared to many other freelancer on the platform. This is why I almost do not use UpWork to do my freelancing anymore.

</comment><comment><USER26> Quit my job 2 years ago and went freelance. I earn just a bit more than before but I have way less stress and quality of life improved. All my clients are contacts I gathered over the years, never had to look for a client online. My advice is, before you quit make sure you are networked enough to pull it off on your own. Maybe it's a good idea to plan spending the last couple of months at your regular job arranging your first freelance gig before quitting.

<comment><USER27> It's awesome to hear that you're doing well doing freelance work. Do you have any tips for how to find clients, especially the first ones when you can't get them through existing ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there much of a difference between freelancing and software contracting? I've met a handful people who are part of a company (read: agency) of 1-5 and making really good money ($60/hr+). But they're also in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER29> $60/hr is not particularly good money in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER30> Source? What is ideal for Bay Area? Most startups I see have salaries around ~$80k (~$32/hr for 48hr week or ~$40/hr for 40hr week)

<comment><USER31> You realize that the $80,000 includes completely free health care (otherwise $300 a month minimum, if not more if they offer a good plan) with no employee contribution, free dental ($20 a month?), $300 towards vision a year, minimal life insurance maybe, free meals at the office, etc.

Not to mention that you get sick pay, holiday pay, retirement account contributions, etc.

Including the benefits it easily adds up to $100,000 a year of benefits or more depending on how good the benefits are

Besides, if it's not a start-up you're easily making $130,000+ if you have a lot of experience

<comment><USER32> Are there any payroll taxes on top of that salary number? Where I live (Belgium) there's a 33% (probably being lowered to 25% soon) social security tax paid by the employer.

<comment><USER33> In the US your employer pays around 15% of your salary as tax. If you're not working for someone else that's an extra 15.3% you have to pay - it's called "self employment tax".

<comment><USER34> It's not an extra 15%. The total amount of Social Security and Medicare taxes is 15.4%, with the employer paying half and the employee paying the other half. When you're self-employed, you pay both halves. And the employer half is always deductible on your federal income tax, which reduces the sting a little.

<comment><USER35> Good actual data, though the total figure is 15.3%

NB: it drops to 2.9% (just the employer/employee portion of Medicare) after the cap, which is currently $118,500 for both 2015 and 2016. And then the employee portion of Medicare rises by 0.9% above $200K, but that's not specific to self-employment as it's the employee portion only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author gives one bad example and extrapolates that to all of freelance. I've found plenty of well-paying gigs on these sites. As with most things in life, it takes hard work and lots of failure to get there. It's really that simple. The author shouldn't have pursued that job from the beginning. Recognize a loser and move on.

</comment><comment><USER36> I understand your frustration, but you dug that hole for your self. If you want $15/h, tell the client that. Or give a quote. When you just leave it to them, of course they will low ball you.

</comment><comment><USER37> (Context: I'm a top rated freelancer on UpWork that's been using the platform for a year)

Ivan, one of the main reasons you're encountering those types of clients is that your hourly rate is competitive with other freelancers in other parts of the world that will do the same job for $3/hr.

Here's my advise for you:

1) Increase your rate to around $50/hr. Trust me there are plenty of clients that are willing to pay higher rates. 2) Don't bid on every project that comes along. Only focus on projects that you really want to be a part of. 3) If you don't have a portfolio then build some demo sites where you can showcase your work. Given that you like building scrapers you should be a simple web service that does exactly that. 4) Only take hourly jobs OR fixed rate jobs where the client provides a clear, documented scope document that you both can agree to. 5) Don't be afraid to say no. The biggest issue with freelancers in other parts of the world is that they say yes to every single thing....don't be that guy. Clients will respect you more for it. 6) Don't hand the source code over until you have been paid. 7) Stand your ground anytime a client challenges your rate. You're a professional and not a cheap commodity.

</comment><comment><USER38> What was that "Indian/Fillipino guy/girl" part about. Do you thing we don't code? Or is incompetence a function of race in your mind? :(

<comment><USER39> I have solidarity with your point of view. However, I'm French and I once lived in Australia for 3 years. And I can tell you that their programmers know what they're doing, better, on a massive scale, than the French IT sector. They know when to align behind the boss (which is surprising for a French guy) but still know how to stir internal debate, they have understandings of marketing and economics, they master several languages each, they output software faster with better quality. We get paid twice more in Australia than France, and the job requirement was twice higher. It's not even personal skills, it's sometimes how we act in teams.

We need to be humble, fellow Indian/Fillipino guy/girl. Yet they hired me, because as Agile as they are, they don't know anything about CMMi-based corporations ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> People are going to try their luck in negotiations. That's what they do.

"Would $15 be fair to you for this category?"

Counter-offer with something that you think reflects the value you're going to provide. Will she take it? Maybe yes, maybe no - you get idiots in every line of work. If she doesn't take it, and you're dealing honestly, it's her loss.

