Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922) - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/1922-why-i-quit-being-so-accommodating/ <comment><USER3> What a great read! Thank you, OP, for finding and sharing it.

I don't know what I like about it more, that it's from an earlier "simpler" world or that it highlights a problem that's just as important today: learning to tell the difference between and issue and a detail and dealing with them differently. Sounds like the original author had his epiphany 90 years ago. I wonder how that ended up changing his life.

(I have often commented here about issues vs. details. A few highlights:)

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=edw519+issu...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=edw519+issue+detail&sortby=points+desc)

<comment><USER4> How are you discerning issues v. details from this post? I feel it's quite clearly about drawing/enforcing boundaries, being able to say 'no', and the like. In my experience, there are a lot of people in SV (men, mostly -- partly because SV is male-dominated) who can learn a lot from this lesson.

First, the author refrains from blaming those who were taking advantage of his "kindness" (loose boundaries, really, but he framed it to himself as kindness for so long). Instead, he takes full responsibility for his own misapprehensions about how the world works -- not his father, not his college- friend-turned-boss, not anyone else. Today, when I read posts about people who undergo this specific epiphany -- "nice guy syndrome" if I can call it something -- it inevitably is accompanied by resentment: _other_ people are cruel and manipulative, _women_ are bitches who don't want nice guys, _investors_ are sociopaths who just follow trends, etc.

Second, and related to the first -- this man did not act simply _in reaction_ to his epiphany. He didn't simply swing the other way, as if to say "well now I'll be a jerk to everyone else to punish them." Instead, he continued to be generous and magnanimous, but he took responsibility for drawing and enforcing his own boundaries. And those boundaries still included room to be generous and charitable, but what he gained was the facility to _choose_ those traits.

Previously, he felt compelled to oblige and unable to resist the impositions of others. Now, he has the power to choose not to oblige, and he still chooses to oblige when he feels drawn to do it. And when he doesn't, he now can turn down the request.

As I said earlier, I have seen a lot of men arrive at the particular revelation that what they perceive as a kind and generous nature is actually compliance and subservience -- and then simply shut off that valve in reaction. I greatly admire this author's example of maintaining the choice to be generous, while gaining the capacity to choose the direction of his generosity.

<comment><USER5> > _Second, and related to the first -- this man did not act simply in reaction > to his epiphany. He didn't simply swing the other way, as if to say "well > now I'll be a jerk to everyone else to punish them." Instead, he continued > to be generous and magnanimous, but he took responsibility for drawing and > enforcing his own boundaries._

For a humorous example of the _wrong_ way to act after this epiphany, see the 1942 Joe McDoakes short film "So You Think You're a Nervous Wreck".

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038960/>

<comment><USER6> or sheckley's short story "cordle to onion to carrot" [<http://arthursclassicnovels.com/sheckley/conion10.html>]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's probably not a real story, The American Magazine published a great deal of morality tale fiction anonymously -- mostly aimed at a female audience -- and this sounds a lot like one of those "just-so-stories" about a man that brings his family to ruination (though usually it was demon alcohol or pool halls).

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, AM also published a great many profiles of real people too. I set up a separate blog to highlight those: <http://ipeopleblog.wordpress.com/>

<comment><USER7> That's pretty neat, thanks for collecting all of those. I've spent hundreds of hours reading newspapers from that period for a historical novel I've been working on for a long while.

It's equally fascinating to see the parallels and the divergences in our culture.

<comment><USER8> Any way to get updates relating to your novel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "As a matter of fact, I was too often being friendly to the customers at the expense of the house. It is a common fault in salesmen. They let a thousand trivial demands on the part of the men to whom they sell take their time and energy from the business of the men for whom they sell."

\- This is one of the hardest concepts to teach in enterprise sales nearly 100 years later. Too often customers (worse prospects) ask for all sorts of things from compliant sales people who never ask if it's necessary. References, POC's etc. The salesperson chews up hours of their time and other employees times because they don't have the backbone to say "No" or at least "Not yet" The rationalization is "I'm advancing the deal for the company!"

<comment><USER10> _The salesperson chews up hours of their time and other employees times because they don't have the backbone to say "No"_

The salesperson does this because he'll get a nice commission if the sale goes through, and doesn't really care about the people whose time he's wasting.

<comment><USER11> If he' on commission, then either he's not wasting his employers time with these things, if they genuinely lead to high total sales, or he's wasting his own time as well.

<comment><USER10> Total sales don't determine whether a company lives or dies. It's the bottom line, profit or loss after all the expenses are paid, that matters.

Sometimes, the real cost of a sale can exceed the revenues to the company from the sale. For example, I've seen salesmen sell vaporware that the company then has to drop everything to implement, possibly a feature that's not of use to any of the company's other customers. The salesman gets his commission and doesn't care that the development group is tied up with the feature he sold and unable to work on the really important features.

If salesmen could receive a commission on profits rather than gross revenues it would give them incentives that are better aligned with the health of the company. Unfortunately, it's easy to calculate a salesman's revenues and very difficult to calculate the actual profits (or losses) attributable to him.

<comment><USER9> What you're describing though is a management/leadership problem not a sales problem. Also, with the ongoing emergence of cloud/SaaS based offerings it's much easier to tie real revenue/profitability to comp plans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First off: I don't know if anything of this is really true. I just don't know people exactly and this is my perception and ONLY a perception.

I don't know. Usually, when someone says they quit being nice I find it hard to believe that they were accommodating. Maybe I am wrong, but everyone I ever knew calling themselves nice actually wasn't, but rather the opposite.

Yeah, I am not a nice person. I never was and I will never be. Yeah, a lot of people call me nice, helpful and whatever, but come on that's what everyone gets to hear all day long.

Yeah, I spend working a lot and I spend my money for others and I have all my stuff second-hand because of that. I spend all night being awake, because there are people who rely on being. Yeah, on my way home I will bring your book to the library, so you won't be stuck in the traffic. Yeah, I feel better buying fair-trade goods - no actually, stuff that pays higher than fair trade stuff. But don't we all have something like that? I work more than 50 hours a week, spend most of my free time helping others and write here only because there really isn't anything else I can do right now - well besides thinking about what I could do better or sleeping (unlikely), when they need help (and someone always does), just to not feel like a bad person.

But come on, everyone else does so too and most people on this planet do way, way more or else things wouldn't run as day do. And if everyone else is like that how does it make sense to call you nice?

Okay, there are exceptions for all of this of course, but just because someone isn't a lazy asshole it doesn't make them nice or extremely accommodating, does it? And if someone has time to write a long article on how they are so accommodating are they really?

P.S.: I slept about 3-4 hours per night last year, because there always was stuff to do and I (really) worked until I fell asleep. I guess it affected me mentally, but people rely on me.

<comment><USER13> I recognize some thought patterns in what you said here that I have also felt previous to this year, before I started working with an excellent professional coach. Several of the "practices" he gave me to work on involved learning how to say no to people. That includes delegation, qualifying, hidden costs. It's an involved set of closely held attitudes and assumptions that can be hard to break out of.

My advice for you is that your intelligence might be working against you, because it appears that you've constructed a [familiar to me] set of logical assertions which seem to support this viewpoint. It's like a perpetual motion machine which lets you congratulate yourself and seem like both the everyman and an ascetic at the same time. While it's possible that these things are all true, it's at least likely that you're flattering yourself.

Life is not black or white. By participating in HN are you nice for sharing your wisdom or egotistical and vain? By giving to charity are you paying it forward or celebrating your own self-image? People do things for selfless self-serving reasons all of the time. I personally don't think that this is a bad thing, so long as the end result is that people share wisdom and help those less fortunate.

Anyhow, I sense I'm rambling but in closing the author isn't suggesting that he stopped being a nice person, he's explaining how he was shocked into realizing that spending his time doing things for other people at the expense of those closest who deserved his priority was not a winning proposition. He could in effect be nicer by putting on his oxygen mask before putting one on his kid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One has to strike a balance. "No" is a very powerful and effective strategy when used judiciously. However, you don't want to say "No" to everyone about everything, or you become known as the opposite of the overly helpful fellow in the story, and people will resent you.

I enjoyed this article and I'm grateful to Mike Cane for turning me on to this charming bit of Americana. In those days, it was said that "The business of America is business" and the writings in this magazine fully reflect that belief. It's all about getting ahead, becoming the big boss, achieving financial security. Underlying it all is a naive yet practical optimism, a sense that we [white males] can achieve anything if we set our minds to it. It's a bit sad to think in contrast of today's narcissistic, short-sighted attitudes which are so prevalent.

<comment><USER15> "No" isn't a strategy.

I think if you think the story is about saying "No", then you've missed the point. The point is the mental shift between living reactively and ceding control to anyone who asks for it, to living with purpose and giving your time and attention to those people who deserve it.

People will resent you for being unreasonable. People will resent you when their expectations are not met.

When you are too accommodating, people may value your courtesy. However, they will expect you to be accommodating, and if you ever try to stop, they will resent you for violating their expectations.

If you say no when it's reasonable to do so, then you set fair expectations. People respect your fairness, so they don't expect more than is reasonable from you.

If you are unreasonable, people expect you to be unreasonable. They will ask little of you, but they wont have any respect for your character.

