Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It's Underpaying Many Men - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.html <comment><USER4> Reminiscent of Simpson's Paradox, the most famous example being a gender discrimination lawsuit alleging UC Berkeley discriminated against women in admissions (57% men vs. 43% women).

It turned out there WAS bias - in favor of the women!

"The lawsuit triggered a study. The study results showed that not only were women not discriminated against, but that women had a statistically significant advantage!

Here's what happened. Some departments had high acceptance rates and some had low acceptance rates. Women applied to more competitive departments. Men applied to more accessible departments. Taken on the whole men had an advantage. When broken down per department it was women who were more favored."

[https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/my_favorite_paradox/](https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/my_favorite_paradox/)

<comment><USER5> You got too distracted by the Simpson's Paradox reference to see the actual Simpson's Paradox in play. As sokoloff [1] pointed out in a below thread, Google having an overwhelming male workforce means that there could still be a large bias against women at the same time that more man are being underpaid.

There is simply not enough information presented in this article to know whether there is truly a gender bias (in either direction) regarding how Google pays their employees.

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989)

<comment><USER6> > There is simply not enough information...

Hmm...

"Men account for about 69 percent of the company's work force, but they received a _disproportionately higher percentage of the money_. "

So, yes, we do have that information.

<comment><USER5> Yet we don't know what jobs women and men do at Google. There can be bias elsewhere in the system. For example women might be disproportionately hired as administrative assistants and men might be disproportionately hired as senior engineers. Both groups could then be compensated fairly and it would result in men receiving a disproportionately higher percentage of the money.

<comment><USER7> You've missed the point entirely. The comparisons are among peers in the same jobs. But it sounds like Google can't get its own data together in a sensible way, so you can't really trust any numbers in this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows this.

[https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage- gap.htm](https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm)

The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly.

The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap is a problem has a solution. They are pushing equality of outcome. They want everyone to be paid exactly the same. That's the problem that they have. They don't care that they are comparing apples to oranges. They want pay to be exactly the same.

<comment><USER9> It's only "apples to oranges" if you're willing to beg the entire question. _Why_ is elementary teaching less highly paid than university teaching? _Why_ is nurse practitioning less highly paid than anaesthesiologizing?

<comment><USER10> Amount of training required.

I'd be fine with a random anesthesiologist teaching my grade schooler, but I'd hesitate to have a random elementary school teacher giving him anesthesia.

Elementary school teaching: a teaching certificate.

University professor: PhD, pre-tenure work & published research (Note that there are less-qualified people teaching in universities that are compensated much less.)

Nurse practitioner: Master's degree (undergraduate plus 2 years)

Anesthesiologist: Undergraduate + medical degree (4 years) + residency (4 years) + possible specialty training.

<comment><USER11> How do software developers fare under that regime? I make 3x more as a software developer than my teacher friends that have had far more schooling (masters degrees in many cases, plus continuing education requirements). I don't know where you live, but in my state (Michigan) teachers have rigorous certification requirements.

And I definitely would NOT expect someone without training to be an effective teacher. I'm in awe of what my kids' teachers are able to do. Classroom management is a skill that is incredibly difficult to master.

<comment><USER10> Successful software engineers have a lot of knowledge & skill that is often acquired informally, so it may not be reflected in university history. Because of the demand for developers and the apparent difficulty of acquiring the skills, they are well-compensated.

If a person has a bachelor's degree, they can get a Michigan interim teaching certificate by passing a test. [https://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/certification/mi...](https://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/certification/michigan- alternative/) Permanent certification then requires 12 hours (1 semester full- time) of courses, or working toward a masters degree would probably give an immediate and permanent bump in pay.

Imagine a random liberal arts graduate: Would it be easier to go into elementary teaching in Michigan or software development?

<comment><USER11> I see a lot of parallels between this alternative certification route and a bootcamp: yes, the route is shorter, but you're at a huge disadvantage when applying for entry-level positions.

The teachers I know personally obtained traditional four-plus-year bachelors degrees before applying for jobs. In most cases, they had to do a year or more of subbing before finding a permanent position.

(edit to add: education degrees are very hard to get done in four years, especially with the aiding, student teaching, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it's their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed.

No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs are not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are women got awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with them and they agree with what I'm saying.

The actual discrimination against women comes in PhD programs, programs where their success is determined by 1 or 2 superiors (mostly men in advanced research programs), areas with primarily male coworkers, and creepy bosses. The area with most discrimination for women is in non major liberal cities. I went to the Midwest twice and saw more blatant sexism in the workforce than I have my entire life. 2 friends confided that they were asked to trade sexual favors for promotions albeit this was 20 years ago and that was the deciding factor for them moving to the Bay. These things are horrible and I can't imagime the emotional trauma for that.

However, in the Bay Area and the majority of society the pendulum has swung way too far the other way. I don't care if people think me sexist, these are my observations over my lifetime from both sides and unlesss convinced otherwise this is what I believe.

<comment><USER13> > No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs > are not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are > women got awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with > them and they agree with what I'm saying.

.... and yet, how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50% female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?

<comment><USER14> It's possible to both discriminate against men, yet have more men in the workforce, if women voluntarily are choosing not to enter a profession.

In fact, that seems to be the problem: no amount of discrimination against men resolves that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do, but the only policy lever that can really be utilized is discrimination at various stages of education or employment.

This has left people aiming for a fantasy, and using increasingly aggressive discrimination to try and carry it out, biology be damned.

<comment><USER15> > that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what > men do

Why is that, though?

Are women not encouraged to pursue technology careers? Or are they being encouraged to chose other careers instead?

Are they driven away from it by a toxic work place culture?

Or just the perception of tech as having toxic workplace cultures?

Are women moving into roles with more flexibility because they are expected to take on more domestic duties?

Or my hunch... Do women just feel less comfortable entering an industry with such an unbalanced gender ratio to begin with, and it becomes a self perpetuating cycle?

You say Biology be damned, but I don't think it's settled that biology is the main factor here.

And I'm not saying it is or it isn't. I'm saying we don't know.

<comment><USER16> Or... may I dare to suggest they simply don't like it?

I used to work at school. Not for a long time, but enough to make some observations. One of them: school kids are passionate. If they're interested in something, no amount of persuasion, toxicity or whatever else will distract them.

<comment><USER17> It's perfectly reasonable to consider that maybe women are inherently drawn away from the field for whatever reason. There are biological differences between men and women and it's possible that this is one.

What I don't understand is why so many people insist that this must be the explanation, as if the current state of things is definitely a level playing field (or biased toward women) and the fact that there are so many more men in the field _must_ therefore be due to something innate.

We're only a few decades out from a time when women couldn't open a bank account without their husband's permission, and when raping a woman was perfectly legal as long as you were married to her. I think we should give it a _little_ more time and effort before we declare that everything is now fair and any remaining discrepancies must be biological.

<comment><USER18> Why do you think your last paragraph hasn't prevented women from becoming numerous and successful in many other fields, such as becoming doctors? Could it be because of one of the most reproducable and statistically significant findings in social psychology, that women are generally more interested in people and men more interested in things?

<comment><USER17> A quick search shows that male doctors outnumber female doctors in the US by about a 2:1 ratio, so I don't think that's the best example. Your point remains, since there are fields where women are at parity or beyond.

I think that because it seems unlikely that we've managed to completely eliminate thousands of years' worth of systemic sexism in such a short time. It's highly improbable that, with so many things changing all the time, this just _happens_ to be the moment when we've achieved a level playing field.

And to address the specific claim, why would being interested in people keep women away from computer jobs? It's an intensely collaborative field. And why didn't this keep women out of the field a few decades ago when women programmers were much more (relatively) numerous? If women are generally more interested in people and this drives sex disparities in different professions, why are there so few women in politics, the most people-heavy profession imaginable?

<comment><USER19> > A quick search shows that male doctors outnumber female doctors in the US by > about a 2:1 ratio, so I don't think that's the best example.

I think it's a good example, you (and GP) just missed the more interesting part: Nurses handle the patients on a more intimate level than doctors, and female nurses outnumber male nurses roughly 10:1 in the US.

[https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of- pr...](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of- professionally-active-nurses-by- gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've talked to one expert about a similar result in a company where I worked, and the flip side to results like this is sometimes promotion velocity - <USER2> looked "overpaid" for their level relative to the men, and that was often because they had been at that level much longer than most men at the same level.

If you set initial salaries fairly with respect to gender but promote men more quickly, then you end up with a company where it looks like women are paid more when you control for job title.

<comment><USER21> So would you say the accurate way to study this is to examine "lifetime pay"\--look at the pay of demographics over a time period at the company? That would show if men are making more in 5 years of accumulated employment vs women, right, and potentially unearth some of this "promotion velocity" numerically?

<comment><USER22> That is one part of the picture. This situation is so complex that I don't believe everybody has actually figured out all the important parts to study in the first place.

<comment><USER23> This is it, and definitely step 1.

Step 1: Let's agree that this is a complicated problem, and that quick feel good knee jerk reactions may end up having negative impacts.

