Microsoft Solver Foundation: numerical optimization library - <AUTHOR> http://solverfoundation.com/

<comment><USER2> This should certainly be interesting. Did anyone with a quant background here try the software yet? What are your thoughts? Do other similar software exist in market right now?

<comment><AUTHOR> I, too, would love to hear from someone who has tried this software. By the way, I found an interview with Nathan Brixius, a senior developer working on the Microsoft Solver Foundation library:

<http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=209>

Regarding similar software, there's MOSEK and a bunch of others whose logos show up on Solver Foundation's website. If you like to code in Python, there's CVXOPT and CVXMOD. If you're into MATLAB, there's CVX and Yalmip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excel has incorporated software from Frontline Systems, rebranded as "Solver", for many years. Most heavy Excel users use it every day. I couldn't dig through the marketing speak entirely, but this product appears to be a port of Solver to C# and not open source. Of limited interest to HN readers, I'd expect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I strongly disagree. This has _very_ little to do with Excel Solver. This seems to be Microsoft's take at large-scale, real-world optimization problems, possibly with millions of variables and constraints. Can you do that with Excel? I doubt it. This _Solver Foundation_ framework can do Constraint Programming, Quadratic Programming, and Mixed-Integer Programming. This is serious optimization, not the kiddie stuff Excel users deal with. SF seems to be based on commercial C++ solvers such as MOSEK.

I would say that open-source is not of great interest in optimization software. The idea is to write as little code as possible, and to trust that everything performance-critical has been optimized. Even speed is not the main issue for me. I want something that is flexible. I want to write little code because the less I write the less bugs there are. Correctness trumps everything else.

If I am using SF to allocate investments, I want to make sure an optimal solution is found, even if it takes a little longer. Computer time is cheap. Buy a bigger computer. Developer time is more precious. There are only 24 hours in a day.

You want to change the source code? With all due respect, but I would speculate that 99,9999% of HN users are not qualified to write numerical optimization code. Looking at it is of little use unless you have a PhD in Applied Math and years and years of experience.

Of limited use to HN readers? To those writing web-apps, perhaps. Those doing Machine Learning will probably be ecstatic to find this.

<comment><USER4> This is the guy from the hanselminutes interview...

Solver Foundation is not a port of Excel Solver - it is a ground-up implementation in managed code (C#). As TriinT said, the focus is on addressing optimization problems that commonly occur in finance, engineering, supply chain, etc. It's fair to say that there are things that Excel Solver offers that Solver Foundation currently does not (e.g. nonlinear programming), and things Solver Foundation offers that Excel Solver does not. In particular, there is a roster of solvers that are all accessible from a consistent, .Net friendly API.

It's not open source, but there is a solver plug-in model which allows you to use other solvers in place of the ones supplied by our team. In particular, open-source solvers such as lp_solve are supported.

Nathan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. Been looking for something to learn and try trading algorithms in. We use a CPLEX solver library from IBM at work but it's not used for trading but for optimizing a different set of constraints. Interesting to see MS has a solution as well.</comment>


Ask HN:  Why are comments disabled on the job posts? - <AUTHOR>

On reddit one of the best things about the ads there, which include job postings, are that you can offer constructive feedback on the ad, which actually helps the advertiser better understand the message they are sending.<p>For example, for today's job posting, I'd like to offer them the feedback that "Social Hacking" has some very negative connotations, even amongst the HN crowd, and they may want to reconsider their wording. <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2022116>

</comment><comment><USER3> I think they're disabled because people were outing ones that wanted to be nameless and the tech rags lurking on HN looking for stories to recycle might prematurely write about them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fair. But why not at least put public comments on the ones where the company isn't secret?