It's very easy, especially when you are worried about people's perception of you to be too compromising, which leads to unmanageable expectations and that feeling of persecution. It's your own fault when this happens, you've been silently making promises with your actions, and people get angry when you break them.

Say you go to a coffee shop every day and get a sandwich, and to be nice, the server gives you a free small coffee, and you do this for a few months, and every time you get a free coffee. Then one day, you go to the coffee shop with enough money for your sandwich and ask for a sandwich and coffee, but the server demands you pay for the coffee this time. That's frustrating because you don't have the cash to get both, so you either go without the coffee or plead with the server.

However, consider another coffee shop where you ask for a sandwich, and the server asks if you want a small coffee for a dollar. You decide you want the coffee, you buy them both. You're happy with the arrangement, and the former situation never comes up. You never have the opportunity to be frustrated with the server because she hasn't set any expectation she's not willing to maintain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I notice that his name is Bert at the start of the article and Joe at the end. If there were any doubt about whether the story is real or made up, I think that clinches it; people very seldom forget their own names.

<comment><USER17> More likely bad editing. Joe was his roommate and eventual boss. It's only once near the end that his aunt calls him Joe.

<comment><USER18> yeah, bad editing, but if it weren't fiction, would the author have mis-stated his own name in his first draft?

<comment><USER19> If it were real, names would have been changed to anonymize it. No search replace in those days, so it's an easy way for such a mistake to creep in.

I still suspect it's a fictional or largely fictional piece though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "First: A man's chief loyalty must be to the woman who has joined her life to his; to the children who call him father; and to the business which feeds and clothes and houses them all."

A greater truism can hardly have been spoken.

<comment><USER21> Truism, yet not true!

The first two are backwards. If you doubt me, think about what happens in a divorce.

Disclaimer, I've been married over 20 years and never divorced. My kids come first. I'm fairly sure that my wife puts our kids first as well.

<comment><USER22> I'm not married, nor do I have kids, but I've decided when that time comes I will put my wife first.

It seems to me "your children come first" is the traditional expectation of modern, American society, but I think it's wrong. At least in my case, it led to me being very well treated and doted on within a tragic environment of my parents' relationship falling apart.

This NYTimes blog post [1] captures my feelings pretty well.

[1] [http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/priorities- chi...](http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/priorities-children-or- spouse/)

<comment><USER11> > I'm not married, nor do I have kids, but I've decided when that time comes I > will put my wife first.

You are not prepared for the hormone storm that you'll experience the first time you hold your child.

For me, I wasn't sure I was ready. I said yes to having kids because my wife wanted kids. The moment I held my son for the first time, on the other hand, all my priorities shifted instantly.

Maybe you'll still hold on to the idea of putting your wife first, but you're not in any position to make decisions about it at this stage and expect them to hold firm.

<comment><USER23> Actually, now is the perfect time to rationally come up with some sound principles _before_ the hormone storm hits. Hormones are not a good basis for decisions that affect the course of peoples' lives.

<comment><USER11> Except when the hormone storm hits, you will rationalize to yourself exactly why you need to reverse those decisions with the greatest ease, if that's what fits best.

Hormones control a substantial part of your life, no matter whether you like it or not, and they influence and control a large part of the decision you think you made rationally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just had a call from someone conducting an IT survey. I asked the person, "What's in it for me?, I'm at work, time is money." They were confused and I responded, "I'll do your survey if there's a gift card or lunch involved. You are not a client, nor a friend. Time is money."

<comment><USER25> I used to work at a marketing firm and we did occasional phone survey which I would have to listen in periodically to ensure the questions were understandable and getting good answers.

I was always amazed that anybody would spend 20 minutes answering questions asked by some random person for absolutely no reward. I still don't understand why. And our surveys had to be representative of the area demographics so it was not just all lonely, elderly people. It was people of all ages, race, etc.

<comment><USER26> People are bored, and a lot of people want someone to listen to them.

<comment><USER27> This is especially true for people with strong opinions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The underlying principle in this article is the same one that underlies the advice at <http://marriedmansexlife.com>. mmsl helps husbands who endlessly say "yes" to all of their wives' requests, but who are frustrated by a lack of sex in their marriages. If you found the OP interesting and your marital relations are lacking, you need to read mmsl.

<comment><USER29> Well if one is married and lacks sex then one should make it clear , and discuss it with his wife , because sooner or later things will break apart.

<comment><USER30> Or discuss it with the man? Sometimes it is the woman longing for sex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Compare the man in the article to someone who can take any request, no matter how absurd, and make sure it gets done behind the scenes. You can take a very similar set of actions, but by presenting them differently you come across as an extremely talented and capable person-almost a magician. And people will respect you and entrust you with more important things.

<comment><USER32> This simply cannot be possible. Perhaps you've been fortunate enough not to encounter the sort of people the article is referring to, and consequently aren't familiar with the drain these people are.

Some examples from my own life, a more modern context:

\- acquaintances ask me to "fix their Internet" because I'm "good with computers": I point out I have other priorities and they're already paying the line provider/ISP so should call them for assistance

\- similarly, people who ask me to fix their computers: I point out that they wouldn't expect a mechanic to fix their car for free, and besides IT != software development

\- back in university when people asked me to help develop or debug portions of their solutions: if I couldn't figure it out in 15 minutes I told them I had other priorities but gave them general advice about what the problem or solution might be

\- people asking me to work longer for the same amount of pay and unpredictable benefits (i.e. bonus formulas): I became a contractor instead and I've been immeasurably happier for it

You simply cannot consent to _every_ request from such people - they will literally drain your life (i.e. time) from you, to what end?

<comment><USER31> I certainly don't mean that you can or should respond to every request.

I mean that you can do the same amount of work, and depending on how you present yourself, you can be seen as the accommodating doormat (and consequently, treated like shit) or the guy who can get things done (and be treated well, trusted with more important stuff, etc.)

<comment><USER33> The distinction is in the _type_ of work being accommodated.

The article is particularly referring to _trivial_ tasks. The person who does trivial stuff, no matter how impressive their demeanor, is going to be known as the person to whom you take your trivial requests.

Not the person you take important work to. Not the person you entrust with serious responsibilities.

Unless you have your own staff, to which you delegate the actual doing of trivial things, there's really no way to dress that up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very good article. I think at some level, most "nice" people know they are taken advantage of. They know that they are supposed to say no, but they don't - primary reason being they don't know how to say no, plus they don't want to offend anyone. So the cycle keeps going.

<comment><USER35> Plus they aren't confident enough to know that people will still like them even if they don't do everyone favors.

<comment><USER34> This is something I've struggled to understand too - how is it that someone who is always nice to everyone _isn't_ high on the popularity list (they are only remembered when _needed_ ) whereas someone who only cares about his/her stuff, is popular?

<comment><USER36> Because to be popular is to be admired, and nobody _admires_ someone who's desperate for approval.

<comment><USER37> True and this also more or less dovetails with wanting what you can't have as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can't help but be reminded of a novel I read in university - Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth series). It wrote of similar theme (with a more focus on faith/religion), of how one must serve the greater good, humanity and the whim of his fellow men. Going down further, you go into the philosophical territory of individualism vs collectivism, how do you decide and balance your own moral ground, your 'selfish' needs and the needs of your neighbours.

<comment><USER39> That is one of my favorite books of all time. You're right ... it centers on exactly what this article covers. The people in the book were members of a culture that taught that it was selfish to spend time and energy on your own needs. Your duty was to sacrifice your needs and your life for the "greater good". The "moral" was that there is nobility in taking charge of your own life and making what you want of it, and that, in fact, it is from doing so that the greater good benefits too. The slogan that captures it all: "Your life is yours and yours alone. Rise up and live it."

Not selfish: the main character in the book would give up everything for the woman he loved. I have no idea how much it overlaps with Ayn Rand. But taken as its own individual work, I consider it one of the most profound things I've ever read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is beautiful! Thanks for writing this and sharing it. You will be amazed how many capable men and women I come across who demand simple tasks that they are perfectly able to take care of themselves. I finally learned to say "No" and the requests died down over a period of 2 years. These same people are happy to have me around.

Pro tip: If you are sitting in a large gathering and someone asks you to help them out. At best, if you cannot say "No", what you should do is give them pointers. That's it, nothing more. Those who are motivated enough will take your pointers and handle it themselves, others will not.

I have found that people in general are just trying to get someone else to do their work for them, for free, without giving a thought to the other person's schedule.

</comment><comment><USER41> Incredible find! This is my favorite quote (which hits home) "People never trust an accommodating man with important things"

</comment><comment><USER42> Reading this article rings so true with me. It's why I quit playing MMOs... I always felt like I was doing work for others rather than enjoying myself.

<comment><USER43> Haha, I'm pretty similar. If it's impossible to solo the game, I won't play. It's nice to be able to help others, but not if it's _mandatory_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What a wonderful article for the Chrismas season. Helping people is so overrated. May we all strive to live in a world like the 1920's; when a 12 year old child could work in a coal mine for 16 hours a day and receive 1-2 dollars, when minimum wage laws were non-existent; and the income disparity between the top and the bottom was at it's highest point in all of US history. What a wonderful time to have lived, and this article is exactly the type of attitude we need to cultivate in todays society.

I hope you detect the sarcasm.

