Ask HN: Would you hire me out of college? Willing to live in the office - <AUTHOR>

My goal after I graduate in a year is to work for a start up, preferably one in Silicon Valley. Before I ask you if a start up would hire a college graduate, let me tell me a bit about myself and you can judge for yourself if I am worthy.
I am current pursuing my degree in Computer Engineering with a minor in math. I have a 4.0 GPA(all around), 2 (soon 3) years of research in DNA matching and parallel programming for protein folding. I just finished working for a local start up for about 7 months (while doing a 7 class work load), I did the entire back end (code, server setup, server/db admin, etc...). I am interning with Intel this summer. My senior year I will be doing research in porting MPI to a new architecture we are exploring at my university.
I know all the usual languages a college kid would know (C/C++, Python, php5, mysql, shell scripting).
I am teaching myself Erlang and plan on learning Scala/Clojure next. I am already familiar with Nvidia CUDA, and understand which way technology is going. And yes I know the difference between concurrency and parallelism :)
I constantly read about start ups, and I am willing to work very hard for whomever hires me out of college. I know start ups require a high capability/person ratio, and I am ready to bring it.
I also read a ton of books on software development, practices, and all that good stuff. I constantly try to improve myself and I am an incredibly hard worker, motivated by success.
I recently started a blog, it is not done yet, but the purpose of it is to have a sort of online resume. Feel free to check it out, and contact me to book me before graduation :P
www.khawajakorp.com <comment><USER2> With your profile, I think you would fit what Matterport is looking for: <http://matterport.com/jobs.html>

I don't know how well you code, but from your description, you're a very bright kid. Talk to them to inquire about opportunities.

One final tip: if you've gotten some time, try to spend some time and money doing work at coffee shops, if you're visiting the Silicon Valley. Try to attend valuable conferences as well (it's much easier for students to get freebie entrances, or at massive discounts). You could gain a lot of relevant network that would help you down the road.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do you guys think I am on track with the technologies I am teaching myself? Also since I do not graduate for a year from now, when do you think is an optimal time to try to make contact? I am looking for a way to get in contact with as many startups as possible

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The start ups that really interest me are those that are catering to the tech world in general, for example, medera cloud (spelling?) that came out the other day, or something like heroku, I really want to build things that are HUGE and scale really well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you know what sort of startup you would want to work at? I am guessing you will want to find a startup working on a problem that you are passionate about so some info about what you want to work on would be useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know a single Cs Graduate at my state school with those kind of credentials. My questions is who _wouldn't_ hire him, lol.

</comment><comment><USER5> Out of curiosity what school did you attend? A 7-course workload and that GPA is ridiculously good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently attend the University of South Carolina/their honors college, which was just voted #1 public honors college in the nation, and yes we rock football

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to work on scale I've got a job for you.

email me: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER7> "whomever hires me"

should be

"whoever hires me"</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendations for Non-Fiction Techie Audio Books - <AUTHOR>

I have a long commute and am a history/tech/startup junkie.  Just finished The The Ultimate History of Video Games (which was a fascinating blend of history, business and tech).
Looking for recommendations from HN readers.
Cheers. <comment><USER2> Masters of Doom by David Kushner. It's about the history of id Software and its founders. The audiobook is narrated by Wil Wheaton and he does a killer job at it.</comment>


The Outsiders – Homelessness in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-outsiders

<comment><USER2> "While the homeless may always be with us, we need to ensure that we are helping them in the most effective ways possible. For the city named after Francis of Assisi, a nobleman who gave away everything he had when he saw a poor man on the street, nothing less is acceptable."

The article seems to imply that creating more housing will solve this problem. Such is not the case. "Homeless" is a euphemism. There are two types of street people: 1. Those who cannot take care of themselves. 2. Those who will not take care of themselves.

As a society, we should take care of the people who are unable to take care of themselves. I do not know how to define "take care", but it definitely should not include having schizophrenic episodes on the corner, intimidating panhandling, drug fueled benders, and shitting like animals on the city sidewalks.

One idea is to lock them up in an institution. This is expensive, arguably unfair, and creates an opportunity for abuse and corruption (one flew over the cuckoo's nest), and sets up a big liability - How long before violence or abuse causes a huge payout from the government?

For the others who _can_ take care of themselves but will not, they seem to me to be some combination of really bad choices and really bad luck, it is less clear to me what our responsibility to them is, and I wonder how much they can be helped. Consider Tap from the article. If he just wants to tap dance and get drunk all day, sleeping and shitting on the streets in my neighborhood, I am completely unsupportive. I will call the cops every time I find him passed out. Hopefully they will run him out of town. As much as he wants this lifestyle, it cannot make ends meet. He seems like a likable fellow during his stable periods, but I do not want to subsidize him.

If you don't want to make an honest living, you are going to have to break laws: dealing drugs, breaking car windows and stealing from them, stealing and selling bicycles. I have no tolerance for these layabouts and I cannot see why anyone else should either.

<comment><USER3> Your binary divide between worthy homeless and unworthy is simplistic. Why, for example, do some cities have far more homeless people than others.

The high number of homeless people really struck me when I visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, and it's worth as a city asking why. For a wealthy place, it was incredibly sad and surprising too.

<comment><USER4> Mild weather and tolerance/support of homelessness tends to draw more in.

<comment><USER5> Minimally, though. Most of the people you'll encounter are locals.

<comment><USER4> How do you know they are local? Based on statistics? What do you define as local? If they have been here for 5 years is it local?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple rejected my app where you could give your lunch leftover to the nearby homeless person. Apple told me the homeless person did not agree to be tracked. Well shall we give them all an iPhone so that they could agree? (you smell sarcasm?) I mean it's not like they are safe and this app would jeopardize their safety more...

<comment><USER7> Could you tag, track, or predict a (safe and secure?) time and space to leave food instead of their identity?

Microempathic targeting of food pain points could be a healthily decentralizable dApp for Bitnation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thorough. As a city dweller for many years, you do get jaded. Although I give financially to charities and try to be compassionate I do get annoyed at the constant pan handling.

Interesting that the article is coming from a fairly upscale magazine chain

[http://www.modernluxury.com/](http://www.modernluxury.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Good article about a difficult problem. Here's an excellent series on homelessness in Portland OR: [http://www.oregonlive.com/portland- homeless/#incart_maj-stor...](http://www.oregonlive.com/portland- homeless/#incart_maj-story-1)

</comment><comment><USER10> Fantastic article. Well worth reading in its entirety.

</comment><comment><USER11> _How, after all of the city's investments, can it be faced with a virtually identical situation a quarter century_

It's clear that the problem would be much, much worse had it not been for all that investment.

<comment><USER12> Alternately, it's clear that the so-called investment badly missed the mark.

<comment><USER13> Given the disagreement and the impossibility of hard scientific investigation into the problem, it's clear that nothing is clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> San Francisco has a homeless problem because it invited such. I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population. As long as it remains a profitable and easy lifestyle, homelessness persists. Change those variables however you want and the problem goes away. This is not to say there are not those who are homeless due to bum luck. In many cities, this is the majority. Not so much in San Francisco where homelessness is a true profession.

<comment><USER15> > I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also > have the highest incidence of homeless population.

[citation needed]

<comment><USER16> Here you go:

[http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco- homeless...](http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco- homeless.html)

<comment><USER17> That article does not seem to claim that point in it. Maybe I just missed it. But I checked all usages of high, population, city, and cities, so if the point is made in that article is is done so with different enough language to be difficult to find considering the article's length.

Edit: That all means I am calling bullshit on that being a citation for that fact (or 'fact' depending on your view of it).

<comment><USER18> The Manhattan Institute's mission is (I paraphrase) to make selfish rich people feel less guilty, so I would be wary of any claims made by the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great article.

After reading reddit.com/r/news , I found the following: [http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur- videograph...](http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur-videographer- captures-deadly-officer-involved-shooting-on-camera/)

So, one homeless disposal technique is to house them. Another is to consider them violent criminals and execute them.

<comment><USER18> Then there's the also the ship them off to California strategy, [http://www.businessinsider.com/nevada-california-mental- pati...](http://www.businessinsider.com/nevada-california-mental-patient- dumping-2013-8)</comment></comment>


Facebook starts prompting US users to fill Covid-19 survey to help track virus - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/06/facebook-covid-19-survey-cmu/ <comment><USER2>
      No. Non. Nein. Nei. Nee.

      Never.</comment>


BitDefender 2017 (Windows Anti-virus) still MITMs browser HTTPS traffic - <AUTHOR> https://developer.jboss.org/message/966925#966925 <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently this has been known for a while. What I'm curious about is, since this isn't a good thing to do, why haven't browsers blacklisted this CA?</comment>


Warden: CloudFoundry's Linux container library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cloudfoundry/warden

<comment><USER2> Has anyone used OpenVZ along with either ProxMox or the free openvz webpanel, as I have?