<comment><USER3> That might be because people were making fun of companies looking for ninja rockstars who wanted to change the world one todo list app at a time. Even after comments got removed some were tragic enough to spawn separate, parallel discussions heh.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that is valuable feedback to the advertiser. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I strongly suspect 'social hackers' are exactly what this particular company's looking for, and the negative connotation serves as a useful filter.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can always send them a private message.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could, but it think it would be better for them if the comment were public, because then other people could reply and explain why my feedback might not be good.</comment></comment>


EBay founder lashes out at Carl Icahn - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57619640-93/ebay-founder-lashes-out-at-carl-icahn/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to see them go on the counter-offensive. Very different from Apple's response.</comment>


Senator Dodd Reform Bill Could Ruin Angel Investing - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704671904575194483171910348.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop <comment><USER3> Congress has not been friendly to startups this past decade.

A few results of their well-intended efforts:

1\. Startups today have little or no realistic hope of gaining liquidity through an IPO, leaving them in a position where M&A is their only realistic exit, with the result being that valuations are lowered for founder exits (the consequence of Sarbanes-Oxley, among other new laws).

2\. Startups today can't simply price their stock based on the reasonable business judgment of a board of directors, nor can they use a simple 10 to 1 ratio in pricing their preferred versus their common stock, but must instead incur significant expense in having to do independent outside appraisals just to take simple steps such as issuing stock options (the new 409A statute and accompanying regulations have brought this about).

3\. The VC market has been all but dead for the past two years, owing in no small part to congressional actions that helped fuel the Fannie/Freddie subprime mess, leading to a financial meltdown.

4\. Add to this the hammer that is about to fall on angel funding as reflected in the Dodd bill, and startups will not only have their VC funding sources largely dried up but will have far more restricted access to early-stage funding across the board. In practical terms, this will mean that funding activities will need to be based on: (a) having access to comparatively wealthy angel investors (maybe 25% of the current pool) while being prepared to incur significant delays in getting funds pending a minimum 4-month wait; or (b) relying on Section 4(2), which is the section of the 1933 Securities Act that offers an exemption from registration for private placements but without benefit of the safe-harbor approach of Regulation D and its rules relating to accredited investors (the equivalent of "walking on the high wire without a net").

Maybe any given point above is over-simplified or overstated but the broad pattern is clear. No individual item is ruinous but each contributes to costs and restricts options. It is not a good trend for startups.

<comment><USER4> Freddie and Fannie did absolutely nothing to fuel the subprime mess. They were not allowed to invest in any subprime mortgages during the bubble and were later forced by law to invest in them when the crash was already happening, because that was Bush's plan to stop the crisis. This is just an excuse that people that caused the sub-prime mess use.

<comment><USER5> What is the source of this? If you look at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_crisis_impact_timeline> and search for subprime you'll see many cases of Freddie and Fannie buying or guaranteeing subprime activity.

\- In 2000 Fannie buys $600 million, and Freddie buys $18.6 billion, and guarantees 7.7 billion more. \- 2002-2006 the GSE's buy 38-90 billion a year in subprime mortagages

As far back as 1999 you can find stories stating that Fannie was being pressured into subprime:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae- eases-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit- to-aid-mortgage-lending.html)

Their activity appears smaller than the market at large, but it's not non- existant. It doesn't seem on face value that they were not allowed to invest. Is there some rule I am missing?

<comment><USER4> It seems I was wrong about that. But still their activity was just a small part of the market at large and they only bought the safest tranches. Saying they were responsible for the mess is just wrong, imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <rant>I am amazed at the things people find important enough to take action on -- or not.

Seems to me, just guessing, can't be sure, but a bill that has these things in it should be the #1 item on HN, and we should be organizing as a community to stop it. I don't care what your politics are, this is a political thing that needs to be stopped.

Parallel Haskell is awesome and all, and goodness knows I want to hear more about Apple and Flash, or linux, or iPads, or Adobe, or browsers, or Jon Stewart's jokes last night, but this is real, live stuff that could impact anybody with a startup.