<comment><USER45> The 1920s was a period of extraordinary economic and technological progress. Economic progress, not passing laws or stewing with envy over income distributions, is what has made society wealthy and advanced enough to end child labor.

<comment><USER44> Sorry, but no. Child labor was ended in the aftermath of the great depression. The efforts in the decade prior to that failed, including one case where the supreme court said child labor laws are an infringement on the rights of children. The 1938 fair labor standards act was the first at the federal level.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/16/158925367/child- la...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/16/158925367/child-labor-in- america-1920)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My god, as someone who wakes up at 7, starts working right away and doesnt usually stop until around 7-8, this rang pretty true to me. I really need to going out of my way to help people because I never get as much out of it as I give. I do recruitment for a startup and constantly have people asking me to help them fill roles at other companies. I wonder how many extra hours I'd be able to give to my girlfriend or current job without those. Need to work on shedding some excess.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think that helping people definitely can give you preferential treatment and respect, but whether it does depends heavily on _how_ you help them.

The physical act of helping earns you a reputation as a 'nice' person; however, I've found in my limited time that when people start trying to use me (getting a sense for this is a very useful thing to have, and something I had to learn the hard way after being used), I either need to (a) draw the line and say no, or more commonly, (b) help them in such a way that I force them to think or do something along with me. In my experience, plan (a) happens strictly only after you've done plan (b) before.

By just doing everything for others and magically making things happen, you allow people to trample on you; but by teaching them exactly what you're doing, you (1) demonstrate that you really know what you're doing, (2) practice your understanding of the thing it is you are doing, and (3) place on them the expectation that they won't come back for trivial help. I only resort to plan (a) if, after doing plan (b) a few times, they still attempt to use you. Teach a man to fish...

</comment><comment><USER48> Great story.

In case you're wondering who, Agassiz, the scientist mentioned in the article was, I thnk that this is probably him: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz>

</comment><comment><USER49> Being the "nice guy" certainly has its own benefits. Having performed favours already, the author can certainly ask for returns. He would also win various popularity based scenarios. But instead, he is so busy scratching others' backs that he forgets his own. I find the reason that the author was not trust with responsibilities in his friend's company, is due to the fact that he lacks the ambition and tact that would make a successful business man. How he blames himself for others taking advantage of him is admirable, and fitting with his "nice guy" attributes.

</comment><comment><USER50> This says a lot about about how much the human life span has changed in the last 90 years:

"You are thirty-five years old," I said to myself. "More than half of your life has already been spent."

<comment><USER30> Hm, really? Sure, I hope to get older, but I don't really make great plans for life in my 70ies. While life expectancy might be higher, I know people who died younger, and many who are 70 and not in the greatest shape.

<comment><USER51> "The days of our years are threescore years and ten (70 years old); and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years (80 years old), yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." - <USER2> 90 10

Edit: Not sure why this would be down-voted. It's a quote from the King James Bible with a source reference that supports the notion that 70 years is about all the time we as humans have to live life in good health. It is relevant to the article as it lines-up with the 35 years old, "half of my life" claim as well. People do live longer than that, but quality of life and good health tend to go down a lot in the 70s.

<comment><USER52> Some people are emotionally unable to tolerate any mention of the Bible, even a literary one. I once quoted Saint Paul in a way I (smugly) thought was rather witty, and one of the people in the room freaked out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Well the axiom of offering things to people is to realize, anything that you do/give away/offer for free _will be_ perceived as a valueless. No matter how difficult or important the work actually is.

Go out of your way to help someone, its almost dead certain you will be treated like a doormat next time. You will always be expected to keep doing things for free. Its a given.

No person should ever be helped unless he is totally incapable of helping himself.

</comment><comment><USER54> _"Unless, in a word, he commands his time. Read the life of a great scientist like Agassiz."_

Hmm. 1807 – 1873, Swiss paleontologist, ended at Harvard, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz> . Plus, Ezra Pound's take, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_sunfish>

</comment><comment><USER55> Aside from being able to say no. I believe a more subtle and useful technique is to actually use the good will you built into an actual relationship.

How do you turn an acquaintance that you occasionally do favors for to a good friend? Well, you get the favors back in other ways. To put it in nicer words, you give them chance to help you back. That's how relationships grow.

</comment><comment><USER56> Fantastic lessons from life experiences, really puts into perspective what really matters in life.

</comment><comment><USER57> Interesting read. Resonates on a couple levels. I do tend to think that people take the work-life balance a bit too seriously in the startup world, but those are also the same people who might otherwise have problems saying no to partnerships and business deals.

<comment><USER58> I don't think that's really the message the author was trying to convey:

 _"Read the life of a great scientist like Agassiz. Was he forever at the world's beck and call? Not for a single day. To letters inviting him to write, or to lecture for money, he replied that he had no time for those things."_

The message seems to be more about using your time the way you want to use your time, and not the way others want you to use it. Want to work 20 hours a day? No problem - the author would encourage that as you're using the days you have as best you can to get where you want. Want to work 4 hours a day and spend the rest of the time with your family? Author encourages that too as long as you're providing them what they need.

Basically: it's your time, not someone else's time to decide what you do with it.

<comment><USER59> It's your time, but you're a lucky person if nobody else has any leverage over you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have made these into basic ePub eBooks people can download for free from Google Docs: [http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/an-experiment- in-e...](http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/an-experiment-in-epub- ebooks/)

</comment><comment><USER60> This article hit the nail on the head. In essence, the human kind is identical with dog. There are certain amount of people that need a indication that you are in a higher-order in the pecking order. Otherwise, you'll be imposed/bullied.

</comment><comment><USER61> This situation was used to great comedic effect in "Blackadder's Christmas Carol".

</comment><comment><USER62> Fantastic read. Long, but well worth it. Maybe if we had taken note of this decades ago, we wouldn't be seeing the "no" revolution now. It's ok to say no sometimes, it doesn't make you a bad person.

Thanks for sharing this, OP.

</comment><comment><USER63> Great Read!

</comment><comment><USER64> Social status and being well-liked are different things, and sometimes you have to choose one at the expense of the other. It's not a comfortable feeling, but it's the truth.

Being accommodating lowers your social status but makes you well-liked. The end result of this is that people waste your time because they get away with treating it as having less value than theirs. But the default mode of most people is insecurity so, when the chips are down, they go with the high-status guy (the rival druggist who was not accommodating but prospered).

Respect, not popularity, is key. I spent many years of my life doing obnoxious, ridiculous things on the basis that it was better to be hated than ignored. I was completely wrong. Being hated or disliked is undesirable, if you can help it. Being ignored is fine. Being liked but not respected turns you into one of those whiny "but I'm such a nice guy" types, so it's the worst of all outcomes. Being liked and respected is what you want, but to get that, you have to accept the fact that some people will ignore or dislike you.

The reason it is better, in most cases, to be ignored than disliked is that it takes less effort. The same goes with being liked but not respected-- lots of effort. You should expend effort only for people who respect you. That's a chance to show true loyalty, not subservience. Subordinate people can never be really loyal, because power relationships always evolve and, when they do, their colors will change. So you only gain anything by doing someone a favor if you're already from a position of equality.

<comment><USER65> I have always found that helping people does not make you more popular: they just start treating you like their bitch, and get angry when they ask yet another favour and you eventually say "no". Also, they will not reciprocate - why should they waste time helping their bitch, when the bitch is supposed to help them? As soon as you act like a subordinate, you become one, at least in their eyes.

People often mistake my role as tech support, which means anything from changing toner cartridges to setting up their presentation equipment. They often just turn up in my office with another "emergency" and I'm supposed to drop everything and run off to help them. I have learned to issue a flat "no" when this happens unless they let me know well in advance that I will be needed. They are often furious but I'm thick-skinned enough not to care: at least I have _some_ control over the situation if I play it this way. My boss supports me so that helps.

"You should expend effort only for people who respect you" is something I've learned the hard way and it really does work. I keep pushing back until they learn that (even if I annoy them) my time is not worthless, and if they treat it as such I will not help them. Actually, I usually end up feeling quite good about this way of working.

<comment><USER66> Tech is a bit special because you also mix in the insecurity feeling that some people have towards that "black magic". I know a lot of people who just become frustrated and aggressive when things don't work as they expected.

When I was working in a computer shop one of my trick was to clearly state what was going to happen or to lay down the options that they had. That would often help them feel in control and calm down. Obviously before I had to wait for them to calm down enough to be able to listen.

<comment><USER65> Yes, they are insecure. One of my pet hates is when they go on about how I'm a "genius" or a "miracle worker" when mostly I do basic stuff they could do themselves. It's both an excuse for them not to do it, and a way to flatter me into doing it for them. Except I don't flatter that well, and I'm not really tech support in the first place.

I keep reminding myself that these are otherwise highly intelligent people who have insecurities about technology. Part of the "pushing back" is about encouraging them to do it themselves.

A trick I learned from a one-time co-worker was to listen attentively and repeat the words "I understand" and "yes, I understand" until they calm down and I can say something more meaningful. Keep reassuring them you're listening and their problem is valid. Works like a charm.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airbrb.com  #coworking - <AUTHOR> http://www.airbrb.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks like they've been sitting on this joke for a while.