With all the noise about LXC based solutions I wonder if some wouldn't be just as happy with OpenVZ.

<comment><USER3> openvz doesn't seem to be known outside of hosting/hosters community, otherwise - it's quite a mature container engine

<comment><USER4> The ancestor of Docker at dotCloud ran on openvz. We moved to lxc in 2010 when it became usable.

I think of them as mostly interchangeable except for the shared hosting use case where openvz has a head start (more time for more eyeballs to audit and fix it).

Now the whole "openvz vs. lxc" distinction is pretty moot - linux has namespaces and cgroups. Everything else is a matter of choice of userland libraries and cli tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Warden is similar to Docker, every container gets a read-only and a read-write filesystem assigned and Warden provides an API for creating and destroying containers.

</comment><comment><USER5> jambay provides more info on Warden in this other HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6488258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6488258)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, much more accurate than my explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ironically, Warden is also the name of the tool used in PC-BSD to manage FreeBSD Jails.

[http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Warden%C2%AE](http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Warden%C2%AE)

<comment><USER7> Probably obvious, but there's another ruby project named Warden as well (handles user authentication): [https://github.com/hassox/warden](https://github.com/hassox/warden)

This project looks pretty cool, though.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I thought it was funny mostly cause FreeBSD Jails and Docker have really a lot of things in common</comment></comment></comment>


The Athens Affair – The most audacious cell-network break-in (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair

<comment><USER2> Audacious hackers my ass. That was clearly the job of some major foreign intelligence service. The triangle of tampered antennas included among other things the US embassy. Granted, we Greeks have a tendency for conspiracy theories, especially if they involve Americans, but this particular attack was _way_ too sophisticated to be carried by individuals. And how on earth would an individual gain access to network infrastructure of one of the largest carrier providers in the country?

Not to mention the fact that everyone in the list of targets were in one way or the other directly connected with the government. Hackers usually don't go for such high-profile targets unless there are some state actors involved.

<comment><USER3> This is the link to the wikipedia article about the "hack" [http://tinyurl.com/l2pfdew](http://tinyurl.com/l2pfdew) (Using tiny url because greek chars on the url get really messy on copy paste).

Translated excerpt from the wikipedia link above. "Two years later, in 2010 the case reopened with the advent of new evidence suggesting espionage with involvement of the American embassy."

I put hack on double quotes because it was anything but a hack. This was coordinated from within the phone carrier and the company that wrote the software, with the management most probably being aware of it.

<comment><USER4> Every USA embassy is a spying station: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ndx...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ndx0eox0Lkg#t=1072)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > They took advantage of the fact that the AXE allows new software to be > installed without rebooting the system, an important feature when any > interruption would disconnect phone calls, lose text messages, and render > emergency services unreachable. To let an AXE exchange run continuously for > decades, as many of them do, Ericsson's software uses several techniques for > handling failures and upgrading an exchange's software without suspending > its operation. These techniques allow the direct patching of code loaded in > the central processor, in effect altering the operating system on the fly.

Since the is an Ericsson switch my first thought was that they describing Erlang's hot code swapping being used here.

Can anyone confirm if this is the case?

If so that's a pretty big testament to the robustness of Erlang that it can allow switches to run for decades at a time and update themselves on the fly!

I really should be doing more with Erlang!

<comment><USER6> > Executable code is what results when a software compiler turns source > code—in the case of the AXE, programs written in the PLEX language—into the > binary machine code that a computer processor executes.

That was my first thought as well, but it looks like they used a language called "PLEX" that is specifically built for the AXE switches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tsalikidis' family and their lawyers asked for the case to be reopened, claiming that forensic medical examination results prove that Tsalikidis' death could not have been suicide [1]

[1] [http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=307811](http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=307811)

</comment><comment><USER8> No matter what people say, a young man is dead and no one is in jail. I am a Greek , but I cannot see how this is good for my country and security. No matter if a foreign agency is implicated, this is treason. They care for their interest, we do not.

</comment><comment><USER9> it is very difficult to imagine this kind of stuff happening right under the noses of seasoned n/w administrators without implicit complicity of one or more state actors...

<comment><USER10> Considering the scale of the attack, it's pretty obvious that state actors are behind it.</comment></comment>


Systemd Will Change How Your Linux Home Directory Works - <AUTHOR> https://www.howtogeek.com/673018/systemd-will-change-how-your-linux-home-directory-works/ <comment><USER2> Apparently this change was decided in January? I had no idea this change was occurring until now.</comment>


Join Thinklab's $1M effort to crowdsource a biomedical data translator - <AUTHOR> https://thinklab.com/blog/join-thinklabs-1-million-effort-to-crowdsource-development-of-a-biomedical-data-translator/217 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks. Thinklab founder here. Would be happy to answer any questions you have.

<comment><USER2> Job solicitations are probably better suited for the monthly "whoishiring" threads. They are automatically posted 11AM Eastern time the first weekday of each month. The next one will be Wednesday, June 1.</comment></comment>


You're playing the wrong sport - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rafaelcorrales.com/2011/01/youre-playing-wrong-sport.html

<comment><USER2> >But if you believe that playing basketball will translate into you becoming a better soccer player, then you are deluding yourself.

Playing basketball will improve your soccer more than not playing a [round] ball passing sport (or indeed playing no sport).

At my small town, small-time school I represented the school in lots of sports. The sport I achieved most in I didn't play until after I started my working life.</comment>


BrightWork's JavaScript SDK – build your back end faster - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TeamBrightWork/bw-js-sdk <comment><AUTHOR> One of the co-founders here. If you don't have a BrightWork account, this is a good place to start.

[http://blog.brightwork.io/getting-started- guide/](http://blog.brightwork.io/getting-started-guide/)</comment>


Question/Opinion: Proper Bandwidth For Startups - <AUTHOR>

Hello Admins/Engineers<p>I've asked this question outside of the online environment and the answers have ranged wildly. I'm currently hosting an database & web server with a Dedicated Business Connection from Comcast at 16mb Down and 2mb Up (Runs about $110 a month). It's the most available in my area. How many requests can that handle? And if things were to grow from 100 hits/searches an hour to 1000, then 10,000 what would be required? I'm asking because it's important we keep this hardware in house. Currently the site sends between 45k-110k per request. Hopefully this can be a reference point for other who may have this question. <comment><USER2> It really depends on what app you're running. Let's look at this from the point of view of the user of your app.

Your user sees a 2Mbps (assuming you meant Mbps not MB/s) connection. That's a very narrow band for a Web server. Typically, Web servers push much more data to the users than they receive (GET vs POST ratio). The 16Mbps upload (again from the users' pov) matters little unless your users upload much more than they download from your app.

Think of it this way: most content from your Web server is served out to your users using the 2Mbps (GET). This is why cable/DSL is not well suited for running Web servers. But if you still insist on hosting this yourself ask Comcast for an increase of the upload band (to least 10Mbps).

Let's do some rough math:

640kb (~80KB average size) * 10000 (reqs) / 3600 (1hr) = 1.7Mb/s or 2.0Mbps including protocol overhead

Let's say your app goes viral and assume you get 10000 hits in a period of 10 minutes:

640kb (~80KB average size) * 10000 (reqs) / 600 (10mns) = 10Mb/s or ~11Mbps including protocol overhead

You might be able get away with this if you offload all static files to a CDN.

Regards

Joe

</comment><comment><USER3> OT: Out of curiosity / my own interest, does your Comcast business class plan have volume (aka "bandwidth) caps?</comment>


Show HN: Anypic, an open source Instagram clone - <AUTHOR> http://anypic.org

<comment><USER2> Anypic: an example of what you can build with Parse.

This isn't an Instagram clone.

1) The site doesn't mention that you have to sign in with your Facebook account to even use it.

2) One of the big reasons Instagram was "cool" or "fun" was because of the photo transformations. These aren't there either.

It's a photo sharing app. I wouldn't compare it to Instagram and I certainly wouldn't declare it as a "clone" of it.

I agree with another user commenting that the cool part about this is the tutorial [1] available to show how to make it. Why not just emphasize that instead of making this out to be something it's not?

[1] - <https://parse.com/tutorials/anypic>

<comment><USER3> Right on. I think Parse was being tongue-in-cheek, to show you how far you could get with their API in a short amount of time. But the tutorial is one of the more comprehensive how-to-build-something-cool ones I've seen for mobile app dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also see Classdroid <https://github.com/johnyma22/classdroid>

</comment><comment><USER3> The most relevant, interesting part of this:

Parse's tutorial on how to do this yourself: <https://parse.com/tutorials/anypic>

</comment><comment><USER5> I really like the tutorial. The presentation on the main website is really good, too. Good work.</comment>


Nvidia  GPU Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/gpu-cloud/home/ <comment><USER2> This is really interesting, though it seems like some kind of container play primarily to simplify GPU workloads anywhere - local and cloud.

