Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One's 40s - <AUTHOR> Hi HN — I'm 43, and at a bit of a crossroads. I sold my share in a company last year and have been taking time off to figure out my next move, and while I've mostly done startups my whole career, I am considering going for a job at a big tech company (FAANG/Lyft/Stripe/etc.). Does anyone have any experience doing this? I can still keep up coding, but should I do that, or try for management? What skills should I brush up on particularly? Mostly, I am a bit fed up with the stress and uncertainty of startups and looking for something more stable, at least for a while. <comment><USER2> I was 37 when I joined Google in a senior IC role in 2008, so nearly my entire 40's. It's still work, there are still issues with coworkers and there's still stress compared to the startups I used to work at. The company isn't going to go out of business but you can still get a manager who doesn't communicate well and gives you bad performance reviews as a result. Google turns over more employees in a month than the entire headcount of some of my previous companies. And GOOG is a huge company - if anyone says it's either great or horrible that's probably true for them, but it doesn't mean much for what your experience is going to be. I honestly don't think that being young is really much of an advantage one way or other here - there are successful people in the 40's here, even ICs, there are a lot of new grads who wash out after a year or two and go elsewhere. Big companies have much more idiosyncratic tech stacks so knowing any particular technical skill isn't that huge a deal as we probably don't use it anyway. Know the basics, know how to write, know how to manage up.

edit: reading some other comments I think it's easier to be an older IC at big companies than startups/small companies. But whether you should pursue a management track is a completely different question.

<comment><USER3> If anyone else isn't familiar with 'IC', it seems it stands for "individual contributor" (as opposed to a role where you're managing others). Correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER4> [was] IC =worker.

[updated] IC = worker with management tendencies but more technical knowledge.

[kept] Ok then. Helpful. Corporatespeak is often just jargon creation to exclude others for whatever reason.

[edit expansion] Worker who is not manager but has manager skills sufficient to orchestrate as needed to deliver a result in required manner. Knowledge level exceeds expectation normally associated with a classic "pure" manager.

<comment><USER5> It's an abbreviation. It's used to save time. I don't want to waste away typing Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.

<comment><USER4> You just did.

<comment><USER5> I didn't waste away this time, I'm still here. But next time I might not be so lucky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anybody in their 40s or older has valuable experience above and beyond ephemeral value of "Hitting the ground running with Cabbage and Sprouts containerized with Cuper9s using ES2020 and JSxyz."

One way to deliver that experience is in delivery management, that is, being responsible for teams that ship stuff.

Another way to deliver that experience is in people management. Not all companies equate this with the previous responsibility.

A third way in in a more nebulous "leadership" role that doesn't have "manager" in the title, e.g. "Architect," or "Principal Engineer."

The latter is tricky, but can be a very good opportunity. My 2c on being in engineering leadership is that it's best to think of yourself as a manger without authority, rather than thinking of yourself as an engineer with authority.

\- - -

FWIW, I am 57 and a Principal Engineer with PagerDuty.

<comment><USER7> > it's best to think of yourself as a manger without authority, rather than > thinking of yourself as an engineer with authority

That's great, and resonates

<comment><USER8> Andy Grove talks about this in "High Output Management". He says there are two kinds of managers, "know-how" managers and "position" managers. Both have a certain amount of authority, and a successful technology company needs both.

If you're a senior enough person who doesn't want to manage people, you should think of yourself as a "know-how" (knowledge, experience) manager and find a role that allows for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes, I did exactly this. Stayed a dev, moved to the west coast, got a big pay bump, job stability, and benefits. There are plenty of 40+ devs here. So much of the work at big companies is learning their huge custom domain, don't worry about any particular tech.

Only regret is that I absolutely under leveled myself (msft L64), and after a couple years getting dragged through a couple of reorgs, I still feel like promotion is a ways off. Most of my peer group is 10 years younger, and most ICs of my age group are at least two levels up. So wait for an opportunity at the level you think you should be. Don't let imposter syndrome talk you out of it or think you can make it up after you join.

But even still, I'm doing way better now than I was back in Michigan working for startups, even accounting for cost of living.

Also note the most challenging change for me was getting used to how little control of anything you have is. I really miss being able to basically decide my design and implement it against public well-known technologies. Now so much of it is calling around, trying to figure out how other teams are doing things, coordinating with them, ensuring backward compatibility with a million old things, blah blah blah, it's much slower and less interesting. But, still worth it....I guess. (second-guessing myself now?)

<comment><USER10> Did you "declare" a target level when you applied?

<comment><USER9> You don't, not directly. At least at msft. But you can figure out what level you think you should be based on your experience, and then work backwards to determine what base salary to ask for, and the levels are fairly tightly coupled to that.

And don't let imposter syndrome weaken your resolve on that salary if you're coming from somewhere with way lower baselines. You don't need to be a super hero at any level short of "partner" level. You'll just end up with a lower leveled job than you should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I joined Google at the age of 50. Just send a resume. They are not trying to surprise you and want you to do your best. Consequently, not only do they tell you what to expect from the interview process, the recruiter will send you a PDF that talks through what to expect along with a reading list you can use to prepare. (For example: cracking the coding interview and CLRS are on it.)

That said, I just went in cold. If you've been coding and are current in one of the 3 big interview languages (C++/Java/Python), and if you still understand your undergraduate level algorithms course and the corresponding vocabulary, then you know what you need to know.

Side note: A thing that no one told me but that I had to figure out on my own is that your technical writing skills are one of the most important skills to doing well at google. It was unironically said to me that the highest reward/effort one can do at Google is to write documents. The person who said it was correct about that IMO.

<comment><USER12> You advice is sound but incomplete.

> if you still understand your undergraduate level algorithms course and the > corresponding vocabulary, then you know what you need to know

speaking from experience, this would not get you nowhere near the level you have to be for passing the Google interview (or any other FAANG interview for that matter). You need to study long and hard in addition to solving OJ problems and familiarize yourself with different problem patterns. Let me give you and example of what I got at Google: [https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-duplicate- letters/](https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-duplicate-letters/) Solving this problem optimally with only what you remember from undergrad algo courses is impossible. You either need to have a knack for these types of challenges or solve enough of them to identify a solution pattern.

<comment><USER13> I've just finished the 2nd year of my CS degree. In about 3 minutes I came up with:

1) create an empty string, call it "S2" 2) loop over each char in original string 3) if the char isn't in S2, add it to the end of S2. If the char is already present in S2 then lexicographically compare the prior S2 verse S2 with this char shifted to the end. Keep the lower ordered one.

This took about 3-4 minutes of thinking and is O(n). It might not be optimal, it might not even be a correct solution as I've spent only a few minutes on it. However, I feel it's close and it wouldn't take much to flesh out.

EDIT: This solution is incorrect.

<comment><USER14> input: "bcabc"

      1. "b"
      2. "bc"
      3. "bca"
      4. "bca"
      5. "bca"

What am I missing?

<comment><USER15> Take all the possible answers with duplicates removed, and return the first one in alphabetical order.

input: "bcabc"

output: "abc"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I started at my second 'FAANG' company when I was 48, two years ago, and it's been great. The previous 'FAANG' company was less great, but still fairly ok.

In between and before those, I have worked at two startups and three other in- between (in size) organizations, as well as two non-tech giants, over the course of about 27 years now. Kind of takes my breath away seeing that last number!

As others here have noted, no matter where you work, one of the most important things is your manager. I've had good managers and bad managers, and my less happy time at the previous 'FAANG' was largely due to a bad manager.

Having said that, the department/group you're in is also important. I had a great manager at one of the large (but not giant) companies but the department had big problems. It was a relatively comfortable but in the end unproductive couple of years. (And also why I decided to move on relatively quickly.)

Re: skills to brush up on: honestly, I suggest just start interviewing heavily and use that as a template to figure out what you need to learn.

The big tech companies have the luxury of having tons of talented, qualified people trying to work there, and so structure the interviewing process to be biased toward turning away qualified people rather than accepting unqualified people.

That means that the interview process can be pretty strenuous.

Re: trying for management: I was a manager briefly, early on in my career, and decided that I was never going to do that again. I was relatively good at it, but I didn't like it, so all of my roles have been technical, though of course a lot of the best things I've accomplished involved large quantities of 'soft', non-technical people work.

Re: fed up with uncertainty. Yup, I totally get that, and it's the main reason I haven't done more with startups. I value my personal/family time too much, and always have.

Feel free to contact me directly: email@example.com

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER17> Same age, I recently interviewed at two FAANG companies.

Mostly algorithms and system design interviews. I thought I did pretty well (something like 3 very good interviews, 1 good, and 1 ok). In both cases, the conclusion was that my results were good enough for an L4 position, but they wouldn't hire me for less than L5. (Why not, I'd be happy as an L4...). Also, I found the interview process pretty random and arbitrary. One company praised my algorithmic skills, while the other said that I did very well on system design). They encouraged me to re-apply.