      Updated Date: 2014-03-28T14:26:39-0700
      Creation Date: 2012-02-20T19:27:58-0800

[http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=air...](http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=airbrb.com)

<comment><USER3> Or they just bought it back then so that no one else could buy it. It's easy to mistype r as n.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Almost all April Fools Day gags are terrible..this one is actually pretty funny. The video itself was good and clicking on an individual desk was the icing on top..well done Airbnb.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh god I hate today. There's almost no point in being online today at all.

<comment><USER3> Exactly! First the Gmail "Shelfies" and now this :S I guess there's more to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very good... Very good... You got me.

</comment><comment><USER7> April fools :)</comment>


Why today's netbooks won't kill the laptop market - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-todays-netbooks-wont-kill-the-laptop-market-2009-2

<comment><USER2> This is assuming netbooks took consumers away from laptops rather than attract consumers who otherwise would not purchase portable computing.

Netbooks were meant to expand the portable computing market, not redistribute it.</comment>


Kaleidoscope 2.0 Beta - Diff and Merge Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com/beta

<comment><USER2> I bought v1 with the hope that a merge tool would be added. Looking back, I can't remember if that was just something I had in my head or something that was mentioned somewhere or maybe they just mentioned something like they were "working on it".

Kind of disappointed that I have to spend more money to get that… and there's no upgrade path for people who bought v1.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Although this is just beta and it's possible that they will announce upgrade paths when 1.0 is ready.

<comment><AUTHOR> Their FAQ explains there is a mildly cheaper upgrade path for people who already purchased v1.0:

> The final release will sell for $69.99, with an upgrade available to > registered users of Kaleidoscope 1 for $49.99

So, save $20. Not terrible. My gripe right now is that to save the most money, I have to pay for software that is incomplete and I have no promises about what will happen if it never makes it out of beta. Granted it seems likely they'll finish it, but not knowing their plans for failure bothers me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking at the page, it doesn't seem as if it has 3-way-merge, which is something I'd expect from a merge tool with such a price tag.

<comment><USER5> I was trying this briefly last night. It does have 3-way-merge when you integrate it with your source control tool, however I couldn't seem to find a way to use this functionality when you're just using it standalone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> OSX Diff/Merge tool for text and images</comment>


How do you optimize a MySQL database for writes? - <AUTHOR>

I have a write intensive application running on EC2. Any thoughts on how to optimize it to be able to make several thousands concurrent writes on the MySQL DB? <comment><USER2> Firstly, write scaling is a hard problem. Secondly, secret to write scaling is in read scaling. That is, cache reads as much as possible, so that the writes get all the throughput.

Having said that, there are a bunch of things one can do:

1) Start with the data model. Design a data model so that you do not ever delete or update a table. Only operation is an insert. Use Effective Date, Effective Sequence and Effective Status to implement Insert, Update and Delete operations using just the Insert Command. This concept is called Append Only model. Checkout RethinkDB..

2) Set the Concurrent Insert flag to 1. This makes sure that the tables keep inserting while reads are in progress.

3) When you have only Inserts at the tail, you may not need row-level locks. So, use MyISAM (this is not to take anything away from InnoDB, which I will come to later).

4) If all this does not do much, create a replica table in Memory Engine. If you have a table called MY_DATA, create a table called MY_DATA_MEM in memory table.

5) Redirect all Inserts to the MEM table. Create a View that UNIONS both tables and use that view as your Read Source.

6) Write a daemon that periodically moves MEM contents to the Main table and deletes from the Mem table. It may be ideal to implement the MOVE operation as a Delete trigger on the Mem table (I am hoping triggers are possible on Memory Engine, not entirely sure).

7) Do not do any deletes or Updates on the MEM table (they are slow) also pay attention to the cardinality of the keys in your table (HASH vs B-Tree : Low Card -> Hash, High Card-> B-Tree)

8) Even if all the above does not work, ditch jdbc/odbc. Move to InnoDB and use Handler Socket interface to do the direct inserts (Google for Yoshinori- San MySQL)

I have not used the HS myself, but the benchmarks are impressive. There is a even Java HS Project on Google Code.

Hope that helps..

</comment><comment><USER3> You could start by turning off indexing. Not sure what your use case is here, so that may or may not be reasonable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indexing is on but my understanding is that it only help reading, not writing on the DB

<comment><USER3> What you say is true; indexing does not make writes faster. In fact, it makes writing to the DB _slower_ , which is why I suggested to turn it off. Now, there may be extenuating circumstances (e.g., you also read from this DB) which make this decision more difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would it make it slower?

<comment><USER3> Instead of just inserting a record, it now has to do something else, too (update the index).

Try taking a look at [http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/improve_mysql...](http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/improve_mysql_insert_performance/) , which suggests some things you can try. This might be a question better suited for StackOverflow, by the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On EC2, I increased write throughput on one table by 3X by mounting 2 additional EBS volumes to the server and partitioning the table across the three volumes. That may not be as beneficial to you though if you have many different tables that are being written to.</comment>


Hackers Can Silently Control Siri from 16 Feet Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-radio-trick-silently-hacks-siri-from-16-feet-away/ <comment><USER2> This is exactly the kind of thing they would have put in old hacker movies like Sneakers that I'd always laugh at. I live in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> At first I thought they were using some sort of ultrasonic highly-directional speaker, but I suppose inducing currents inside the mic+headphone wire is arguably even sneakier.

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR

French security researchers able to trigger Google Now / Siri from 5m way using headphones as antenna, send txts, make calls.</comment>


Last Wishes of a Dying "General" - <AUTHOR> http://www.jqpublic-blog.com/?p=133

<comment><USER2> Army officer here, currently a Captain in the Army Reserve. Most of what this guy says is spot-on but there's one big thing that he missed. Perhaps this does not apply in the Air Force but I suspect that it does:

Senior leaders in big organizations like our military have an unfortunate unwritten mandate to /create/ things: policies, organizations, rules, procedures, etc. This mandate is enforced by the officer evaluation system which demands quantitive measures of performance, eg. "Implemented XYZ policy and achieved 98% compliance rate across Battalion's 510 Soldiers".

It _sounds_ like a good idea to that leader and to the rater and senior rater who evaluate him but in actuality, it creates a shitstorm of busywork for his subordinates and over time, it becomes impossible to get anything meaningful done because of the never-ending load of mandatory upper-leadership-directed tasks and training requirements.

It's a huge fucking mess. Every time I go into somewhere like an Army hospital and I see something posted about the Commander's new policy on electricity usage or whatever, I immediately think "bullet point on this guy's OER". Seriously, people are making careers out of this bullshit. The Army is a never-ending stream of computer-based training requirements. Our Soldiers spend weeks of every year in front of web browsers, trying to complete some horribly broken Flash-based interactive training that "teaches" them safe driving, STD prevention, social engineering awareness, etc. It's all crap and you know that some Colonel got a star for spending $2MM to implement them.

If you want to improve military efficiency and increase troop morale, start rewarding people for _eliminating programs_.

I would love to have a bullet point on my OER:

* Successfully eliminated five outdated computer security training programs, saving the Army $15MM/year in program costs and 750,000 hours of Soldier training time.

<comment><USER3> A couple of questions if you don't mind

1\. Private security firms are apparently taking over huge swathes of the not- actually-being-shot-at roles. Are those "soldiers" required to do the same policy busy work?

2\. US Armed forces (incl reserve) is nearly 3m. Is that simply too big?

3\. I thought the patten quote earlier solved this one - no policy or training DVD tells you what to do, it's telling you how.

<comment><USER4> It seems to me that the root of the US militaey's problems is that it's a giant peacetime military. Until WWII the US military was small in peacetime so that when there was a war promotions based on real performance eventually overwhelmed the peacetime leadership. It's impractical for the US to have a tiny military, but reducing it by 2/3 should be doable if anyone has the political means.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, but that's just not the case anymore. There's a lot more to weapons systems now than simply figuring out which end to point at the thing you want to hurt. Even getting a straight-leg infanteer up to speed takes more than a couple of weeks these days, and that doesn't begin to account for any of the more sophisticated tools that need trained operators and maintainers. There are some trades (MOCs) you can populate relatively quickly, but there are a whole big bunch of them that take years in peacetime (though you could break some of them down into smaller specialties and fast-track it to months at the expense of having people who know the whole system in wartime). It stopped being about getting a horde of young men to walk slowly and bravely into machine gun fire a long time ago.

<comment><USER4> This may be true, but we don't need to outspend the rest of the world on defense in "peace" time. I'd also argue that we're very good at building insanely difficult to use systems. Perhaps if getting users up to speed with weapon systems were a design priority this wouldn't be true. After all, everywhere else but the military tech gets more powerful and simpler to use.

<comment><USER5> > After all, everywhere else but the military tech gets more powerful and > simpler to use.

And more disposable. If your modern whiz-bang gizmo dies in the field on civvy street, that may mean a trip to the store. Even those things that _can_ be repaired or worked around are beyond the knowledge and capabilities of most owners/users these days. If it happens on the battlefield, you're dead if you're relying on things you don't understand and can't at least jury-rig to work when they go bing. And no, you can't reschedule. And along with the training you need to make it work, you'd damned well better have the conditioning that allows you to use the training when your own personal ass is on the line. If you are to have a military at all these days, it pretty much has to be a standing military (regular plus reserves). _Ad hoc_ forces are cannon fodder and little more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Glad to see a bunch of military folks commenting here. Inculcating a culture of innovation within the service is something I am passionate about, to counter the reality of what this prescient author writes about.