Step 2: Work on solutions to complicated problems.

Easier said than done, but few things worth doing are simple, and there's already a lot of people doing great work on sustainable, informed solutions (but too many people just going "lets pay everyone the same, its the only way to be fair!!!" hurting everyone else)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you assume:

a) Google is about 70% men; and b) The "error" in pay (eg how under- or over- paid you are) is randomly distributed

Then it will be trivially true that more men than women are underpaid

If you, in addition to this, assume some level of sex discrimination, such that in addition to (b) there is additional 'error' in womens' pay, depending on the relative strengths of each of these errors, the following two things can both be true at the same time:

1) A higher percentage of women are underpaid than are men. 2) Most of the people who are underpaid are men.

If this is surprising to anybody, they should be taking a remedial statistics class immediately.

To illustrate, assume that Google is 100 people: 30 women, 70 men. assume that 25% of men are underpaid, and 50% of women are underpaid.

That means that 0.25 _70 =~ 18 men and 0.5_ 30 = 15 women are underpaid.

That means that more men are underpaid than women.

That means that 18/(18+15)*100 =~ 55% of the people who are underpaid are men.

So in my hypothetical, is Google biased against men? Or is Google biased against women? Or is Google not biased at all?.

<comment><USER25> The information provided in the article directly contradicts your hypothetical.

It says that the raises resulting from the study _disproportionately_ went to men. Not just in absolute terms, but proportional terms:

> The study, which disproportionately led to pay raises for thousands of men, > is done every year [...]

> In response to the study, Google gave $9.7 million in additional > compensation to 10,677 employees for this year. Men account for about 69 > percent of the company's work force, but they received a higher percentage > of the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the > gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google > hired her as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers > who are recent college graduates — in 2010 despite her having four years of > experience.

> Within a few weeks of Ms. Ellis being hiring, Google hired a male engineer > for her team who had also graduated from college four years earlier. But he > was hired as a Level 4 employee, meaning he received a higher salary and had > more opportunities for bonuses, raises and stock compensation, according to > the suit. Other men on Ms. Ellis's team whose qualifications were equal to > or less than hers were also brought in at Level 4, the suit says.

This feels like a part of the issue, but could be really hard to analyze easily.

<comment><USER27> > Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the > gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google > hired her as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers > who are recent college graduates — in 2010 despite her having four years of > experience.

I worked for around 4 years before joining Google and was also hired as an L3. I'm male.

Two of my new grad friends were hired as L3's at Google too but make like 100k more than I do in total compensation. One is male and one is female.

I'm not saying there isn't sexism but I'm not really convinced by this example. It's pretty common that people get "demoted" when coming in from other companies.

I made the mistake of not getting competing offers (I wasn't actually looking to change jobs at the time).

<comment><USER28> Also, number of years worked does not dictate how good of an engineer you are.

<comment><USER29> No, its mostly because turning down a offer(no matter what that is) from Google screams privilege. There are a lot of things related to prestige, and other hiring marketing related things that have built up this enormous clout of you having arrived at a big place in life if you land a job at FAANG companies.

So people just take whatever is offered. Because, there are tens of thousands of people applying for these jobs. Most of them are likely to better than you and they didn't crack all competitive coding style interview to land a job like you did. So people just find it hard to turn down the offer and take it.

It's only later do they realized they are not building the next search engine. Nor building the next gen e-commerce platform, but building Jsons and posting to dataservices. By then you are conditioned to free food and you are not comparing your salary with people outside but _inside_.

Its always hard to admit you didn't negotiate well or fell for the marketing appeal of the company. Its easy to find conspiracies and accuse others of malice. The later story is more appealing, makes you a victim and makes the other side look bad.

<comment><USER27> > So people just take whatever is offered. Because, there are tens of > thousands of people applying for these jobs. Most of them are likely to > better than you and they didn't crack all competitive coding style interview > to land a job like you did. So people just find it hard to turn down the > offer and take it.

I don't speak for everyone obviously but the reason I took the offer is that it will still >50% what I was making previously. I didn't bother looking into how much other people make.

> It's only later do they realized they are not building the next search > engine. Nor building the next gen e-commerce platform, but building Jsons > and posting to dataservices. By then you are conditioned to free food and > you are not comparing your salary with people outside but inside.

Somehow I feel you have a bone to pick? I've been on 3 different teams and this has not been my experience at all.

People at Google seem to be just like people at other companies. They're happy they have a good job but look forward to retirement.

<comment><USER29> >>I didn't bother looking into how much other people make.

>>People at Google seem to be just like people at other companies. They're happy they have a good job but look forward to retirement.

Not sure what's your point here. The whole reason this discussion seems to be happening is because a segment of people think that is not true.

If that is true in your case, why would you even argue? It does not even apply to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.

<comment><USER31> I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference in pay in that situation is cause for concern.

But that's not how a lot of jobs, software development included, work. It's entirely possible for someone fresh out of school to be a far more valuable team member than someone with ten years experience... yet we would point to a disparity in pay between those two people as [sexist, ageist, whatever-ist]. Now let an experienced employee find out they're getting paid less than someone with far less experience? Hooo boy, talk about creating a toxic environment.

<comment> munk-a I think this only really comes up when pay disparity is as extreme as it is now, when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity.

<comment><USER32> > _...when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and > others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing > pay disparity._

You're completely throwing context out of the window, though, and that's a dangerous precedent. Is the person making 300k in sales? Is the person making 32k merely the frontline helpdesk?

To try to "even it out, to decrease the dispairity, and - thus - <USER3> inequality" would mean the sales person and the helpdesk person making around 150k but only one of them is performing highly skilled, desired, sought-after work and the other is a generalist whom can easily be replaced. You intentionally devalue the sales person to add unwarranted value to the frontline helpdesk person.

So, your sales person leaves and your helpdesk person stays with your company until they either die or company runs under or what-have-you. They _could_ improve themselves to move up the ranks but where's the onus for that, if they're already making gold bars, without having had to have done anything to actually _earn_ that value?

The entire premise is wrought with problems because it doesn't address the principal fact that the desparities probably exist for a reason...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a side note: I have recently come over a university which promised a gender equality in "all our science degrees", which it explained as an "admission of 50% males, 50% females". But how can it be a "gender equality", if 80% of the applicants are males?

<comment><USER34> Was it in advertising or other official materials? If so, could you reference them?

<comment><USER33> It was one of the universities in Germany, but I cannot find the source now. I was primarily reading material on the postgraduate studies. As a semi- reference, this Spegiel article[1] explains how important the perception of gender equality has become in German academia in recent years.

[1] [http://spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/potsdam- university...](http://spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/potsdam-university- removes-masculine-generic-from-official-documents-a-909696.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This debate is exhausting.

I agree with some previous posters that women may be more favoured by formal systems now, while men remain more favoured by informal systems.

I think that part of the issue is that there are more ways to be male and a successful senior engineer or team lead than there are female.

We tend to look towards people who are similar to ourselves to see how we should advance. There are many fewer female role models than there are male ones. Many women who make it to leadership positions are encouraged to act masculine.

Women who make discrimination claims that later ring false are usually villainized. I think it might be useful to think about why these might be occurring. In particular, I think women as a whole still feel a great deal more insecurity WRT their positions in the workplace. The equality that's been won in the last few decades has been to some extent manufactured, so it feels a lot more fragile.

I don't think that a good reaction to this news article is to feel upset that men are now being discriminated against.

<comment><USER36> > I don't think that a good reaction to this news article is to feel upset > that men are now being discriminated against.

Why not? It's good and bad news for men but men definitely shouldn't be discriminated against

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I read the article first and then came in to read the comments. I feel that most people commenting did not actually read the whole article. To put it simply:

It is not just about pay equity in a particular level. It is also about the ingress and egress rate of a level.

As the article mentions, some woman was hired as L3 while all of her co- workers were hired as L4. Was she overpaid as a L3? Maybe. But she was underpaid overall because she could've gotten L4.

Similarly, women and under represented minorities also face similar issues in promotions.

<comment><USER38> Sure, but there's zero data to suggest either of those are a factor at Google. That's just moving the goal post.

<comment><USER11> How is that moving the goal post? The question at hand is whether individuals are fairly compensated based on their amount of experience and ability to contribute. Compensation is affected by job title, therefore job title is absolutely relevant.

<comment><USER32> > _Compensation is affected by job title, therefore job title is absolutely > relevant._

Levels (on hiring) can be affected by negotiation. You can, quite literally, negotiate a better level before signing the employment contract.

Why Miss Ellis' level was only Level 3 and everyone around her seemed to be hired at a Level 4, I won't even presume to know but I think it is a disservice to argue over facets surrounding something not publicly known specifically because those facts aren't known.

For example, the man that was hired - after Ms. Ellis was hired - was also hired four years after he graduated university and came on at Level 4.

Did he graduate with a master's? Did he have the same (or more) experience dev'ing? Is there any other plausible reason than the nefarious one we assume?

If not, then, sure let's deride away.