I'm not concerned about the actual job, I don't feel less capable than my 30 year old self. I'm more knowledgeable, and I have more experience with human interactions.

The interviewers all told me that you don't have to be a manager if you don't want to, and that good developers were always valued, regardless of their age. I don't know how much of this is true though. I can't help thinking that my age had played against me in the final decision.

The interview process is a pain. It's very random, it takes a lot of time preparing (some people literally spend months working full time). The things they ask you have very little value besides getting you a job. At least, it's kind of fun to work on these leetcode problems, but after 200 hundred variations of BST and dynamic programming exercices it starts to get old. Also, if you already have a demanding job (and maybe a family), it's hard to find the time to practice.

If you spend enough time preparing AND if you aren't stressed out during the actual interview, I think you can pass with reasonable probability the algorithm interviews. I found system designs a little more random. My question wasn't in the "syllabus" they provided me. Also, as an older programmer, there may be many things that you knew a few years back. You're disadvantaged compared to a younger graduate.

<comment><USER18> >In both cases, the conclusion was that my results were good enough for an L4 position, but they wouldn't hire me for less than L5. (Why not, I'd be happy as an L4...).

Can you elaborate on this? Were you interviewing specifically for L5 roles? I wonder if years of experience or even achievements can be used against a candidate by raising the bar so to speak. Maybe one is a L5 at their current company but only a L4 elsewhere. As long as you can contribute at whatever level is appropriate for the given company I don't think it should be held against the candidate.

<comment><USER17> I was applying for a software engineering position. No particular level was specified. After the interviews, the recruiter basically told me that they couldn't make me an offer for a L4 position, considering my experience (I think he mentioned 7 years of experience). Interestingly, I had the exact same explanation at two different companies.

A year later a different recruiter from the same company contacted me again to ask me to re-interview. Then he contacted the recruiter from one year ago to see if I had to retake the initial phone interview, or go directly on site. After discussing with her, he told me that they don't have currently an L5 position open, and that he would be contact me again in a few months (which he didn't).

<comment><USER18> Thanks, I hear a lot of stories of people being down leveled but it sounds like some companies have strict bands related to YOE. L4 appears to be mid level and I guess 7 yrs if on the upper limits of that but you'd think they'd give you the option of being down leveled or not to get your foot in the door.

<comment><USER19> L4 is an intermediary level between new-to-industry junior (new grads generally start at L3) and mid-level (L5). In many companies, it's expected that people will reach L5 within some time period.

Failing to have grown skills and project scope to L5 level after extensive time in the industry could be interpreted by some as poor motivation or career growth planning - their thinking is that if you've been doing the same thing for years elsewhere without growing, you'll tend to be trying to do the same things for years there without growing.

<comment><USER17> > Failing to have grown skills and project scope to L5 level after extensive > time in the industry

The projects I've worked on in my career haven't been considered in the interview process. They just expected better results on their standardized interviews (algo + system design) compared to a more junior candidate. I don't think the question they ask correlate at all with candidate experience, even for the system design part.

But overall, I think it's an imperfect but fair process.

<comment><USER19> I'm definitely not going to defend the industry's interview processes' effectiveness at consistently and/or accurately extracting useful information (or even just the information that it is intended to). When faced with the output of the process indicating this "flat" trajectory (however inaccurate that may be), that's just how some people interpret it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would not recommend trying to interview as a manager for any large tech company without having first been a manager in another role. I would also not recommend doing this for small startups, but some may be willing to hire you into such a role without you being able to point to concrete experience in the role (the filters aren't as strong).

I say this because that is personally a cardinal rule of mine, and I've never heard anyone contradict it -- hiring a manager comes with inherent risk, and you significantly add to that risk by hiring someone that hasn't done it before. If you want to try out management, you should first get a job as an individual contributor somewhere and then move into a management job in that company. They will know a lot more about you from having worked with you and you will know a lot more about the team, the company, etc and have a much higher chance of being successful.

This is really a two-way street, you are much more likely to be successful this way as well. The interview process is simply too artificial to get a good read on how someone will do as a manager when they don't have previous experience.

<comment><USER21> What's the bar for being hired as a FAANG engineering manager? Prev FAANG management experience? Prev FAANG IC role? Cursory LinkedIn searches show many FAANG engineering managers were promoted from within or came from a similar position at a similar company. FWIW I've been both an IC before and have steadily moved to CTO at my current startup. I come from a non traditional background (non CS) but had several leadership roles there.

Thanks.

<comment><USER19> Being hired in as an engineering manager requires having been an engineering manager previously (at any company), generally for a reasonable period (let's say, minimum two years of full-time management experience minimum with at least 3 direct reports), with a career YOE of around at least five years. You're generally coming in at the same pay band as a senior IC (you might be able to see this sort of information in levels.fyi), so you'll be in the same ballpark of experience/career trajectory.

If you don't have enough engineering manager experience, you can generally join as an IC (with a full IC interview loop) with a view to converting to manager. You may have additional discussions or even interviews around management as well, especially if converting to manager is something you identify as a career goal (as opposed to an option).

Converting to manager from an IC is generally pretty easy if you've shown good aptitude for leadership - the larger companies generally find it a lot easier to hire ICs than good managers externally, so internal conversions are necessary to keep up with demand for quality management attention on teams.

<comment><USER22> What are the interview questions aligned towards? More soft skills, or are there still a bunch of algo questions, etc?

<comment><USER19> I don't know if this is as standard across the FAANG (and similarly styled companies) as an IC interview is - some companies expect managers to have been able to be successful as mid-level ICs, and some might not. Recruiters will generally happily describe company's process to you if you're applying, or will tell you if you ask if they reach out to you.

Often, you'll still have a coding (or other technical interview) and a system design interview, and a probably very similar general "people skills/career" type interview that an IC gets. But instead of another one or two technical interviews, you'll have another one or two manager-focused interviews (how to build teams, how to run projects, how to grow individuals, how to navigate a particular scenario).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have very similar experience. I'm 42, spent most of my career in startups / small companies in CTO-level positions, but last year took an engineering position in big tech (at one of the companies you mention).

My suggestion for someone with a lot of experience is to focus more on networking your way in to the company than on skills brush up. Find contacts at the company(s) you are interested in and try to set up direct meetings (in person, video conference) to find out more about positions, responsibilities, etc. at that particular company. Each company has their own unique philosophies and growth paths for individual contributors vs. eng. managers, so I don't know that there would be one generic piece of advice to follow.

Feel free to reach out to me at <username> @ gmail if you would like to talk more specifics.

<comment><USER24> As someone in a CTO position now but being a serious IC ~5 years ago, I'm curious. How was the transition back for you? I love my job, but I also miss it.

<comment><USER23> So far (been about 9 months), I like being an IC a lot. I still get to be a leader and mentor, but have a lot less paperwork to fill out come review time! I always enjoyed the coding part of the startup CTO job more than the manager part anyhow. I feel that if I ever want to get back in to management, either at my current employer or somewhere else, I'll be able to make that transition pretty easily.

But if I go full-time manager, I don't know how easy it would be to flip back to dev / IC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> YMMV, but in my non-FAANG experience in the mid-/south- eastern US, tech managers seem to make at least 1.25X for X=senior dev salary. Maybe keep that in mind?

My dev friends over the last 10+ years have included people who made a management/dev track career decision and anecdotally speaking, those who chose management have earned more and seemed to have more employment stability. In a couple of cases, I have friends in my personal network earning 3X a senior dev salary managing dev teams.

Personally, I decided to stick with the dev track and have been somewhat dismayed to find (after 10+years with one employer) that I am often pulled into decision/management-type situations but am consistently evaluated as a lower-level employee because "coder." It's even more annoying when I chat with my peer group who made the mgmt track choice and I find that the overlap between what I do and they do is actually _very_ large.

<comment><USER26> > my non-FAANG experience

I think this is highly relevant. Traditional companies have a historically inherited structure where the talents to 'do things' are relatively easy to come by, allowing management to accrue larger influences and hence compensation with the organization. The practice has a lot of momentum as you would hire the same managers even for a software business, they'd come from one of these places.

The growth of FAANG and other new tech companies threatens to end this by driving up the scarcity of engineering talents, while creating an entirely new management class that used to be engineers. While they do make more than most engineers in those companies, they take on highly technical decisions that management in traditional industry mostly refrain (drive & initiate vs select from n things).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a senior manager of a development team at a Fortune 10 company that consists of many members who are in their 40's or older one of the things I'm looking at during the interview process is their ability to logic and reason. That ability alone seems to be so much stronger just due to living the ups and downs. Displaying this, focusing on this, is by far one of those things that makes you stand out.