If the Philadelphia news ran a story "Philly on fire!" people would come out to try to put the fire out. HN runs a story "VC investing seriously challenged!" and you can hear the crickets chirp.</rant>

<comment><USER4> The bill does not have these things in it. It is merely a huge overreaction. Most people that complain about this section, are really worried about other parts of the bill but do not want to admit that they are worried about those other parts of the Dodd bill. So this is merely a red herring and people that know what they are doing recognise it as such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the full text see [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22minimum+interference+from+...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22minimum+interference+from+regulators.+The+law+requires+only+that%22+site%3Awsj.com)

A good official house editorial, it discusses the more likely worse regulatory aspects before getting into the mandated new worth threshold increase.

<comment><USER8> _sob_

'Mandated net worth transaction increase'

Please, let's talk about the actual bill. It's at <http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files/AYO09D44_xml.pdf> and the relevant regulation is in Sec. 412.

It says that the Securities & exchance commission should raise the threshold, using its existing authority, _as the Commission determines is appropriate and in the public interest, in light of price inflation since those figures were determined;_

..and in the next section, directs the Comptroller of the Currency (the banking-specific regulator) to examine those investment thresholds and evaluate the feasibility of forming a _self_ regulatory organization for hedge, private equity, and VC funds.

Now, I recognize there's a wide spectrum of opinions on the degree to which government should regulate the financial industry. And I totally agree that angel investment is critical to small businesses like tech startups. And I agree that a million $ in assets or an annual income of $200k is already a fairly high barrier to entry, while technological change since 1982 has significantly lowered startup costs. And so, I agree that just mindlessly jacking up these thresholds would likely be a Bad Thing - for startups, angels, and the economy.

What I'm grumpy about is the meme that the bill does mindlessly jack up the rates. The SEC's existing rules require public consultation on such changes - so if the bill passes, the thresholds will not suddenly shoot up. Rather, the SEC will announce they're considering it and invite input from the public - including people like us - for 3 months. And the SEC has been responsive to that input in the past. Mainly they're worried about not allowing another Bernie Madoff episode; it's entirely possible that they might employ their rulemaking power to carve out an exception for Angels and VCs.

And in the next section, where venture capital is explicitly mentioned, the bill directs the other regulator to study whether and how such funds - <USER2> are, obviously, quite different from banks - could be allowed to regulate themselves. the main purpose of this bill is to regulate big wall Street banks. There's a clear understanding here that small funds are _not_ banks; they operate differently, are much more competitive, and probably shouldn't be regulated like banks. The bill _supports_ the idea that such firms will do a better job of keeping each other honest than direct regulation by government!

Participants in a diverse a competitive market (for fund management) are best placed to decide what constitutes 'fair play'. Where self regulation fails is the situation where a few players utterly dominate the market - for example, the fact that 6 large banking firms currently manage about 60% of all capital on Wall Street - and tailor the rules to suit themselves, to the detriment of the smaller players, and of the customers. For that reason, the bill also seeks to put an end to the practice of large banks creating and capitalizing hedge funds that are nominally independent, but in reality are just legal vehicles for large institutions to take advantage of the lighter regulatory and disclosure requirements for hedge funds, while leveraging the reputation and deep pockets of the creating bank to attract customers away from smaller funds.

Why is this important? Because the SEC failed to heed warnings about fund managers like Bernie Madoff and Alan Stafford. Their competitors knew the performance of those funds was 'too good to be true' and repeatedly asked regulatory agencies to step in, but were mostly ignored. The bureaucrats' reporting requirements were being met, and they did not understand the sheer improbability of such consistent profitability in a volatile market. Competitors did: customers preferred fairy tales to honest reporting of market behavior. Hierarchical regulation failed dismally where peer review would have put a quick stop to the abuse.

Result? Jittery investors lost faith in _all_ private capital management and VC funding fell by almost 50% in sectors like biotech and internet from 2008-2009. Some $5 billion was taken off the table - perhaps more. Less VC funding means less angel funding: no mezzanine capital means no exit or equity partnership. You can't grow an oak tree in a one gallon pot.