If so, then are we saying that prior experience and education level[s] (or quality) should not matter? That there should be a "maximum minimum level" for all workers entering the force?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me the key takeaway is that google systematically underpays both men and women.

<comment><USER39> The takeaway is that compensations are not perfectly aligned with whatever model was used in the study. Which is expected because compensations were not set using that model, so they won't be exactly the same. And at that point, if the model is calibrated for everage compensation to be the same, it's obvious that some people will get compensations below the prediction of the model and some people will get compensations above the prediction of the model.

<comment><USER4> > And at that point, if the model is calibrated for everage compensation to be > the same, it's obvious that some people will get compensations below the > prediction of the model and some people will get compensations above the > prediction of the model.

This is true of most models (in practice - _any_ model which models salary in the real world) yet not every company is being accused of these payment discrimination lawsuits.

<comment><USER40> > yet not every company is being accused

maybe because attacking them is not worth it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Too bad they fired James Damore for simply wanting to have a discussion about it. I think discouraging people from speaking up on issues is ultimately how we got here.

</comment><comment><USER42> Do read the fine article for the details:

 _But the study did not tell the whole story of women at Google or in the technology industry more broadly, something that company officials acknowledged._

 _Most significantly, it did not address ingrained issues that, according to workplace experts, cannot be overcome simply by considering how much different people are paid for doing the same job: Women and racial minorities often do not get the same opportunities and they must overcome certain biases when they are hired or compete for promotions._

Etc.

<comment><USER43> > according to workplace experts

The media really needs to stop this practice of just saying "experts say" without any attribution.

I suggest when reading any article, when you read, "experts agree" or "sources say" or "critics have said" or "others are saying" \-- just replace it with, "I, the author of this article, think ..."

<comment><USER44> Seriously, I read that and I immediately wondered who these experts are and what their data actually says, considering the entire article is about how empirical data actually debunked the commonly accepted narrative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How did this fall off the front page with almost 500 points and less than 6 hours? There are submissions with fewer points and older that are still pretty high on the front page. Can anyone explain? Is it possible this is getting flagged too many times?

</comment><comment><USER46> Several related facts:

1\. In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions: [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the- more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender- equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/)

2\. In the past 30 years women have made gains in traditionally male areas like law and medicine, but have gone backward in software engineering

3\. Men are disproportionately on the autism spectrum

It seems to me that aiming for 50% female representation in software engineering is not necessarily something we should be aiming at

</comment><comment><USER47> It's interesting how this sort of discussion is actually leading HN to be _more_ of an echo chamber. Most of my female friends in tech completely avoid it now because it seems that discussions that get voted up tend to ignore or belittle their experiences—even if there may be lots of great points and perspectives mixed in. In fact, the only response I noticed explicitly from someone who identified as female was being downvoted last I checked: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19306248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19306248)

That can feel rather insulting and demoralizing, and why would anyone want to subject themselves to that? Instead many women just avoid HN—which in turn means that it becomes more male dominated, with more upvotes and mindshare to comments about experiences of "the other" that may not by particularly well informed—because it's not worth the time of a woman to even chime in.

Regardless of your opinions on these specific issues, this dynamic of driving away women decreases the likelihood of everyone gaining a well informed perspective. It doesn't just impact gender issues. It impacts discussions on the importance and potential markets of startups that provide products which aren't just male focused. And you can end up with more things like: [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth- world-built-for-men-car-crashes)

Not an easy dynamic to "fix", but a useful thing to remember when thinking about communities, incentives, and impacts...

<comment><USER48> > accurate opinions

You can have an accurate or inaccurate belief on a question of fact, but "accuracy" is not a measure that applies to matters of opinion.

<comment><USER47> Whoops. Good catch. Edited to make more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Should we read "Many Men" as "Those on H1B visas"?

<comment><USER50> $60K and the privilege of working for a FANG should be good enough for everyone.

<comment><USER51> Pretty sure this is a troll but if it's not then I Disagree.

<comment> munk-a I'm almost certain that's a troll or else someone that forgot a "/s"

<comment><USER52> > _should be good enough for everyone_

This is an "inside" indicator, referencing that ol' ungenerous-but-pithy paraphrase of a since-disavowed Bill Gates quote regarding 640 kB of personal computer memory. It's like the phrase "modest proposal", in that you only know it's marking something as insincere with some out-of-band knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Talking about the additional compensation - "Men account for about 69 percent of the company's work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money."

Doesn't this imply that men, per capita, were being underpaid more than women?

<comment><USER5> Yes, which is why the per capita number is not the proper way to measure this.

For example, imagine a company with 7 male employees and 3 female employees. That company has 9 engineers and one administrative assistant. All the engineers are underpaid. The male engineers are underpaid by $1000 and the female engineers are underpaid by $1200. The administrative assistant is a woman who is fairly compensated. That means the men are underpaid by $7000 total and the women are underpaid by $2400 total. Men make up 70% of the employee workforce and are roughly 75% of the underpaid total. More men are underpaid than women. The per capita underpayment of men is $200 more than the underpayment of the average woman. There are plenty of ways to frame this data that make it look like men are the biggest victims and yet woman engineers are all payed $200 less than their male counterparts.

<comment><USER53> I understand how that works but we're going to need to draw a line somewhere. Going by job, rank, and salary alone could ignore hours worked per week (statistically men tend to do more in the same role), bonuses for high quality work (who knows how this plays out?), etc. I could choose whatever filters I want to frame the data how I want it to, it's one of the biggest tricks of the "women are paid X less than men" camp.

<comment><USER5> You asked a direct question and I gave you an answer why that question isn't the right one to ask. You are now shifting the debate to be about something completely different.

As I have said in other comments in this thread, there is simply not enough information in this article to say definitely whether there is any gender discrimination in pay at Google and if there is, what gender benefits from that discrimination. Too many people in these comments are approaching this article with biases of their own (on both sides).

<comment><USER54> There is never going to be enough information and no matter how you slice the data you have it will always be arbitrary and biased. This whole debate is silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I keep telling my wife she should learn Python and become a developer. Women are highly valued in tech right now, at least in corporations of any significant size.

<comment><USER56> I suppose that is one way to give someone imposter syndrome...

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> >> One effect of the adjustments was to create a pronounced imbalance in compensation among lower-level software engineers, one of Google's largest job groups, with a large number of men identified as being underpaid compared with their female peers.

The article refers throughout to "numbers" rather than "proportions", or "ratios", "percentages" etc, meaning that it is actually a larger _absolute_ number of men rather than a larger _relative_ number of men who are underpaid, compared to women.

Most of google's engineers are men, so even if equal proportions of men and women were underpaid, the absolute number of men being underpaid would be higher.

Google obviously has people good enough with numbers to know this. However, it's perhaps not surprising to see that there seems no mention of it in the above article. Google is, after all, defending a lawsuit by some of its former female software engineers who allege they were underpaid compared to their male peers. There is a clear incentive to allow a certain lapse from google's usual pride in employing people who understand numbers.

</comment><comment><USER58> I love the irony of this. Accused of underpaying women - their reaction is "let us get some data". Nope. underpaying men. This is the way you do things. You collect the data, analyze and react. Wash rinse repeat.

<comment><USER59> Given that Google's workforce is 69% men, it's quite possible that they found 3 men underpaid for every 2 women who were underpaid (60%/40%), which would mean they gave more men than women salary equity adjustments while still having a bias in the direction of the original complaint.

<comment><USER4> It's not a contest of who is _more_ underpaid. This would indicate that Google systematically underpays, regardless of gender. THAT is the real issue here.

<comment><USER60> How can everyone be underpaid? Does that even make sense?

<comment><USER61> Not everybody is underpaid, but among the underpaid, they found men as well as women. As random illustration, they might pay 200k+-5% to 80% of all level X developers, and the other 20% might only earn 150k+-5%.

I still agree that 'underpaid' is a difficult term here. Maybe the 80% are overpaid? The only hard fact in this example would be that the salary is more skewed than it should be for a 'fair' compensation.

<comment><USER60> What does the ideal salary distribution curve look like, anyway? Should it be a bell curve? A long-tail distribution? Should it have distinct peaks, i.e. everyone with the same YOE is paid exactly the same?

Should the salary distribution mirror the talent distribution, or no?

<comment><USER61> Good questions. I think that compensation should mirror the value an employee provides to the company. However, in many cases, that is very hard or even impossible to measure.

In large companies with many career levels, the role level indicates the perceived value for the company. Then, the distribution within the level doesn't matter that much, as long as the difference between minimum and maximum pay is relatively small, and there is not much overlap to the neighborhood levels. Of course, there is no objective criterion what "relatively small" means in this context.

And, as the article already points out, this only covers fairness within the same level. Maybe even more important is if everybody is evaluated in the same way when it comes to career progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Nobody in these discussions seems to attack the elephant in the room: performance review systems.

These are openly meant to overpay some employees and underpay others. Though they can be coated in HR-speak to appear neutral and objective, the decisions that come out of them are typically arbitrary; they enforce biases of all kinds. So we should not be surprised at the results.

