If average salaries are 80-100k why does everyone keep getting 40-60k offers? - <AUTHOR> Are people's salaries really as high the numbers people are throwing around here? Around 80-100k for an average salary? My experience has been quite different. Is this just in big tech centers like SF, Seattle and NYC? Mainly consultant salaries? The people I know graduating with masters degrees from regional universities are getting 60k offers with undergrads getting 40-50k offers.
A little background for myself:
I've had a couple jobs. First was a student sys admin at U of MN computer science dept at about $10/hour (I think). Then in the Army where I made around $30k by the time I got out.
My next job in the industry was a relatively small company in the Portland area and there I made about $47k when I left and all new grads/entry level people were being offered $40k, no exceptions. The people there that had 5-10 years of experience were only making in the $65k range. And the senior developer/general manager was only making about $100k.
When I was offered the job I asked for $55k which I thought was really pushing it for only having some experience developing stuff in the army and in my classes.
So, what gives? What's with the Buick sized disconnect between my experiences and what I hear being discussed here on HN? Is there really a 40k difference in salaries just based on location?
All in all I consider myself a very good programmer (Honestly I'd guess in the top 80% of programmers, I haven't met one that's better than myself, but I don't consider myself nearly as experienced as a lot of the people here) that's passionate about coding and I've been doing it since I was in middle school, so I really want to be able to value myself accurately, but something just feels off about it. Looking at everything going on I'm thinking of leaving grad school if I can get offers like this?
Am I just marketing myself wrong? Any feedback would be appreciated.
You can check me out at github.com/solarmist or http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joshua-olson/5/521/88b. <comment><USER4> Simple. You keep getting emails from recruiters advertising $50k/year Senior Developer positions for the same reason that you get 200 resumes from completely unqualified people for every position you advertise.

Good positions fill quickly, just like good developers find jobs quickly. What's left is bad developers and bad jobs.

So what you're seeing is not hundreds of employers who don't know what the market rate is. It's dozens of employers who refuse to believe the market rate is where it is, and therefore continue advertising for the same position over and over. There will always be that $50k Senior Dev position available in Hillsboro because they're never going to fill it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Short answer: yes, it's location.

Slightly longer answer: It almost always pays to go to the center of your field. You get paid less at a relatively small company in Portland because _they_ get paid less. Firms in Silicon Valley focus on eliminating whole industries; when they succeed at that, they capture basically _all_ the value that the incumbents in that industry had. That gives them large quantities of cash, and since there are so many other companies in the region competing for the same talent pool, a lot of that cash goes to employees.

BTW, $80-100K/year is quite low in Silicon Valley. That might be a starting salary at Microsoft for someone fresh out of school.

<comment><USER6> Although the other side of the coin is that Silicon Valley has much higher living costs. Does this make a big difference? Do people in Silicon Valley have significantly higher qualities of life, or is there an argument for staying away from the expensive hubs?

<comment><USER7> I grew up on the East Coast, but I love Silicon Valley. Not necessarily as much as I loved NYC, but they're very different.

Silicon Valley has really, really nice weather, almost to the point of monotony. It rained something like 3 times last summer, and the rest of the time it was 75-85 degrees without being too humid. There's a lot of asian cuisine available, and some of the best restaurants (of many varieties) in the world to the North in Napa. Nature is extremely accessible, and some of the best skiing in the US is a relatively short drive (the Rockies are much, much better than the Appalachians). It's a day-tripper's heaven.

As for downsides, Houses tend to be smaller, and even those are absurdly expensive. Rents in the better parts are just a cut below low-end NYC rents. The atmosphere could be described as "Irrational Exuberance" or more commonly as an echo chamber, which can be great encouragement if you're trying to do something crazy, but it can also severely weaken your BS filter if you're not careful. Silicon Valley itself is better-than-average suburban sprawl, but it's still suburban sprawl. The public transit system is lackluster compared to NYC, but it is an option, at least. Access to a car is generally necessary (ZipCar might work, though).

There are a bunch of other upsides and downsides, but those are the impressions off the top of my head from having lived there a bit less than a year. Overall, I really like it.

<comment><USER8> It is about 15 hours to the Rockies. Did you mean the Sierra Nevada mountains?

<comment><USER7> Sorry, you're right, I was lumping the two together. Convenient and cheap flights to the Rockies, though. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Voluntary response bias. The higher earners are more willing to advertise what they make.

Also, I've heard that companies prefer to pay what a job (they think) is worth, regardless of location. Just something I've heard.

<comment><USER10> Companies pay whatever makes sense to pay from a business sense of view. If there is supply of software developers working for 65k/yr, and they don't know how to get 50% more value out of a 100k/yr developer (either because they're unable to figure out, or not interested, or because their business hinges on something else and doesn't scale with better software), then it does not make any sense for them to pay more.

And of course, they will think that whatever they pay is whatever it is worth, because they have no other indicator of fair prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're the best programmer you know, then you're probably not in a competitive enough market to drive prices up for programmers.

In a place like Silicon Valley, it's impossible to not meet somebody that's better than you.

Either that, or I'm seriously underestimating your programming ability!

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol, I'm probably just a decent sized fish in a small pond, but I do keep growing, so I've been looking to find myself a bigger pond.

<comment><USER12> I made the move to Silicon Valley about four years ago. It was one of the best choices I've made in my life. I wish I would have made the move a long time ago.

If you only make around 60k now, don't expect to get a 100% raise once you move over to a tech hub, unless you are an amazing negotiator. Shoot for 85-90 (plus some stocks). Don't waste time at a company that doesn't have a lot of growth potential. Work harder and output more than the rest of your team does. Stay visible, make sure they know the value of your contributions. A few 10% raises/promotions later and you could be up to 120k+ in no time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These "salary" threads of the past week have been a bit depressing to me. Like you, most of the salaries discussed in these threads make me feel like I've been and am still underpaid.

And this one is no other. And I live in the Bay Area… my internship was nowhere the $8k mentioned at some point for Google and my first salary was pretty far from the $100k that are floating around here once again.

That being said, I actually checked salaries of H1b (I was one too) at my current and previous companies and mine looked decent in comparison. So, I'm not sure if it's matter of me picking the wrong/cheap companies (and being bad at negotiating, but I know that) or that there is some selection bias going on.

<comment><USER14> Salaries in the Bay Area remind me of sushi restaurants in Tokyo. The vast majority are in a fairly normal band that we can all relate to. Then there are the upper echelon which make a very sudden and alarming jump in price. Much like how Chowhound focuses on the creme de la creme and its commensurate pricing, HN focuses on the top 1-5% of tech jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Total nitpick, but by saying that you are "in the top 80% of programmers" do you really mean you consider yourself in the top 20%? Because if you are in the top 80, there could definitely be a reason why you are drawing such a low salary :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You got me. I hope I'm in better than the top 80%, but I'm doubting myself now that I wrote that... :P

<comment><USER16> You did it again! How could anyone be better than the top x%? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> HN ate up my first comment so here's a shorter one (relatively).

1) Becoming a Top 5% coder will end up being a much better thing to focus on than how much money you can earn by leaving grad school.

2) I got a 48% pay increase once. An article at Quintessential Careers - <USER2> never name a price/desired salary and never disclose your past salary. There are a TON of little things like this that programmers just don't realize.

Most companies are losers - they would rather pay you $50K for $100K of work and have you miserable than pay you $100K and have you happy and contribute $1 million worth of work. You have to get them to pay you a lot.