There is little mention of their plans to build their own GPU data centre - though they must already have one for their cloud gaming offering.

NVidia could likely destroy AWS and Azure for GPU instances since they have GPU HW for cost price. I wonder how they are going to walk the fine line between cloud GPUs and cannibalising their own hardware sales - this feels like a dipping their toes in the water. I expect pricing to be only slightly below AWS.

[http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-gpu- cloud-...](http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-gpu-cloud- platform-to-simplify-ai-development)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting play vis-à-vis commoditized hardware offering from AWS/EC2.

If they have a differentiated and/or significantly more powerful offering, this could chip away at the status quo...

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks like a signup page. The 'announcement of an announcement' category is off topic here; there's no harm in waiting for the stack to pop.

</comment><comment><USER5> Signup/Subscribe button isn't working in latest Firefox

</comment><comment><USER6> The page does not actually tell what is it.</comment>


Social network design principles - <AUTHOR> http://danlewisjames.com/resources/social-network-design-principles/

<comment><USER2> Designing for the Social Web by Joshua Porter is one of the better books I've ever read (3-4 times). My former colleagues at AboutUs.org even had a weekly book club for it.</comment>


Free exposure for startups - <AUTHOR>

Hi there, I've just started www.threens.com. A free showcase for all web and app startups. Having experienced how difficult / expensive it is for the internet giants of tomorrow to gain a foothold in public minds, this is my sincere effort to get a free platform going. Enjoy. <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://www.threens.com>

Good luck! Lose that dotted background, though. It's really hard to read text over that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I get a blank white page, is it down ?</comment>


Stop complaining and pay programmers more - <AUTHOR> It seems like every time I check HN someone is bitching and moaning about how difficult it is to find competent programmers. Newsflash: competent programmers apparently have a skill that is extremely rare. Rare commodities are expensive.
It strikes me as senseless to complain endlessly about how 199 out of 200 candidates who are interviewed for a programming position are literally incompetent. No competent hiring manager should put out more than one ad posting which attracts a horde of unqualified candidates. Why not? Because the second time around he will offer a much more attractive salary.
And that's really the end of it. Enough of this nonsense. <comment><USER2> I have a simple theory. Most managers are still educated according to Taylor's Scientific Theory of Management, where the managers are more intelligent than the "factors of production," and their role is to "scientifically" direct their work so that they create additional value (which is multiplied by how many workers they have reporting to them). Their salaries reflect that model, and thus is proportional to the salaries of their direct reports times the number of direct reports they have. This is well-ingrained in the workplace, and in society.

Unfortunately programming is really the first discipline where the primary determinant of the "factor's" productivity is not the manager's skill but actually the intelligence of each individual. There's huge conflicts created, not just about salaries, but job roles, and really the structure of society (which is really built around an educated managerial class overseeing (and living apart from) a less educated working class.

The primary issue with paying programmers more is that they're butting up against those managerial salaries and life roles. Programming doesn't fit Taylor's theory. To change that isn't just about micro changes in business, it's about macro-changes in society.

<comment><USER3> That's silly, physicians, mechanics, lawyers, and many other skilled tradesmen are just like programmers. The problem is that many folks see programmers as somehow different than these folks.

<comment><USER4> We should not seek to emulate doctors or lawyers, but cabinetmakers, watchmakers and joiners.

Programming isn't a profession, it's a craft. The trouble is that traditional crafts are not really valued any more, as their purpose has largely been supplanted by mass production. So, we have no current role models for how to organise ourselves.

<comment><USER5> Programming is not a craft. A craftsman produces some product, whereas a programmer designs some product that is then produced by a compiler or by copying a file. That the production of software is trivial and fully automated, doesn't mean that there is no distinction between production and design.

We already have mass software production.

<comment><USER6> Overall, I strongly agree. I agree so strongly, I've been thinking about counter-examples, and I think I've found a few corner cases. ;)

Firstly, obviously, some aspects of programming are crafts-like. When we write conditionals as if(4 == x) instead of if(x==4) (for languages where variable assignment in a conditional is legal but not what you want), that's craftsmanship. Analogously, part of the process of designing a building is drafting, and that is a craft. A common error is to think that drafting is the primary task of architecture (at least, that's a common error about programming).

Less confidently, I would argue that the closer you get to the metal, the more craft aspects appear (without claiming that these aspects dominate), and that when we use a compiler, part of what we're getting is automated crafting. So we see three cases where we take back that crafting aspect into human hands...

First, for a new platform, sometimes some of the work is done by hand.

Second, many programmers _enjoy_ the craft of programming, and so practice it for fun. For example, code golf is craft.

Third, sometimes crafted is more appropriate. We usually prefer a cheap mass- manufactured physical object (high-quality, but not customized), but sometimes we want something handmade for the situation. I think that writing assembly by hand has some parallels with this (not to argue that writing assembler is more craft than design).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having tried this approach I can tell you that offering more money results in perhaps a doubling of the number of barely competent programmers, a ten-fold increase in the number of completely clueless, and no apparent increase in the number of people we'd actually want.

My results are not statistically valid, I've only gone through the hiring cycle five times, but my impression from actually trying it is that salary is not what it's about.

Dan Pink said it well:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782171>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357390>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439939>

The problem isn't attracting candidates, it's getting the candidates to see your job opening, to understand that it's a great place to work, and then filtering out the clueless.

<comment><USER8> > The problem isn't attracting candidates, it's getting the candidates to see > your job opening, to understand that it's a great place to work, and then > filtering out the clueless.

And then offering them enough money so they don't have to worry about it. Because, I'm sorry to say, minimum wage isn't going to cut it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about those Hacker News members who _are_ looking for jobs? Is there a good resource of tech positions available?

Personally, I'd love to see a nicely-indexed list of jobs. Things like location, work environment, remote working arrangements, languages used, expected number of hours worked, typical responsibilities, schedule flexibility, vacation possibilities, who I'd be working with, degree of autonomy, level of recognition for work, perks and benefits, etc. are all factors that go into liking a job. And that's not even mentioning money.

Personally, I'd love to start a job working remotely at $40/hour for 20 hours a week or so. Once it was determined that I'm a good fit, I'd be willing to relocate to a lot of different places (e.g., Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, New York, pretty much anywhere warm and coastal).

I think the question isn't so much why is it so hard to find the right employee or job. The real questions are:

What are the _actual_ job requirements? I don't mean traditional notions of what a reasonable work week are. I mean what do you truly need? It might be possible to get a rock star developer working for you at a cost of $40K per year, if you can eschew the standard notion of a 2000-2500 hour per year commitment.

If you're a potential employee, what do you really want from the job? Focusing on the money is not the answer. Make sure that what you'll be doing, who you'll be working with, and where and when you're working all fit well with your personality and work habits.

And why is it so hard to match jobs and people up? Is there a decent resource anywhere that I could use to actually narrow down job opening according to a slew of criteria? In a high-demand field, doesn't it make sense for the potential workers to post what they want in a job, and have the jobs bend to that? Maybe I'll make a submission along those lines...

</comment><comment><USER10> You have to understand: there's more to hiring programmers than paying lots of money. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had a dot-com bust and software companies would be dominated by MBAs.

That's the hard part of hiring programmers. How do you incentivize the good ones to work for you? If you have a solution to that problem, I suspect you'll be a very much in-demand person.

<comment><USER11> > How do you incentivize the good ones to work for you? If you have a solution > to that problem, I suspect you'll be a very much in-demand person.

Bonuses, perks, and congrats on jobs well-done. If I spend 40 hours between Dec 31 and Jan 2 writing up a new wireless barcoding system because the powers that be decided at the last minute to begin the new year with a different process for warehousing, I better get a damn bonus, at least 1.5 x 40 hours of my rate. You know what I got upon successful completion of my last-minute project? "chime, if you had originally developed a flexible enough system to accommodate changing of bin/zone locations, you wouldn't have had to work in the last minute." I resigned from that job.

<comment><USER12> _Bonuses, perks, and congrats on jobs well-done._

Speaking only for myself, non of those things would really swing it too much for me. Give me challenging projects in my preferred problem domain, sane working hours and environment, an opportunity to grow and improve my skills and surround me with brilliant colleagues to work with, and I'll happily forgo the perks and bonuses.

<comment><USER11> > Give me challenging projects in my preferred problem domain

The projects were challenging, that's why I stayed for so long. When you have tons of student loans, mortgage, and hospital bills, you can't forgo the perks and bonuses. I have a family to take care of so what I really want is everything. I want a good work environment, I want good money, and I want fun projects. Why? Because I give them back what they need: stable/reliable, problem-solver, productive etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How will offering a higher salary deter less qualified people? It seems like it will attract more of all kinds of programmers.