</comment><comment><USER63> None of this analysis accounts for leveling.

If women are disproportionately hired at lower levels, pay equity will still be _very_ off, even if the data says otherwise on the surface-level.

Ex: Woman w/ 4 years experience hired at T3. Man w/ 4 years experience hired at T4. Both are "in range" of their median comp per level, but the man is being paid more for his expertise.

</comment><comment><USER64> The solution to this is the solution to many problems in tech: unionization.

Many tech workers think unions cap the maximum achievement and result in people getting underpaid. In reality, we're _already_ underpaid when you look at how much the ownership of a company gets. Additionally, Hollywood's unionization hasn't hurt their pay.

</comment><comment><USER65> Here's what I think happened: women become a hot commodity. Tech companies have been trying to get their diversity numbers up for years know and the best way to do so is to hire some URMs, but the supply is still low, thus the cost to hire URMs has risen, leading to the higher average salary, and the subsequent adjustment.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't know what the results really were but:

> it found that more men than women were receiving less money for doing > similar work

NY Times needs to learn the difference between absolute numbers and rates. This is awful reporting.

</comment><comment><USER67> I once applied for a scholarship that did not advertise itself as a Male or Female only scholarship. In the fine print it quoted: "women will receive first priority for this scholarship."

</comment><comment><USER68> If you look at the amount they increased wages by, 9.7 million and by 10667 employees and just take an average... that's only 908 bucks a person. Don't get me wrong, 908 bucks a year is 908 bucks. But take into considering hours, that's only a pay increase of just under 44 cents an hour.

So at the end of the day, they weren't severely underpaying employees.

Good to see a company take this step. I had this happen to me at one company I worked for... it actually resulted in a pay increase of over 4 bucks an hour, now THAT was nice!

</comment><comment><USER69> I am sure the Labor Department will absolutely _love_ Google giving raises specifically to men whilst under investigation for "systematically" underpaying women.

<comment><USER59> I strongly suspect they'll be fine giving raises to anyone specifically _being underpaid_ while under such investigation.

<comment><USER70> I've seen a couple of studies that suggest that the pay gap isn't so much sexism as it is men just being better at negotiating in general. But with all generalizations it's not true for the entire group, so there will be some women who are better at negotiating and some men that are worse and have salaries that reflect that.

Basically the real world is a lot more complicated than people think and there are many factors that lead to pay discrimination. Claiming that it is due to sexism is an oversimplification.

<comment><USER71> That's the explanation when men get paid more than women.

When women are getting paid more than men, there are no known explanations beyond sexism. Especially at Google who notoriously fired Damore for stating that maybe men and women have different preferences - it's pretty clear from the article, biased though it is, that the issue here is really Google managers systematically awarding pay increases to women rather than men, in order to try and boost their numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> from my experience women get promoted to managerial positions much sooner and much more ease than men. Upper managment finds women more agreeable, less threatening, less combative and more likely to run with their plans without question and make upper manager look good. Women are also eager than men to move out of coding roles into JIRA management roles. My last two managers were women both of them given that position for purely reasons I described above.

</comment><comment><USER73> > In response to the finding, Google gave $9.7 million in additional > compensation to 10,677 employees for this year.

Doesn't sound like they were underpaying by very much...

<comment><USER74> On average $900 additional salary per employee. Probably not a huge raise for most of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> HN is a very civilized place, and this thread is the closest I have ever seen to a toxic environment.

A lot of people (men) here complaining about women getting things too easy in tech. Talk to a woman in tech. Look around you and see how many women there are. Men are still running the show.

<comment><USER76> Why can't we talk to men in tech? Are they not allowed to voice their concerns? If men are running the show, why were they being systematically underpaid at Google? Why are there so many anecdotes from men in this thread about watching less qualified women move ahead of them? Do you not believe the data? Men being upset by this isn't "toxic", it's a natural, healthy and correct reaction to the _data_ they were presented with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Systems that can serve the least-privileged fairly are more fair for everyone. The people who are resistant to making things more fair are usually the people afraid they are getting away with something.

<comment><USER76> The only "fair" wait to do things is to reward people based on merit. Artificially propping up someone because they're less "privileged" (as determined by ?) is the epitome of unfair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Google is being sued by the government for under paying women. This result, which is based on some objective and some _subjective_ criteria sure does come at a convenient time for the company.

</comment><comment><USER79> Didn't google fire a guy for trying to talk about this topic?

</comment><comment><USER80> We're nowhere near any common definition of what a fair wage should be. Especially for knowledge workers whose work ain't easy to value.

Say I build some engine and buy a bunch of identical bolts I need: each one obviously costs the same. But now I'm building a business and need some human cogs to run it, why would I have to discuss the particular cost of each one?

Same work, same pay. But... unique person and custom pay? How do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?

</comment><comment><USER81> > Men account for about 69 percent of the company's work force, but they > received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money.

If women were underpaid, things are less equal on average. If men were underpaid, as the study suggests, things are more equal on average. That said, would it be fair to keep underpaying some people in order to keep it more equal on average? I think not.

<comment><USER52> Using aggregate measures like that rolls up the wrong numbers into a final metric. It tells me that the men who were underpaid had a lesser gap between what they were being paid and what they should be paid, or that the men who were overpaid were overpaid to a greater extent.

They needed to compare the number of men who were underpaid as a proportion of all men to the number of women who were underpaid as a proportion of all women.

Using bum-pulled numbers, your company has 1000 employees, 667 are men, and 333 women, and they all do pretty much the same job. Your payroll is $100M, and 70% of it goes to the male employees. The mean pay for men is $105k, and the mean pay for women is $90k. Mean pay is $100k--let's say this is fair pay for the work. Overall, the men are overpaid, and the women underpaid.

But the mean is a fool's game; the median is more telling. Now say 445 men get $90k, and 222 get $135k. 2/3 of men are underpaid. Now let's say 222 women get $101k, and 111 get $68k. 1/3 of women are underpaid.

On a per-person basis, a man working for the company is twice as likely to be underpaid as a woman, but the amount by which they would be underpaid is much less. Going by the aggregate numbers, one could say "men at Company X are overpaid, compared to the women" and then any given underpaid man might not even realize they are being underpaid, thanks to the misleading statistic. When one of the $68k-paid women complains (naturally, as the worst-off of the bunch), and the company analyzes its own payroll at a more detailed level, it realizes that men are more likely to be underpaid than women (and also that increasing its payroll by 8% would make _no-one_ underpaid).

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> > _Google, Ms. Emerson said, seemed to be advancing a "flawed and incomplete > sense of equality" by making sure men and women receive the same salary_

This quote would appear to sum up the entire debate, using the term generously.

There is a large and vocal minority in society who abuse the word "equality" to mean "more money and power for women". They don't care about equality. They want inequality, but they know they can't say that, so they simply redefine equality to mean inequality in the Orwellian style and carry on as if the language hadn't just been horribly violated.

Ms. Emerson should stop talking until she can say what she means, although given her job is 'diversity consulting' I'm going to guess she will never be able to say what she means.

<comment><USER82> The next line is very important:

>That is not the same as addressing "equity," she said, which would involve examining the structural hurdles that women face as engineers.

Consider the following situation:

Men get promoted faster than women for similar work. They're seen as more assertive or something. Managers, noting the systemic inequality, take individual action to compensate women fairly for their contributions, despite the failure of the larger system.

The structural hurdle: that women find it more difficult to get promoted, is not addressed. And as a result, they end up paid less for similar work, despite attempts by ground level mangers to address the inequity.

The HN guidelines suggest that you

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I think this should apply to articles posted as well.

<comment><USER71> But that's not what the word "equity" means either.

Regardless, if she wants to define a word to mean "the structural hurdles that women face as engineers" specifically she should not criticise other people for using the word equality to mean equal treatment. She definitely has no right to claim those who disagree with her have a "flawed and incomplete" understanding of anything - she simply has no intellectual leg to stand on. Put differently, there is simply no plausible interpretation of what she's saying here that isn't a nasty attempt to manipulate the language.

<comment><USER82> So you're saying that my clearly plausible interpretation of her words is a nasty attempt to manipulate language?

What about "remember that there are structural issues that affect women" isn't fighting for equal treatment? I'd think that an argument to reduce the structural issues that unfairly impact women would be seen as a move towards equality, but apparently you disagree? And further think it's nasty?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Do you want the government to set pay scales for all STEM employees?

Keeping digging this hole and see whose grave you find at the bottom...

</comment><comment><USER84> #himtoo

</comment><comment><USER85> Well. Glad that's settled then.

</comment><comment><USER86> I don't get this. It is not possible to underpay (when there is no allegation of discrimination) because if a person X is willing to work for salary Y then that's exactly what he should be paid. In capitalism, corporations have a fiduciary duty to pay no more than is necessary to keep the employee.

</comment><comment><USER87> "You're in private mode.

Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode."

How obnoxious. (I think trying to make people using private browsing register is offensive. FWIW you can also stop the effect by blocking requests to their graphql subdomain.)

<comment><USER88> FYI, you can get free accounts through many public library systems, including those around Silicon Valley.