I am part of an organization launching what we call the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, co-sponsored by the Booth School of Business at UofChicago. Its a TEDx/Startup weekend type event featuring junior warfighters from across the services coming together with civilian entrepreneurs to create new national security and defense solutions. National security in the 21st century will be defined by we in the Innovation generation create through collaborative efforts, breaking the antiquated models of the industrial era.

</comment><comment><USER6> Patton once said "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." If the author's third point is an accurate representation of reality in the Air Force, I wonder how the armed forces went so far to the other extreme since WW2.

<comment><USER7> Because the United States won World War II, and because it outclassed every opponent it fought after World War II.

Winning has a very bad effect on innovation. In contrast, it's when you _lose_ that the old doctrines get discredited and innovation has a chance to take hold.

Patton was essentially describing the famous German system of _Auftragstaktik_ (mission tactics), in which junior officers are given an _objective_ and permitted the freedom to decide how to accomplish that objective.

The Prussians developed mission tactics and the modern general staff because they were so _shocked_ by their defeat at the hands of Napoleon. It took Napoleon just three weeks to march into Berlin, winning every battle along the way. Three weeks? Frederick the Great had held out for five years! Clearly, something was _very_ wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured it out and fixed it.

In the late twentieth century, the Israelis have been the foremost practitioners of German-style mission tactics. And it's because they faced the same situation than the Germans faced, but worse -- surrounded by enemies, and outnumbered. They cannot win on numerical superiority, so they must win on the superiority of their military leadership.

<comment><USER8> > Clearly, something was very wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured > it out and fixed it.

For more than a century the secret weapon of the Prussian (and then German) military was the General Staff. Whereas other powers started planning once war was declared, the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers: Want to attack Austria tomorrow? Just tell me whether we can assume France and Russia are neutral or not, and the time of the year you want the campaign, and I tell you which drawer to get the plans from.

The birth of the modern university system happened around the same time after Prussia's defeat at Napoleon's hands.

<comment><USER9> > the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers

We (the US) learned to do the same thing, even to the extreme of War Plan Red, the plan to fight the UK and its colonies, beginning 1927 and updated through 1939. It broke down into sub-plans, one for the UK itself and one for each major colony, including War Plan Crimson, the plan to invade Canada.

Did we imagine we'd have to actually fight the Brits? No, not really; we were just being prepared.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Poking around on his blog, I really liked this post: <http://www.jqpublic- blog.com/?p=106> (describing the military budget, without some of the shrill hysterics that often accompanies the subject).

</comment><comment><USER11> I work at a large, non-military government entity. We're in the middle of making some big changes that when complete will save taxpayers a significant chunk of change, and improve the efficiency of a number of things.

I feel like I should be proud of being involved in such a thing -- I'm confident that we will succeed. But I have this lingering doubt as well. Streamlining administration will save money, but it will also introduce the situation that the writer's unit faced -- centralized administration.

Its been my experience that more often than not senior leadership is uniquely unqualified to make effective decisions at a tactical level. Executives are supposed to drive vision, not fiddle with minutiae, right? Compounding this is the idea of taking authority away from the folks down the line -- where is the new generation of leaders going to come from?

</comment><comment><USER12> His first comment applies to about any organization. I remember working at companies which used various different scales and never saw anyone get below a "B" equivalent grade.

When everyone is great who do you get to fix the problems that are obviously there?

</comment><comment><USER13> >>Being an expert operator is job enough for anyone all by itself. Having the additional duty of being self-financier, administrative support specialist, training manager, and supply coordinator is enough to stretch most individuals beyond capability limits.

Sounds like working at a startup... except you're making decisions that take or save lives.

<comment><USER14> Well, what he is likely referring to is the fact that the Air Force has majorly cut and consolidated support fields in the past decade. There used to be finance personnel at every base to help you if you had any problems with your regular pay or travel costs; now that function has been centralized to one center, which is not a horrible idea in itself except that it takes forever to get any paperwork through. Not to mention that if there are any errors, you have to wade back into the mire to try and get it fixed. (I once went on a TDY [temporary duty assignment] for six months and spent the entire time fighting the AF finance machinery over errors in their reimbursement for my travel costs that were not my fault) I would compare it to starting your own company (not that I have done that, bear in mind) and trying to be your own lawyer and advisor for paperwork, taxes, local regulations, whatever. In the military these days, you have to know the intricacies of every rule and regulation inside and out to make sure you don't get screwed.

<comment><USER15> I wonder if there's a business opportunity there in helping members of the armed services navigate the bureaucracy - for example, bringing in many of the folks who have been made redundant and hiring them out for $x per hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel like, the whole idea of the military structure is to discourage critical thinking (this is of-course a generalization). It is supposed to make people further down the chain of command pseudo-robots to the people above them. As the people below become more robotic the chain of _responsibility_ shifts UPWARD. So by following orders you push off responsibility to the people above. It's a system in which the more punctual and accurate you are the better. The less thinking you do, the more you will be rewarded. In fact, thinking is dangerous because if you screw up you're on your own.

<comment><USER17> I kind of disagree with you here, but you are close. The US military encourages critical thinking in all its ranks (something many other nations do not do), but it has to do so while discouraging risky behavior. This is what is so difficult, because unnecessary risks can literally get you and your friends killed. Because of this the US military teaches their officers and soldiers to follow orders but to give it some thought about how it's done. The only career field (that I can think of) where orders are supposed to be followed 'robotically' is the maintenance career field in the Air Force where the Technical Orders (instructions for fixing jets) are the word of God. Most of the time there will be quite a bit of flexibility in an order to encourage critical thinking but discourage risk.

Source: I'm an officer in the US Air Force.

<comment><USER18> Technical orders are the always the word of God in civil aviatio, too, at least that's my experience.

I can't judge what a military is like, but some big organisations tend to crack down on critical thinking pretty successfully. At least in a military environment I can understand it somehow....

But I suppose without ANY flexibility you would actually drum out the last bit of motivation, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone that works a Google, might be able to answer this. With Eric S. removal, does the management aspect of the company work this way?

Reason, I just want to know if their way is doing something better?

</comment><comment><USER20> > _These ideas are my own_

Funny, they sound like management in every big company I've ever known.

</comment><comment><USER3> I took quite a lot from this - hackers working in large organisations suffer from all of those situations - poor delegation, lack of time for reflection and micromanagement.

Yet given the space we can do amazing things. It seems to me that start-ups are a place where the bad management habits have not yet crept in - and if it is possible to keep them out - as the author hopes, there is a possibility of large and effective organisations

Personally I think dunbars number is a hard limit of human organisations and we shall just have to learn to do with smaller companies - but the lessons still apply

</comment><comment><USER21> "Wheeee, I found a Jeep!"

Source: <http://forum.i3d.net/huiskamer-dutch/14785-if-ww2-rpg.html></comment>


Taking my home work setup seriously: ergonomics and setting in for the long haul - <AUTHOR> https://ahelwer.ca/post/2020-08-09-home-ergonomics/ <comment><USER2> > It should be noted that pretty much the only mechanical keyboards meeting my > requirements were the Kinesis Freestyle Pro ($210 with tenting kit), the > Kinesis Advantage2 ($330), and the Ergodox EZ ($350). All of these are > beautifully-designed tools, but do they really justify a price multiple of > up to 5x a non-mechanical Goldtouch keyboard? I think not.

All of the keyboards mentioned offer something that the goldtouch does not. The Freestyle Pro and Ergodox both have fully split keyboards. the Ergodox and Advantage have ortholinear layouts for their keys. The Advantage has a scooped keywell. These all contribute a lot to the ergonomics of the keyboard which is the point of purchasing them over a conventional keyboard. They all will also last a lifetime of use, which is rarely the case for membrane keyboards, where the rubber membrane acts as a single point of failure that can rarely be replaced. Then again, you can buy 5 of them for the price of the other.

Another point this post highly encourages is buying used. While this is often a good option inside the US in suburban/metropolitan areas, the used market is not as good in rural areas and availability of used computing hardware in Europe and other parts of the world is often sparse at best. Still, if it is an option in your area I agree that it should be seriously considered.

<comment><USER3> There are cheaper Chinese semi-DIY options like Ergodone(Ergodox's clone), XD75, X-Bows(120$)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Rocketship (beta) – a resume-free job matching taxonomy for developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.rocketship.dev/ <comment><AUTHOR> OP here! I'm Eric, and I'm a PM at Rocketship Jobs.

As a startup, our aim is to help developers build stellar careers by matching them to jobs with extreme precision and accuracy. To achieve this, we built a matching hierarchy that identifies the software elements shared by developers and employers.

-What's the product?-

It's a skill-centric job matching platform, presently run out of Google Forms. Developers and employers are matched based on an inventory of software skills inventory, values, and preferences. We're hoping to promote remote jobs as more mainstream through our platform as well.

-How to use Rocketship?-

Developers who would like to participate in our matching platform beta can submit a response though the link. It takes about 10 minutes. There's no resume required, but try to give a specific representation of your skills. We'll then use responses to identify the strongest matching clusters, and connect those developers and employers.