<comment><USER14> I'd imagine the incompetent ones wouldn't bother applying to jobs that are "way out of their league".

If you are "sucky" you might still apply for a $60K job, thinking that you might slide through. But you wouldn't bother applying to a $100K job, thinking that there'd be way more competent people applying so it'd be a waste of time

<comment><USER15> You'd imagine that, but you'd be wrong - there are a great many technical employees who don't realize they are way out of their league and will apply anyway.

<comment><USER16> "Hey, I've got 'two years of experience with .NET'! I remember, because it was my birthday last week and on my birthday two years ago I wrote a little digital clock app from a tutorial I found in a magazine. Man, who ever thought ten minutes in Notepad would net me a $100k job! I'm totally going to apply, and when I get this job I'm never working at another Burger King again!"

<comment><USER17> Upvote for satire!

<comment><USER17> I'm curious about why this was downvoted.

Is "upvote for x" too reddit-y?

<comment><USER9> You honestly didn't consider that it might be because the comment was entirely pointless?

<comment><USER17> I actually thought it was better to be specific about _why_ I liked the parent link, because that way the parent would get more upvotes, which I believe it deserved.

<comment><USER9> This is not a community concerned with upvotes. It is a community concerned with content, and especially with getting good content as quickly and as easily as possible. We upvote to signal good content. We do not comment to signal good content; that is what upvoting is for. We comment to add content; this can be in the form of insight, correction, elaboration, humor, summarizing a long article well, adding a personal anecdote or expert knowledge, answering a question, or any number of other things. Our comments should not be complaints, memes, or other wastes of space and time.

Before clicking the reply button, ask yourself, "Am I really adding something, or should I stop procrastinating and get back to work?"

<comment><USER17> OK, I appreciate this explanation. By your rules 'upvote for satire' deserves its downvotes. I agree.

I still don't see why the child-post was downvoted. In my view I wasn't whining there, merely asking.

So I'm skeptical that everyone here behaves perfectly rationally in the context of the community rules you've listed. And I don't view this as a waste of time, because I'm trying to figure out how things work here.

Edit: OK, forget it. I'm taking it too personally. You're right, asking 'why the downvotes' is also not good content I'd like to read from other comment'rs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The same thing is (and has been) happening with nursing. They complain endlessly about the "nursing shortage" unable to figure out why people might be unwilling to do a hard job for long hours requiring extra education and incurring outsized liabilities for extremely low pay.

The really bad news is its starting to catch up with many doctors as well.

<comment><USER19> > for extremely low pay

Not sure where you are from, but here in Canada nurses lead _very_ cushy lives. Salaries of 80 to 120K are not uncommon, and that's with 4 weeks of vacation, 1 day in / 3 days out schedule, etc.

<comment><USER20> Here's a link to information about base pay for nurses in the US (2006). It actually mentions the nursing "shortage" at the top: <http://www.allied- physicians.com/salary-surveys/nursing/>

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the link! Good to see supporting _evidence_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The best way to hire good programmers is by tapping into the network of the good programmers you already have. Everyone with a few years of experience has a short list of developers they'd like to work with again.

EDIT: sponsoring hackathons may be another way of finding great programmers. And don't forget the colleges in your area: if you have an interesting piece of technology you can show off, you can present a talk and hopefully get a handful of resumes.

<comment><USER17> Networking is a good strategy, but you have to temper it with interviewing and portfolios or it can turn into nepotism and a mushroom cloud of bad hires.

Hackathons and design contests like topcoder.com are great for employers but really bad for contestants, most of whom are left with nothing.

<http://codeanthem.com> might turn into something of an inverted marketplace where employers can compete for the attention of good programmers. (I'm not associated with codeanthem.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I suppose this refers to us (and our _Will the real programmers please stand up_ post). If it doesn't, excuse our self-centeredness and kindly disregard this message.

Our salary structure is designed to select for exactly the type of people we want to attract - the kinds of people that will go through walls to bend the world to their will, for some deeply ingrained reason unknown to anyone but them. For people like that, we pay an incredibly high salary that they're unlikely to find anywhere else (2.25% of everyone's contribution on the high end). If you're the type of person who wants to change the world and have a shot of building a one billion dollar business while doing it, you're unlikely to find a higher compensation anywhere other than choosing to start your own business.

If you're interested in having a stable, $200K job, RethinkDB is not for you. Neither of these choices is better or worse, simply different. It's a question of temperament. We weren't complaining, we were working to recruit great programmers who are driven to change the world. This is exactly what the post accomplished.

<comment><USER24> "unlikely to find a higher compensation anywhere other than choosing to start your own business."

Which is exactly what I did. Freelance contract programming pays the bills (and is quite enjoyable) and I'm bootstrapping a startup on the side. It's not so much for the compensation as the challenge of something new and the independence to make my own decisions.

So at least in my case, it's not your fault. You can put the most attractive job offer out there and I won't bite. I'm wondering if there are a lot of programmers like me. That would certainly reduce the supply.

<comment><USER25> _waves_. Yeah, I literally fell into the consulting business, and here I still am, 2-1/2 years later, slowly transmogrifying from a consultant into a small business. It'd not really about the money: as a family guy flexibility counts for a whole lot more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I feel that good/great programmers ask too little. Because there's order of magnitude of variance in skill sets and productivity, there should be much more variance in salaries.

In Finland, if you leave out top 0.5%, the variance is between 2000€-5000€. And most of it settles around 3000-4000€. Finland is very eqalitarian society when it comes to salaries and thus that has to be taken into account. But still. 2.5 is not much, think how much variance there is in salaries of managers, lawyers, doctors.

How's it in States, what are the typical salaries for good or great programmers vs. below-average progammers? Leave out top 0.5% - i.e. rare individuals with specialized skill sets in e.g. bank security.

<comment><USER27> Different parts of the US have such large variances in the cost of living that it's hard to give a meaningful answer (i.e. non-skilled labor here has greater variance than that).

<comment><USER26> How about e.g. in Bay Area? What's a typical range for skilled programmer and what a horrible coder can earn while hiding inside some clueless big co?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let's also address the issue of interviewing. Most people can't _tell_ a good programmer from a bad one (which is sad, really). There are also a ton of people out there that mistake higher percentile technical competence with software development competence. This recently got posted to HN and sums up the overall situation nicely:

[http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/2010/06/will-the-real- programm...](http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/2010/06/will-the-real-programmers- please-stand-up/)

Pay is but one factor, and resume (or job description) plus salary requirements aren't going to communicate what you really need to know. More than 90% of the jobs I've interviewed for had laughable interview processes. I've asked harder questions of my interviewers than they've ever asked of me. Most people just don't get it.

A "competent" developer needs to be hard working, interested in your particular problem set, and like the work environment you've created. You need to dig in and find out what this person is really about. Even if they're competent they may not like your company, idea, or even you. These are things you, and they, need to find out before the hire.

You/They aren't finding competence because you/they aren't looking for it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think you have it exactly backwards. The best programmers I know seem to be indifferent to cash. They work on the most interesting project they can find that pays them enough to live. Hiring people like that is really tough.

<comment><USER8> > The best programmers I know seem to be indifferent to cash.

No, they do care about cash. How do I know?

>They work on the most interesting project they can find that pays them enough to live.

There. That's why. If they weren't making enough money to meet their needs, they'd be looking to trade up. Money isn't the only answer. Everyone likes to talk about how money isn't the solution. I'm pretty sure every one is making a bit more than minimum wage or aren't looking to get compensated in some other way in the future.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but offering more money to someone who feels like they already make enough is amazingly ineffective. My point is that, in my experience, great programmers place a much higher value on doing interesting work than they put on making more money.

<comment><USER30> I'm interested to know who they are. I'm dead serious.

If "great programmers" work attitude is based on mood swing, business owner will be in danger hiring "great programmers". Cause what you just said boils down to human's mood to perform. "I'd like to do this because that's what I want to do now, I don't like to do X,Y,Z" where X,Y,Z are usually "testing, documentation, and mentoring".

<comment><USER29> There are three that come to mind right now, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to name them. Two of the three could literally double their salaries if they took crappier jobs, but they don't because they have great gigs and don't care much about making more money.

Getting people to perform _always_ comes to getting them in the right mindset! The more complex and creative the task, the less money matters in doing that.

If your work is mind-crushingly boring and repetitive, you'll go to the highest bidder. (That seems to be pretty much how investment banking works). But if your work is something you love, involves intricate problem solving and creativity, it will take more money to pull you away from a good job.

And for some reason I don't know, most (but not all) the great programmers I've come across haven't been all that interested in money in general.

The sooner people stop equating money with compensation the better off we'll all be. Money is but one _small_ piece of the the puzzle.