They don't give unlimited access to all content (recipes and crosswords are apparently excluded), but you can read all the articles you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Someone should write a manifesto.

</comment><comment><USER90> Off-topic: Why almost all words in the title begin by an uppercase letter?

<comment><USER91> Are you asking in general? That's one of the first things a student learns in middle school English is that the title is all capitalized except for words like "the, to, and, or", unless those words are at the beginning of the title.

This site looks like it has the rules more formalized, if you're interested. I think it's something most native English writers do without thinking by adulthood.

[https://capitalizemytitle.com/](https://capitalizemytitle.com/)

<comment><USER90> I've often noticed this pattern but only ask myself now, so, yes, in general. From what I remember I never learnt that in school, but I'm obviously not a native English writer. @Raphmedia already gave me a good link, but thank you for the one you gave me too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Let's see how long is this post allowed to stay in the front page before it gets flagged out. I'm surprised it stayed 2hs.

</comment><comment><USER93> I sometimes find that I have to write a comment questioning the very premises of the discussion, whether it's Net Neutrality (Title I vs Title II) or the Pay Gap (women vs men). This is one of those times.

There are many factors for why women are paid less than men for the same type of position. Many of these factors have to do with hours worked and expectations around child rearing. And when this is taken out, the women are found to make as much or more than men.

My position can be summed up like this:

The corporate world is about 100 years old, with its crazy commutes and uses of energy just to sit in a chair. This comes at the expense of future generations (fossil fuels), and current family values (taking care of children, elderly, etc.)

Why do we say that women have to keep learning from men on how to move up the corporate ladder, work long hours and get paid more. Perhaps men should learn more from women about how to have a healthy work-life balance, take care of the kids more, and their parents.

Today's kids are overmedicated with methamphetamines for ADHD, there is an opiod crisis among adults, 1 in 4 middle aged women is on antidepressants, the elderly are in nursing homes.

The wages have stagnated largely because both sexes flooded the labor pool, globalization and outsourcing and automation caused everyone to go into a race to the bottom. Now both parents are working for corporations. Fewer working Americans are becoming parents. They're in a Red Queen rat race, 1/3 of Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness. Is this really the best outcome for Americans?

Today's world isn't that of your grandfather, the company man who had loyalty both ways for decades and got a pension. Today we have two year stints, gig economy, part time work.

Andrew Yang wants to do what Nixon almost did, and institute a UBI for all Americans like the Permanent Fund in Alaska (lowest inequality of all states, year after year).

Why do we think Corporate Careers should take so many of our hours a week? Why should we trade time with our children and elderly for more money, just to survive? In the past, indirectly, child rearing was valued because one of two parents simply didn't take the job, so there was less available labor, so one parent could pay for the whole thing.

The system is broken, and we are accomplices by talking about how women can match the men in their "career opportunities" of long hours, instead of talking about parental leave for men like in Scandinavian countries, making the school day shorter, etc.

Read this for more info: [http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286)

<comment> crooked-v Along with making family life in general easier, a basic UBI program would also be a huge boost to small business ownership, since it acts as a general- purpose safety net in that sort of situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Can't wait to see how Jordan Peterson uses this one...

[edit: minor wording change; why am I being downvoted? I'm seriously asking]

<comment><USER95> If I had to guess, a)Not adding anything to the discussion, b)the implication that Jordan Peterson has anything of value to add to the conversation, and c)the tone of the message.

<comment><USER36> Jordan Peterson has been controversial in this topic in the past. I'm not really read up on the specifics though and I guess OP could have added more opinions to his post

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> One word: Union.

Unionize and wage equity magically disappears.

<comment><USER97> And so does the ability of talented individuals to negotiate their own salaries.

<comment><USER98> of individuals talented at negotiating*

not necesarily talented at doing the job

<comment><USER97> There will always be exceptions.

But I don't think most people go to an interview without having googled "how to ..." about the interview process first. Thus even those not naturally talented at negotiation have a reasonable chance at negotiating decently.

Talent/job competence + a little bit of research and preparation prior to interviewing will ensure superior results IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Many companies avoid these kind of issues by having a strict experience-based salary scale for all positions.

Gender or any other identity factor is then irrelevant if pay is based entirely upon candidate experience, right?

Edit: I have no knowledge of how Google handles salary. If anyone knows, feel free to share.

<comment><USER100> Sounds like a union shop.

<comment><USER99> I don't know of any tech cos or startups with unions, do you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> The only surprising part to this is that it was made public.

>Women and racial minorities often do not get the same opportunities and they must overcome certain biases when they are hired or compete for promotions.

My problem with these kinds of "intrinsic biases" that white men are accused of is that they can only be shown to exist by accepting the fundamentally unproven assumption that we all enter the workforce equally capable in all industries, a position which is clearly untenable at a minimum because of cultural differences.

This is practically the definition of ideological, institutional bias, and the results will either be reduced efficiency across the workforce, or a violent swing of the ideological pendulum.</comment>


Why the Tumblr Deal Is a Disaster for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/why-the-tumblr-deal-is-a-disaster-for-entrepreneurs/?ref=technology

<comment><AUTHOR> As a NYC entrepreneur I am excited to see how the money is spread around. This is a Billion dollars! Much of it will go back on the table as investments instead of staying in Yahoo's bank account.</comment>


IRC as a Startup Incubator - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/11/69394

<comment><USER2> November 2005

If the article is to be believed, the win32 IRC scene must be a friendly place. Certainly more friendly than the odd developer channels I occasionally visit.</comment>


Meditation can help you feel like you have more time - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/urban-survival/201910/meditation-may-change-the-way-we-perceive-time <comment><USER2> meditation is a skill and a conditioning process. It is very similar to stretching in association with athletic activity and develops in response to repetetive sessions.

master the art of the whole body daydream</comment>


Language and computers: Why language isn't computer code - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/07/language-and-computers?fsrc=nlw|newe|8-1-2012|2958453|38673228| <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4319279>

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately a day old, and one comment, == effectively dead.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. It's an interesting problem though. Given something that should be of interest✝ to the HN community✝✝, suppose it gets submitted and ignored. Should it be submitted again and again until it gets the attention it deserves?

When should it be decided that an item is not, in fact, of interest to HN?

✝ Whatever that means.

✝✝ Whoever they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Should it be submitted again and again until it gets the attention it deserves?_

Probably not "again and again", but many times I've seen first submissions languish and second submissions (often of essentially the same URL) take off.

Timing and all that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Investors sue Nasdaq and Facebook over IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/us-nasdaq-facebook-lawsuit-idUSBRE84M02O20120523

<comment><AUTHOR> The suit against Nasdaq is fascinating in principle. In brief, trading started nearly an hour late and there were difficulties with trade confirmation. Now, the sinking price is also a reflection of a) weaker public demand than underwriters may have anticipated and b) disquiet over dubious accounting/disclosure in the runup to the IPO. But clearly, delays and stumbles right at the commencement of trading took a lot of air out of the balloon.

How to value this, though, is a very difficult question that will most likely be left to a jury. Assuming NASDAQ were found to be negligent, it could be messy; Facebook's market cap has gone down by $20 billion since it began trading (or $39bn peak-to-trough). Nasdaq's Market cap is only $3 billion.</comment>


I've Spent $1500 on Google's Now Dead Glass Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-glass-explorer-program-dead-now-what/ <comment><USER2> While I agree that has to suck, isn't that the risk of being an early adopter?

Don't get me wrong, spending the money from Google feels like it _should_ be a safe bet. But life is not always going to work as we want it to.

Additionally, as pointed out, it isn't the end for Glass, just the Explorer program.

Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, you aren't.

Our CTO bought some as he wanted to test the waters with an stock counting program, nearly all the emails I read were about it being a demo, tech idea, contact Google for help and all that stuff.

All it looks like, Google allowed people to try out new tech, it seemed to go well, but the tech isn't great yet, Android Wear took most of the concepts with Google Now, the future will involve making it better before its a consumer product.

It seems to me Google can't win. Ah well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The road to innovation is paved with the detritus of millions of dead worthless gadgets. I, personally, have a closet full of technology that will never live again. Thus is the price of being an early adopter.

I feel bad for the guy that he dropped that kind of scratch less than a month ago, but I haven't seen anything yet that says existing Glass devices will spontaneously combust, so he should still be able to live the glorious jetsetting lifestyle of a Glass user anyway.