Self-regulation of the private capital market could reinvigorate capital formation significantly. Reduced red tape and peer review are strong economic incentives for honest and transparent risk management. Investors want transparency, and they want innovation rather than speculation, in which it is all too easy to end up on the wrong side of a zero-sum trade. There is enormous potential here to deepen and diversify the investment pool, and that would be very good news for startups.

So as it affects Angel and VC funds, the bill does two things: directs the SEC to re-examine investment thresholds in the wake of a real financial meltdown; and directs the CotC to consider reducing government regulation of private capital management, rewarding true competition with greater trust.

Instead of seeing this bill as a giant monolithic gravestone for capital formation, entrepreneurs, angels and VCs should look at the potential long- term benefits and use the public consultation process to tell regulators what kind of market they need, and how an open self-policed market could unleash a wave of innovation in the real economy. The giant Wall Street banks do not like this bill, but you can worry about them when you're ready for your IPO. Until then, they won't take your calls anyway. Consider your own interests rather than theirs.

<comment><USER9> > Please, let's talk about the actual bill. It's at > <http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files/AYO09D44_xml.pdf> and the relevant > regulation is in Sec. 412.

Yes, let's do that.

> It says that the Securities & exchance commission should raise the > threshold, using its existing authority, as the Commission determines is > appropriate and in the public interest, in light of price inflation since > those figures were determined;

Actually, it says "shall". Should is a request. Shall is a mandate.

There's some wiggle room in "determines is appropriate and in the public interest" but the marching orders are pretty clear. Do you really think that they're going to come in significantly lower than where the inflation numbers come out?

I'm serious - the inflation numbers give us $2.3M. What's your "I was wrong" number? Is it anything over $2M? How about $1.5M?

Note that Section 412 has two parts. The second "(2) adjust that threshold not less frequently than once every 5 years, to reflect the percentage in crease in the cost of living." doesn't have any discretion.

<comment><USER4> There are no requirements that the increase follow inflation numbers. It only says that the SEC should increase the rates as "the Commission determines is appropriate and in the public interest, in light of price inflation." I guarantee you the SEC will not double the standards over night. They will have a long rule making session will ask for comments from the public as they are required, and will slowly increase the standards while studying the effects.

So yes every article that says "The Dodd bill also raises the net worth and income thresholds to $2.3 million and $450,000, respectively" like this WSJ article is dead wrong. The Dodd bill does no such thing.

<comment><USER9> > There are no requirements that the increase follow inflation numbers.

There's some discretion in the intial bump but, as I quoted, there's no discretion for subsequent and regular increases.

> It only says that the SEC should increase the rates as "the Commission > determines is appropriate and in the public interest, in light of price > inflation."

That's only for the initial bump.

> I guarantee you the SEC will not double the standards over night.

"Guarantee" implies that money will be changing hands if you're wrong....

Yes, they'll probably have hearings, but they've been told how they "shall" compute the new number. That's why I asked what you're "I was wrong" number is. I'm asking again.

<comment><USER8> _I'm asking again._

I apologize, I thought that was a rhetorical question. I'll be surprised if it goes over $1.25m.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have I missed a runaway profusion of investment scams targeting people with net worths between 1 million and 2.3 million? The perceived need for this just perplexes me.

<comment><USER11> Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.

<comment><USER6> Look! I did something! It looks good on TV and 98% of the voters are not directly hurt by it.

Looks good, gets votes, it is good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article leaves out that along with moving the net worth from 1 to 2.3 million for accredited investors, they are also not allowing primary residence to be counted anymore, which for many people is a large part of net worth.

The SEC filing for startups is insane. The last thing we need is further roadblocks and delays for early stage startups.

PG, would this affect y-combinator? YC is the first investment for companies in your portfolio. Would they have a 120 day delay? Four months is a long time in startup land. This would certainly give a head start to bootstrapped companies.