Also, I think you're right - it's not always best to hire a great programmer, regardless of cost. If you can't keep them interested and engaged in the right type of problem, they will underperform under the crushing boredom. Get the right person for the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In software development, like most anything else, you really get what you pay for.

Being a non-technical co-founder, I did learn this the hard way a few times.

I totally agree that having a competent, hardworking and passionate programmer is probably the most important part of a startup.

<comment><USER3> "In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." — Warren Buffet CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

My Buffet said it best IMHO... I've worked with some competent, hardworking, and passionate with no integrity who have really caused a lot of problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Employers: It's not about pay it's about _value_.

I agree with the original poster to the extent that I see some employers trying to get a "deal" on a great programmer without compensating the lower pay with great work, _meaningful_ equity, or good work/life balance.

You've seen the job posting by Big Dumb Company that wants a "rock start programmer" but has strict policies that won't let them pay rock start salaries or give more than 2 weeks vacation their first year, telecommute, etc.

Then there are the small guys that want you work for peanuts in exchange for worthless stock options i.e. they want you to take $30K less pay per year and _if_ they ever have a liquidity event your diluted stock would be less than that $30K you per year you gave up. If they fail (and they usually do) you'll get squat.

</comment><comment><USER33> Money doesn't always attract people to a job. The purpose of good pay is to keep people from leaving! Nothing will destroy a code base like having its original designers leave; there has to be someone who can answer questions quickly.

I've never known the salary for a job at the time I applied. I'm not even sure I had a ballpark. It _does_ come up in interviews, since companies tend to want to know what you're expecting. But why should I care? That's what an offer is: if I don't like the offer, I don't have to accept.

To attract good talent, you have to put your requirements right into your job posting. Ask for proof of work on open-source projects, for example; things that are hard to fake. A candidate that feels daunted by your application won't even make it to the interview.

<comment><USER34> "But why should I care?"

If you know ahead of time they're only interviewing for a position that tops out at $35k and you don't want anything less than $60k, it's better to not waste everyone's time.

<comment><USER33> If they're surprised that I expect more than they were planning to offer, they might also ask themselves why the difference would be so drastic. Maybe they compare their experience interviewing me, with others who seemed to want less, and make a connection. Or maybe that's wishful thinking. :)

<comment><USER34> I think it's wishful thinking. Most companies (large and small) I've worked at or known about (via friends) have ranges for particular positions. It doesn't really matter what you _want_ if you're vastly outside of what they've been allocated to pay. Yes, occasionally orgs will bend the position to fit you and modify pay accordingly, but it's rare enough to be the 'exception that proves the rule' when it does happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My impression is that most programming jobs don't give a salary range in the job description. If they do include one, the Dunning–Kruger effect[1] could make the more qualified people who are humble think they weren't qualified and they could decide to skip on the job.

If Salary.com tells me that the 75th percentile for my general qualifications in my area is 80k, I'm not going to believe that I'm qualified for a job paying 120k. My mind would resolve that discrepancy in favour of the job requiring something I don't have, not just they employer's willingness to pay well. This may even be true _if they say why the salary is so high_

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

</comment><comment><USER36> I think you can hire good programmers for cheap, but the tricky part is retaining them. Programmers can be hired for relatively low-wages, but then they should raises every few months. Turnover can be really expensive, and it often isn't factored in. Further, maintenance work may not help the programmers develop marketable skills, so they strong incentive to quit.

</comment><comment><USER37> The same problem happens in grant writing, my family's field, to the point that I wrote a longish blog post on the subject: [http://blog.seliger.com/2008/08/08/tilting-at-windmills- why-...](http://blog.seliger.com/2008/08/08/tilting-at-windmills-why-there-is- no-free-grant-writing-lunch-and-you-wont-find-writers-for-nothing) . My guess is that it happens in many others too, and people who are smart eventually realize they'll have to pay for quality or accept lower quality.

Sometimes bargains can probably be found, but they're probably rare and difficult and don't last very long.

Getting really good grant writers (like us) is going to cost _at least_ $100 an hour, and probably more like $125 – 200. The same is, as far as I can tell, true of web consultants. Good lawyers? $300/hour. Escorts? Probably also $300 in most of the country.

If you don't realize how much things and services costs, you'll end up with sub-par quality, or you'll pay, and/or you'll complain. A lot of people do the latter. I wouldn't expect it to stop.

</comment><comment><USER38> How exactly does offering a higher salary prevent hordes of unqualified candidates from applying?

<comment><USER39> Why are you concerned about who applies? Wouldn't you be more concerned that offering a low salary is going to have the same hordes of unqualifieds applying, without the benefit of the actually qualified people applying as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you've been around yc for more than a month, you've doubtless seen a number of links to articles on motivation as it pertains to creative activities like software development. The consensus is pretty clear. Incentives hurt productivity in creative activities.

This seems to have something to do with the relationship between creative effort and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. The prospect of an incentive seems to gum up the creative works.

When you compound that with how difficult it is to _recognize_ , let alone find good talent, especially with an interview process, you have a real conundrum.

Real conundrums are rarely solved by naive one-dimensional solutions like "offer more money." An actual solution would have to solve the dual problems of finding good help and not spoiling it with overt incentives.

Clearly there is a real problem here. Perversely, if you could solve it, you could make a lot of money!

<comment><AUTHOR> "Incentives hurt productivity in creative activities."

Unadulterated nonsense. On the one hand, I recall a cartoon-drawing presentation about school contests and the like. On the other hand, there are these centuries and centuries of evidence that PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES, PERIOD.

If you think that a company couldn't assemble a team of OUTSTANDING programmers by offering each $200k a year, you're crazy or stupid or both.

<comment><USER41> As a meta point the guidelines here request we use italics for emphasis rather than caps (you can do italics by putting a * either side of a section).

(I just noticed you were a new commentor so I hope that comes across ok :))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hiring managers don't list a salary. If they do they're looking to hire really junior engineers who probably can't write a linked list reversal program anyway. In my 13 years working at startups I've never applied for a job that listed a salary range.

Ultimately, within reason, good programmers are worth whatever you have to pay them and bad programmers aren't worth what you pay them. There are way more bad programmers than good programmers and money isn't the way to attract the good ones. You have to attract them with interesting problems and a great work environment. If they're there for the money then they're probably no good anyway.

<comment><USER43> Different people are attracted by different things. For one it's the money, for others the environment, culture or challenges. But usually it's a combination of all of these factors. You can't just disregard money as an influencing factor in the decision making process of a potential employee. After all, you wouldn't be working for free. Sure, there is always the exception to the rule - the person that isn't interested in money at all. But in general money is a pretty good incentive for doing something.

The salary that a company offers might not be listed in a job offering, but the culture and many other factors are neither. And even though they are not listed you probably heard of companies with a great culture etc. Don't you think the same is true for salaries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't know if it would work, but has anyone tried or heard of a job posting with a "name your price" salary? Similar to the "scariest pricing idea" that was on HN a while ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1279660>). I'm not sure if this would improve the S/N ratio or make the whole thing more complicated - my idea of what I'm worth is probably quite different to someone else.

<comment><USER45> Then problem becomes one of differentiating between the people over-value themselves, the people that under-value themselves, and the people that correctly value themselves...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Obviously I worded some things wrong in my original submission. I realize that offering a (much) higher salary won't necessarily (or even probably) prevent a "horde of unqualified candidates" from applying. What I meant was that if a hiring manager places an ad which fails to attract an adequate number of qualified candidates--the ratio between qualified and unqualified candidates being of secondary importance--he would have to be incompetent not to offer a better salary the next time around.

Also, the main point of the submission wasn't that programmers ought to be paid more. It was that I find it offensive when people claim that there are no good programmers out there but don't even seem to consider offering higher salaries. I'm reminded of the woman who is asked out five times a week by reasonably good-looking men of average social status, rejects them all out of hand, and then laments, "There are no men out there!"

Actually, this is worse. The woman may not be able to alter her personality or appearance enough to attract the caliber of man she's interested in; but companies can always offer higher salaries.

</comment><comment><USER3> But there's a perverse side to this. By offering MORE compensation, it would seem likely that MORE unqualified people will apply. For your logic to work, we'd need to show that making a skill more expensive would automatically cause inept people to stop applying. If that doesn't hold true, you could be throwing away 999 out of 1000 candidates instead of 199 out of 200.

<comment><USER46> That's what I concluded too! If you raise industry standard average pay it's just going to attract even more incompetent people and therefore the flood of applications from non-programmers will _increase_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> As a highly skilled programmer, what I really want is a fair piece of the pie percentage wise. Even a high salary for the field compares little to the prospect of making exponentially more. Also, nothing motivates like having the product of your work bring you money or prestige directly.

Because I'm currently only a few years out of school, no one would come close to paying me what I really feel I deserve. Even in the best case, the long term for a programmer doesn't look all that great. This is an extremely ageist industry.