One of the biggest pitfalls of ICs regardless of age (but I see it more as some get older) is the inability to break free from the past. If you cant learn, or refuse to accept, anything new have no use for you. Tech is changing constantly and if you can't tout something you are looking forward to and just constantly looking back on that one project you did and using that same method/tool/tech it really makes it difficult to envision.

There are IC roles that are "lead" but not management which our company calls "Principal" consultants - that seems to be the latest term in the industry that everyone is going with to denote someone at a high level of expertise who contributes at somewhat of a manager level but not necessarily of people just of projects but is still more of an IC than a project manager.

</comment><comment><USER28> Just speaking from my experience. I rejoined Microsoft at 47. Loved it. There are a lot more grey hairs there than during the early days, and nobody cares (in a good way). You're just part of the team. Go for it. Satya has done amazing things with that company, and in many teams it's like working for a startup, but with the safety/security of a bigger co.

I lasted 3 years and then got the urge to go chase my own thing again (ML/robotics consultancy), but most my friends (well into their 50's) are still there.

Go for it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't know where you live, but I'm guessing you're in the US. I'm 43 as well, been mostly the startup world for 20+ years - similar journey (worked, founded, etc). After my last startup got sold (not at best terms), I also took the time to relax a bit (and ended up rebooting another business and starting another instead).

Anyway, after my timeout I got back into contracting. First of all, I've never encountered ageism and my experience was always appreciated. It could be to do with my attitude, or maybe ageism is not a thing in the UK as it is elsewhere. I think attitude helps and if you come across as a friendly experienced person you will be able to get in.

My question to you would be why go for the "Larger" tech companies? Why not focus on established smaller companies? I personally equate those with start- up level stress but less ability to affect things. Again, just my personal perspective. Second point - do try contracting. It's quite liberating not being tied to a place in a long term mental-bond. The market is great for contracts (at least in the UK).

<comment><USER30> This is a great perspective and resonates a lot for me.

Curious though, to hear your thoughts on the incoming off-payroll legislation and how you feel it will effect the UK contracting market.

<comment><USER29> We've just been talking about this yesterday and today in the client's office, where most of us are contractors. It's an agency, most tech staff is on contract, the client is a government body where almost everyone there are contractors because gov pay is low and nobody will take the work on their PAYE rates. Spoke to my accountant who told me this whole IR-35 malarkey is under review at the moment and might or might not happen come April. He made a good point regarding IR-35 "insurances" saying that they are only offered because the chance of being hit by HMRC for that are slim to none which is why they are passing the buck to the clients. The problem is not HMRC vs the Contractor but now HMRC scaring the clients from hiring contractors.

Another friend told me his current client wants them all inside IR-35 which means a mass contractor exodus. He also told me banks are cutting the contractors as well. The problem for banks is that a LOT of their tech staff are contractors at high rates.

To be perfectly honest, I'm concerned to a degree. Both for contractors like me, and to clients who rely on contractors - come April, if this is not retracted, there will be a mass shortage of hands. Being inside IR-35 is like being PAYE without benefits and PAYE pay is significantly lower than contract one. This is quite a problematic situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not an issue. I'm older than you by a few years and I'm looking for a new job. I have 5 onsites lined up with more to come. Age hasn't been an issue except for expectations at places like Google that want to interview and hire me at L6+ level which I know I'm not good enough for, hence why I was never hired. Otherwise I'm not concerned... yet.

I am an IC so I make sure my code is top notch, which means I need to LC for weeks before I'm ready for the onsites.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am still in my 20's and recently switched team. Switching team made me think a lot about what I want to do in my life, and I still haven't been able to figure it out. I was feeling anxious and worried as I felt I am old enough that I should know what I want to do.

Reading some of comments in this thread made me realize that many people don't figure out what they want to do, even until 40's, so I feel better that I am not alone in this. I thank you all for sharing your perspectives with career. I will bookmark this page and read this whenever I feel lost with direction of my career.

</comment><comment><USER33> I joined a FAANG company when I was about 40 years old around just a couple of years ago coming from a sequence of startups and smaller companies. I think the biggest adjustment to make is the performance review systems. At these big companies performance is not about doing right things, but about fitting in with insular expectations. The senior folks who you would hope could mentor you may have no idea that you don't "get it" or what kind of feedback it requires to make the transition. In contrast, a lot of feedback you get at smaller companies is to just focus on doing right things for the business and not worry about any defined expectations.

I have seen some people make the transition smoothly... others not so much.

</comment><comment><USER34> I cold applied for an L7 position at "A" recently. Going in, I had fear that I was under qualified. My background is CompSci, Management consulting and leading teams at global 5 companies, startup founder, and other lead positions. I left the L7 interview wholly underwhelmed as I felt I was interviewed by engineers with experience an inch wide, one mile deep. Whereas I like to be a mile wide, 0.8 miles deep. My thoughts "maybe L8" is better didn't set well though...

edit: I'm in Denver, and here senior leader positions are not too common.

<comment><USER35> Very interesting metaphor of the engineering talent you sized up during your interview. Thanks for sharing that.

You have an interesting background, would love to learn more about your career trajectory. Do you have a blog where you write more that you don't mind sharing? Feel free to email a link if you're up to it. (email in bio)

Thanks!

<comment><USER34> :) I only create things, not document my stories.

<comment><USER35> Time to start writing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So you should separate tech companies, from companies that use tech.

Tech companies really care about your tech skills (assuming that you do not want to go to the manage route), so age should not be an issue. However, skills might be an issue. I.e. if you spent your career in companies that use tech, you might not have deep specialization.

Companies that use tech, are easier, which tends to bring less experienced developers, which usually are younger and might create ageism.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was 47 when I joined Microsoft and am currently a principal engineer working as an individual contributor doing engineering work. Before that I was running my own startup for several years. There are jobs available in everything imaginable including product management, engineering, management, and blends of those three.

The age thing wasn't a problem for me interviewing for an engineering position. However, I had some difficult engineering interviews with senior and principal engineers. You should prepare hard to interview very well. The hardest part is convincing young senior engineers that you're as good of a develop as they are or better.

</comment><comment><USER38> Ageism is out in SV, because the biggest perpetrators grew up. Plus experience is worth a lot of money. If you're young or old, don't listen to those who say you can't do something. It's just one more form of resistance that successful people have to plow through.

<comment><USER39> I'm going to disagree. Yes, the biggest perpetrators aged. But in my experience it became more "50 is the new 40" than it went away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What do you enjoy ?

> I am a bit fed up with the stress and uncertainty of startups and looking > for something more stable, at least for a while.

I think you have answered your own question there for the most part, and I don't think its too much to ask for a bit of stability.

Personally, I would advise you take some time to think about what areas & roles you enjoyed the most, as you're looking for something possibly long term, don't make it difficult `WORK`, instead make it something you enjoy.

Then you can dedicate your time looking for the projects/companies you really are excited about.

Sounds like a dream, but theres no reason why you can't suit yourself!

Best of luck!

PS: I don't think you should worry about your age, if thats why it was in the title; but if you're like me, over time I lose patience with people who wonthave a genuine discussion & be open to being wrong. But this is a maturity thing that you can asses at interview time I guess.

</comment><comment><USER41> 43? you young-uns crack me up.

> I can still keep up coding

This sounds like you are not confident of your skills. At 43, with 20-ish YOE, if you want to become a SWE IC at FAANG you better be good, and know it.

> but should I do that, or try for management?

no offense, but you sound like an 18 yo.

In all this time at startups, how is it you haven't learned how to make decisions? Sorry if I am being harsh, consider it tough love. :)

You might just be coming off in writing as being indecisive and lack confidence, whereas in real life you are solid. Or you might have the humility that only true seniority brings. I can't tell from here.

Either way, I don't think this is a question with easy answers that you can get from a forum. You need to do some soul searching. I would first settle the question of whether or not you _want_ to go into management, not whether or not you think FAANG will have you as an IC. There are plenty of books on becoming a manager. Almost all of them suck, but that doesn't matter. You'll get some initial perspective from reading 1 or 2 of them.

Assuming you do want to switch tracks to management, I don't know at all how FAANG is at hiring no-experience managers at age 43. Personally, I like to be prepared so my personal plan in that case would be to get a manager job at a startup -- it should be super easy for you. Do that for 2 years max. Quit no matter what after that. (You need to make that your plan and stick to it.) If you like it, apply to FAANG! Note though that being a manager at FAANG is completely different than being one at a startup. But what you're going for is the resume builder as well as the experience of having direct reports. Ideally you'd get a job where you have firing authority. Not that you want to exercise that, but it changes things.

Now if you search within and read a couple books and decide IC is what you love, take a month to bone up on core algorithms and then go for it.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm not quite as old, but I struggle with this question too. Programming and building shit is my passion, and I'd probably be a terrible manager, but I've been conditioned to believe management is the wise path for aging software engineers.