At the end of the day though, you did let her open. That's kinda on you.

<comment><USER41> I'm a bit confused on that part though, the offer says $15/hour, why did the author write as if the the offer was $3/hour? Isn't that the pay for manual data entry?

<comment><USER40> The price that she quoted him was $15. It's not clear that that was $15 an hour, or whether it was $15 for the entire job (regardless of how long it might take.) Considering that the writer questioned whether she thought it would only take him one hour to complete the task, that would be the way that I would be inclined to interpret the way it was taken (if not necessarily the way it was meant): Five hours work at three dollars an hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm glad that Upwork is allowing first world folks to pay second and third world folks to earn great income (for them) at doing remote IT work, but I don't see Upwork as a way for unfairly-economically-isolated first-worlders to earn a living.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm not familiar with upwork but I've been surprised looking at other freelancing sites and seeing the range of salaries.

It went from $15/hr - $40/hr - $100/hr. But what surprised me was the mix of people in each range; including Microsoft MVPs in the middle and idiots at both other ends.

For reference; $40/hr is about a low-end full-time salary and $120-$150 is what would get you someone hopefully decent from an agency. So pretty much everyone was undercutting what I think was a reasonable amount to request for contract work.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have similar experience. I tried to bid to some projects there, but it's just seems to impossible. Every project got 50-100 bids and my bid is just lost. And, as I'm not going to work for free ($20/hr currently), probably my price and lack of reputation makes it impossible to win any project.

I like the idea of this site, but everyone undercuts so much. I live in a poor country, but even there I can make more on a full-time job.

It seems for me that freelancing is really hard. Much harder than work on local site.

</comment><comment><USER45> I used to do jobs at elance.com and peopleperhour.com but I have not accepted a single invitation in almost 3 years. I keep receiving them, sometimes 10 times in a single week. Prospective clients from these sites nowadays get 10 seconds to convince me that they are not wallowing in bullshit, and up till now they have all failed the test. So, there's nothing wrong with these sites, but you will indeed be better off if you save your time for more interesting people.

</comment><comment><USER46> So people should not become freelancers, based on your single bad experience, make sense. I was expecting some data backing up your statement or at least proper story.

tl;dr - This guy is freelancer and few days ago he was contacted by stupid client who thought he will work almost for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was just telling about my experience working on odesk (read biggest freelance website). This is not first case of stupid client and I'm not first day there.

What kind of backup? Link to my profile? Ok will update post now.

<comment><USER47> Sergey, one advice - please do NOT work for $15/hr. All it takes to charge $XXX/hr (or $8X-$9X/hr ) is just to ask for it. Seriously. And keep away from odesk/upwork/etc.. race to the bottom sites. Search and contact prospective clients yourself - as if you'd looking for standard job. No middle-man is needed here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. Actually I already started to search full time job. Enough odesk freelancing for me. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've been working as a freelancer for about 10 years, getting clients from word-of-mouth, making about 2-4 times what people make here working 4-6 hours/day.

It all depends if you can sell yourself.

<comment><USER49> He's not opposing freelance work, he's opposing using odesk/upwork to get contracts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I tried my hand on vworker.com I got a great reputation (top 100) but when I added up I had made about $2 an hour overall, competing head to head with third worlders is not easy.

</comment><comment><USER51> Some guy doesn't have marketing/coding skills and complains about it instead of thinking constructively.

What all the fuss is about?

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, like one of my friends is saying "friendly speaking" I think he took the right decision :)

</comment><comment><USER49> The client side of the equation may be bad but the profile building side is excellent.

</comment><comment><USER53> back in the day when I was doing scraping competing with mailhouse rates, I would guess how much the mailhouse would cost and quote half. Worked well for all concerned.

</comment><comment><USER54> Who is upvoting this garbage. Come on hacker news!

</comment><comment> d--b this is a post about Upwork, change the title back...

</comment><comment><USER55> > Even my profile states $15 per hour

Don't do that. I started with $40/h, raised it to $50/h and still consider it low. I also avoid fixed price projects and I'd rather wait for good jobs rather than work for peanuts. There's enough open source work to keep me active when the freelancing market is in a lull.

</comment><comment><USER56> The hell, the title of the blog does not even relates to the story he had. And that story, is just part of many stories of freelancing as ups and downs.

Why would you ask your Client about the rate if your not ready to hear low ballers deal. Its a competition of doing the job, but that doesn't mean you have to low your price to get the deal. You may do the task for about an hour only but they have to know that you spend hundred of hours to get that done right away.</comment>


Amazon website goes down for 40 minutes, costing the company $5 million - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/19/amazon-website-down/ <comment><USER2> Revenue divided by minutes a naïve way to look at it. They of course lose money, but not nearly as much as you'd think -- people simply just come back later.

Source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147461)</comment>