He'll just have to put up with the inevitable comments about using a "dead product" which I presume detracts from the exciting experience of being an Explorer.</comment>


Show HN: An isometric marble run build in CoffeeScript - robert-boehnke http://marbleo.us/#GQIAAP8AAAYvAgAA_wAAFDwAAAA_AAAABwICAP8AAAQAAAAAAAAAABgCAgD_AAALAQEAAP8AAAYpAQAAGgcIAf8AAAU_AAAAPwEAAP8AAAU_AAAAPwEAAP8AAAU_AAAAKwAAAB4CBQD_AAAEAAAAAAAAAAAwBwgA_wAABAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACwHCQD_AAADAQEAAP8AAAYpAQAA_wAAIgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAD_AAADKQEAAP8AAAYpAQAA_wAAKQEBAAD_AAAGKQEAAP8AACkBAQAAFAAAARUAAAAVAAAAFQAAABUAAAAFBwkAKQEAABYAAAEVAAAAFQAAABUAAAAFBwkA_wAAARUAAAAVAAAAFQAAABUAAAAVAAAABQIGAP8AAA8AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFAEAAP8AAAIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMAIAAP8AAAIFAgAA_wAABjECAAAA=

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a little hard to tell where the marble is in "3d" space. I think it might be a little better if it was even lighter while "underground". A lot of isometric games use shadows to show exactly where objects are - that could help as well.

Edit: now I figured out what the big problem is: you can't see where it's headed when it's underground. In Roller Coaster Tycoon, when your train went into a tunnel, there was a sort of transparent view of the underground track. I think having that here would make a lot of sense.

<comment> robert-boehnke thanks for pointing that out, that does seem like a good idea and I will look into that

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Direct links to some of the interesting source:

[https://github.com/robb/Marbleo.us/blob/master/src/js/Block....](https://github.com/robb/Marbleo.us/blob/master/src/js/Block.coffee)

[https://github.com/robb/Marbleo.us/blob/master/src/js/Path.c...](https://github.com/robb/Marbleo.us/blob/master/src/js/Path.coffee)

[https://github.com/robb/Marbleo.us/blob/master/src/js/Game.c...](https://github.com/robb/Marbleo.us/blob/master/src/js/Game.coffee)

</comment><comment><USER3> Turn your design into something real: <http://woodgears.ca/marbles/run.html> or <http://woodgears.ca/marbles/modular.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Building this successfully destroyed all my productivity. <http://bit.ly/g11Q6h>

<comment><USER5> Playing with it destroyed a bit of my productivity ;) I like the ending of the map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> this is quite cool: [http://marbleo.us/#PwAAAD8AAAA_AAAAPwAAAAMAAAAoAAAAKgAAAD8AA...](http://marbleo.us/#PwAAAD8AAAA_AAAAPwAAAAMAAAAoAAAAKgAAAD8AAAAfAgEAPQAAAj8AAAADAAAAKAAAACoAAAA_AAAALwIBAD4AAAI_AAAAAwAAACgAAAAqAAAAAAAAABgCAQAVAAACPQAAAAMAAAAoAAAAKgAAAAAAAAAsAgEAFgAAAgEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_wAABz8AAAA_AAAAPwAAAD8AAAArAAAAKgAAACoAAAA_AAAAAwEBADwAAAE_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_AAACKwAAACoAAAAqAAAAKgAAAP8AAAcIAgUAAAAAAv8AAAUVAQQAFQAAAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIQIFABYAAAIVAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACoAAAAKAgEAPAAAAisAAAAqAAAAKgAAACoAAAAqAAAAMgIBAD8AAAIrAAAAKgAAACoAAAAqAAAA_wAABxQAAAAVAAAAFQAAACkBAQD_AAADHAIFABUAAAL_AAAFIAIFABYAAAIVAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACkBBQAWAAABFQAAAAEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAqAQEA_wAABh0CAQApAAACKgAAACoAAAAqAAAAKgAAACoAAAA- AQEAKwAAASoAAAAqAAAAKgAAACoAAAAqAAAAPgEBABcAAAEVAAAADQICACgAAAIqAAAAKgAAAAUDAQAUAAADFQAAADEHCQArAAADKgAAACoAAAA1AgUAFwAAAhUAAAABAAAAAAAAACgAAAAqAAAAKQEEABYAAAEVAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAoAAAAKgAAAAYCAQD_AAAGNgIBACsAAAIqAAAAKgAAACoAAAAqAAAAKgAAABUAAAAVAAAAKQAAACoAAAAqAAAAKgAAACoAAAAVAAAAFQAAACkAAAAqAAAAKgAAACoAAAAqAAAABQIEABQAAAIpAAAAKgAAACoAAAAqAAAAKgAAABUBBAAVAAABFQAAACkAAAAqAAAAKgAAACoAAAA1AgUAFwAAAhUAAAApAAAAAgAAACgAAAAqAAAA)

</comment><comment><USER7> I feel my curly-brace intertia softening a bit lately, so Im considering converting Orbium to CoffeScript.

The game has "classes", like this:

<https://github.com/bni/orbium/blob/gh-pages/js/tile.js>

<https://github.com/bni/orbium/blob/gh-pages/js/inspector.js>

So I think it will translate well.

Anyone with CoffeScript experience that can share what its like to convert over a codebase from JS -> CoffeScript?

<comment><USER2> Hah, mostly: delete, delete, delete.

<http://www.screenr.com/xd0>

Fair warning, the syntax in that screencast is a bit out of date.

For your codebase, instead of having to "call super" manually:

        orbium.Inspector = function(count, xnr, ynr, vari, col) {

          this.setBase = function() {
            orbium.Tile.prototype.setBase.call(this, "modtile");
          };

        }

It'll look more like:

        class orbium.Inspector extends orbium.Tile

          constructor: (count, xnr, ynr, vari, col) ->
            ...

          setBase: ->
            super "modtile"

<comment><USER7> Thanks, probably some search and replace will do most of the boring stuff. Since it follows the classical pattern already the structure of the code will be mostly the same, but with a lot less dense syntax :-)

Im concerned about adding a compile step, since I like the "just reload" workflow a lot that you get with JS.

text/coffeescript script tags could help out with this. But from the the CoffeScript site: "it's not recommended for serious use". Why not?

<comment><USER2> Check out the --watch flag, which will give you the same "just reload" workflow you have with JS.

Using `text/coffeescript` script tags works, but isn't recommended because you're effectively programming through an eval(), and debugging becomes more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's pretty cool, but might I suggest loading a fully built track as the default?

<comment><USER9> I found it is. Just click on a green arrow after test map.

<comment><USER8> My mistake, the fact that they have the ability to jump over distances is even cooler. Nice touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This basically does not run at all in my browser. (Chrome 11.0.696.44 beta)

<comment> robert-boehnke I have had some trouble with it on my Windows netbook with 2d canvas acceleration enabled, could that be it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> the sources can be found on github <http://github.com/robb/Marbleo.us>

</comment><comment><USER11> The very first thing I thought to do when I saw the app was to widen my window (to 2000px or so) so that I wouldn't have to scroll to see all the available blocks.

But the block selector doesn't resize with the window. Please could you fix that?

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish I could just buy blocks like these for my son. Bandai Spacewarp-type- things are a little too much yet, and the marble toys we have are pretty lame in comparison to this.

<comment> robert-boehnke You can: They were based off marble blocks built by a Swiss company called Cuboro: <http://cuboro.ch/en/Info/Products> They are not very cheap though.

<comment><USER13> I grew up with a set of those (not sure if from that company or just a really similar product), and to me it represents a nicer time when toys for children were... can't quite find the right way to put it, but overall _nicer_. Loading the marbleo.us page instantly took be back in my mind, so thankyou :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very cool. What does isometric mean? Is it like Eschere drawing, i.e. marble goes bak up the hill?

<comment><USER15> "Isometric" refers to the style of the 3D viewpoint. The x and y axis are presented at a 45° angle, and the camera looks 'down' on the surface diagonally.

Escher's work is an example of how an isometric perspective can be manipulated to present an impossible object, such as a staircase that appears to go upwards even though the 'top' stair is connected to the 'bottom'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> my little thing: <http://j.mp/etrO8H></comment>


Coronavirus tracking app locks up Android phones for ransom - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/news-archive/coronavirus/coronavirus-tracking-app-locks-up-android-phones-for-ransom/ <comment><USER2> The password appears to be 4865083501

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/fj2ixw/comment/fkk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/fj2ixw/comment/fkkylqu)</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Craigslist killer - <AUTHOR>

www.menkle.com
Our focus is on creating local marketplaces in small towns and neighborhoods (as opposed to large population density areas where Craigslist dominates).  We accomplish this by using zip codes (or neighborhood or town names) as a primary location reference.
We are looking for feedback on the following:
How do we provide an incentive for users to post on our site when we have very few buyers browsing the site?
What are the best categories of second-hand items that we should focus on (ex. Electronics, Furniture, Real Estate, Services, etc)?
What do you wish you could do on Craigslist but can't?
What can we offer that would make us a better alternative than Craigslist?
What would you change on our site to make it better?
Thanks for your thoughts and comments. <comment><USER2> It's tough to provide a good incentive. I think your idea of initially targeting zip codes not covered by craigslist is good, but then your problem is marketing to thousands of local, semi-rural areas. Very tough...

Perhaps a way to break into the market would be to find an esoteric genre of items to trade with a very devoted user group - these people generate buzz for free. Then, when you have a group of users, slowly expand into more mainstream categories that have some relation to the original base. For example, you could start with car stereos and speakers, then slowly expand into other car parts, then into everything. I realize this may require shipping and isn't CL- like, so it may not be what you are looking for.