3) Do you really want to leave grad school for an offer like this? Is it the money - because if you like grad school but would leave for a job that you don't like just for money then it would be a colossal failure.

4) Eastern Wa and Portland. Waste of your life if you're a developer.

Ideal - Silicon Valley, NYC. Very Good - Seattle, Austin, Boston, perhaps places like Colorado etc.

Portland people are cool and girls are amazing. However, if you want to be the best you have to go where the best are.

5) Your post about 'Let down by School' etc. Get out of that thinking - <USER3> are responsible 100%. You were let down only by yourself.

6) You have to figure out what markets out of the ones you like are hot.

iPhone and Android App developers are charging $100 per hour or more. So 470 hours (10 weeks) for what you are saying average salary ($47K). It's going to become even more. I'm not even talking about the best. This is top 15% of mobile app developers.

7) Why exactly do you care whether you make $50K a year or $100K?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughtful comments. 1.) It's not just the money, or even mainly the money (I lived quite happily on my $45k). I want a place where I can become a Top 5% coder and I don't see that happening in Eastern Washington.

3.) I do enjoy grad school, but I'm at a mediocre school and I've learned that I enjoy coding much more than research.

4.) I'm in Eastern WA temporarily due to personal reasons, my next stop is either Seattle or the Valley.

5.) That post was more in response to what I hear from other people, trying to encourage them to get out of that thinking. If that's how I came across I'd better look it over again though. I'm quite happy with where I'm at and I do try to take responsibility for my actions.

7.)Main reason I can think of is companies that value software pay those kind of salaries vs. companies looking for code zombies. I've been in a shop nearly like that and I don't want to repeat it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=software+engineer&l1=San...](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=software+engineer&l1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&tm=1)

There's a huge race for talent right now. You've got a peculiar background compared to most startup hires, but if you've got the chops to make it thru an interview, I imagine you'd get snatched up in the Valley (or Seattle) for $100-110k, easy. In the Valley, probably more.

I know a great company in Seattle that'd give you a $12k signing bonus, give ME $12k for referring you, and give you an iPad just for making it to the interview process.

Disclaimer: No idea if you can ship software, how broad your skills are (web dev front end to backend? Sysadmin chops? iOS?), etc.

<comment><USER19> Who's the company?

<comment><USER18> SEOmoz. Great company, great team, amazing growth, great founder.

<comment><USER20> That offer has been on the table awhile. I suspect they're desperate for top talent. I don't mean this in a bad way, but I highly doubt an impromptu conversation in this particular topic will be a winner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know the figures you are looking at, but an _average_ salary isn't the same as the _median_ salary. It's like that old joke: "Bill Gates walks into a bar and makes everyone a millionaire, on average." One programmer getting a $500K salary and 10 getting $50K leaves a $90K average.

Now if you are just using the words average and median as substitutes and are seeing figures talking about $80K _median_ salaries, then the "location/experience" are likely to be the explanation, but if you really are hearing about average salaries, you have to factor in that, in systems with the characteristic imbalance of wages, something like 85% of programmers will get below-average salaries.

<comment><USER22> But technically the _mean_ salary isn't the same as the _average_ salary either. In fact they are _both_ 'averages.'

(sorry, nitpicking. Your point stil stands)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anecdote - one of my friends (who is a good, but not mindblowing developer) is drawing a 180k$ in San Fransisco for (essentially) maintaining a CRUD insurance app in Rails. He is being wooed by a social gaming (yeah I know!) company who is offering him 200k. So I'd think 100k would be low _in San Fran_. Just as a contrast, 100k is a toprange salary for a _really_ good developer in Bangalore. By and large only managers make that kind of money hereabouts.

My friend says that he isn't able to get people to join his present company even at those rates and the only people attending interviews are clueless Indian developers who are waiting for their Green Cards[1] but hardly know how to create a table in MySQL. The good people who do join soon leave for better companies or startups.

[1] I am Indian myself fwiw. I am not saying all Indian devs are clueless, just that those applying at my friend's company are.

<comment><USER14> $200k base salary in the Bay Area is Engineering Manager level - VP at a well- funded startup, or Sr Director at a larger company. Not sure what your friend is doing.

$75-$100k represents 0-5 year engineer in the vast majority of cases. Most mid-career folks earn between $130-$160k.

n.b. There are definitely exceptions. Difficult and specific hires will generally command market rate + 50%.

<comment><USER23> "$200k base salary in the Bay Area is Engineering Manager level - VP at a well-funded startup, or Sr Director at a larger company. Not sure what your friend is doing."

First I think it is 180k gross salary, not really "base". Second, as I said, all I know is that he is working on some kind of CRUD Rails Insurance App that makes its company millions of dollars. He is just a competent Rails dev. No genius of any kind or any extraordinary skills like, say Linus Torvalds. Maybe he is being paid a premium because he is the only capable dev in the company. Maybe he just got lucky. He has a dozen years or so of experience. I really don't know any details hence the "anecdote" prefix.

If it helps, I knew middle managers at Intuit were drawing well above 200k US$ at nowhere near "Senior Director" level. My immediate boss _in India_ was drawing around that much. And his boss about 300k. Another "dotted line"/ matrix org( heh!) immediate superior was getting >250k as well. This guy was a "Chief Architect" and not manager at all. (well in Intuit all these positions are very political and not really about tech at all, still) And _he_ had a 3-4 layers above him before he reached the boardroom players at Intuit. I don't consider GlassDoor to be authoritative but here is a report for a position (plain jane "architect") that would be one level below my "Chief Architect" boss.

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Intuit-Software-Architect- Mo...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Intuit-Software-Architect-Mountain- View-Salaries-EJI_IE2293.0,6_KO7,25_IL.26,39_IC1147431.htm)

Seems to bear out my thesis that these kind of salaries aren't all _that_ rare. To repeat, I am _not_ saying GlassDoor estimates are accurate, just that in this case, it bears out my personal experience.

Another anecdote: My title at Intuit (India) had an additional (and empty) "Senior Program Manager" tacked onto "Architect" and I was getting > 100k _in India_. (In Intuit, when I was there, Indian salaries were roughly half US salaries for the same position.) They still find it very hard to hire senior technical people. Go figure.

My personal hypothesis on such things is that salaries follow _perceived_ (vs actual) value add. I had nothing to do at Intuit except attend endless meetings about meetings and write the occasional email. I quit in 6 months.(It helped that I really didn't need the money and I could make an equivalent amount but actually working for it (which I am doing now touch wood)). My former division at Intuit has delivered nothing (except PowerPoint) in the last couple of years but everyone who is still there keeps drawing their salaries. Some even got raises.

So, yes. Intuit is a cash flush/high paying company, but I still wouldn't really blink at someone getting 200 k in San Fransisco, without being anything like a VP, but hey I don't live there. What do I know? I am glad to concede to people "on the ground".

PS : I also have friends, who are _really_ good developers working on very cutting edge projects in Google (Mountain View) who don't make anything near 250 k. They are very fulfilled by their work and don't seem to care. So it seems to be all over the place. But there certainly _are_ very normal devs getting >200k in SV. (and of course many more at WallStreet companies but that is probably a separate discussion).

<comment><USER14> 180k package makes a lot more sense. 140k base + 20% bonus target + 10k stock is what a lot of senior developers make.

In my experience "chief architects" do tend to get paid a lot, regardless of direct reports.