<comment><USER7> As indicated in my first comment, the article is focusing on the regulatory problems first; as you note, filing with the SEC with a 120 day delay is awful. Letting the regulators of all the states into the game might be worse, in that I'm sure angel investments would be de facto or de jure outlawed in many states (the state residence of the firm and/or of the angel).

Massachusetts didn't let its residents invest in the Apple IPO: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1303133>

But thanks for pointing out that often overlooked detail WRT to primary residence, as that will knock a whole lot more angels out of the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, the economy is stumbling and the only way out is innovation and now they are trying to make it harder to start a company. Just how do they propose we get the economy back on track? Sorry printing more money is not a long term solution to economic recovery. It amazes me that our elected officials have zero grasp of how the economy works. These are supposedly educated people and yet they consistently treat the economy like some grade school battle for teacher's pet honors. Sorry for the rant but crap like this makes me question the viability of our current governing system.

As @rmaccloy I'm not against the idea of bank reform but these types of provisions and attachments to bills are causing so much waste and then we wonder why we have such a huge deficit.

<comment><USER7> I think it's more our current ruling class than the system per se, although that depends on how you define "system".

No system can work if you have fools running it. Our big C Constitutional system has worked better in times past when better people were in office ... and worked worse when worse people were in, e.g. Hoover and FDR making their economic mess worse and prolonging and worsening the agony.

It's just not that bad yet. While e.g. Cash for Clunkers was pure "broken window" bogus economics, do we have anything quite as vile as the Agricultural Department destroying food and preventing its production while at the same time they calculate 1/4 of the nation is malnourished (which the DoD confirmed in the WWII draft)?

Well, maybe this is as perverse, although not hardly as vile. As grellas details in some length, in a period of bad economic times (starting with the dot.com crash) our ruling class as seen fit to steadily destroy the foundations for startups. And it's a general bipartisan thing, e.g. a ruling class problem.

There are, realistically (ignoring the rosy projections of going below a trillion in FY 12, a Presidential election year), trillion dollar annual Federal deficits stretching out as far as the eye can see. Where is this money going to come from? Not from new enterprises and new industries, there will be few if any new Apples, Suns or Googles ... hmmm, Microsoft managed to bootstrap itself, but such opportunities don't come along often and the computers and their components that ran Microsoft Basic and so on were largely/almost entirely not self-funded.

Bleah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some past posts on this issue:

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/03/startups-get-hit-by- shrapnel...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/03/startups-get-hit-by-shrapnel-in- the-banking-bill.html)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-e-litan/proposed- protec...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-e-litan/proposed-protections- for_b_511284.html)

I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up more on HN. I'm not against bank reform, but these provisions seem clearly detrimental to prospective founders without providing any actual protections to people who need them. Correct me if I'm wrong...

</comment><comment><USER15> If someone's going to make this case, could they please do so from somewhere without a paywall and if at all possible, from a source who's logic is more honest than "are republicans or democrats in office right now"?

IF the claims are correct though, then that needs to be fixed in the bill, particularly the part about filing with the SEC.

<comment><USER7> Second source???

These provisions of Dodd's bill have been discussed extensively on Hacker News: [http://www.google.com/search?q=dodd+site%3Anews.ycombinator....](http://www.google.com/search?q=dodd+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

And I think you underestimate the significance of the editorial board of _The Wall Street Journal_ taking a strong position on this issue in a house editorial.

<comment><USER15> The Wall Street Journal's opinions are driven entirely by which political party controls Congress.

After 8 years of the "deficits don't matter" administration, all of a sudden these guys turn into budget hawks 1 month after Obama inherits their fiscal situation. They're against quote "socialized" healthcare even though the bill didn't socialize anything that wasn't already a government program.. but the more expensive Medicare Part D program was just ducky with them. Etc, etc etc.