I think the most important thing for me that Craigslist is missing is user profiles of some sort. When I am going to drive 30 miles to some guy's house to pick up a widget, I would feel much more comfortable if other users said he was on the level and dependable.

Feature-wise, I'm unclear on what your site offers that Craigslist doesn't, other than a more web 2.0 interface. If anything, I think a simpler, quicker interface would be better for something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's a great point -- start specific then branch out. i agree it would be helpful to know more about the sellers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think before you want to make something like a CL killer, you first need to understand what is CL, why is that so popular as it is - essentially what is the primary driver of business for CL.

As other would have already commented, it seems that the simple interface is one of hte biggest drivers for CL. You would find the same if you dig through tons of forbes/media articles. I think that is not the case. That is just post-facto insight - something which gets generated a lot in the media.

The primary driver of business for CL afaik is data and the people who already use CL. If I want to sell something I go to CL because it offers me the most amount of buyers. If I want to buy something vice-versa. It is a self- fulfilling loop.

The only way to beat CL is to figure out how do you overtake CL in its primary driver of business. It will not be easy - I dont know even if it is possible. But what I do know is that anything else (neat UI, AJAX) is just inconsequential.

<comment><USER4> The existing user base of CL, and the chicken-and-egg problem of buyers and sellers, are definitely valid issues.

However I would keep a very simple interface. There are things that I have sold on craigslist and I knew that I would get more and sell it faster on ebay, but right then I just wanted to get it "in the process" of getting gone, and ebay is a pain. It may be because of the computer or browser I use, but it is slow, it loads up all kinds of ads and kruft to show me what I want in a tiny 2 square inches in the center of my big monitor.

In fact, I would go further, and provide RSS feed interfaces and even a newsgroup interface ( not many people will use that, so maybe make a few million first).

<comment><AUTHOR> i especially like the idea of RSS feeds or even a search that will notify you when the item you're looking for is listed (i think ebay may have something similar?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> * Incentives for users to post, i.e. beating the chicken and egg problem: 1) Find a way to offer a payment service, or easily integrate with google checkout, so that the user's "Buy" button is automatically hooked to their GC account and the item description, link to menkle.com item, etc is in the GC transaction email. Don't use PayPal. 2) At least at the start, advertise some posts in other ways. You might buy google adwords that link to specific items, make a single-page poster listing half a dozen good items and have it put up around college campuses and other place, etc. 3) Attract buyers by buying certain items and re-selling them through the site, trying to break even on the transaction and taking a hit on the overhead of finding, dealing with the customer, storing it in the mean time, etc

* Best Catagories: I am not sure there is anything in particular you can focus on. If there are catagories that Ebay and Craigslist forbid, that are easy to handle, then you might advertise to buyers / sellers for that catagory, but the only such catagories that come to mind are firearms and used underwear. You can probably do the firearms, as long as you try to only assist in-state transactions, and you prominently warn parties that transactions are archived on the site forever. Maybe you could allow someone with a FFL to pay for a special account where they could do interstate firearms posts. Offering pets for free is another one.

* What I wish I could do on Craigslist: 1) Make a good search engine for historical pricing data, so I can see if something is a good deal, and price my own offerings. This is hard on CL because there is no way to tell if a posting ever sold, or if the transaction occurred at the advertised price. 2) Archive all posts in a searchable manner. This is good for pricing, but also for tracking down stolen shit. 3) Don't stop people from selling, trading, or giving away pets. 4) Swap meet - see below 5) Never completely delete posts. You can make them "go gray" YC-style with a few flaggings, but if the poster wants to remove it, or the transaction is done, it should go into some permanent archive. Access to the permanent archive can be sold at a subscription of $10 a year or something if you need to keep out spammers and etc.

* What I would change about your site to make it better: 1) Use a simple, no java script, craigslist like or google like interface. Look at plentyoffish if you want something a little more featured than CL. This site (yc) is also good. 2) In addition to searching by zip or region, have a "special region" called "mail order" for people buying or selling through the mail. 3) Offer a way to do an auction. Avoid the sniping crap by extending the auction for an hour every time someone makes another bid (i.e., make it a real auction)

Here's a way to try to get jumpstarted: hook up with some small flea market to do a "county wide garage sale". Charge $5 to pile your shit in a parking lot to sell it, free admission, the $5 charge is waived if you post all your stuff for sale on merkle 30 days before the swap meet.

I would love to consolidate all my meeting of potential craigslist buyers, and all the driving to check out items that turn out not to be as advertised, into one day and one location. I could tell people I'm interested in the item, and they should bring it to a certain place at a certain time, and then I could do all the haggling and get my business done in one hour and save gas.

I like your idea. The most important thing is to make the interface cleaner, don't use ajax or javascript or anything else that a web designer would think was cool.

<comment><USER4> I signed up and contacted a seller. In spite of all the java script the site was pretty fast. I'd still get rid of it.

Two points:

1) You need to get people using the site, and I have to second the observations that requiring someone to sign up to contact a seller is too much hassle. Most people used CL without an account for years before they signed up in order to post somethign.

2) Your search is broken. I listed books and searched on exact words in some of those listings, I never got any search results.

<comment><AUTHOR> i agree with you here..the sign in /register is a pain in the ass.

thanks for pointing out the issue with the search. we knew it was primitive but not broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't kill Craigslist with that UI.

What makes Craigslist "just work" is the simple, bloat-free interface. It makes it easy to view large quantities of data on a single page, and doesn't make it a "chore" to browse through the site for stuff.

Your UI is really way too bloated. Cut down on all the "web 2.0" look, focus on what your customers _need_ rather than making sure your design screams "I'm a Web 2.0 Startup!"

Cut down on the graphics, the crazy whitespace.

Just my two cents.

<comment><USER6> My first reaction to the design was "landing page!". It looks so much like a parked domain...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _What would you change on our site to make it better?_

Here's a start: don't use javascript for link navigation. Try browsing Craigslist with javascript disabled and you'll see that the site is fully functional. Then try browsing your site the same way and see how far you get.

Craigslist quickly presents a lot of useful information in an accessable manner. It's successful in part because _everyone_ and _everything_ can traverse their site.

Craigslist on lynx:

front page: [http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl.p...](http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl.png)

sf bay area: [http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl2....](http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl2.png)

software jobs: [http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl3....](http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl3.png)

specific job posting: [http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl4....](http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/cl4.png)

Although not particularly pleasing to look at, nothing stopped me from getting right to the information. Now consider menkle on lynx:

[http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/menk...](http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt145/lynxcraigslist/menkle.png)

Unfortunately this is as far as we (and most search engines) are going to get because your links depend on javascript for navigation.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the specific illustrations! this is a big help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _How do we provide an incentive for users to post on our site when we have very few buyers browsing the site?_

That's the big question that none of us probably have an answer to. Like PG said about auctions: "a startup that wants to do this has to expend more effort on their strategy for cracking the monopoly than on how their auction site will work" and like he said about dating sites "if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem."

Building a better CL isn't such a hard thing. The hard part is overcoming the momentum that CL has or in your case (since you want to go for people in rural areas) figuring out how to get people using it before there's a reason to use it (i.e. other people using it).

So, the chances that your site will succeed aren't wonderful. It's not that it isn't a worthy site, it's that there's a high level of random chance involved in whether a site like this succeeds. Success for a web office suite will be based on features, polish and the like. Success for your site will be (mostly) determined by whether other people use it since the majority of the value will be the user contributed content and not your code.

But, in terms of the code:

* Better search. CL only matches whole words as far as I can tell and it's just not great. Do it better. Get people to what they want more easily.

* Logins. I don't like having to create logins and until you're big don't put that hurdle in front of people. When your site has a million users, they will see the value of an account. Right now, an account is another reason not to use your site. Why should I register for a site with no one on it? However, if I can just post without registering, well, I might. Maybe offer the option of either ala CL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We're hoping we can improve our chances of success by listening closely to what our users are asking for.

I agree (as do others) that the search needs to be improved. We'll work on that. And you're right we need to lower the barriers to entry (ie. login/register).

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks nice. Just my 2 cents (I am not a USA citizen so I don't know the exact conditions):

Marketing in small towns is going to be difficult. A lot of small towns lags behind more urban places in internet adoption. Their population are also generally older and less tech savvy than cities - so you should plan for this group (simple interfaces, etc...).

You also get small towns that are relatively near each other: if a person wants to buy something $200 + he will happily drive through to the next town. So if you implement a type of map and list nearby towns it may be good.

A lot of selling over here happens with small regional papers – a regional paper will cover one or two towns and will be filled with regional news (stuff like school performance, local politics, etc...). Those papers also contain classified advertisements. If you can maybe link up with one or two of them to put those advertisements online – or provide a system in which they can put advertisements on your system (e.g. show on their website and redirect to yours when a user clicks on the add) it would be great.

Most of those papers are usually a one or two man operation without much of a website – you should check if you can get a system in which you supply a CMS type system with your advertisement system to them. You provide the website framework and advertisement system and they fill it with content & advertisements.