<comment><USER43> Same and same except I have more management than programming time but I enjoy mentoring so that side is fun, if I want to scratch my own itch I have side projects for that when I want.

It's a trade-off though, by choice I'd be programming most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have both worked with and interviewed people in their 40s when I worked at a FAANG. Despite what's advertised by HR, culture tends to be org/team-dependent at bigger tech companies. I believe that you should be more concerned about culture fit which is something you can assess during the interview. If you decide to interview for an individual contributor position, I recommend that you brush up on algorithms. You can either target a company on LeetCode or go through a generic list of problems (here is the one I use [https://theinterviewlist.com](https://theinterviewlist.com))

</comment><comment><USER45> Your mileage may vary, but I think management role is hard to come by at bigger companies, unless you have a connection with existing management who already work there. So I would hit up your existing connections.

Also, you may already know this, but big companies have their own problems. Unlike at smaller companies, these are deep structural or cultural issues you will not be solve. Instead, you have to learn to make the best of it and not let it get to you.

</comment><comment><USER46> I joined AWS 6 months ago at 43 as a principal engineer, transitioning from a CTO role of a Series D company, and wrote about it.

[https://code.dblock.org/2019/11/17/the-pros-and-cons-of- goin...](https://code.dblock.org/2019/11/17/the-pros-and-cons-of-going-from- management-back-to-ic.html)

I would recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER47> in your 40s your big picture management skill would be more valuable than technical skill.

you need to disclose what was your role in these startups.

if you want to go back to coding at FANG there would be less ageism but it will still be there. Be sure to brush up your algo, data structure. I would suggest finishing a book of programming interview and you should be set.

<comment><USER40> > in your 40s your big picture management skill would be more valuable than > technical skill.

I don't like this assumption: Some of the older engineers & architects I know are incredibly more adept at developing than management, and speaking with a lot of them, most are pushed into management roles instead of desiring them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> You should brush up on protocol buffers. Oh and containers. Mostly protocol buffers.

</comment><comment><USER49> If you don't care about dealing with the headaches of enterprise/corporate and know what you are getting into then sure. Not for me. I've tried multiple times after 15 years in various startups (and .edu). The kultur of a large company is a deal breaker. I'd suggest looking into consulting or , if you can do it, find a large company that needs 'SME' and 'Fixer' skills (if you have those). You can then approach work offsite or telework varying your vista on the basis of what project needs your skills. Defense contracting has a lot of this type of work.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not in my 40s yet but I'm in a similar position. I'm going to take some time off and prep for FAANG interviews. The benefit of the algo focused interview is it seems like there would be less ageism there as less of the criteria is based on behavior or fit type questions. Maybe I'm off here but that's what it appears like. I recently attended a Google recruiting event where a lot of the Googlers there were over 40 and recently joined the company, a couple of people even looked to be over 50.

</comment><comment><USER50> i'm at the same spot. I've found the team lead role in the consulting industry to be enjoyable. I mentor junior devs (whole career mentoring in addition to technical mentoring) and try to setup Sr. devs to do their best work. I still get to write code and scratch that itch too.

Consulting is nice because projects/customers come and go so every few months you're on to something different. Of course, consulting has down sides too but i seem to have a knack for it.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm in a similar position. I think if you have experience they really try to interview you for senior positions where you are defining technical architectural standards and teaching others. That makes it tough if you just want to code, but maybe suits you.

At least in the initial stages it seems FAANG companies at least are very good at ignoring age for applicants, later stages though are tougher when most people interviewing you are half your age.

</comment><comment><USER52> "I can still keep up coding, but should I do that, or try for management?"

HN can't answer this for you. Which do you prefer?

<comment><USER53> I think the unspoken question is whether it is more prudent for a person of this age to pursue an individual contributor role or a role in the management track. Take this for what it's worth, but anecdotally I've heard a lot of programmers find that once they hit this age, opportunities as an individual contributor are more limited. So if the goal is to get a stable job at a large tech company, then the question is which track to pursue, and I think the decision process should go like this:

Really love coding, really hate management: Apply for IC. Tolerate/enjoy management: Apply for management.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a great people manager, but it's subject to the monkey in the middle problem, which I find stressful.

<comment><USER54> Why not try sliding into project management or product management? It's not "real" people management since you typically have no direct reports, but these careers allow you to remain technical and I've encountered way less ageism here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Broadly, you will experience significant ageism trying to come in as a coder/technical type. Probably less of this as a manager.

That said, you should do what you want, especially if you have your nut already. Look for an outfit that really needs someone and is willing to look past age (or even sees it as an advantage).

</comment><comment><USER56> I hate these questions because it honestly puts me off when I think about my future. It makes me scared of being old. 43 isn't even that old (isn't retiring age 65...?) and you seem to be confused what your profession is. I don't want to be in that position.

If you're 43, you should know what you want to do. If you want to code, go for a senior/principal programming lead position. If you want to manage, go for a managerial position. You're asking a question a 20 yr old should be asking which makes me extremely worried what the future has in store for me. I hope that when I turn 40 in 2029, I could still do what I love (which happens to be in programming), and not have to fret if I need to change professions or not...this is the way.

*Edit, I hope I don't sound like a jerk, but this is really what I feel. I hope when millennials like me start to hit 40, we can change the tech industry's age distribution and we no longer have to worry about problems like this.

<comment><USER57> As you get older you'll realize that "adults" don't know any better than you do. Consider that moving forward. Nobody has all the right answers, and even fewer people know what the right answer is for you.

I'm reminded of this quote by Baz Luhrmann:

> The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do > with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still > don't.

Incidentally, I'm in the same boat as the OP. I've done coding, I've done the management gig, not sure what life has for me in store in the next 5-10 years.

<comment><USER58> My dad will be 75 in a little over a week. I told him I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up (I'm 43). He said he still didn't know.

<comment><USER59> A close family friend is a recently retired federal judge, about that age, maybe a little older. He and his family are some of the unpretentious, intelligent people that I've met. He said the exact same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I don't think age really has much to do with it. Apart from having more experience, joining somewhere in your 40s is pretty much like joining somewhere in your 30s. If you want to code, code. If you want to manage, manage. But don't decide based on age.

42 at MS

</comment><comment><USER61> All valid points but this is very personal, no one can answer this. This question alone requires you to meditate on your personal preferences. "I can still keep up coding, but should I do that, or try for management?"

</comment><comment><USER62> It basically boils down to: what are you more comfortable with?

If it is management, go for it.

If it is coding, be open about your expectations and go with a company that values your experience while accepting that you're there 9 to 5.

</comment><comment><USER63> Sure go for it. Pick one company and apply as a manager or lead and pick another and apply as an IC. Decide what you want to do. Tailor your resume for that role.

</comment><comment><USER64> 1\. Can you do the job? 2\. Are you reliable? 3\. Will you, as a human being, negatively affect the team?

Those are the things I try to determine when I interview someone.

</comment><comment><USER65> Depends what you want to do. Are you still passionate about coding? If not they I would suggest management.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've interviewed and failed often enough (with google) to know it is never going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm a Sr Manager at a FAANG company (and I started here in my 40s). My direct reports include other SDMs, senior product managers, and staff/principal engineers.

You mention "trying" for management. If you haven't previously managed people, then you probably won't be able to get a good SDM role directly. Instead, your best path would be to be hired as an SDE, demonstrate strong managerial bones (mentorship, communication, process orientation), and then transition to SDM after a few years.

If you've mostly been an engineer, then you may want to learn more about what's expected from different levels of engineer so you can determine, realistically, where your experience will be sufficient, and where there will be gap.

<comment><USER54> > You mention "trying" for management. If you haven't previously managed > people, then you probably won't be able to get a good SDM role directly.

This is very true. No company I've interviewed with so far was willing to hire a manager who hasn't previously managed people.

> Instead, your best path would be to be hired as an SDE, demonstrate strong > managerial bones

I've tried this strategy a number of times and I wish it was that straightforward. Usually, even internal management roles are set aside for people who have already managed people before. So, you'll take the time to be an outstanding IC, develop credibility with the team and good communication skills, focus on process building... then finally the workload grows to the point where you need more than yourself and you think "now is my chance!" You go to your manager and propose to hire a few people under you and SURPRISE he already hired an experienced manager who will have three reports including you! Bummer!

<comment><USER68> >I've tried this strategy a number of times and I wish it was that straightforward.

I'm currently at a FAANG and it is that straightforward. You don't just say, "hey, I should have people under me" but you do say that you're interested in managing folks some day. The company even offers a specific development track and training for people that want to do that.

That's also how I got into management at a non-FAANG company. I was hired as an IC, but indicated that my desire was to be a manager. I eventually became a VP.

Obviously every place is different, but you do need to make your desires known.

<comment><USER21> I'm curious if you can answer the question I posed on this thread a few sibblings up. Thanks.