By the way - this discussion is very confusing since most people in this thread are talking about base salary, yet you seem to consistently talk about entire package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what is the net income of 100k after you pay taxes. As a guy living in Europe I don't have a clue about how it works in US, for instance if in UE the company is spending 100k euro for you, you end with 45k in your pockets (there are differences between countries but more or less those are the numbers). And this is unrelated to the amount of money you spend. If you buy a car the amount of taxes you pay does not change, you can use your 45k to buy what you want or to take them in your bank account (that's lame IMHO people spending should be advantaged).

So what you can do with 45k year? Well this is 3750 euro per month, it's enough to pay for a decent house, to pay your bills, to go for vacation a few times per year. If you have sons better your wife to work as well, otherwise life it is still feasible but with restrictions.

What you can do with $100k in US and how much of this are spent in taxes?

Edit: btw a difference is that in UE you don't have to think too much about putting money in the bank in order to retire, the government will provide you with a post-work salary that is proportional to your past income (at least this is how it works in Italy, France, Germany, ...). Also medical stuff are mostly free.

<comment><USER25> I'm from Europe too. There are some specifics, but you can look at Wikipedia and find calculators online that explain what is deducted from gross income.

You have social security, medicare, state and federal income tax.

You should take into account that some parts of the US are more expensive than others, and that state income tax is not the same for every state. Also, 401k (pension plans) and some other types of savings, investments are deductible from the taxes.

It all depends on who you live with, do you have children, etc.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the information, one of the most interesting thing for me is if in most states in US you can deduct taxes if you buy normal things, like a car, a computer, and so forth. In Italy everybody cites the US as example of how taxes should be payed (at least about the general model: everybody pays but less, if you don't pay: huge troubles). One if this dogma about the US system is that you can deduce everything you spend more or less.

<comment><USER26> This is inaccurate. The things you list (car, computer, other consumer purchases) are not personal deductions under the US tax system.

Relatively few personal purchases are deductible. The most heavily used personal deduction is mortgage interest (interest, not principal). Otherwise most personal deductions are things like tuition, major healthcare expenses, tax paid elsewhere (sales, property), and alimony payments.

And for a majority of Americans, none of these things actually appear on their tax return. Only 41% of American taxpayers file a return listing the deductions above ("itemize"), usually because they carry a mortgage.

The other 59% just take a single deduction ("standard deduction") of about $5800 per adult (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deduction>).

Finally, if someone found legitimate ways to deduct the things you listed (for example, they were unreimbursed business expenses), they would run into the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). AMT is a floor on the percent of income which must be paid as tax. In calculating AMT, most deductions get ignored (and it ignores one's effective tax rate in other years).

<comment><USER20> There are a lot of available credits though.

The American Opportunity/Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits can be applied when using the standard deduction. Also, many cars have significant tax credits though it seems the bar has been raised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Firstly location.

Secondly just out of school should get significantly below average salaries. You don't realize it until you've been out in the working world for a bit. But people learn a _lot_ in their first few years of being in the real world.

Thirdly I wonder whether your figures are accurate. My experience is that people's impressions of other people's salaries are often out of sync with reality. In part because companies push people who make more to never let on that they do, so that other people don't push to make more money. (I've had the experience at multiple jobs of being told directly that letting people know my salary is a fireable offense.)

<comment><USER28> My understanding is that making you not disclose your salary is unenforceable. They can get mad at you, but they don't actually have recourse.

<comment><USER27> In an "at will" state you can be fired at any time for no reason.

I doubt that enforcement would be a problem if they wished to enforce it.

<comment><USER29> They'd have to prove you disclosed it. As has been discussed here recently, there are plenty of ways to do that among colleagues while maintaining plausible denial.

<comment><USER30> If it's at-will, they can fire you for whatever reason (or no reason). I don't think they have to prove anything, except that you signed an at-will employment agreement.

<comment><USER29> Sure, but if the word on the street was that Company X fired somebody for something as petty as disclosing salary, which again is not enforceable in most States in the US, then I'd love to see them be able to hire effectively in this market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> No one has said anything about the language or platform?

Please don't make this an argument about what language is better, blah blah blah, but the language you specialize in makes a difference -- at least in terms of salary.

From my limited experience, Ruby/Rails pays significantly more than PHP or .NET . I hear Java pays even more... Just sayin...

Edit: This is why I love these salary threads. We could have just potentially changed the OP's life (for the better I hope), even if to most people its just an annoying topic that keeps coming up on HN.

</comment><comment><USER32> Two things worked for me.

1\. Switch Jobs

2\. Ask for at least $10K more money each time.

1: Companies are aren't going to just give you money. They don't have much incentive to do that. Most people take their 3% cost of living increase (plus bonus and a few % if you are lucky).

Most of my contemporaries agree. You have to switch jobs.

2: If you don't ask for it, you aren't going to get it. HR depts have more flexibility on hiring than raises. So coming in, make sure you get the salary/bonus/vacation/etc you want right off the bat.

</comment><comment><USER33> Bay Area salaries are really that high. However, the standards for hiring are much higher out here. Interviewers out here can really smell your actual ability; BS that would work to get you a job on the East Coast doesn't fly out here.

So the salaries are higher, but the standards for hiring are also that much higher. If you are that good at programming, come to the Bay Area and you'll find a job. There are always people hiring...

</comment><comment><USER34> did _everyone_ fail statistics? average doesn't mean _anything_ without knowing standard deviation. if possible just show me the distribution itself.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think part of it is Portland -- Anecdotal, but I know a large number of people in the area who are relatively good at dev and used to work for HP or another local company and are now unemployed or underemployed and have a house that's severely underwater.

A few Seattle companies I know of have hired portland telecommuters because they've had trouble finding good talent up here. I have no idea how much that is happening outside of my experience.

</comment><comment><USER36> According to this [1] cost of living calculator if you're making $55k in Portland you'd need $72k in San Jose - to maintain the same standard of living. A 30% increase in cost of living. So, anything more than that you'd actually be earning more in relative terms.

[1] [http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=55000&city1=541590...](http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=55000&city1=54159000&city2=50668000)

</comment><comment><USER37> The companies you're targeting value the programming work being done / needed at $x/year. If you feel like that is too low, I suggest targeting companies that value your skills at a higher rate.

Also, tech companies or companies started by or run by tech people may pay at a higher rate because they know the value of the skills and want to attract and invest in top quality employees.

</comment><comment><USER38> Hi Joshua,

I examined the repositories you have on github, looked at your linked-in registry, and then followed a link to your blog at <http://solarmist.blogspot.com>

There wasn't a lot to go on, but the main thing which I noticed was I didn't see any evidence of great depth in your skills. You have breadth pretty well covered. Your Linked-in page shows C, C++, Java, Perl, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Scheme, Lisp. But then when I looked at your github page, I saw a SICP repository, where you had been recently working on the exercises from SICP. Great! I commend you on that! But I only saw exercises from the first 3 exercises in Chapter 1, dated from about two weeks ago. Maybe you do know Scheme really well --- it could be that you simply haven't uploaded them, or I couldn't find it while Googling you. But the impression I got of the seven projects which you uploaded to Github, was that you're a bit of a dilettante. You've started a lot of projects, enough to upload them to github or fork them so you would have your own repo on github.... but then I didn't see a whole lot of sustained effort by _you_.

Your resume also shows that at different jobs you've had to use many different languages and technologies. This is not unusual, but what you need to do is to find a way to make yourself become a top-notch expert in one or two areas. Breadth is good, and you'll get some points for that. But if you go and compete to get a job at companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, who want to accept only the very best, you'll need one or two areas where you are quite deep in your expertise.