-The Key Features-

* A skills section on steroids: categorized banks of platforms, languages, frameworks, etc...

* Hyper-specific matching: we'd rather send zero matches than non-matches

* Spam-free by design: employers simply cannot access non-matching profiles

* Top Secret mode: developers can now search anonymously and passively

Rocketship was built with the developer community in mind, so if there's anything we can improve, please let us know. Thanks HN!</comment>


How Secure is Your Password? - ely-s http://howsecureismypassword.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> You are joking right?</comment>


Disney Blacklisted Replaced American Workers - <AUTHOR> http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/09/disney-blacklisted-displaced-american-workers/

<comment><USER2> Former Disney Contractor (in 2012) here. I was working for a Disney Contractor in the Disney Offices in Celebration, FL (about 1.5 miles from the Magic Kingdom Gate). I knew of the Disney Contractor rule from Day One, and was reminded of it almost every week. I would have co-contractors leave, to be replaced by another contractor the next month. It was pretty commonplace in our little department.

They did mention that there were ways around Disney's rules, but the 18 Months on, 1 year off rule was something Disney has had for years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could be some (inhumane, but not outright evil) reasons for this.

\- If you fire all your employees, then a month later have all the same people working for you as contractors, that can (and probably should) be a strong signal to regulators that you are abusing contractor status and ought to be paying for payroll taxes, healthcare, etc.

\- Security. If you had just laid someone off, would you hand him root passwords for production infrastructure a week later? Once you've given someone a reason to hurt your company, probably best not to give them the keys back, at least until they've cooled down and found employment elsewhere (this could be the reason for the 1-year waiting period.)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's an IRS rule. Otherwise, the contractor could argue they were an employee and sue for back benefits. I think Microsoft got burned by this.

<comment><USER2> Not an IRS Rule, but it is something bigger companies want to implement so they don't have to pay for benefits for the contractor. When googling it, most I come up with is that most big companies don't want to make it look like they are using temporary work in place of a permanent employ.

(I can't believe I'm linking a Yahoo! Answers post about it, but it's the best that I can find quickly: [https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070308162652A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070308162652AASMMKV))</comment></comment>


The Polymer 2.0 Release Candidate is available and ready for use - <AUTHOR> https://www.polymer-project.org/blog/2017-03-08-2-0-rc.html <comment><USER2> Nice to see Web Components v1 and ES6 adoption!

<comment><USER3> +1 :)</comment></comment>


Atlas by HashiCorp (formerly Vagrant Cloud) - <AUTHOR> https://atlas.hashicorp.com/

<comment><USER2> Dunno whether the feature of "self-hosted" boxes indexed on vagrantcloud will still be free after end of tech preview :-/</comment>


Background processing coming to Google AppEngine - <AUTHOR> http://zef.me/2009/01/background-processing-coming-to-google-appengine/

<comment><USER2> Great news, I have been waiting for this. GAE still has a long way to go, but this is a feature that I'm sure a lot of developers were waiting for.

</comment><comment><USER3> They're slowly getting there. But I think Bulk Data operations are a lot more important than background tasks, and it's sad that there's still no progress there.

Until you can do "delete from Stapler where color='red'" or "update Building set onFire=false where isMine=true", AppEngine is still basically unsuitable to the task of hosting web applications.

<comment><USER4> I would say this solves this by allowing you to batch segments of that bulk... a streaming bulk transfer may not be possible because you don't know what server the data is on, and what order it comes in, etc... Google has had a lot of success building web applications using this generic, split-up way of storing data... it sucks for one box, but for their cluster of so many, that makes up for it. I haven't had problems with the example queries like what you're asking for, if the dataset that it modifies is small.

<comment><USER3> It only really becomes a problem when you add a column to a table and want to fill in values for all the existing data. Or when you want to truncate a table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has been missing on Heroku as well. I haven't needed it myself, yet, but it's been discussed frequently on the mailing list.</comment>


Emacs IPython Notebook - <AUTHOR> http://tkf.github.io/emacs-ipython-notebook/ <comment><USER2> FYI, active development has continued here: [http://millejoh.github.io/emacs- ipython-notebook/](http://millejoh.github.io/emacs-ipython-notebook/) [http://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython- notebook/](http://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook/)

<comment><USER3> At one of my clients I basically live in jupyter and emacs. One of my issues with jupyter is that I'm often in a mode where I'm doing development and some analysis. The browser client is pretty good for analysis but rough for development. Emacs is much better for development. Though this mode has a few rough edges, it appears to be coming along quite well.

<comment><USER4> I have been using the

      ipython console --existing

command to connect to the same kernel that the browser is attached to. I can do more complicated coding in that repl (inside of emacs). Then, when I need visual feedback, I do some kind of one liner plot and hit play in the browser.

It works pretty well, but maybe this will make the whole thing smoother.

<comment><USER5> I just saw this today, which might allow you to save the context switch and just always work in a terminal/emacs REPL:

[https://github.com/rgbkrk/jupyter-sidecar](https://github.com/rgbkrk/jupyter- sidecar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another approach: [https://github.com/gregsexton/ob- ipython](https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-ipython)</comment>


IcoMoon App – Generate Font Icons - <AUTHOR> https://icomoon.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I'm not the author and have been using iconmoon for a while.

It's a simple tool to generate custom font icon from svg</comment>


ETHWaterloo announces world's largest Ethereum hackathon - <AUTHOR> https://ethwaterloo.com <comment><USER2> There were a few cryptocurrency start-ups in the Velocity program in the Bitcoin hay-day. What makes things different in the Ethereum era?

Also, who is sponsoring the hackathon, and what do they hope to get out of it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm one of the founders of the event. Ethereum took the core technology behind Bitcoin (the blockchain) and figured out a way to generalize it for any kind of decentralized application. Vitalik has a great overview you can watch here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SaEDzlmP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SaEDzlmP4)

Regarding the event, you can read our philosophy here: [https://ethwaterloo.com/philosophy.html](https://ethwaterloo.com/philosophy.html). Essentially we believe that the technology has immense potential, but there is an enormous shortage of talent and general understanding of how to build applications on top of it. The simple goal we aim to achieve is to educate and inspire talented developers to build on Ethereum. There is no other agenda, and to that end it is free for all attendees.

Regarding sponsorship, we're primarily backed by Blockgeeks Lab out of Toronto (blockgeekslab.com), which is a blockchain-based accelerator started by Dmitry Buterin. We're also accepting a carefully selected group of companies with an interest in developing applications on / learning more about Ethereum to sponsor on a case-by-case basis.

<comment><USER3> I'm super interested in attending, and it's only a few hours away from me, but I have absolutely no knowledge in building blockchain based applications. If I do some preliminary research and get a fundamental grasp of the terminology and basics of working with it down, do you think it would be a worthwhile trip for me and maybe a couple of other classmates?</comment></comment></comment>


Dank Mono – the rather special coding font - <AUTHOR> https://dank.sh/ <comment><USER2> This looks shady to me [https://www.virustotal.com/en/domain/dank.sh/information/](https://www.virustotal.com/en/domain/dank.sh/information/)

<comment><USER3> Flaged it because it looks at least suspicious. I assume you are alarmed by the entries under "detected by at least one antivirus [...]". news.ycombinator.com has tons of these too[1]. Is there anything that helps to distinguish the two cases?

[1] [https://www.virustotal.com/en/domain/news.ycombinator.com/in...](https://www.virustotal.com/en/domain/news.ycombinator.com/information/)</comment></comment>


Why 37signals advice is irrelevant and unhelpful - <AUTHOR> http://iwasamonkey.tumblr.com/post/872202764/why-37signals-advice-is-irrelevant-and-unhelpful <comment><USER3> The main point is that advice from 37signals is pushed too hard. It's not all bad, but it isn't a business model or company philosophy that can work in every situation.

I read and enjoyed Rework. It's refreshing to hear from a source that is trying to take on the business world by pulling a George Cosntanza and doing the opposite, or at the very least, an alternate.

The best use of their advice is to become a disciple of simple. Don't create huge goals, stick to small ones. Don't include every feature you think of, just the best/necessary ones. Don't have lots of meetings, only the ones that are vital (and good communication can fill in for formal meetings entirely). And don't be afraid to show your flaws. It's the advice we've gotten from parents and teachers and friends for years: be yourself. None of these things guarantee success, but they shouldn't lead to failure either.

<comment><USER4> YMMV, yadda, yadda, yadda. Nothing to see here, move along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary: if your product isn't useful (or doesn't have _utility_ in the economic sense) it's harder to charge for it.

Duh.

The unfortunate conclusion of this is that social media may just not be that useful to people. DHH even made this point at his startup school talk - <USER2> that if people aren't that willing to pay for your app, maybe it's just not that useful. I believe they've also stated elsewhere that when they moved Basecamp (or was it backpack) to a B2B product instead of B2C it got way easier to make money.

<comment><USER6> That's not an accurate summary, or at least it's not complete. I took the author's main points to be that (a) 37Signals's offerings are viewed by customers as investment opportunities instead of as consumable goods, and that (b) people are thus more willing to pay for 37Signals's stuff than for the mere "consumption-services" offered elsewhere. The author implies that this is the case _even if those consumption-services provide a lot of utility_.