<comment><USER68> It looks like another user answered your question and covered it well, but I'll add my own color as well.

>What's the bar for being hired as a FAANG engineering manager?

In my past cycle I interviewed at, and received offers from two of the FAANGs. Past Engineering management experience was required and experience managing other managers was definitely a big plus. I think it's that latter bit that really makes a candidate very attractive since there seems to be high demand. A history of strong IC experience and technical leadership was also required.

I didn't have FAANG experience, but did have significant startup experience and a clear career progression, culminating in a few years at larger (>10k people) companies. One benefit of startup work is that the majority of my past experience is being the primary architect & owner of complicated production codebases and systems. The larger companies provided an opportunity to show how I was effective working cross functionally and getting things done in orgs where I was not in the chain of command.

So, tl;dr: is that strong IC background plus a few years of management are required, but specific types of experience can make you more attractive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> what does it matter? global warming going to send us into an apocalypse in 2-3 years anyways.

</comment><comment><USER70> That's a pretty broad question, isn't it? Besides your age and that you used to work at startups and dislike the stress, there isn't much to go on for guidance. Who knows if you're suited for management, would be better as a code monkey, or what skills you need to brush up on?

<comment><USER71> Not to be disrespectful, but your response sounds like those arrogant Stack Overflow responses that are simply not helpful. There is enough in his question for anyone to provide a proper answer.

<comment><USER70> The only question (and it appears to be the majority of the responses here) that looks like you can answer well is if other people have done what he's considering doing. Maybe that's the discussion he's looking for; the comments to that affect are definitely good.

The remaining questions regarding coding vs. management or what skills to 'brush up on' are very person-dependent beyond general platitudes. Sure, discussions can be had, but it kind of depends on what he wants.

<comment><USER71> I appreciate the response.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IMac (Thunderbolt) outperforms most other desktops but one which is $200 cheaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384879,00.asp

<comment><USER2> What they don't mention is that the competing $200 cheaper desktop also only has a 23-inch screen.</comment>


Intel Core i7-4770K Review: Haswell Is Faster; Enthusiasts Yawn - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-review,3521.html <comment><USER2> CPU doesn't matter on the desktop unless you're doing something wrong or interesting. Hint: if you're paying for your own CPU intensive thing, try "engineering sample intel xeon" on ebay.

If you can stand the sunk cost it's a LOT cheaper than AWS. Horses for courses YMMV etc.

I buy not-for-resale chips on a dodgy basis for fuzzing (MOAR VMS!) but on the whole, bucks per MIP, or MIPs per watt - who cares?

<comment><USER3> I think watts per unit of performance is most important, as long as the more energy-efficient CPU isn't exhorbitantly more expensive, since we only pay for the hardware itself once but pay for energy continually.

<comment><USER2> Newer xeons are viciously more expensive :/ If you can get away with an older Xeon and higher power usage, you can get more stuff per dollar per hour.

Mainly, whether MIPs per watt matters depends on where you can get your stuff racked ;)

<comment><USER4> I guess it depends on how much oomph you really need, but the e3-1230 v2 xeon is a tremendous processor (9k passmark) and can be had for the low $200s.

<comment><USER2> Intel Xeon X5650 ES 2.66 GHz 12MB 6.4GT/s 95W Hex Core

(x as many as I could afford). That does look like a good chip, but dodgy engineering sample trays in 2013 you can prolly get twice as many cores. That means NO WARRANTY and like, not for work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> BTW, I find Anandtech's coverage of CPUs to be the best since they actually dive into some of the architectural decisions. Interesting if you care about the "whys" behind the benchmarks.

[http://anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel- core...](http://anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel- core-i74770k-i54560k-tested)

</comment><comment><USER5> One of the other things to note is support for hardware transactional memory. Applications won't be taking advantage of that for a while, but it could have a significant impact once libraries are rewritten to take advantage.

</comment><comment><USER5> I really want to see benchmarks for scientific / math-heavy workloads. AVX2 & FMA3 are supposed to give double the peak FP & integer vector performance.

Unfortunately, it takes time to optimize code for each new architecture, and most benchmarks don't even bother with a recompile.

<comment><USER2> I don't even know the CPU flag to specify to go "I have the absolutely latest CPU". Generally all the scientific libraries have vectorised asm for the tight loop stuff. So what is a benchmark person gonna do?

<comment><USER5> -march=native at least. Something like re-tuning ATLAS at best.

Not really griping that much; eventually people do do those kinds of benchmarks, but they do take time, and they're not really the target audience for someplace like Tom's. Understandable they would focus on gaming & general- use benchmarks.

<comment><USER2> Thanks; I have to admit I didn't know -march=native. I sit a lot in the debugger (other people's programs) and I never see even SSE let alone all the other things that could happen. One day the output will change ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone please shed some light on this relatively recent APU race? I understand it seems like a good idea for OpenCL, but when they increase their APU performance while actually stagnating their CPU performance I am just completely lost (as is the case with the i7-4770K).

What is the market for desktop CPUs where the desktop buyers don't also have dedicated video cards which can do a almost a magnitude better job than the APU?

<comment><USER7> >What is the market for desktop CPUs where the desktop buyers don't also have dedicated video cards which can do a almost a magnitude better job than the APU?

Small form factors, like the iMac or Mac mini. Apple is pretty influential in Intel's roadmap nowadays. See also how the next-gen mobile chipsets are getting more powerful onboard GPUs to drive Retina displays.

<comment><USER2> The NUC (next-unit-of-computing) buzz is cool for robotics too.

<comment><USER8> I hadn't seen that. There are lots of research oriented robotics projects that use Apple Mac Minis for compute power. You just bolt on a Mini and you have a standard environment to run computer vision, learning, or advanced path planning, communicating with the robot's own computers by UDP, for example. NUC could be a nice intermediate point between the Mini and full integration with the robot's own computers.

<comment><USER2> NUC is nice, I measure mine at less than 10 watt for "smash the CPU" tasks, small form factor, good alternative to ridiculously expensive options like car PCs. I found it's also voltage tolerant. It's rated at 19v but you can run it at much less (down to 15).

EDIT: it does go up to nearly 20 watts, depending, esp if you have the HDMI plugged in. Technically I think you can get more out of a NUC than a mini in terms of raw MIPs. They're PCs, not toys like RPI.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the info. For the robotics use case I mentioned, having a high- performance system is important because the algos are demanding, so a RPI would not be very good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The overclock on the 4770K is crap if it can be pushed only to 4.4 on air. Interesting if the 4670K will have more headroom. And review on the integrated graphics. Why bother? It will be good enough for anything non gaming related and crap for everything gaming related just like the previous 2 generations.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure of the sense in comparing a $129 AMD CPU to a $329 Intel CPU. Sure, they both have integrated graphics but the budgets of people building a system with these CPU's are going to be very, very different. It'd be silly to build a system with an i7 and no discrete GPU when you could use an i3 (or even a Pentium) and use the savings on video card.

<comment><USER11> Unless you play demanding videogames there is litte point to having a discrete videocard so it's still a valid comparison. That said I have a 2600k @4ghz and there does not seem to be any reason to even consider an upgrade which I find rather disappointing.

<comment><USER12> Agreed - I still have a Nehalem 875k and was thinking about an upgrade, but while this stuff is significantly better than mine, I don't think it's Significant Enough to go build a new computer right now.

The power savings might get me to upgrade my laptop though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are we supposed to be surprised by this? Look at desktop sales numbers versus laptop and mobile sales numbers. Which one would YOU focus on?

</comment><comment><USER14> Any word on fluxless solder vs TIM? For kicks I am going to over clock and need to know if I should gird my loins for delidding.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, the AMD FX8350 is pretty good, knowing it competes against 65% higher priced CPUs.

Performance per watt is another story through ...

</comment><comment><USER16> Way more interested in what it will do for notebooks. I've let myself wait until this generation to do a refresh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh great, now even Intel's gone with a "flat design" logo.

<comment><USER18> who gives a shit about a logo

<comment><USER19> Enough people for companies to invest into theirs.</comment></comment></comment>


IBAM, the Intelligent Battery Monitor - <AUTHOR> http://ibam.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> > the x-axis represents the bios-minutes (now bios-percentage), the y-axis the > actual average lengths of that minute (percentage) in seconds

I'm confused. The BIOS clock is inaccurate? Or does this refer to "the data provided by the underlying power management system"?

Either way, I think it is a nice project. I would note that it is from 2008, as is custom.</comment>


SpaceX cleared for US military launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32894760 <comment><USER2> I like the old school dogma underlying the whole thing. Russia is bad, private enterprise is good, the US wants to put weapons in space, and Michael Jackson is rocking the world with Thriller.