</comment><comment><USER10> I could see having to sign up and register with menkle to _sell_ something -- CL does that. But if I have to sign up to contact a seller, I wouldn't use it.

Its little things like that that make CL such a winner. CL tells users that it cares more about them than profiting or collecting data from them.

Also, there's no listings in central Texas.

It does look a little bit (like someone suggested) like a parked domain. I think its the overabundance of whitespace and soft pastel colors. Do something different and unique. I suppose it can even be ugly, just make it a different kind of ugly than Craigslist and domain squatter pages.

There are a lot of things people would like to do on Craigslist but can't (your question above). Many of them are unfortunately viewed as illegal or immoral by various cultural groups, municipalities and governments. Perhaps you should host your site offshore and tap into new markets, offer new features like anonymous cash, etc.? I wouldn't do it, but it'd be interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> i agree you should be able to contact a seller without signing up. we'll take a look at that! thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would change the look and feel of the site a little. It looks like those spammy domain squatters. I would tweak the font a little, at least.

<comment><USER12> Yes, that's true. But what is it about the site that gives it that feeling? I can't really place it. Maybe the color scheme? Or is it the layout?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm going to be overly harsh on you simply because you called this a Craigslist killer ;-)

\- Your site does not work with Javascript turned off. If you're trying to get the small towns and such, you need to be careful on this.

\- At first entrance of your site, it looks like a typical domain parked page with some ads. Make it more clear your site is about small towns and neighbourhoods. Display your top cities up front, or at the very least use some simple ip location to grab where I am and display relevant content.

\- You want to make me register to contact someone. Not going to happen

\- All the AJAX you are using is totally unnecessary.

\- Stop calling yourself a Craigslist killer and focus on a single niche, in a few small towns and do it well. Dominate those towns and that niche, then expand.

That, along with everyone elses comments should start you off .. good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the candid feedback. Your suggestions are excellent!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about if you allow them to import their postings from Craigslist and other places? Craigslist wouldn't like it but when you are small they probably wouldn't even notice. Just do it from multiple IP addresses or something.

<comment><USER4> CL postings expire, so I don't think that is a big deal. The way to do the import is to write a program that runs on the seller's desktop, that goes out to CL and logs in and snarfs the stuff, and then has them confirm / edit one by one as it inserts into menkle. That way the IP that visits CL is always the IP of the seller anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I realize you're targeting small towns and neighborhoods, but I live in LA and travel between numerous zip codes every day (and wouldn't mind stopping in any of them).

<comment><AUTHOR> you're right -- you should be able to view more than one neighborhood at the same time

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> well first things first you need to realize that your audience isn't tech savvy. So your site should work without javascript.

Install Noscript in firefox and try your site out. When you do, you'll see that your site is completely unusable if the person doesn't have javascript.(can't change categories)

So either remove it, or add a javascript check that shows different content when it doesn't detect javascript

<comment><AUTHOR> great suggestion for overcoming the javascript issue! thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Take a look at the Craigslist message boards. You'll find all sorts of customer complaints about how Craigslist has been taken over by spam, in all sorts of areas, including the personals. Offer your site in those cities where the "overtaken by spam" complaints are the loudest and you'll provide a real alternative. There are lots of international destinations as well where you won't find Craigslist.

</comment><comment><USER17> Your site would be more useful to me if you listed any items in California. A search for California on the site shows nothing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't the " _[insert huge company or product]_ killer" phrase incredibly cliche at this point?

<comment><AUTHOR> you're probably right -- i was hoping the phrase would attract some readers. not sure if it helped or not :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Instead of zip codes, why not do closed, individual communities? I know there are a lot of forums that have a closed buy/sell market that could use this application. Some guys recently were trying to buy/sell on HN and this would be a good opportunity to expand.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's a really good idea! who would we talk to about providing that kind of service to HN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing I wish Craigslist did but doesn't do is look good on the iPhone. I am not suggesting you do this. But that might be a strategy for you to beat CL: find a niche that CL ignores and target that.

<comment><USER21> There are some Craigslist iPhone apps - try <http://www.pheedyou.com/> (I've not tried it myself)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you're going to AJAX, what about just going all the way and never showing a 'loading' page? Just cache all the pages and all the item listings in memory so that its zero cost to browse around fast?

</comment><comment><USER23> You have very low information density. I go to Craigslist and see an incredible amount of data instantly. On your site I get very few things at once.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's a good point -- we'll try to improve there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> One possible method for building user bases - one zipcoed at a time: signs - see the thread on _SomeLittleTown_ singles.com a while back.

</comment><comment><USER25> What is the point of all the AJAX? All your content is virtually invisible to google, and given that you're looking for ways to get traffic i would have thought natural search would have been very important.

I think you need to think a lot more about your urls - make them friendly for people and search engines, so instead of:

<http://www.menkle.com/BrowseCategory.aspx?c=3>

why not:

<http://www.menkle.com/categories/electronics>

and instead of:

<http://www.menkle.com/ShowClassified.aspx?id=847>

why not:

<http://www.menkle.com/items/dvd/american_pie_2> or

[http://www.menkle.com/washington/georgetown/dvd/american_pie...](http://www.menkle.com/washington/georgetown/dvd/american_pie_2)

some well thought out url rewriting will go a long way + will give the benefit of obscuring the fact you're using asp, which might help with security.

<comment><USER4> The human-parseable URLs would definitely be a big improvement. "Power Users" (i.e., nerds) of CL often type in the whole URL to the city / section that they want instead of going to the main page and clicking from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are one million sites like yours out there. Half of them scammers. Yours looks like one of them.

It has to be clean and professional to give me some confidence.

And let me tell you, I really really hate CL.

</comment><comment><USER17> Your name strikes me as somewhat anti-semitic, but I wouldn't swear to it. Did you have gibberish Hebrew in mind for the name?

<comment><USER27> I know you're trolling, but what do you think it actually means?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's a nonsensical word actually derived from one of the founders' last name -- coleman. switching syllables it's man-cole which become "menkle" over time</comment></comment></comment>


Female scientists less likely to get a high grant proposal score due to wording - <AUTHOR> https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/who-gets-grant-money-gendered-words-decide <comment><AUTHOR> > Female scientists are 16% less likely than men to get a high score on their > grant proposal, and new research suggests word choice might be the reason > why.

[...]

> According to the researchers, women used "narrower" words that are "highly > concentrated in a small number of topics." Male applicants, on the other > hand, tended to use "broad" words, which "appear at similar rates in all > topic areas," the study stated.

> Women's use of topic-specific words lowers their chance of getting a high > score from reviewers compared to men.

> "Even after accounting for the quantity and quality of male and female > applicants, there is still a disparity in outcomes that favors men over > women," Kolev said. "This is a problem not only because of the general issue > of underrepresentation of women in science and technology, but also because > this disparity strongly suggests that the reviewers are allocating funding > inefficiently and failing to make the best use of their organization's > resources."

> In fact, the researchers found that women who received grants during the > time of the study "may well generate a greater 'return' on resources > compared to their male counterparts."

> Murray said the burden lies equally with funders and applicants. Kolev said > while female applicants could alter their communication style in pursuit of > grant funding, doing so carries the potential risk of undermining the > quality of their research.</comment>


What Does Immersing Yourself In  A Book Do To Your Brain? - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/what-does-immersing-yourself-in-a-book-do-to-your-brain/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17739349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17739349) ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17739349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17739349)</comment>


How to get over 1,000 FB comments in 1 hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/xfiregaming/posts/10150179677204717

<comment><USER2> How to get banned from Facebook in 58 minutes.</comment>


Conway's Game of Life in one line of APL - <AUTHOR> http://catpad.net/michael/apl/? <comment><USER2> Try a descendant in q/kdb+ at kx.com. No special symbol set required. For reference, "Q for Mortals" is a good read, and Joel at wagerlabs.com blogs about q/kdb+ occasionally.

q/kdb+ could turn into something really useful, and has some nice tricks, like very easy to use remoting capabilities, and a way to send lambdas to another machine anywhere and have that machine run the code. Unfortunately q/kdb+ are still a bit too domain specific to the finance world where the product apparently has a strong commercial following, so some of the stuff, like a robust, secure web server to compliment the powerful remoting capabilities is currently not available. Additionally, the language should have separate variable creation and setter operators, because it would be pretty easy to inadvertently start working with a new var after a mistype when an original var was intended.

If this stuff was cleaned up for consumption by a larger market, I think it would be pretty hot.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a very clever hack.

I have to say, I'm glad to see APL getting some mainstream attention-- it seems to be almost a forgotten language these days...

<comment><AUTHOR> Having to use a special character set and a special keyboard didn't help its adoption...

When I first saw APL, I thought it was Cree or hieroglyphics.

<comment><USER3> Unquestionably so (although it is interesting to note that there was a post here a few weeks ago suggesting that the restriction of the ASCII character set was holding language development back.)

What I find more interesting is how little reference there seems to be to it, these days-- I'm not surprised that it is not in widespread usage, but I'd think that it would come up more often in language-related discussions.</comment></comment></comment>