Point being that in the author's mind, it's not that 37Signals is making great products while everyone else isn't. It's that 37Signals is making great products that are seen as productivity tools and hence as investments, rather than as simple absolute costs.

<comment><USER7> That's interesting. What if social sites focused on being better tools and less on being time wasting entertainment? I think it would be a good bet that there are productivity apps yet to be made -- ones based on the social graph which can be ad supported or freemium based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It has not been my experience that B2C customers are unwilling to pay for web services.

<comment><USER9> I thought Bingo Card Creator was B2B?

Edit: The product is sold mostly to teachers to save them time and help them do their job better, so that would make it B2B I would have thought.

<comment><USER8> Substantially all of my customers a) choose to buy BCC for themselves and b) pay for it with their own money, which are two characteristics more typical of B2C. That said, lawyers get paid for arguing about definitions and I am not a lawyer, so you can call it either if it floats your boat.

<comment><USER9> That seems a little odd to me, but I can sort of understand it. Are they using in their jobs? If so, is there a reason their employer won't pay for it? Or do teachers routinely buy stuff with their own money to save lesson prep. time?

<comment><USER8> The average teacher spends between $200 and $400 of her own money a year on instructional supplies, depending on what survey you believe.

<comment><USER9> That's an interesting fact in it's self. From people I know who teach or have taught, it seemed that they had too much to do outside the core hours, so maybe they are trying to get some of that time back?

<comment><USER10> You're chasing a dragon he's already tired of finicking over.

<comment><USER9> That was to be my last point in the discussion, which ended 11 hours before your post.

I get it now, people will pay their own money to help their career, it's technically B2C but if they didn't have that job, they wouldn't buy the product. Most B2C products are independent of the customer's career, but this type of product is not. Similar products would be suits, some networking events, travel costs, smart shoes, working lunches, coffee, smartphones etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The majority of start-ups are social web oriented. They operate in a consumption-services market._

That line strikes me as both wrong and missing the point. Perhaps then the majority of start-ups should consider a different service to sell.

<comment><USER12> It's wrong enough that it casts doubt on the rest of the article, but he does have a - small - point, which is that any advise should be evaluated in the context in which it is given, which I think is pretty obvious.

I think the author operates from a limited perspective in to what startups are generally busy with and then assumes that everybody takes the 37signals advice as gospel.

<comment><USER11> Exactly

It's not like it's a secret that the map is not the territory.

But perhaps, if you would excuse my pedantic tone, that's what one might think being an economist from an Ivy League University.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article is pretty far off the mark. 37signals don't advocate charging for social media apps. They advocate building software that people are willing to pay for. It's a little ridiculous to simply say "The majority of start-ups are social web oriented," and then assume that the rest of 37signals' advice still applies to all those startups.

37signals' advice _is_ , in fact, irrelevant and unhelpful to you, but the real reason is this:

Your blog doesn't have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

<comment><USER14> This was a good comment until it kind of got sidetracked at the end. I'd say 37signals' advice is irrelevant and unhelpful to him because he's not starting the kind of startup that they are advocating. I think if he had just pointed that out it would have been an interesting observation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author does a good job of identifying who will find the business model advice from 37 signals unhelpful. The title certainly is sensationalist.

A short summary: 37 signals is a B2B. The economics of the B2B model do not translate to a B2C model.

<comment><USER16> A better short summary: because 37signals is B2B, and because they sell productivity tools, companies are more likely to view their 37signals product purchase as an investment. What this means is that people believe the purchase will help their company's productivity (and therefore increase revenue). This is the real reason behind the high 'willingness to pay' that we see in 37signals's business model.

<comment><USER12> Investments are typically done in capital goods, say a machine shop buying a new lathe or a real estate company deciding to put up a new building.

This is just cost/benefit, investment does not really enter in to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm fuzzy on where he draws the line between consumptive services and productivity tools.

Which is dropbox? flickr? instapaper?

I also can't say I've yet enjoyed the pleasure being part of an organization that views business-services costs as anything _but_ costs. MSDN subscription? cost. Server lease? cost. Conference? cost. Support contract? cost.

They aren't considered investments any more than the electric bill; which itself could be arguably interpreted as an investment under the logic of this article.

<comment><USER18> Hmmm... HN - consumptive service or productivity tool?

<comment><USER12> That depends on the user. It is the opposite of a productivity tool for some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I will note that people are seemingly unwilling to incur costs which they > know are in place purely to generate profit rather than to shoulder > distribution and manufacturing outlays (as admittedly unfair this is of > consumers).

Entirely false. He's basically saying - "People are more willing to pay for manufacturing/distribution costs than they are willing to generate profit for a creator."

People don't pay much attention to whether the things they're spending on are profit-related or are going to manufacturing. It's _completely irrelevant_ to the average consumer. That's why an App Store app that took 4 hours to code can bring in tens of thousands of dollars, and one that took 4 months can bring in nothing. People don't pay according to how much you spent or how much they perceive infrastructure costs to be - they pay based on how well they perceive a product fills their needs relative to other options.

Ebooks often sell for more and have higher margins than paperback books. There's lots of other examples of this.

You don't need to increase costs to sell people. You don't need to put more time in to sell people. _You have to deliver something they want that they're willing to pay for_. How much your costs are don't really factor into most people's thinking on how much it helps them.

</comment><comment><USER20> "I have a degree in economics. I studied this at Oxford University, and have as good a grasp as anyone."

This provides a great theoretical foundation for his argument. Now all I want to see is a more practical one.

</comment><comment><USER21> > 'People are willing to pay' say 37 signals to the cowering mass of young > developers bombarded with an implicit open source manifesto written across > the social web.

It's not "open source" vs. "selling software." 37signals heads one of the most popular open source projects of all time. They also sell their software. It's "free services" vs. "selling software."

Of course someone who is set on never charging for a product as a business model will not find 37signals' advice helpful.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like 37 Signals and their general message, and certainly appreciate their willingness to take a strong, uncompromising public position in support of what they believe.

That said, my biggest objection to their whole discursive space is that a lot of their advice is implicitly elevated, both by them and by those who listen to, interpret and relay the message, to a more cosmological status than it should be insofar as it's characterised as general "business" advice. It's not. There is very little in their general methodological core that is useful _unless_ your business model is exactly theirs: selling subscription-based hosted web applications. Most of the same advice they give would be extremely ill-suited toward other domains of commercial endeavour within IT, never mind anything capital-intensive and/or outside of mass-market technology per se.

</comment><comment><USER23> Because their "advice" is really thinly veiled marketing and advertising.

</comment><comment><USER24> I find the article to offer no insight. I surmise that it was written in a trollish manner to garner attention. Looking at previous post by the Author, this is the first to extend over 5 lines.

Also, the Author tries to appeal to his authority[Oxford, Economics] which I consider poor taste; your logic should be able to stand on its own merits.

I myself was going to write an article on the failings of 37signals philosophy. But, talk is cheap; they have spent many years developing their philosophy; a simple cognitive dismantling of their philosophy would not suffice.

Any counter-arguments must be made in a similar fashion as they made their philosophy, in the real world with tangible results.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, what's more, it sounds like an undergrad economics degree. I don't care where you go to school, an undergrad degree in economics does not mean you understand this stuff as well as anyone. That's just pompous huffing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Independent of the argument, I enjoyed the writing style and structure. Not many blog posts are as well written as this one.

</comment><comment><USER27> 37Signals themselves readily admit that charging B2C consumers is hard, which is why they shifted their business to focus almost only on B2B products. I don't think they've ever said charging casual users works. They're whole thing is that the best market for web businesses is the "Fortune 5 million" of small businesses who will actually pay for stuff.

I don't see what the point of your post is. 37s already concedes these facts as part of their philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER28> This post teeters near the edge of linkbait.

It should probably read "why 37Signals advice regarding pricing is irrelevant and unhelpful for some types of software startups." That's the claim that is actually defended in the body of the post, and I might actually agree.

That said, I don't think the blogger isn't trying to pull a fast one here. When Nick Carr wrote "IT Doesn't Matter", then defined IT as something much more limited than the way most of us think of it when it came time to defend that statement, he knew damn well that his claim vastly exceeded his definition. The title, not the substance, was what got him attention. Kind of reminds me of sports writers who wrote "Roger Federer is Finished" headlines a few years ago, then defined "finished" as "only winning a few more slams." Strange definition of "finished" you got there. Hey, even with his resurgence, winning RG and Wimbledon the next year, they're still right!

The body of this article is very clear about the scope of the claim from the get-go... the title is link-baitish, though.

</comment><comment><USER29> Uh, it's not 37 Signals' responsibility to determine whether their advice is relevant to your business, your startup or whatever you are trying to do.

Their advice is what you make of it. It will work well for some; probably not so well for others. It is your job to determine whether that advice will work for you and is relevant or not to how you want to run your business or startup.

All these "pundits" fresh out of business school with zero years of experience under their belt need to take a long hard look in the mirror and decide whether they want to continue talking out of their ass or actually take a closer look at how Jason and his team actually run their business.