Fortunately, that's not _that_ hard. While there's a lot of Malcolm Gladwell's work that I don't really agree with, his claim from his book Outliers that 10,000 hours (5 years of full-time sustained effort) is what it takes to become an expert in a field sounds right to me. Focus is key.

Ten years of experience, if it's a few years doing PL/SQL, a few years doing Javascript, a few years doing ML, and a few years doing Java, isn't as impressive as ten years working in a single area, where people are asking you to present at conferences and people recognize you as a leader in a particular area. This may be obvious, but someone who has done the latter will easily be getting far, far more than $100k, trust me. :-)

Something that I would suggest is that even if you have a pretty low interest in changing employers, try to get in some interviews. As long as you would be at least open to accepting a job offer, it's fair game to try getting an interview at companies like Intel, Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Most of them will ask you to code on a whiteboard. Getting good at that is a skill like any other. So practice is good. Based on the questions that they ask you, it might also help to calibrate yourself about how good you really are.

The other thing I'd suggest is that you try examining what languages and technologies these companies are most interested in, and then use that as a filter to the languages and technologies which really interest you. For example, it looks like you are at least half-way decent at being a Java programmer. OK, that's pretty marketable. But maybe your research will show that a number of companies want both C++ _and_ Machine Learning. If that's what you find, then you better check --- and be ruthlessly honest with yourself --- how good your C++ chops really are. And if you are going to using github as your portfolio, maybe you should have some demonstration code of significant C++ and ML projects that you have worked on. (And I don't mean forking a ML code base and then making a few changes; if you're not going to start from scratch, you should have at least created a significant module or plug-in from scratch, and then make sure it's clear what is yours and what you grabbed from elsewhere.)

<comment><USER39> Let me echo what tytso said. I work / have worked / have gotten job offers for a bunch of companies you've heard of and I would never consider < $100K+ unless for a pre round A. At places I've interviewed and at places I've hired I think there is an expectation that there is at least one language that you know really really well. If it's java, I expect you not only to know the syntax backwards and forwards but to have used at least one of {groovy, jruby, jython, scala, clojure}, to be able to discuss design patterns, failure modes of the gc, how to detect them and how to work around them, to know things like how to minimize memory usage, to have opinions on how the jvm team did generics and possible alternatives, to have used at least one common editor and know keyboard shortcuts by heart, to know how to use associated tools like ant, jar, ivy, maven, sbt, etc.

So my recommendation is you need to have at least one tech stack -- and I'd avoid .net, but some companies do use it -- where you're an expert and you're the person in your company that people come ask questions of.

<comment><USER40> I agree with some of what you said here, and maybe i have misunderstood what you're trying to convey, but allow me this little rant here...

Some of it seems excessive. I've been developing in C and Java for 11 years now. I make a tad under $100k and live in Atlanta, Ga. I have yet to need to know or discuss failure modes of the GC by heart, how to detect them and work around them by heart, how the JVM team did generics and possible alternatives, nor to know keyboard shortcuts by heart. I have however come across these things in my career and had to takle them. Guess what I did? Googled. Then I got back to writing code, what my job soley exists for.

It seems absurd that any company would require these things. If I was interviewed at a company asking me to talk about these things in the interview, I would walk out simply because I would feel it was completely irrelevant to how good of a software engineer I am. I really hate being interviewed by people who are more interested in asking obscure questions that just want to prove how smart they are (when we all know they probably just looked up that question/answer before the interview), rather than talk to me about coding and problem solving.

Things like memory use, basic algorithms, what design patterns are, collections, code quality, software development life cycle, unit testing, general coding problems, maybe some things about hibernate (if you use it), basic database knowledge, their favorite language and why and let's not forget overall personality and how they will fit into your team are far more important areas to cover. Not some obscure questions that will be used maybe once in your lifetime or on extremely rare occasions at the new job that can also be looked up on google when you need an answer for that rare occasion.

I even shutter when I think about design patterns being discussed because they're so over used and bad developers focus way too much on putting well known ones into their code base even when it may not be called for and just create so much more bloat for no good reason other than to feel like they're smart. An understanding of design patterns is great, but forcing people to describe any of them but the well known basics is just dumb.

The interviews my team gives exist around these things and I can honestly say we have yet to hire someone that didn't know their stuff very well and fit into the team nicely from the start.

I have only been without a job for a max of 3 months when I was laid off once and I have job hopped a lot, especially in my early career (which, there is a dirty secret there... That's how you make more money when you're staring off!). I have walked out in the middle of interviews before when it was clear that the person was asking obscure questions just to feel superior. I don't want to work with people like that...

Interviewers need to focus more on asking questions that software engineers face on a daily basis and less on odd and obscure things that can easily be researched in a short amount of time online when and if the problem ever presents itself.

I apologize if I got off topic or missed your point entirely. I was just having a conversation with someone about this very thing and it seemed relevant based on what I read.

<comment><USER41> _I have yet to need to know or discuss failure modes of the GC by heart, how to detect them and work around them by heart_

Knowing - and having experience of - the failure modes of your platform is one of those things that is invaluable.

Knowledge of GC issues in the JVM is something that indicates (a) you've worked on applications that tax the JVM, and (b) you are the person who people turn to when the shit hits the fan.

Sure, Googling will help here, but you need to have a pretty good understanding of the problem space in order to understand what to Google for. For example, how do you get from "the application is slow" to a query for "sizing the New Generation in the JVM garbage collector" unless you already know when to suspect GC issues, how to use jvmstat etc etc?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since I STILL seem to be low balling the figure what WOULD be an average salary in the valley? For someone just out of grad school?

<comment><USER42> 90-105k

Read this before doing every interview:

Game Theory, Salary Negotiation, and Programmers <http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=67>

<comment><USER43>
        When the company is the first to give a number, you always get the job, and you have a 50% chance of getting a high salary.

No... Let's say you're going to the store to get milk. Either milk will be on sale or milk will not be on sale. We've covered the universe with our proposition. Nevertheless, the presence of two options is irrelevant to their respective probabilities. Assigning a uniform prior to the options is downright absurd.

I believe what he means to say is this:

        No employer is going to lower their offer because you've asked for more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I would honestly say you are being short changed if you get 55K. Back in the day (some 10+ years ago), I got 55K with 2 years experience in the midwest.

Today, I hear from friends who still live out there that not much has changed, but I would be looking at 70K in salary with 2 years experience.

If you can, hold out for better opportunities and please, please, please, don't sell yourself short. A 15K would not make a difference to these companies. It will make a difference to you. I went to silicon valley from mid-west with a 30K jump in salary back in the day. I shared an apartment in the bay area and living costs didn't matter that much. The money did.

</comment><comment><USER45> $80-100k understates the salaries in Silicon Valley. $100k isn't even a recent college grad salary, it's usually closer to $110k + $40k in other compensation == $150k right out of college. A few years of experience pushes you well over the $200k mark. Heck, interns even get paid $8k/month which is almost $100k/year.

Seriously, brush up your resume and apply to the major firms.

By the way, I should note that cost of living and taxes are much higher here. Standard rent is >$2k (which is nothing compared to some parts of NYC, I guess...)

<comment><USER30> Interesting - I'm only a year and a half out of college, and I don't think any of my undergrad CS friends were making a $110k salary right after graduation (more in the 60-90 range).

I've always used a rule of thumb that rent is $1k/month/bedroom around Palo Alto, a bit less in Mountain View / Sunnyvale / Redwood City, and a bit more in SF. >$2k/month/bedroom sounds extraordinarily high - where were you seeing that?