<comment><USER3> >Russia is bad, private enterprise is good

Considering Putin is playing politics with space, namely limiting critical RD-180 sales after the west criticized his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, as well as funding and arming rebels who are purposely targeting civilians, well, what exactly do you want us to say here? Engage in more mindless political correctness? Sing kumbaya around the campfire as to not offend Russiophile HN'ers?

Putin's Russia is bad. They're dishonest partners and the US should keep its space policy under its national borders for sanity reasons. Look at the early retirement of the ISS. Russia is taking its modules and leaving the project in a few years, again as punishing the west for criticizing their illegal annexations. Previous to this the ISS was thought to be a project with a decade or two of service left.

Also, Putin's mismanagement of his economy means he just cut the Russian space program by a third and what's left is good at flying Soviet-era Soyuz and building Soviet era RD-180's but can't keep post-Soviet Proton-M's from exploding. From a practical stand-point, ignoring everything else, we simply don't need or want their tech now that the RD-180 based rockets are being made redundant/replaced and Orion/Dragon flying astronauts in the next 3 or so years.

<comment><USER2> the US invaded Iraq, and kill people everywhere in the world on a regular basis too, overthrow governments, helps dictators and lie to people all the time. Nobody gets ahead when you only look for scapegoats and with Manichaeism as a policy.

We are bringing back the world into the 20st century, this will be a big problem.

<comment><USER3> That's fine, you are very welcome not to buy our rockets, iphones, software, and processors if you want to protest our foreign policy. We're not buying Putin's stuff, so don't buy ours.

I don't see a problem with this.

>overthrow governments

The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime, thanks to US foreign policy. While I think foriegn policy is hard to judge, annexing land Russia-style for "fuck you" reasons is very different than overthrowing dictators murdering their people and those people begging for US/NATO/UN intervention, which we sometimes provide. The world tried non-interventionism and it got us WWII. Better the US/NATO making these calls than autocratic powers with annexation agendas like China or Russia.

<comment><USER4> >The middle east is migrating to democracy and has the least amount of dictators in charge in my lifetime

How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?

Many (probably pretty much everyone actually familiar with the situation) would argue that things were better under those dictators.

<comment><USER3> >How's that democracy working out in Libya and Syria?

How was India immediately after its colonial rule? Or South Korea after the war?

Its incredible how people conveniently forget how long transition periods are for societies that were previous non-democratic to a democratic one. Ten to fifteen years from now it will be a very different picture. Migrating to a democratic capatalistic economy is an incredible thing. GDP comparision between North and South Korea below:

[http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/image...](http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/chart_content/Institutions%20Matter%20Real%20Per%20Capita%20GDP%20in%20North%20and%20South%20Korea.JPG)

It was rough for the South Koreans until the 1970s then its been all gravy. They went from war ravage rural wasteland to the most envious economy in about 20 years.

<comment><USER5> There is no population on earth that has been grateful for "democracy bombs" to have been dropped on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So really this is a more of necessity not to encourage competition.

They need a replacement for the Russian rocket engines and SpaceX is the only good alternative.

<comment><USER7> Competition is about alternatives - the Air Force could have just trusted the Lockheed-Boeing venture to do it. F-35 comes to mind and not in a good way.

<comment><USER8> I'm not seeing the connection to the F-35. I guess you know there was a competition for the right to build the JSF. Both aircraft met all the requirements for the competition. So can you please clarify?

<comment><USER9> The F-35 continuously overruns budgets and gets more and more money poured into it. I think this is the what is being referred to.

<comment><USER8> It has a history of overrunning budgets, yes, but the per-aircraft cost is declining and should continue to decline. I thought parent might have been referring to budget issues but I'm not really grasping how that's relevant.

<comment><USER10> The per-aircraft cost is still 3x or more that of the F/A-18, and the costs of operating it are also dramatically higher. [http://breakingdefense.com/2014/09/gao-draft- slams-f-35-on-u...](http://breakingdefense.com/2014/09/gao-draft- slams-f-35-on-unaffordable-costs-8-8b-over-legacy-fighters/)

<comment><USER8> [http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/F-18-Super-Hornet.html](http://www.bga- aeroweb.com/Defense/F-18-Super-Hornet.html) F-18E/F: $65.3 million (flyaway cost) or $80.7 million incl. support costs. You'll see a number of places quoting slightly different per unit costs for an F-18E/F, but they cluster around that figure. The cost of an F-35 in the latest LRIP lot (8) was as follows:

[http://www.janes.com/article/46129/pentagon- finalises-f-35-l...](http://www.janes.com/article/46129/pentagon- finalises-f-35-lrip-8-contract) "The US buy is for 19 F-35A conventional take- off and landing aircraft at USD94.8 million apiece; 6 F-35B short take-off and landing aircraft for USD102 million each."

That does not include an F-135 engine for each jet, which is anywhere from $10 to $15 million depending on the variant.

So while the F-35 is more expensive than the F-18, I do not believe the figures bear your "3x or more" assertion.

Also it's difficult to compare the operating costs of a fully mature aircraft like the F-18 with the F-35, which is still being tested and developed. I don't think that is an apples/apples comparison.

Disclaimer: all opinions my own, not those of my employer, etc.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, I was going off F/A-18D unit costs from Wikipedia rather than the Super Hornet. Still, ~2x the unit cost plus a 79% increase in support costs is nothing to sneeze at.

<comment><USER8> Well keep in mind that we are still in a low production rate situation. Production will ramp up greatly in the next few years, driving costs down further.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure those costs are estimates based on a high production rate.

<comment><USER8> The costs I gave are the costs as contracted for LRIP lot 8, which consists of 43 aircraft. There are two more LRIP batches after LRIP 8, and then full rate production begins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I assume this is for the Falcon 9 especially; will they need to certify the Falcon Heavy as well, and will it take as long as the F9 certification?

<comment><USER13> Could be wrong, but I thought it was approving SpaceX as a company- evaluating their methods and processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is anyone else becoming a touch bothered by the large number of BBC news articles that are being submitted to Hacker News? I love the BBC and BBC News is - for the most part - very good. However, the articles on their website are often lacking in detail and when talking about technology, they are often wrong or show a misunderstanding on the behalf of the reporter. The BBC News definitely has a place - I'm just not sure that it's on Hacker News.

I don't mind one or two articles - and I don't mind articles from mainstream news publications - but there are a _lot_ of articles being published from the BBC. Here's the past 24 hours:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bbc&sort=byPopularity&prefix=f...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bbc&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=last24h&type=story)

All of that said, they keep getting upvotes - so enough people clearly want them on Hacker News.

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily statistically significant, but of the past 1000 articles submitted:

          8 (bbc.co.uk)
          9 (techcrunch.com)
         10 (arstechnica.com)
         14 (nytimes.com)
         14 (theguardian.com)
         16 (washingtonpost.com)
         16 (youtube.com)
         18 (wsj.com)
         32 (medium.com)
         46 (github.com)

Of the past 10,000:

         40 (kickstarter.com)
         40 (reddit.com)
         40 (theatlantic.com)
         44 (forbes.com)
         46 (bloomberg.com)
         46 (securityaffairs.co)
         47 (theverge.com)
         56 (bbc.co.uk)
         62 (washingtonpost.com)
         68 (arstechnica.com)
         69 (bbc.com)
         70 (businessinsider.com)
         74 (wired.com)
         82 (wikipedia.org)
        102 (wsj.com)
        105 (theguardian.com)
        157 (nytimes.com)
        159 (techcrunch.com)
        163 (youtube.com)
        339 (medium.com)
        485 (github.com)

In case you're wondering, I have a file of all submissions listing ID, userid, URL, and title. Then I did this:

        $ tail -n 10000 records   \
            | gawk '{print $NF}'  \
            | sort                \
            | uniq -c             \
            | sort -n             \
            | grep -n .           \
            | tac                 \
            | head -21

<comment><USER14> Wow, thanks Colin - really cool information. Where do you get the contents of 'records' from? Do you have a script that crawls occasionally?

If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we end up with 125 / 10,000. I suppose that isn't that many compared to others, but it's still higher than I think it should be. ArsTechnica (which often runs the same articles, such as this SpaceX one) only has 68 / 10,000 and the articles are written with a lot more technical detail.

Nevertheless, I'm not really sure what can be done about it. We can't ban the BBC from HN, as with BuzzFeed, because that's over the top - there's some good content. A nice solution might be to remind people, on the submission page, that it's better to go to the source - or at least a good, technical write-up - rather than a news post that is written for the general public.

<comment><USER15>
      > Where do you get the contents of 'records' from?

I download the "newest" and "news" pages every 15 minutes or so, then collate the data.

      > If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we
      > end up with 125 / 10,000.  I suppose
      > that isn't that many compared to others,

It's less than some, but not as many as, say, nytimes.com or techcrunch.com. But it's a major news site, so I'm not surprised people read it and go "Oh, that's interesting, I'll click the HN bookmarklet and submit it."