Just because Jason and 37S figured out a non-traditional way to make money through providing web services does not mean their approach is wrong. Just because it's not taught in business school does not mean it's wrong.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think the crux of all of this boils down to marketing. You can market your widget as a consumable or entertainment and people will not pay. On the other hand, you can market your product as an INVESTMENT to achieving their goals -- and people will quickly take out their wallets.

It connects to what Kathy Sierra has always talked about. Design your product to make your users fell AWESOME and you will succeed. If you do that, people will co-relate paying for the product as making themselves more awesome.

</comment><comment><USER31> So in regard to _The scope of this piece is narrower than that. This post really focuses on their take on pricing and the analogies they often use with their own experiences, which I feel aren't applicable for the reasons given. Sometimes this advice is pushed harder than it should be, with little awareness of the lack of relevance it has to many start-ups._ , I wonder how you would evaluate Reddit's model, as it is apparently not a taker of the advice that you disagree with?

</comment><comment><USER32> Counterpoint: People pay for music. People pay for games. What people won't pay for is something that is a shallow copy of what is available for free elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Now look at consumption-services markets. Social web tools which aid in the consumption of goods, or which are forms of consumption in their own right, represent absolute costs. And if there's anything we've learnt about absolute costs in the digital world, it's that people are unwilling to bear them._

Why are people willing to pay for a CarFax?

<comment><USER33> Because it's a smaller cost than the money you could lose on a car with a troubled past.

<comment><USER7> _Exactly_. It has serious utility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Their blog and their book is the SEO, product placements and self-promotion in the first place. Do not confuse it with something like selfless and sincere help to the community. ^_^

Update: Dear anonymous coward-down-voters! Face the reality - 37signals is a successful business, and it looks a lot like that of MySQL - lot of hype and really good, well-written texts, which means big and active community.

Do not assume that they know only programming. Those guys looks like well-read and more or less familiar with Eastern, philosophy. Most of their advises are just adaptations of some well-known Zen (and from other branches) principles. ^_^

</comment><comment><USER35> Counter examples: Meetup.com and dating sites.

<comment><USER36> Dating sites are a really bad counterexample, since they have to advertise(except plentyoffish and OKCupid, which are also free) and TV advertising for an Internet business is a sure sign of a failing business. (Think about every search engine you know. Almost every single one has tried to advertise, except Google. Google never ran ads. All their competitors did.)

<comment><USER37> I'd be curious to hear in what sense you consider online dating sites failures. Your assertion that advertising in other media makes them a failure is, well, just that; an assertion. I don't have any numbers on the financials of the companies, but the general consensus of people that I know is that OKCupid is a fine place to waste time, but that if you really want to meet people you need to go to the pay sites (precisely because the financial barrier-to-entry keeps away all the people who aren't really interested in dating).

<comment><USER7> I've heard that okcupid is an excellent way of meeting new people you actually like -- from friends that use it like this. My short time on there seems to corroborate this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Irrelevant and unhelpful ... to you.</comment>


A pricing strategy for freelancers - <AUTHOR> http://jake-jorgovan.com/blog/unconventional-pricing <comment><USER2> Reminds me of a clip [1] by Steven Levitt about how people have no clue how to set prices.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hABM20X0iZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hABM20X0iZg)</comment>


My Public Expertise Rankings Facebook App (looking for initial users & feedback) - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5469363031

<comment><AUTHOR> Keep track of your public expertise rankings as determined from your friends' endorsements. Endorse your friends to contribute to their public expertise rankings.

Note that these rankings are global and you may end up being on them without ever using the app.

</comment><comment><USER2> Feedback:

I don't want to see your friends when I click everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what you mean. As more people use the app, the "everyone" ranking will include many people, not just my friends.

<comment><USER2> oh...i was just tring to see what people think im good at and I get like java errors or something?

"java.lang.AssertionError: assertion failed at scala.Predef$.assert(Predef.scala:91) at com.endorsefriends.server.DB.getFirstEndorsementTime(DB.scala:179) at com.endorsefriends.server.DB$$anonfun$14.apply(DB.scala:285) at com.endorsefriends.server.DB$$anonfun$14.apply(DB.scala:282) at scala.List.map(List.scala:701) at com.endorsefriends.server.DB.getScores(DB.scala:282) at com.endorsefriends.server.PeopleRanking.getEndorsementRanking(PeopleRanking.scala:29) at com.endorsefriends.server.PeopleRanking.show(PeopleRanking.scala:47) at com.endorsefriends.server.MyAreasOfExpertise.show(MyAreasOfExpertise.scala:17) at com.endorsefriends.server.EndorseFriendsServlet.processRequest(EndorseFriendsServlet.scala:192) at com.endorsefriends.server.EndorseFriendsServlet.doPost(EndorseFriendsServlet.scala:219) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:709) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:252) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:173) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:178) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:126) at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:105) at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:541) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:107) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:148) at org.apache.jk.server.JkCoyoteHandler.invoke(JkCoyoteHandler.java:199) at org.apache.jk.common.HandlerRequest.invoke(HandlerRequest.java:282) at org.apache.jk.common.ChannelSocket.invoke(ChannelSocket.java:767) at org.apache.jk.common.ChannelSocket.processConnection(ChannelSocket.java:697) at org.apache.jk.common.ChannelSocket$SocketConnection.runIt(ChannelSocket.java:889) at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run(ThreadPool.java:684) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595) "</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Adult industry coder wants to transition to mainstream/startup scene? - <AUTHOR>

I'm 31, front-end full stack developer and for the majority of my career, 6-7 years, I've been coding for a company that primarily does adult sites. Now I'd like to transition to mainstream/startup companies as I've simply outgrown my previous position and lost interest in that area.
How should I approach prospective employers giving possible discrimination will be rife? Should I be honest about my work experience and hope for open mindedness or perhaps make something up to cover the tracks? I'm also considering starting afresh and rebuilding a SFW portfolio, I imagine 6 months of freelancing should cover it.
Developers of HN: giving the vastness of adult stuff on the web I'm sure there are fellow developers here who have worked on adult based sites. How do these projects/contracts transition to your resume and job interviews?
Employers of HN: what is your take on this? <comment><USER2> Anyone who knows tech knows that adult websites were at the forefront of video technology, monetization, recurring building, interactive web, security, content creation, etc.

Wear it proudly. Some companies may turn their nose up at where you worked, but I suspect it will be more than offset by those who are actually intrigued.

Your only danger is likely HR droids screen your resume out, but once you get past that. I bet you are more likely to get interviews than less.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recall seeing a posting on Craigslist years ago that was for a backend / infrastructure developer for a porn site. The amount of data being handled and the technical challenges were really quite intriguing.

I suspect there are similar front end challenges in the space.

There are definitely companies out there that won't care where you worked. Portfolio, that I can't speak to.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you have exhaustive experience with video, I am sure a lot of "mainstream" media companies in NY could be interested. Start off as a consultant with small gigs, so you avoid the corporate HR

</comment><comment><USER5> If I were an employer (I'm not), I'd be extremely interested in some of the problems you've faced/overcome. Average "time of stay" ( _giggle_ ), how you optimized for user behavior/patterns and such on a site that doesn't see the normal user patterns for somewhat bandwidth heavy content, etc. Let's be honest here, no one goes back to an adult site that isn't fast when the content is almost always on another site that will be.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've worked with 2 people that worked in the adult industry previously. One was a software developer, the other a project manager. Both were up front about their job history and transitioned successfully into jobs outside of the adult industry without any real issues. They both were very talented at their jobs and were excellent hires. The developer is now an IT Director at a startup that I will leave unnamed.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's nothing to be embarrassed about. If I were interviewing you, I would hope you would frame your experience in terms of what you did, that was technically interesting, as opposed to the nature of the site...but, obviously don't lie about anything. I'm positive that I wouldn't care anyway.

Also, small startups are filled with guys that watch porn and are pretty open minded.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll echo a lot of the sentiment here. The adult industry tech area is often well ahead of your mainstream counterparts. Anyone would be lucky to pull you in. I'm sure you'll face a little bit of animosity, but it will likely be minor in comparison to the extra interest you'll get at the interview table.

Good luck. As an employer, I'd strongly favor someone with your coding background.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't try hide anything from a potential employer as that just makes you look embarrassed, and the experience that you have gained from working in that industry should be a positive due to the technical challenges that it presents. If the company can't see that then just carry on looking. Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm hiring right now and really don't think it matters.

Send me an email at email@example.com and I might be able to get you a head start on that portfolio building.

</comment><comment><USER11> if you've worked on a major porn site makes it a plus on your resume. means your code _actually_ scales.

</comment><comment><USER12> most people that really know what they are doing in internet marketing etc knows that adult / pharm is the best of the best. don't be shy about it, just don't highlight it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Back in the 90's I build an API that enabled the owners of adult content (Larry Flint Publications/Playboy) to deliver current and updated content (images) to adult website owners and retain the digital rights of the content. I built one of the original payment gateways and video rendering engines. All for porn.

When I went out on my own. I had to beat the offers off with a stick. I ended up at a High End Management Consulting outfit and finally in the valley doing tech M&A. Adult is on the cutting edge of lots of areas, especially revenue generation.

I'd be upfront about who you worked for and focus on the projects and how you tackled the unique issues of the industry and the solutions you built. Not the industry itself.</comment>