<comment><USER46> 60-90k is what I'd expect to see from something outside the San Fran area as a college grad. I don't have personal experience with starting salaries there, but I would expect them to be much higher due to a higher cost of living.

<comment><USER30> From the Stanford CS department for 2009-2010, regarding CS/EE undergrads, size = 140 students:

> Salary offers ranged from $65,000 to $95,000. The average salary offer was > $79,333. The median salary offer was $ 80,000.

Granted (heh), this doesn't include stock options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Here is Luxembourg, the minimum salary for qualified people (at least 2 years of study or experience) is 1900€+ per month with nearly no tax. For the same level of health insurance and retirement plan, one would to win approx 65k$ in USA. Don't forget I'm talking about the minimum legal salary, with that salary you can still consider yourself poor. Middle class people wins at least twice as much. Are people in USA so poor that 80-100k$ seems like eldorado?

<comment><USER48> Regarding US average salaries, Wikipedia says:

* The average personal income is about $40K. * The average household income is about $50K. * About 20% of households make over $100K. * But only about 6% of individuals have personal incomes over $100K.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> As the one who will be hiring our first employees (and as a non-technical founder) I am curious what people think about and expect from a brand new start up with low level ($600k +/-) funding for year one. We cannot offer huge salaries but will offer milestone increases over the first few years to arrive at higher levels. We're talking around $70k to start, increasing up to $90k at the end of the first year and continuing to increase as we grow. Options are naturally part of the deal as well.

Also, we're considering using a location that would offer our team a live/work option in a new complex close to the beach (in So. Cal) rather than just traditional commercial space. Would having free housing in a pretty sweet new pad be an incentive to take a bit less cash? It saves the company a bit of money that first year and saves the team in cost of living expenses at the same time. Anyone care to share their opinions/advice/experiences?

</comment><comment><USER50> Putting aside location for a moment, its because averages are _averages_. Just because a number is in the middle means that's what most people earn. Suppose the top 10% make 200k and the bottom 60% make 50k. That is _not_ an even distribution curve, yet if you do an average its higher than 50k because its offset by the top 10%.

</comment><comment><USER51> Recruiters take (placed 8 Sr Dev's (mostly Java, as well as "lost" 4 or so offers of the same ilk), IT Admins, etc).

For Software Developers, the average was 80-100k in lower cost of living area's. In higher, 90-120k.

"Senior" meaning 4-15 years. The four year folks were deemed "above average" in their technical fly-out interviews (with other programmers). Edit: the average length of experience was 5-7 years (a "sweet spot" for technical hiring managers).

I never worked on 50-70k Software developer positions.

These were top-3 finance firms (NYC and SLC) as well as 4/5 top e-Retailler firms as well as a few local funded startups.

I was never able to pull a Googler or FaceBooker :)

Netflix as an individual contributor made $160k or so, the highest I saw as pulling candidates from competing top 3 eCommerce / finance firms.

Note, in the finance firms, "Architect" or "Leads" were on a much higher magnitude (120-180k base, bonuses were sometimes 20%-200%).

</comment><comment><USER52> Ok so your very first job (out of the Army) was paying you 47K? Is that correct? So beyond that single company, do you have any other criteria for the title of your post "why does everyone else keep gettin' 40-60k offers?" I expect that if you change companies and create value your salary will increase.

</comment><comment><USER53> Depends on location + company/role. Other comments point out location is important and I agree. But almost as important is what kind of company you are at--salary at a tech company where you are creating and building new products is different from salary at a cable company where you are maintaining products someone else built. As an engineer, your job is to find ways to improve the business, work your ass off to implement them, and then build the tools so that less skilled people can manage your creations. Keep creating value in this manner and you'll see your salary skyrocket. Though if you are at a company where they would rather have you sit on your ass doing nothing than being a go-getter (as I learned the hard way), get off your ass and look for a better job.

</comment><comment><USER46> I really doubt 80-100k is an average salary... maybe an average _starting_ salary outside of the valley. I had such offers for places outside of the valley as an undergrad (before I had graduated).

<comment><USER54> Im going to guess you are 27-29.

Before I say why I say this, can you please reply with your age? I want to test a theory which I will reveal in full if you dont mind answering..

<comment><USER55> I've seen the same for starting salaries in Seattle, over the last four years (graduated in Dec. 06). This is for big companies like Microsoft and Amazon and for some startups depending upon their stage. Anyone 26 and under would see the same.

EDIT: typo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Maybe I missed it, but is 80-100k the average or the median? Because you have people like CEOs of major companies making million dollar salaries, and that will have an effect skewing the numbers.

<comment><USER57> The median is _an_ average. You probably meant to ask whether 80-100k was the _mean_ or the median.

<comment><USER56> This is why you don't post on HN before the third cup of coffee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I find all these salary threads humorous for another reason: all the bragging about 100-200k salaries. Try joining finance where that's mot even a bad year.

</comment><comment><USER59> There are many, many variables. Too many to consider.

If you really want to know how you stack up with devs in SV, come out here for a hackathon or SF Startup Weekend.

Decide for yourself who's smarter and ask them what they think is a fair offer for your skills. If you've figured out they're smart, they will probably already have an idea.

</comment><comment><USER60> There are companies in Portland that are hiring at larger salaries than what you're seeing. You just have to shop around. I would suggest getting in to the local tech scene there (user groups, etc). There's also all of the conferences that go on. Also, don't be afraid to look for remote work.

</comment><comment><USER61> Average salaries in SF are 100k. 50-70k is a relatively normal starting salary in "2nd tier" cities like Austin or Atlanta.

But look at housing costs, etc. You'll find depending on what you want (big house/short commute/etc) SF may not be the right place.

<comment><USER62> Hi Michael -- That's too broad a statement to make and it's not factually based on anything. Way too many variables, which is why the only real thing we can say is that location plays a huge role. In SF location drives higher salaries due to both cost of living AND huge demand.

<comment><USER61> > That's too broad a statement to make and it's not factually based on > anything.

It's based on a WSJ article: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870343950457611...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703439504576116192416198636.html?mod=rss_Technology)

I've seen this number several other places as well, varing from 96k to 104.

I live in Atlanta. I get articles from Georgia Tech about the tech job scene here as well as averages for different majors, etc. If you really really really want me to find an email from Tech, and stick it on the web I will.

I get Austin numbers talking to people I know there...

I have housing market comparisons for all three cities and Vancouver due to talking to friends in all three areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Not that this helps, but: always worth asking whether an 'average' is a mean (likely to be skewed higher by a heavy tail of high salaries in certain industries, certain areas etc), or a median.

</comment><comment><USER48> glassdoor.com has anonymous salary reports from many companies. In my experience, they seem to be pretty accurate.

Of course, the reports become even more accurate when more people participate. So please sign up! :)

</comment><comment><USER64> If you're making $47K in IT in USA, you're doing something very wrong. If you actually have skills, you could be making $70K.

Salary depends on

1) Previous salary

2) New title/rank

3) The industry (and how well it's doing)

4) Years of experience

5) Previous salary

6) Negotiation skills

7) Education

8) How well you interview

9) Skills (if the interviewer cares)

10) Your age and gender (sad but true)

11) References

12) How hot the market is (if there's a lack of developers in your area of expertise, you can get some crazy raises every year by switching jobs)

> _All in all I consider myself a very good programmer (Honestly I'd guess in > the top 80% of programmers, I haven't met one that's better than myself, but > I don't consider myself nearly as experienced as a lot of the people here)_

There are many horrible developers out there. Being the top 20% is really not a big deal. If you want to make real money, try to be the top 1%.