      > ... still higher than I think it should be.

What do you think it "should be?"

      > A nice solution might be to remind people,
      > ... that it's better to go to the source ...

I personally find it useful to read a non-technical overview, and then if interested, go and find the technical version. Often the article with technical details borders on unreadable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What exactly are the national security implications of using Russian engines? That it will combine and burn fuel and oxidizer like a stinking, dirty commie?

<comment><USER17> [http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged- embassy-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-embassy-case- what-went-wrong.html)

It's not wise to trust Russian-built anything, especially with diplomatic relations in their current state. Just like how foreign intelligence services shouldn't trust American-built computers.

What could go wrong? I'm not sure. But why make your attack surface larger than it has to be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Welcome to the military/industrial complex. Something you can be really proud of!

</comment><comment><USER19> I would've preferred if SpaceX didn't become a Defense contract. Now I'm worried about military/NSA influence (in order to get these contracts) spilling over into Elon Musk's satellite Internet business.

<comment><USER20> I see it more as using some of that outrageous budget on space tech advances, relevant (old) image: [http://f.cl.ly/items/1x2y2m1Q421H0B0g0Y1P/Screen%20Shot%2020...](http://f.cl.ly/items/1x2y2m1Q421H0B0g0Y1P/Screen%20Shot%202015-05-27%20at%2012.59.44.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seriously compromises the integrity of SpaceX.

Even if they were to only support "national security" there is absolutely zero chance they can know whether they are actually supporting national security or global surveillance and oppression of human rights.

What people don't realize is that we, SpaceX and Musk, are really no different whatsoever than any of the companies that have been chided for "working with the Nazis" or "supplying the Nazis". The US Government and military are nothing remotely even close to "a force for good". A force for good does not support totalitarian dictators, overthrow governments, spy and surveil their "friends", assassinate scientists, support racist regimes, invade and collapse societies leading to the formation of ISIS, use government powers to support corporate private interests, shield, hide, and protect tax evaders, etc. The dirty laundry list is looooong.

<comment><USER22> There's no comparison. The US is not trying to conquer the world and the US is not committing genocide.

Yes, the US government does lots of bad things. It also does lots of good things. It's a vast collection of sometimes loosely affiliated organizations with lots of competing interests and there's no reason to expect consistency. But there's no sensible comparison to the Nazis.

<comment><USER23> How many deaths constitute a genocide because hundreds of thousands of middle eastern civilians have been killed during our 14 year war on Islam.

EDIT: down votes? Can't argue the truth so better to bury it.

<comment><USER22> "Genocide is the systematic destruction of all or a significant part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group." From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide)

There's no systematic destruction of any such group that I'm aware of. I won't deny that lots of middle-eastern civilians have been killed, but it's not any systematic attempt to eliminate them all, which means it's not genocide. (Especially since a large proportion of those deaths are caused by internal fighting which, while arguably the US's fault for going in without a plan for how to deal with existing tensions, is not what genocide looks like, at all.)

<comment><USER23> Much of the middle East is chaos and death. Millions have fled their homes, museums and other priceless artifacts are destroyed or gone missing.

An entire generation is coming to age knowing only war. Sounds like systematic destruction of a significant racial, religious, and national group to me.

Iraq as a country is dust, so too Libya, Syria is also soon to follow. Sounds like genocide by your definition.

<comment><USER22> Genocide is not "an entire generation is coming to age knowing only war." It's more like "an entire generation is murdered."

These disruptions do not threaten the continued existence of the Arab people or the Muslim faith. They do not threaten the continued existence of the shared culture. And they are not _systematic_ i.e. done deliberately as part of a methodical plan to wipe out these groups.

And just to be clear, because I know people love to misinterpret this stuff whenever it's at all possible: the above is not in any way a defense of US actions in the middle east, but merely an argument that these actions fall into the broad category of "not genocide."

<comment><USER23> Your definition includes nationality. Libya, Iraq, and Syria are essentially gone.

I was never claiming the US has committed genocide, I simply asked how many deaths do you need to define one. WWII killed 6 million Jews, were only about an order of magnitude away and our current war has now gone on longer with no end in sight.

EDIT: I'm using _your_ definition dude, I don't think it is genocide, yet, but by your definition it certainly is.

<comment><USER22> Your question is based on false premises because genocide isn't about raw numbers. It's based on a number of other things which don't fit the situation in the middle east.

How can you say "I was never claiming the US has committed genocide" while simultaneously, just one sentence before, saying that these countries should qualify?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Somewhat ironic that Elon Musk's SpaceX whose ultimate goal is to make life multi-planetary, is now collaborating with agents that may as well be responsible for triggering a Kessler syndrome. Not to mention the fact their business very much implies the termination of human life -- if for the greater good that is left for discussion on a case by case basis.

<comment><USER25> "their business very much implies the termination of human life" .. you are assuming a perfect world where no other entity wants to harm human life. Also, GPS satellites were created for the military. They are fundamental for our daily lives around the world now.

<comment><USER26> Don't forget how much better the GPS could have been without the military putting the breaks on civilian uses and competitors: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_%28satellite_navigation...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_%28satellite_navigation%29#Tension_with_the_United_States)

<comment><USER25> A free service to the world, paid for by American tax payers out of the military budget. Kind of hard to complain.

<comment><USER26> I can complain because it prevented (or significantly delayed) much better services through some arm twisting and corruption paid for by American tax payers out of the military budget.

<comment><USER25> Where is the corruption? Galileo (Euro planned system) was going to use the same frequency as GPS. So, during conflict areas the US could not jam Galileo without also affecting GPS. So the US military probably made plans on destroying satellites if it was determined that the enemy was using Galileo.

The Euro group decided instead to use another frequency than the GPS frequency. Now....

"Galileo will start offering first services from 2015.[11] Full completion of the 30-satellite Galileo system (24 operational and 6 active spares) is expected by 2020."

I fail to see any corruption.

<comment><USER26> A different frequency means that all the existing GPS hardware won't work with the new network.

> I fail to see any corruption.

[http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/221020...](http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/22102009-OHB- SYSTEM-CEO-CALLS-GALILEO-A-WASTE-OF-GERMAN-TAX-PAYER-MONEY-5106942.html)

[http://www.itworld.com/article/2792924/data- center/secret-u-...](http://www.itworld.com/article/2792924/data- center/secret-u-s--letter-could-spell-death-for-galileo.html)

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/dec/08/world.internationa...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/dec/08/world.internationaleducationnews)

[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1145904](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1145904)

<comment><USER25> Yes, if you want to use a new network operator you would need to purchase new hardware for it. That happens all the time everywhere. I don't see the big problem.

All of those links do not point to any corruption. Budget overruns that are usual with large govt. contracts. And other links with hard negotiations with US officials over the already resolved issue with Galileo wanting to use the same frequency. They have already moved on to use another frequency.

<comment><USER26> > All of those links do not point to any corruption.

What, you think the CEO of a company benefiting from a project would go badmouth it to the project's enemies without any incentive? The guy was sacked the minute that embassy cable came out: [http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-12212525](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-12212525)

Why do you think that the disapproval of the US Deputy Secretary of Defense is enough to almost kill a EU project? Those sons of bitches had our sons of bitches by their short and curlies. And it's not for any military alliance reason, because the US doesn't have allies - only enemies it kind of tolerates.

Read those links, they paint a pretty clear picture.

<comment><USER25> badmouth? Seems like he was saying what he truly felt without being biased because his company benefits. Actually being truthful against his own company's interests. I read all the links.

> quoted the OHB-System chief as saying, "I think Galileo is a stupid idea > that primarily serves French interests", and, in particular, French military > interests. Berry Smutny denied making the comments attributed to him in the > US cable. Mr Smutny was further reported to say that Galileo was "doomed for > failure" or would "have to undergo drastic scalebacks for survival".

Saying the government project won't be on budget and not efficient. Over budget and needing scale backs to be affordable is par for course for most government contracts. These links are benign nothing unusual, nothing special.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Watersheds, a map - <AUTHOR> https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/lg/51052/image.jpg <comment><USER2> Super cool! You can see how that becomes drinking water, by region or zip code at [https://mytapwater.org/](https://mytapwater.org/) or [https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/)</comment>


Python-related subreddit traffic, visualized (updated hourly) - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevenloria.com/python-subreddit-stats/

<comment><USER2> How is it updated hourly? Did you write your own crawler to pull the data?

<comment><AUTHOR> More info here: [https://github.com/sloria/python-subreddit- stats](https://github.com/sloria/python-subreddit-stats). Not much to it--the script uses BeautifulSoup to scrape user count, and an Openshift app runs the script hourly as a cronjob.