For this reason in my off hours I've been working on trying to increase my prestige through writing books, blogging, and speaking at events. Eventually, I hope this helps me either find a startup with excellent prospects or allows me to charge large amounts to existing companies for consulting.

I can't see doing this with a family though. It's a difficult road either way.

</comment><comment><USER48> Most companies have highly stupid standards and requirements. Most of them prefer older platforms and frameworks just because their customers require older versions. Top notch enterprise solutions are still using IE6 to check compatibility of their products. That gives them all the possible negative Karma. On the other hand, innovative tech giants like Google are using their closed proprietary technologies, which is not doing the world any good. MS actually seems to be the better one here allowing people to use their Visual Studio, making a product out of it. Every language has its weaknesses. A developer proficient in programmer should not stick to a company for his development works and venture off privately. That will create the likes of DuckDuckGo and all the good that is out there changing the way we look at the tech world right now.

</comment><comment><USER49> "Rare commodities are expensive." I do agree on this one. However, money is not always the primary motivation/reason for people to join you. My friend once told me about how he asked his team, what is the reason for them to join a company. From tens of reasons, they finally come out with two only: FUN and TEAM.

<comment><USER50> The problem is that when you interview you can't really judge those. At best during interview you meet a few team members for an hour each and maybe another hour during team lunch and everyone (including you) puts their best foot forward. There's no way to tell if they'll be a great team to work with or a daily nightmare.

The same goes for fun: rarely you know exactly what you'll be doing or how interesting it'll be.

The thing about money is that easy to compare. If you have 2 offers from companies that are both startups, both well funded with seemingly great people and interesting problems to solve, it's very compelling to decide based on salary, because all other aspects are hard to compare and judge before you spend a few months working at a company.

<comment><USER51> "the problem is that when you interview you can't really judge those"

this is a real challenge. I'm trying to get better at judging if a company is good to work for, but so far it still feels like a crapshoot.

Of course, we often cheat and go to places where we already know someone :)

<comment><USER49> well, it applies to everywhere I guess, you just gamble it. I myself still in quest to find 'good' one (but I'm not a job hopper :))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I am tired of being offered $120k for a 3month contract without things like parking, vacation, and health benefits. I am lucky to be employed full time currently. I always ignore recruiter calls of that kind because what it really means is $30k for 3 months, which creates a "mercenary" job environment out of what should really be a more full time/stable developer job environment. I can do that by marketing my own skills. Employers need to end the short-term hiring practices, they're artificially boosting the economic outlook and creating shoddy work that is a piecemeal result of several developers that work on DEV projects temporarily.

</comment><comment><USER53> Money is obviously part of it, but now the whole picture. The difficulty in finding programmers that are gifted is not that you are competing with other companies, it's that you are competing with the programmer taking his ability and resulting wares directly to the consumer. Between startups and lifestyle businesses the lone programmer has a lot of options that other professions don't necessarily have (nurses, for example).

You have to keep in mind that you are competing with the excitement and potential earnings of running your own show.

</comment><comment><USER54> My theory on this is that it is a market for lemons.

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

Solve that problem to solve this one.

<comment><USER55> Extend the idea of "lemon laws" to hiring. Every new hire has a 3 month try- out period (as a contractor?) where they will be fired if it doesn't work out. If you make this point forcefully during the interview, some low-quality applicants will seek safety elsewhere rather than risk losing their job, while high quality applicants won't be deterred.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 How many job postings even mention salary beyond "salary commensurate with experience"? We must be seeing different types of postings.

<comment><USER56> Job postings have salary ranges. If I have 80 years of experience and ask for $500k/yr salary, I'm not going to get it.

<comment><USER46> The whole "years of experience in X" thing is horribly broken and ridiculous. Because there isn't a uniform way of measuring it. It's apples-to-oranges with any one else's way of measuring it, even if you yourself were consistent within your own system. Plus every job is different. Plus, in software you can be programming for _many years_ in a language but _never_ at a day job -- only on home projects or (more recently) open source projects, and yet this experience wouldn't count in some people's eyes. Plus there's the whole multi- variable thing where someone with say 2 years of Ruby preceded by 6 years of Java is generally going to be a more experienced/senior programmer than someone who has 4 years of Ruby ONLY (nothing before that) -- but each person is "farther along" experience-wise depending on your particular crazy-ass assumptions about measuring experience. It's an utter joke.

<comment><USER57> It's not a joke — they're just using it for a completely different purpose.

It's illegal to filter applicants based on age, but you _can_ require '15 years experience with enterprise java'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Looking at a lot of the posts on here, it seems that the bar to finding good programming staff is (1) finding good programmers and allowing them to find you and (2) weeding out the chaff.

Furthermore, it seems that weeding out the chaff is something probably everybody could agree on - that is, what would be nice is some kind of informal certification process or standard test. Nothing like an AMA board certification or the attorney's bar in terms of formality and obligatory nature, but perhaps _some_ kind of hoops to jump through.

Perhaps some kind of list of programming tests and a way to administer them?

<comment><USER59> There are a bunch of certifications already. They are either too simple or too narrow to be particularly useful for hiring purposes (imho).

The best way I've seen to evaluate the ability of a programmer and their* fit at your company is to:

1) Ask them to program something simple in the language you expect them to use.

2) Present them with a problem your team recently faced and ask them to talk through how they would approach finding a solution.

3) Ask them about things that relate to your startup/corporate culture (eg. if you're a bunch of practical jokers, ask them about practical jokes they've done or been victim to)

4) Ask them what part of your product sucks the worst. What specific thing would they do to improve it? Why would that be an improvement?

5) Have all your short-list people meet and spend some time together. In a followup interview, ask each about their opinions of the others.

* I hate to use "they" and "their" as a gender-neutral, singular pronoun but haven't really found anything better :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> There are 2 problems with your proposed solution.

a) Salary is rarely disclosed in a job posting. Salary negotiations usually happen after a candidate was interviewed and deemed worth hiring.

b) Even if you were to disclose a salary in a job post, an unusually high salary might make it easier to find a qualified programmer (because more people will apply) but it is not likely to increase an average quality of submitted resume, so you'll still have to look at 200 resumes to find 1 good candidate.

<comment><USER60> I believe Rethinkdb did post their salary range and stock option at one point.

<comment><USER61> Yes, at <http://rethinkdb.com/jobs/>. It's quite public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Well how about the other side...how do employers take mediocre to crappy programmers and teach them to shine?

<comment><USER63> This never happens. 1\. Employers do not have the incentive and time to educate employees in the first place. 2\. Employees, most of the mediocre ones, do not want to learn more, do more or work more. Because, the process is always about practicing and working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> A relative of mine works as a database administrator making $120k/year and lacks fluency in HTML/CSS. By contrast, Google regularly comes under fire for underpaying their employees, and their average employees are more talented than those of perhaps any other large corporation in the world.

It's not about money.

<comment><USER30> I'd take DBA if that would be the last job I ever had (leading to retirement). Otherwise it might be a career killer.

I'd take Google job if I'm fresh out of college for the sake of experience so I can get better position, salary, and wide-range of opportunities in the future.

But check this out: if there's a better place than Google and they pay better, do you not expecting Google's employees to jump ship? (for example, Facebook pays more or Facebook has a good potential to make yourself to become a millionaire)

These 3 examples are strategy to position yourself for a better future. A better future usually involves better position and/or compensation. Sometime it's not about money, but it's about power. Power to tell fellow developers that they're not that good so they have to do TDD, code-review, and help QA to test their own shit.

Yes, it's not _entirely_ about money, but at the end of the day, mostly it is about money, especially for people who can accept other negatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> When it comes to wall street bankers, there seems to be a consensus that money is the only thing that's going to bring in good talent.

When it comes to programmers, the consensus seems to be the opposite. I mean, they ought to be motivated by having a refrigerator full of Red Bull or being able to bring their dogs to work -- I mean, the Linux kernel got developed by people who work for free... Why do we need to pay people anything at all to develop applications for our intranet?

Although you'll find programmers with very different stories, I think that we'd see a healthier IT ecosystem if software people got more pay and respect (a friend of mine and myself both got offered a particular job... for him this was a big step up in pay and benefits, and for me it would have been a step down -- I've seen the compensation of programming jobs where people do comparable work vary by more than a factor of two.)

I think the "equity culture" is often part of the problem. There are startups in my town that pay $10 /hour, no benefits + equity (which might be worth something, otherwise not.) I also interviewed at a place where people were starting a new job shop; they seemed like a nice bunch of folks, they had all the trappings of "good management" (the CEO was a freshly minted MBA from an Ivy League school) but the biz plan didn't make a lot of sense to be and they were talking low base pay + some equity... This is a frickin' job shop... The kind of place where you might get $50,000 worth of equity and really be able to cash it out for $40,000 if you're insanely lucky.