<comment> DanI-S It sounds like you rate previous salary as a pretty important factor. It seems like an odd measure. How exactly does it factor in, and what reason do recruiters have to trust what candidates say?

<comment><USER65> I interview quite a bit (hire about 2 people per month to my department) and I always ask where their compensation is currently at (or if they are unemployed, where it was at). This is one of the more important questions I ask because it is usually obvious when someone is lying and it helps me understand how this person's previous employer valued them. As an employer, I want to know they were an asset.

Yes, someone could lie. People lie all of the time. One of my jobs is to feel that out. I screen for integrity. I look for any hint of lying, even if they are joking. You can always tell someone with integrity from someone without it. And we want to work with people of integrity.

<comment><USER66> I've only been asked that question in an interview twice, and in both I asked why that would matter. I walked both times (away from a decent offer in one case).

What's being tested is not 'how did your previous employer value you?', it's 'how good at negotiating were you when you started your last job?'

Additionally, the value of less numerical benefits gets substantially ignored in such calculations - I worked for two years at a job that paid 40k, but the flexibility, atmosphere, and environment were worth the 30k drop to me. There's no normal way to explain that in an interview without it sounding like an excuse.

Next time somebody asks that question, I'm going to tell them '15k and a few thousand bananas'.

<comment><USER67> > What's being tested is not 'how did your previous employer value you?', it's > 'how good at negotiating were you when you started your last job?'

and "how little can we get away with paying you?"

I worked for a medium sized private software company and managements goal was to hire people as cheaply as possible, no exceptions regardless of experience or education. They routinely offered developers 30k to start, many were highly offended and some just laughed at it, but they would always get a few developers who were down and out to accept. Yes turnover was high and most people didn't last longer than a year or two, but they viewed developers as disposable assets due to the local economic climate. This was in a medium sized US city with high unemployment and few tech opportunities, managements attitude was ruthlessly honest "we're the only ones hiring in the area, what other choice do they have?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Three changes:

1\. Inflation. Laggard companies haven't kept up, but leading companies are pushing forward. As for the laggards, they probably set their developer salaries back in 1995 when $45k, out of college, was decent for a software engineer. They never revised that number, instead suffering a very gradual (and probably imperceptible, from a day-to-day perspective) decline in the people they could get.

2\. Correction. Talent has been underpriced for a long time, except in finance, where the hours and work sucked. For a long time, rising tech companies could low-ball their offers and say, "Yes, but we're a fun company, and if we get big, you'll get rich." At this point, that strategy doesn't work as well, because new startups have filled that niche (risky, low pay, might make you very rich). Google and Amazon are still great companies, but they're not likely to triple their stock value in the next 3 years.

What's also happening is that the US is becoming less of a destination country for foreign talent, due to post-2001 immigration hassles and our health care situation, which scares the hell out of people. This change is good and bad, but it does improve salaries.

3\. Location + industry. Engineer-driven companies, which are very selective and desirable places to work, but treat engineers very well, are offering $90-110k in New York, Boston and the Valley, and $70-90k in the Midwest. On the other hand, programmers at oil and health insurance companies are not making that much; they're still in the $45-60k range, because programmers are second- and third-class citizens in those companies. For example, a friend of mine works in fashion as a programmer (entry-level/novice) and makes about $28k. If she did the same work in a real software shop, she'd make $70k easily.

<comment><USER65> Industry is important. Pick an industry that actually has money to pay for software. Not all industries are equal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> The average salary is pretty accurate, what I think you may fail to realize is that the industry will pay a premium for experience. I've been coding professionally for 10 years. 80-100k is normal for that much experience in Vancouver, I'm sure it's even more in SF/NYC

</comment><comment><USER70> Ok:

a) Shitty jobs will offer shitty salaries

b) Employers who have shitty employees will feel a senior is worth 50k. Why? Because their "seniors" are juniors at best and are doing the recruiting.

c) Location. If they are the only game in town then guess what. The offers are obviously not from tech companies.

d) 100k is a mid-level position (at least in nyc). All depends on how well you do on the interview or how much you can show off of your work.</comment>


An inteview with Brian Kernighan, co-developer of AWK and AMPL - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/321082/an_inteview_brian_kernighan_co-developer_awk_ampl

<comment><USER2> I found this in the preface to "my" [1] book:

> In addition to my coauthors, many other people have contributed to the > success of this second edition. Clif Flynt, Jeff Hobbs, _Brian Kernighan_ , > Steve Landers and Mark Roseman all spent significant time and effort on > critiquing and improving the technical content.

 _gulp_. I hope I didn't come across too badly. My portion of the book was about Tcl's C API.

1) [http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/09/15/tcl-and-the-tk- toolkit...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/09/15/tcl-and-the-tk-toolkit-2nd- edition)

<comment><USER3> Ouch david, quite some acts to follow, but I know you can hold your own :-)

P.S. I still have a Tclplugin app deployed at my brother's office. A construction company using an in-browser tcl-plugin for their office automation software. If I had the foresight to publicize this I could have gotten some exposure. And yes, the backend for that app is in Lisp, Allegro Serve running on Slackware 9 and SBCL 0.8.2 :-) That was way before github, social coding and blogging; we got no props for deploying "fringe" technologies haha.

<comment><USER2> Tcl would have far better than Java as a web plugin, but I guess they went with Java rather than Tcl at Sun and the rest is history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting how being on the cover of a book about a language gets you to be co-author of that language in the eyes of lots of people.

I certainly fell for it, until this interview I had no idea!

By the way, the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C> entry in wikipedia now only has a link to the C# language, not to C!</comment>


Purism and the Linux Kernel - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/purism-and-the-linux-kernel/ <comment><USER2> I really appreciate this commitment to upstreaming to the mainline kernel.

So many great devices using Linux have become doorstops because (besides closed drivers and blobs) the kernel was forked, or drivers dependent on forked kernel, source disappeared, toolchain disappeared or was proprietary, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Do I hide the fact that I am a sole-founder? - <AUTHOR> Hi HNers,
I am about to put up a landing page for my startup, which is almost ready for a public beta.
While writing the marketing copy, I have stumbled across a dilemma on which I would appreciate some input. The landing page includes a brief story, told in the first person, about the problem I am attempting to solve with this site. It occurs to me that some people might be put off by this, and would rather use a service that appears to have a big team behind it. However, I feel a bit uncomfortable with just doing s/I/we/g.
I would rather not detail the idea fully just yet (as I am shooting for some exclusive coverage from a popular blog in this space), but it is a tech/game-based site, essentially B2C SaaS for a particular subset of the gaming market. The tech nature of the site makes me worry that people would want/expect a big support team behind it, so showing that I am a single founder might put off some customers.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is it better to be 100% open and risk some people not using the service? Or should I change the wording on the site to make it appear as though there is a big team behind the site?
TIA for any responses. <comment><USER2> Two seconds spent worrying about this issue is two seconds of your life you will never get back. Use whichever is more pleasing to your ear. Your customers do not care about this. No really, they don't.

This is almost the canonical question on the Business of Software forums asked to avoid launching. Don't avoid launching. All good things come from launching.

<comment><USER3> > Your customers do not care about this. No really, they don't.

Depending on the service, some do actually. I'm the sole founder of an appointment scheduling SaaS business and I frequently got questions about the reliability/stability of my company. I lost a few customers who explicitly expressed concern about the company size when I still had to answer "1" on the company size question (I've grown since).