<comment><USER2> I don't see the scraper (the BeautifulSoup script) at that repo. Did I miss it or is it not committed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Link was in the README: [https://github.com/sloria/datasources/blob/master/scripts/ru...](https://github.com/sloria/datasources/blob/master/scripts/rusers.py)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's Bing uses Google search results–and denies it (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html <comment><USER2> If people are having to dig up 7 year old articles to bash Microsoft, I guess they've improved a lot.

<comment><USER3> Probably related to the other thread on HN today about a guy having his site scraped by a competitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IIRC they literally installed a Bing toolbar and agreed to turn on a feature that indexes all the sites that the user visits. To then blame Bing for indexing their decoy page, when Google themselves gave permission to index it, is absolutely laughable.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is 7 years old though, I would be curious to see if the experiment is still repeatable today.

I've noticed personally that bing has gotten a lot better, but that could just be because it's still a delayed version of Google.

Microsoft may even be using IE to harvest data to reverse engineer a Google search algorithm. Even if they make an inferior verision thats 90% as good, that's still good enough to keep them relevant in the market.

<comment><USER6> Well, you could sort of do this experiment yourself, with a bit of preparation and a decent bit of patience.

\- Prepare a new small website on an extremely obscure topic; something a search engine will consider uninteresting and not worth ranking highly, but just legitimate enough to warrant maintaining in the search index. On top of obscurity, don't link to the site from anywhere. This is so the site doesn't wind up crawled by Bing.

\- Manually add the site to Google's index (I forget where but there's a webmaster tool that can be used to manually add things; then you wait and see if the crawler paid any attention and added it to the index)

\- Add a single webpage on the site that, in amongst all the other words, contains a single random word, or a series of random words. Now repeatedly search Google for the term, on a machine nowhere near a Windows system, and and wait see if your site shows up. It will take some time to get this working, because unlike Google's fully contrived test, actually getting garbage/nonsense words into the index does take effort, as (in my experience) the index seems to be primed to index/prefer valid words over garbage; on top of this, your nonsense word will be (if you're doing it right) the only result in the world for the word, so it may be the search result is in the index but has some attribute marking it below a "show in results" threshold, if such metrics exist.

\- Now you have your magic term, do what Google did, and repeatedly search Bing for the term, from IE.

\- ???

\- Profit?

<comment><USER5> In the actual experiment Google Engineers manually inserted the data into their index. IDK if my own activities would result in my fake site getting indexed by them, also I don't know how to ensure that I am the ONLY result, which was the case with the google test.

<comment><USER6> I've googled tons of things that only get one single search result.

Obviously I can't link them here, since then there would be _two_ results...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So they..

* Inserted results into the search index for odd queries like "hiybbprqag"

* Searched Bing for those queries

* Saw the result from google

Wouldn't it have been easier and just as definitive to just

* Search Bing for hiybbprqag

* Show that google received a search query for the same thing

<comment><USER8> No, it's not that Bing was redirecting traffic through Google. Instead it was that windows/IE8 was sending data on search terms/clicks on google from their users' machines to Microsoft.

So user searches Google for a search term and then clicks on a result. This data is then sent to Microsoft, and Bing is updated accordingly (and will return that result for that search term) at a later point in time.

<comment><USER9> >Instead it was that windows/IE8 was sending data on search terms/clicks on google from their users' machines to Microsoft.

Only if they had Bing's IE search bar installed and enabled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Original thread on HN from 8yrs ago (511 upvotes): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2167875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2167875)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really bizarre that MS(Bing) can still claim that they don't use Google results with such an investigation and fake results showing identically in both places, having originated on the Google side. Come on Bing, just own up!

<comment><USER10> Bing's excuse (at the time in 2011) was that it was the result of Internet Explorer, Bing toolbar, and other user behaviour within their products which seeded this data.

I'm curious if the Google engineers visited any of the 100 search terms using IE or Microsoft service... but I doubt that. There had to be some level of scraping. It's pretty embarrassing.

They also were using autocomplete terms that matched Google's perfectly, which is what initially caught Google's attention.

<comment><USER12> > I'm curious if the Google engineers visited any of the 100 search terms > using IE or Microsoft service... but I doubt that.

From the article:

>We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed. As part of the install process, we opted in to the "Suggested Sites" feature of IE8, and we accepted the default options for the Bing Toolbar.

> We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box > on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we > inserted. We were surprised that within a couple weeks of starting this > experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing. Below is an > example: a search for [hiybbprqag] on Bing returned a page about seating at > a theater in Los Angeles. As far as we know, the only connection between the > query and result is Google's result page (shown above).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In essence, sounds like a bit of keylogging, data-sharing with external site(s). From the article, even Google couldn't exactly figure what was going on technically. Makes me wonder what else Microsoft was recording and sharing at the time - or was it just limited to google.com.

</comment><comment><USER14> I actually think Bing is ahead of Google for image search these days.

</comment><comment><USER15> Bing and Google get their search results by scraping websites that other people own. For bing, google is just one of the website they scrape.

So probably not illegal - though it definitely looks bad.

<comment><USER16> There's a difference in a search engine scraping a site just to link to that site. And scraping a site to claim its content as your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is so typical Microsoft. Zune, Xbox, Bing, literally 90% of what they do is a rip off of other innovators ideas.</comment>


How to embed an iframe with 'x-frame-options: DENY' set - <AUTHOR> https://www.surfly.com/labs-embed-non-embeddable-iframes/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is part of a series of where we want to experiment a bit with what we can do with our proxy technology apart from our current main use case (co- browsing). With our technology we can basically change HTML pages on the fly and inject for example Javascript. You can read more about this here: [https://docs.surfly.com/introduction/the- technology.html#sur...](https://docs.surfly.com/introduction/the- technology.html#surfly-co-browsing)

In the first one we used our proxy approach to enable an open web proxy, which you can find here: [https://www.surfly.com/labs-advanced-http-web- proxy/](https://www.surfly.com/labs-advanced-http-web-proxy/)

I'd love to learn about more possible use-cases for this approach.</comment>


Youtube Partners With Sony Pictures, NBC Universal And Warner Brothers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/google-partners-with-sony-pictures-nbc-universal-and-warner-brothers-for-youtube-movies/

<comment><USER2> There are still too many free options that will compete with this 2.99 price tag (e.g. torrents). I think they should lower that price, or move to a small subscription-fee model.

<comment><USER3> Personally I prefer the iTunes-like $2.99 pricing model. I don't watch movies regularly enough to make most subscription plans worth it. Hence why I don't bother with Netflix either.

I'm probably the long-tail of the market, though, but I do hope they find a way to segment without without shutting people like me out.

<comment><USER2> Then, for you, it would probably be easier to torrent the few movies you do watch. YouTube is going to have a decent collection (and it will grow), but the best selection is on bittorent sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Q. Is this global?

A. No. This service is available to US YouTube users only.

QED

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't WB take a big dive in its latest earnings report? Google should have left those creeps bleeding.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google's new movie partnerships are an attempt to avoid spending money to get Hulu on Google TV. Google TV is still a flop even if this works out. Apple TV is about half the price, runs iOS, and supports iPad Air Play.

"Earth Girls Are Easy" still not em bed-able: <http://avsquid.com/totally_80s>

<comment><USER7> "runs iOS" is pretty meaningless when there are no apps.

Apple TV is cool but it's pretty much just NetFlix or buy content from Apple. (Or blacked-out sports if you are into that.)

<comment><USER6> Apple TV can be easily hacked to run XBMC: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/20/xbmc-comes-to-the-new- app...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/20/xbmc-comes-to-the-new-apple-tv/)

As for no apps, at $99 bucks Apple is easily taking a loss on Apple TV to get market share. As soon as Apple is ready, it would not be difficult for Apple to enable iTunes and apps for Apple TV.

<comment><USER8> why not just do that now to help them get that market share, and some profits from the app store sales to boot?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is - <AUTHOR> http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

<comment><USER2> Isn't it the hardest? After all, society's expectation towards straight white males are usually the highest in terms of income and work put in – just imagine you tried to find a spouse providing decent income to you. Would you rather embark on such an adventure as a straight white male or as an Asian woman?</comment>


Help wanted in algorithm to estimate location of missed persons in Brumadinho - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dieegom/brumadinho_location <comment><AUTHOR> From the README.MD:

This is the first version of a tool to estimate the possible location of a missed person at Brumadinho/MG. At this city, a huge Dam Burst occured recently and many people died and many more are missing.

The Brumadinho dam disaster occurred on 25 January 2019, when a tailings dam at an iron ore mine in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil suffered a catastrophic failure.

— [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brumadinho_dam_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brumadinho_dam_disaster)

This tool requires the latitude and longitude coordinates to calculate the estimative based on the tailing flows.

The algorithm still needs to be improved (so much!). Also, we built it with few data that we had got. To improve it, we need tailings physical-chemical data, topographic map (.csv) of the place, simulations of the reject spreading, and, of course, the latitude and longitude coordinates from the victims' cell phone.</comment>