That said, the interview question they asked me was the best interview question I'd ever been asked. They asked me to estimate a project they'd done for a client. I was smart enough to ask questions rather than blurt out a quick answer ...

I estimated about 160 hours for the project, and they told me it really took 200. That's not far off for a "seat of the pants" estimate, but driving home I thought... These guys probably charge $150/hr to clients; their client spend $30k for a really crappy intranet app that tortures end users... they "need" it for regulatory compliance, but there's no way that this app creates $30k worth of value.

For christsake they wasted 40 hours dealing with a deadbeat D.B.A.!

So that got me thinking about where my career was going and about software economics. For instance, if you want to get paid $150k a year, that money has to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, the shortest path to that is to get in a position where you can collect that as a rent, but assuming you're (i) the average unlucky joe, and (ii) somebody who wants to make a contribution, you need to be in a place where you're (a) creating > $150k a year in value and (b) in a position (politically) to get a good chunk of that pie.

Marx will tell you to work on (b) and that makes some sense, but I'll tell you from experience that it's a much better life to make $X for your boss and get paid $X/2 and it is to make $X for your boss and get paid $2X.

Practically, Job Shop work tends to be pretty marginal; the usual business model is to underquote work, lose money, but make it up in volume. It can be a nice biz if you've got sugar daddy customers who do stuff on a T&M basis, but otherwise job shops that look really profitable and productive today are frequently gone in a decade.

Now, you can make a lot more for your employer, potentially, if you're making a software product [or developing a SaaS-y service these days] but it's not at all unusual to put a man-decade into a product, spend $100K trying to sell it, and end up with $20K of revenue.

"Getting paid more" is therefore a matter of (a) making more value, and (b) getting a bigger piece of the pie. (a) interests me more these days -- I find it disturbing how much it costs to create business software and how bad the quality is usually is.

</comment><comment><USER66> Managers assume that because one good programmer will do the job for $100k that all good programmers will. Many here point out that good programmers will generally find a job that challenges them, and that pays them enough to live. They then conclude that if $100k fills one seat, then $100k is the right price.

This is totally wrong, and the key is "enough to live". I love programming as much as I did when I was 10. My expenses, however, are now somewhat higher than when I was 10. I have a wife, two kids, will not live in a small house, have very expensive car insurance, and I road-race big cars, hard on tires. If you want to hire me, it will cost a lot more than $100k.

Then there is the issue of mobility. Programmers tend to be loyal. They tend to be realists. If I make X here, and I know here to be fun, why would I risk moving for 1.1X, or even 1.5X?

What you have a reversible reaction in equilibrium. You want to bind seats to programmers. Programmers will bind to a seat for a while. But not all programmers will bind for the same price. Sure you can fill a seat for $100k. You might be able to fill a seat for $20k - but you'll have to wait a loooong time. If you want to fill all your seats, you're going to have to appeal to the largest possible pool of good programmers, and some of us need more money.

Even if you ignore the fact that those of us with higher expenses have more experience, the simple math of the equilibrium reaction tells you that if you want to fill more seats, you have to have a bigger pool. Even if we are of no more value than the 20 year old, the question is: Are 5 programmers better than 4 for your business?

Whether or not that makes economic sense for your business is up to you.

So yes RethinkDB, $125k for an Engineer III will get you some hires, but are you going to insist that this is the right price, even if it means that you have empty seats? What is your opportunity cost? It may be the right decision. But it may not.

<comment><USER67> They have $1.2 million dollars, they can't pay more. $125K is a huge pre series-a salary.

<comment><USER66> They're also offering stock of course, and it actually looks interesting :-) Plus they may not be so time sensitive: 4 programmers for 10 months vs 5 programmers for 8 months (yes I know). But if its $125k vs $150k will that $25k break the bank? Maybe. Maybe not.

<comment><USER67> I used to recruit and hire people and have been working with early stage companies for over a decade. The two companies I've worked with who tried this sort of hiring scheme blew through all their cash within 18 months, and they had a lot more money to burn.

<comment><USER66> I worked at a company that paid us fuck-all and still managed to burn thru $300 million. Are you in a position to tell us that the companies you worked with blew their cash on salaries, or are you just drawing making two causally unrelated statements in the same sentence?

<comment><USER67> Yes, they blew all the cash on salaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> That was solved years ago. Just consider how a professional soccer team (including the double) are managed and paid. ^_^

hint: it is not just a performance and productivity, its also morale, influence and starness factors. And it works.</comment>


John Draper Banned from Conferences After Decades of Inappropriate Behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/hacker-hero-is-said-to-have-used-cyber-conferences-to?utm_term=.tc25Z59j5#.tuOAyAPwA <comment><USER2> I've heard this as an open secret for years.

<comment><USER3> The term "missing stair" comes to mind

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who doesn't want more energy?</comment>


Apple working on 'iTunes for Newspapers' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8009962/Apple-working-on-iTunes-for-newspapers.html

<comment><USER2> That would explain why Apple have been stonewalling companies who've asked for a subscription feature.</comment>


Forget the Goggles: Chlorophyll Eye Drops Give Night Vision (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2009/sep/04-forget-goggles-chlorophyll-eye-drops-give-night-vision <comment><USER2> Interesting. It says it doubles night vision ability, but night vision goggles/scopes give 10000x - 50000x amplification. If the scales are comparable and doubles means 2x, then these eye drops seem nearly useless — but of course the scales may not be at all comparable.

<comment><USER3> The comparison needs perspective. The fact that night vision goggles amplify light levels by a factor of 1 * 10^4 to 5 * 10^4, isn't relevant to the issue of doubling night vision in an unaided eye. That would be like saying the existence of the Hubble space telescope means binoculars serve no purpose.

One might instead compare the cost of a night vision scope versus the cost of the described chlorophyll approach. Or compare the fields of view, or the required weight to be carried in the field.

<comment><USER4> Definitely. But it might make you more vulnerable to light - getting light into your night vision goggles will make you shortly blinded. With eyes altered due to drops or pills, it would make you vulnerable for the duration of the effect. Goggles you can take off quickly. But for non-military applications, not to have to use goggles to see (better) at night, would be so much more comfortable.</comment></comment></comment>


Can you decipher this 143 character string?  If yes, GCHQ wants to hire you. - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/can-you-crack-a-code-if-so-you-could-join-gchq-8810131.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the puzzle, and you are supposed to supply 5 answers.

AWVLI QIQVT QOSQO ELGCV IIQWD LCUQE EOENN WWOAO

LTDNU QTGAW TSMDO QTLAO QSDCH PQQIQ DQQTQ OOTUD

BNIQH BHHTD UTEET FDUEA UMORE SQEQE MLTME TIREC

LICAI QATUN QRALT ENEIN RKG

For the actual competition page, which you might not want to click, there are links under this HN submission.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369430)</comment>


Learning programming without a computer - <AUTHOR> http://hellosavants.com/from-0-to-c/

<comment><USER2> Interesting article, but ye gods that font is nasty. I had to cut + paste it into gedit to be able to read it.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. That's when Safari's reader feature comes in handy.</comment></comment>


LinkedIn Hits 50 Million Users; Still a Roach Motel - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/10/14/14readwriteweb-linkedin-hits-50-million-users-still-a-roac-83360.html <comment><USER2> I'd say LinkedIn's cautious, careful culture is a big reason it appeals to its target professional audience.

People like us might drool over a LinkedIn API, but, right or wrong (and I'd argue wrong) I'd bet a lot of the middle-managers that are LinkedIn's bread and butter would be spooked by an API that made LinkedIn more open and uncontrolled (like Facebook).</comment>


Why Amazon is eating the world (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/14/why-amazon-is-eating-the-world/ <comment><USER2> Great Bezos quote: "I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.'

<comment><USER3> How about, "Jeff, I used to love Amazon, but since you started fronting a bunch of knockoff products I can no longer confidently choose the lowest priced options--I wish your selection was less vast and more select, and I'd even be willing to pay slightly higher prices to ensure that the quality remained consistent even amongst the lowest priced products."

That actually describes the strategy of some other brands like REI which have higher prices but consistently higher quality products

<comment><USER4> This is why you only buy items that are both "shipped from" and "sold by" Amazon. They are very good about accepting returns.

<comment><USER5> "Accepting returns" means that I have to deal with a counterfeit product. Requesting the return, shipping it off, and ordering a new one (aka real one) are a series of pains that I'd rather skip.

Product QA, tracking inventory provenance, and punishing bad actors would be a major improvement.