I agree with the sentiment that you should just launch anyway, but there will be customers who pass you by until you're bigger.

<comment><USER2> I have qualified agreement with you for B2B, particularly B2BigFreakingEnterprise, but B2PoorGamersWhoDoNotPayForAnything does not have a problem with this. (There is another problem with that market - I may have left a subtle hint.)

I get the size question with regards to AR, too. A surprising portion are mollified by a straight answer and mentioning that I've run a software business with thousands of customers for five years with 99% uptime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you both for your responses. I was actually going to use BCC and AR as an example - I imagine the size question comes up with AR more than it does with BCC, making "I" more suitable for the latter.

But given that this is for a bit of blurb on revision one of my landing page, I shall stick with "I" and not spend any more time on it.

I noticed the subtle hint, it is something I have thought/worried about. I am hoping to disrupt an existing market by providing a service that gamers are already paying for in a new way, rather than convincing them to purchase an entirely new service. So I will be aiming for the B2SmallProportionOfGamersWhoActuallyPayForStuff rather than B2PoorGamersWhoDoNotPayForAnything, which is admittedly a much smaller market :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We do. But seriously, think of yourself as representing the company. Use 'I' for yourself as a person, and 'we' for the company: the company isn't actually you.

Recent Business of Software discussion on this very topic: [http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.834579.1...](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.834579.17)

<comment><USER5> Speaking of... both you and patio11 mentioned that forum. It's not one I currently follow.

Worth it?

<comment><USER2> BoS is a major reason why BCC succeeded. That said, the forum is smaller and less vibrant than it used to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the app is a serious business you are looking forward to, safer to use We. Soon enough you will be more than one employee in that case.

If this is a weekend project, use I till it turns out to be bigger than your wildest dreams.

However, in all cases, in your About section, have people with their real images shown so that users are not left in the dark.

Often I chose the support expected from a project based on how many people are there, but it is a disaster if I know it is one man and they never tell that in About page.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never founded a company. But, for over a year, I was the sole IT resource for what was in effect a startup. If I'd gone under a bus, they'd have been in real trouble.

One thing I quickly learnt then and find myself instinctively doing now with hundreds of colleagues is that any work I do is the work of the system which has placed me to do it and so not directly and personally mine. Net result, no matter the external context - talking with clients or friends - I always say 'We'. Never I.

The company is the entity which is producing the work. That it currently only contains you is not relevant to many and not something you want to advertise to a few. So don't; if they ask then be honest but until then, the company is offering the service, it is a corporate entity and IMHO any personalised references to its actions should be in the plural, not the singular.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's never a good idea to be disingenuous. If you plan to run the company on your own, use I. If you can conceive of and are hopeful of building a team, use we.

People that would be turned off by that are not the kind of customers you would want at this stage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although I am planning on building a team if the site takes off, for the moment it is just myself. I will go with "I" for now, and hopefully change it in future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's best to 100% open so that you attract the right people at the stage that you're at. You should read "You're a little company, now act like one": [http://blog.asmartbear.com/youre-a-little-company-now-act- li...](http://blog.asmartbear.com/youre-a-little-company-now-act-like- one.html)

Do you really want to attract the kind of people who expect a big support team, when you don't have a big support team? Probably not, unless you want to disappoint them!

</comment><comment><USER10> No of of course not. I'm a sole founder - I founded Pen.io and a bunch of other stuff. I recently was at the Launch conference. The judges new I was a sole founder and that didn't stop me winning an award and get a bunch of attention from both press and investors. Of course, it might not matter with my app, but even from the sound of yours, I doubt people will worry that much about the people behind it.

If you worry about silly things like that, you won't get anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER11> No need to lie, just use the company name instead of the royal we. Further, if you need to get more detailed and/ or personal, create a separate blog post on your site as a "message from the founder." In the end no one really cares if they like your site. Back when Pud ran f-ckedcompany.com, a very popular web 1.0 site, everyone assumed he ran it alone, it had no negative effect I could discern. Don't sweat it!

</comment><comment><USER12> Use "we" for/as the entity that is the company. Use "I" when speaking as yourself. I believe this has been common and accepted behavior for as long as I have ever known. Even if the company is only you for now, your company will eventually be more than just you. Ask your mom this question, forget what she says, and now you are "we". I will reiterate a previous comment.... You have already spent too much time on this... Launch the page now!

</comment><comment><USER13> Integrity is more important than a small edge from pretending that you're more than one person.

Use "I" or the company name.

</comment><comment><USER14> In research papers it is common to use 'we' even in the single-author cases.

<comment><USER15> Somebody told me the reason for this which I found interesting. Even if you felt you did the research yourself, somebody funded the research, somebody commented on it, somebody at the library ordered journals for you, you attended talks in your institution that inspired you etc.

<comment><USER16> Personally I use "we" in scientific writing mostly because its a convenient neutral way of addressing your reader. Referring to the reader directly with "you" can be jarring or to informal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the main thing to consider is how you are going to provide support. If there's any interaction with customers at all, you will not be able to cope / provide good service as a one man outfit as you go from (perhaps) 10 customers to 1000. I think bigger companies recognise this. It doesn't mean you can't do it though. You just have to be clear that they're not buying support. Either via email, phone, or in person. It either works for them, or it doesn't. You can do that as a one man company.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do you need to be specific about how many founders you have? In your story, focus on the problem and the customers. Having a professional website, business cards, grasshopper phone lines, etc will help project the professional image you think you need. However, if people were to ask, I'd be honest. Be proud of what you've accomplished alone. You might loose a few sales but you'll earn those in the future. Authenticity counts.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm also sole founder - one thing I can say is that customers may really not care if you're alone on it, as long as you provide a great pre-post sales experience (which is harder when you're solo, anyway).

On the flipside, I'm finding that getting investors is WAY harder when you're solo. They want teams, and not having one kinda sends the wrong signal about yourself (even if you're solo BECAUSE YOU WANT TO...)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's entirely down to you, I wouldn't be afraid of being a singular smart individual in your firm, lots of other people do it. Peldi was a single person founder and he managed to bootstrap himself to $2 million, from Italy no less - <http://balsamiq.com/company>

</comment><comment><USER21> All good advice here so far. One additional item - when you get your business cards printed - style yourself something like "Technical Director" (Vice President it it in your part of the world?). It gives you the authority you need with customers and suppliers while implying a whole management board backing you up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting tactic/title - I like it. "Technical Director" sounds good, without being as egotistical as "Supreme Ruler and CEO of all he surveys", which had been my first choice.

</comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn A lot of people in your target market like giving independent business people a shot. Those people won't worry much about the number of employees as long as the service is good, and they'll tell others about your service if it's good.

</comment><comment><USER22> Depending on the market segment and mission critical status, no one cares. In fact, people may actually like it. I make no effort to hide that it is just me and my customers include EA, AT&T, other big companies.

</comment><comment><USER23> a/b test it.

</comment><comment><USER24> "We" is fine. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_plural#Nosisms>

</comment><comment><USER25> If it's a back story, then there's nothing to suggest you haven't brought more people on board since.

</comment><comment><USER26> A/B test it, which ever leads to more sales, use that.

</comment><comment><USER27> Use "we" and refer to your startup as a company because that's what it is (and is going to hopefully grow to be). It also shows a certain humility, like when people write a research paper and refer to themselves as "we". But there are other reasons too: suppose some psycho troll takes aim at your startup for some reason (it has happened in our facebook games) and decides to make your life hell; you 'd rather they did not know you are their only enemy

</comment><comment><USER28> Be unassuming do not lie, TELL YOUR STORY!

biases: One person founder</comment>


An open-source API for Two Factor Authentication - <AUTHOR> http://authful.com

<comment><USER2> This is excellent. More apps should support this feature. More and more personal information ends up on the cloud everyday. People should be given the option to add an additional layer of security.</comment>


Apple has finally embraced key-based 2FA. So should you - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1690028 <comment> dane-pgp > A variety of sites that offer hardware-based 2FA don't work well or at all > with Brave. While the browser works with Yubico keys, keys from Titan aren't > supported at all.

So we've gone from "The website looks fine on my machine" to "The website looks fine on my machine with the contents of my pocket".

<comment><USER2> It seems like Brave must have not implemented the standard correctly or something though, I don't know of these problems in any other browser.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to verify whether its a standard IE or embedded within C# Form? - <AUTHOR>

Within the HTML/JS scope, I would like to distinguish between both cases.<p>I wonder if there is a way find that via some window/doc properties? <comment><USER2> Is this HTML that you control?

If you're loading it through a C# WinForm control, you might be able to do something like pre-inject a hidden input tag onto the page with a particular name/value, and then in the javascript on the actual page, check for that tag to determine if the page was loaded via a form... I'd guess you'd make a HttpWebRequest out to the resource you want, manipulate the response in some way, then load it into your viewable control... I'm shooting from the hip here, so this is just a guess. I haven't worked in WinForms for a while now.

You might want to look at your approach, however... Are you absolutely in need of having this page be loaded through a WinForm?

Edit: Also the dude suggesting you post this on SO is correct

<comment><AUTHOR> I have only control on the web app, not the clients.

It is posted on SO in parallel, but there is no help at there, so I thought to try my luck in this community.

<comment><USER2> Might be able to do UserAgent parsing then... since you're doing a very specific target, it might (keyword might) be simple to do a string compare against whatever the UserAgent of the WinForm app is (I have no idea what it would be, but you could test this very easily), and use that as how you detect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The well known technical QA site Stackoverflow can be found here <http://stackoverflow.com/> HN is not an appropriate site for this question</comment>


Thoughts on Fairness in Rowing - <AUTHOR> https://www.rowinginmotion.com/thoughts-fairness-rowing/ <comment><USER3> Wow, didn't expect one of my rowing related articles to ever appear on HN. Thanks for posting, hope you found it interesting.

Also interesting if you like this: "Why There Are So Many Ties in Swimming", [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282326)

<comment><USER4> Interesting article. BTW, I think you have a typo: "The Germans had one their heat over GB, who had to go through the repechage". I think you meant "won" there, not "one".

<comment><USER3> Thanks, fixed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The point in which a rower is at in the stroke when they cross the finish line can have a hugely outsized influence on the result. During the catch, the boat momentarily slows down while the blades enter the water, and then it surges forward during the drive. This is exaggerated even more than it is in swimming and makes a huge difference in these kind of close finishes. Nothing to do with fairness, but in a close race there is a lot of luck as to where you are in the stroke when you finish.

I watched this race live and it was frustrating to not know the outcome - <USER2> thought Damir had won. I would have liked to see them receive a tie. Rowing governing body should adjust this to match swimming where they measure down to 1/100th of finish time and use that as the only determinant rather than examining the much more precise photo finish. So many other things are not as precise over a 2000m course in variable water conditions - this isn't a 100m dash that's over in 10 seconds.

<comment><USER6> The big issue with a photo finish on this for me is _I bet the starts weren 't accurate to 2cm_. I'd also wonder if the camera was fixed to avoid that margin of parallax error, which is much easier on a small running track than a wide expanse of water.

Still, that photo-finish is a paragon of fairness and clarity compared with the Olympic marathon swimming, in which after swimming in the sea for 10k, it all came down to who could "strongly" touch one of a few small pads on a beam suspended above their heads on a raft floating on the choppy seas: in a finish where ability to obstruct an opponent without being penalised for it could count for as much as swimming speed and timing on touching the pad.

Remarkably the men's Olympic race produced (i) a gold medal photo-finish after nearly two hours that was so close that it took 15 minutes to figure out they'd initially named the wrong man as the winner and (ii) 2.2 seconds behind them, a three way photofinish for bronze (the third person to post that time was subsequently for disqualified for what he described as fighting off somebody that was holding onto his leg in the final sprint...)

The women's race saw the a silver medal photo-finish before one of the swimmers was disqualified for reaching over the top of her opponent to touch the pad first in a manner which looked a little bit too much like dunking

So if losing a rowing sprint by a couple of centimetres sounds tough, spare a thought for the person that is two centimetres away from touching a _moving_ finish line whilst their competitor elbows them, after swimming for two hours to get there

<comment><USER7> _" gold medal photo-finish after nearly two hours that was so close that it took 15 minutes to figure out they'd initially named the wrong man as the winner"_

For me, that was more a matter of the jury figuring out what the rules are. The GPS tracker of swimmer A passed the finish line .7 seconds before B did, but swimmer B hit the board half a second or so before A did. Both differences are easy to spot, even without the benefit of slow-motion ([https://youtu.be/iQY6EoYVRxs](https://youtu.be/iQY6EoYVRxs)). So, if you know what determines the winner, it should be easy to figure out who won.

This race probably has taught them not to connect the GPS measurements directly to numbers shown on screen to a worldwide audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My takeaway on this is that any specification of a physical thing that doesn't explicitly specify tolerances is not really specified as much as it is idealized.

<comment><USER9> Exactly! Plus, if you focus so much on the finishing line in an iota-scale and disregard the plethora of other factors that could've granted that difference, you're just being silly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if this is the kind of thing Ben-Hur thinks about to pass the time.</comment>


Bitmaker Labs coding bootcamp shut down by Canadian government - <AUTHOR> http://bitmakerlabs.com/

<comment><USER2> > Our lawyers have advised us that, to preempt any possible cease and desist > order which could negatively impact our ability to teach going forward, we > must discontinue operating our web development program immediately.

If the government agency involved thought the now-halted activities ought to be regulated, wouldn't they send a C&D letter anyway, at the conclusion of their investigation? I mean, if a company can avoid the regulatory consequences of past actions by shutting down operations for a few weeks or months during of an investigation, isn't that a loophole big enough to make the regulators totally irrelevant?

Let me be clear: Bitmaker Labs sounds legitimate (based solely on their linked statement). But either their lawyers are giving bad advice, or the laws themselves don't make sense. Disclaimer: IANAL.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just wrote a post about this bullshit here:

[http://hackertourism.com/bitmaker-labs/](http://hackertourism.com/bitmaker- labs/)

</comment><comment><USER2> > We have always been transparent about our lack of accreditation and the > unconventional nature of our program. As you know, we don't issue grades, > track attendance, or provide diplomas, certificates or degrees.

If they're not marketing themselves as a college, and are up-front about their lack of accreditation, how can they be regulated as one?

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's an article, about the shutdown, interviewing co-founder Matt Gray.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- business/careers/ca...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- business/careers/career-advice/programming-bootcamp-investigated-by-education- officials/article12786527/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/bitmaker-labs-shuts-down- under...](http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/bitmaker-labs-shuts-down-under- investigation-for-running-unregistered-college/37006)

</comment><comment><USER5> Move it to the USA!</comment>