<comment><USER6> An additional problem with that is that Amazon will not guarantee that the replacement will be a genuine product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find myself using Amazon so rarely now that it probably makes sense to drop Prime. It used to be the first and only place to look for something - I knew they would have it and it would be cheaper than anywhere else. Then it used to be that it might not always be cheapest, but it would be close, and at least it would be easy to find and delivered quickly. Now it seems like there is so much crap to sort through, half the time what I'm looking for isn't there, and if it is, it's probably overpriced or a counterfeit. Maybe I'm just an outlier.

<comment><USER8> And their Two Day Delivery Gaurantee is increasingly neither two days nor a guarantee.

<comment><USER9> To Amazon's credit, they do try to make up for a missed delivery target. [1]

1\. [http://time.com/money/3955429/amazon-prime-late- deliveries/](http://time.com/money/3955429/amazon-prime-late-deliveries/)

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately they no longer offer a free month of Prime for a late delivery - I believe too many people were taking advantage of that perk.

The last few times I've bothered to complain I've been offered a $5 credit instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Amazon had to build their own technology infrastructure. The financial > genius of turning this infrastructure into an external product (AWS) has > been well-covered

Wasn't the story about AWS wildly discredited? As in AWS was built not from sractch as a product and was NOT using any infrastructure that was used to run Amazon, and only later adopted by Amazon itself.

Why people still keep repeating that story?

<comment><USER12> Yes that's been discredited repeatedly by Amazon executives. Stories pop up all of the time from Amazon where they talk about moving part of thier infrastructure to AWS - including the migration from Oracle to AWS native solutions.

<comment><USER13> Yes, Amazon is trying to move off of Oracle but they still use a lot of them [0]. Also, most of their retail stack runs outside of AWS which is why they could not scale up during prime day because they completely depended on their non-AWS nosql database sable [1].

[0]: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-salesforce-would- love-t...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-salesforce-would-love-to-move- from-oracle-databases-muzzle-ellison-but-can-they-succeed/)

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/amazon-internal-documents- wh...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/amazon-internal-documents-what-caused- prime-day-crash-company-scramble.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see a rising consciousness that "sold by Amazon" products are often likely to be stale-dated or counterfeit. Read the reviews. Read manufacturer responses to complaints. This is broad-spectrum: Fake SDXC cards. Adulterated Moroccan argan oil. Travel underwear that falls apart because it sat six years in a hot storeroom before the merchant went under.

I find myself evaluating each Amazon purchase for provenance, as if I found it in the woods. I never buy from those rural Pennsylvania bargain stores that have stale-dated corn flakes for a dollar; why do we give Amazon a pass on this? As more people make this association, their sales will peak and fall.

<comment><USER9> The nice thing about "sold by Amazon" is you can return it at no cost to yourself.

<comment><USER15> That introduces enough friction that I don't want to bother buying there. I'll just pay more and wait longer for a product I know is genuine.

Oh, they've been banning customers for too many returns! [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zm8mde/amazon- ban...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zm8mde/amazon-banning- customers-for-returns)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amazon will soon be operating at a scale that no other company in history has reached. There is a good chance they will run into operational challenges that no one else has faced before. Think: challenges on which there is zero academic research because no one has studied them in the past. Think: challenges for which there are no known solutions. Simply chanting that "software is scalable" and "software has zero incremental cost" doesn't solve those kinds of challenges.

Multiple geographic groups, business units, physical locations, data centers, software systems, managers, and employees, by their very physical nature, are able to communicate and coordinate with each other only in statistically noisy ways that are ultimately constrained by the Laws of Thermodynamics. These laws, to put it mildly, impose hard limits of what any company can do with information and energy.

I wonder when and whether Amazon will start running into these limits.

<comment><USER17> The final state is when every human on Earth is an Amazon employee, going through life with the computer strapped to their arm, telling them what to do next, awarding points for compliance, and electrical jolts when you don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I don't get is why postal services like USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. don't start an Amazon competitor.

For them it could be the difference between being in a race to the bottom versus being in a race to the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think part of it is that they don't have expertise in retail. It also would pit them against all their competition, not just Amazon.

<comment><USER19> They'd need some digital infrastructure and open online marketplace, map or index, and use local shops as repositories for goods. For this to work they need some kind of automated delivery, like drones, or eTaxi/Uber passengers who take on delivery jobs.

Let's say you take an Uber from your friends house to your home, or you shedule your electronic car to "accept packages", and some shop owner drops you a package along the way that you deliver to a neighbor of yours.

You need a good system to make this work, so that shop owners (real world repository maintainers) and traffic participants are on the same map. Of couse would you take a a package if the friction is low enough, or you're stopped by a traffic light anyway and/or get some compensation for it.

Cars as investment (putting the car to work), instead of a constant cost factor for private ownership would be a game changer for private consumers. This might be possible soon with more automation in the infrastructure in place.

<comment><USER20> So, are we sensing a startup idea of "start your own amazon" but for shipping company.

<comment><USER19> Just ecommerce 3.0, all the benfits of Amazon but decentralized, supporting your local environment. This could be an open source project, a public good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The described strategy starts to fall apart when by offering FBA they lose control over quality of products being sold and credibility in their retail operations. The fact that I have to use things like FakeSpot puts me off from shopping on Amazon while I did so without thinking twice in the past. I wonder what portion of AliExpress and Amazon is cross listed.

<comment><USER21> >I wonder what portion of AliExpress and Amazon is cross listed.

It wouldn't surprise me if it were close to 90%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> By Techcrunch, from Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, the world is a different place. In China Amazon is almost nothing, in rest of Asia they're still far from dominance and Europe is running scared of the hegemony of American IT companies.

Disclaimer: I buy mostly from AliExpress and BangGood.</comment>


Trump winning majorities in 5 states is overvalued on PredictIt - <AUTHOR> http://www.flightfromperfection.com/trump-wins-50-in-5.html <comment><USER2> > _It 's safe to assume independence in this case because the five primaries > (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island) will all occur > at roughly the same time, in the same time zone. It would be unlikely for > the result of one of these primaries to influence the result of another, so > we will assume that there's no inter-primary influence._

No way they are independent. If the previous day he appears in all the mayor TV networks killing a kitty and drinking the blood, the probability of winning will decrease in all the states, so there is a lot of correlation.

(You can come up with a more realistic scenario.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't independence mean that, for two events, the occurrence of one event doesn't effect the probability of the other event? You can observe correlations between two independent events, they just can't be causally connected.

In your example, the press conference where Trump drinks kitty blood is driving the change in probability for all primaries, so it's functioning as a confounding variable.

You wouldn't expect the results of one primary to affect the results of another (because they're happening near simultaneously), so I think it's safe to assume independence.

<comment><USER2> Independence is a more strict condition. The probabilities must follow the rule

P(A and B) = P(A) * P(B)

that is the rule that is used in the article.

Let's pick an easier example. You buy two equal decks of cards while traveling abroad. When you return home, you realize that it may be a deck with 48 cards (123456789JQK)or a deck with only 40 cards (1234567JQK) without the "8" and "9".

To make it simple, suppose that you magically know that you have a 50% chance of having bought a 48 cards deck and a 50% chance of having bought a 40 cards deck.

One of your friend come and start to shuffle both decks, one in each hand, without mixing them.

If your friend picks a card from the right deck, what is the probability that it's a "8"? (spoiler alert: There is a 50% that the deck has only 40 cards (without the "8" and "9") and you can't pick the "8", and there is a 50% that the deck has 48 cards and there is a 1/12 to pick the "8", so the probability is: 1/2 * 0 + 1/2 * 1/12 = 1/24)

If your friend picks a card from the left deck, what is the probability that it's a "8"? (again 1/24)

Are they independent? Whatever he does with the left decks doesn't affect the right deck. To get less relation, you can use two friends, and put them in a different room, and make them pick the card exactly simultaneously.

If the events were independent, the probability that both have picked an "8" would be 1/24 * 1/24 = 1/576

But the correct answer is more complicated. There is a 50% that the deck has only 40 cards (without the "8" and "9") and you can't pick the "8", and there is a 50% that the deck has 48 cards and there is a 1/12 to pick the "8" in each one, so the probability is: 1/2 * 0 + 1/2 * 1/12 * 1/12 = 1/288\. That is 2x bigger than if they were independent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the example! I didn't understand it, but then I asked about it on cross-validated and the cross-validated hive mind helped me get it: [http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/209057/independence...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/209057/independence- of-two-decks-of-cards-each-with-a-different-numbers-of-cards/209062#209062)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clearing Detroit's blight will cost city almost $2bn, taskforce report finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/27/detroit-blight-remove-vacant-structures-buildings-report

<comment><USER2> It's incredible to think how such a massive amount of homes (60,000) can all just go under like this. Detroit also has property taxes twice as high as the US average. Why not lower this tax to try to lure real estate tycoons to take advantage of some of the opportunity here

</comment><comment><USER3> Great if they actually find this money and spend it on local firms and people to do the work. Circulating money is good for what ails you.</comment>