I have no problem believing there are problems with the bill that would accidentally affect startups. But if we're talking pithy 2-sentence characterizations from a source with a history of partisanship? Citation needed.

<comment><USER7> [http://blog.heritage.org/wp- content/uploads/obama_budget_def...](http://blog.heritage.org/wp- content/uploads/obama_budget_deficit_2010.jpg)

<comment><USER15> Hang on, I mention the fact that WSJ is hopelessly biased, and you respond with a link to an _even more biased_ source?

Ok, let's back up and try to engage your brain for a second. So you have a set of 10 year projections there. Those are predictions about the future. With me so far?

Now think about what they were on January 15, 2009 as opposed to January 25, 2009.

Do you think that the act of Obama taking office changed the future and mandated a ton of future government spending? Or do you think these might be fundamentals that we were going to have to deal with regardless?

For bonus points: How much of those future deficits would you guess have to do with the increasing cost of healthcare?

And I'll leave out entirely what they might look like if we hadn't just endured 8 years of studied fingers-in-the-ears idiocy from the Bush administration. Remember that surplus in 2000?

Heritage and WSJ are concerned about deficits. Who did they support in 2000 again?

<comment><USER11> You asked for a second source, you have it: the CBO and the White House. The fact that heritage put CBO numbers onto a graph does not make them invalid.

<comment><USER15> I asked for a second source regarding _the financial reform bill_. I'm well aware of the approximate projected size of our federal deficit, thanks.

The fact that Heritage supported Reagan, opposed Clinton, supported Bush and now claim to be concerned about deficits says a lot about the Heritage Foundation.

EDIT: Awesome, downvoted for clarifying a willful misinterpretation of my original comment. Ladies and gentlemen, your conservative movement -- it's not about facts, it's about which side you're on.

<comment><USER11> You were given several other sources for that as well, all of which were posted here. You also criticized another source simply for being conservative, which is what I was responding to.

Regardless, please clarify your point. Do you believe the WSJ is lying about the contents of the bill? If not, then what is the relevance of pointing out their opinion on other political matters?

<comment><USER15> I believe they're extremely prone to exaggerate any bad parts, and there was room for a lot of weaseling in their descriptions. Especially considering that the bill isn't finished yet.

I'm still waiting to see the death panels. Since they'd never lie, of course.

I didn't criticize Heritage for being conservative. I criticized Heritage for being Republican, regardless of principle or policy.

EDIT: To clarify, it's entirely possible that the provisions in the bill still being written are just as bad as the WSJ says. It's also possible that they're significantly less bad. Regardless of which they are, the WSJ would have written this exact article. Does that make my complaint regarding their worth more clear?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If Congress wants to help the economy they should go in the opposite direction: don't increase the accredited investor threshold, remove it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh, for fuck's sake. We're not hurting for a lack of angels because of the accredited investor rules. We're hurting for a lack of angels because there aren't a lot of people who are willing to cut checks to young companies without revenue after other people they know said no. Jacking up the minimum threshold to $2.3 million from $1 million (assuming this passes in current form, _which it won't_ ) is a complete non-event for almost every founder.

<comment><USER14> I think the minimum NW change is the most minor of the issues here (especially in SV). Imposing more of a regulatory burden isn't going to make anyone more likely to cut checks, and increasing the barrier and latency to initial funding is going to make plenty of potential entrepreneurs decline to make the leap.

I think it's quite dangerous to assume such provisions aren't going to make it past whatever partisan wrangling goes on; I doubt either the dems or the GOP are going to give much of a damn about the startup ecosystem unless a lot of noise gets made about it.

<comment><USER7> " _[...] increasing the ... latency to initial funding is going to make plenty of potential entrepreneurs decline to make the leap._ "

That's a very good insight. Up to 120 days is a long time to develop second thoughts, have something else come up that changes things for the investor, etc.

I suppose you could include a CD or DVD of porn as a bribe to overall speed up the SEC's processing of your request ^_^.</comment></comment></comment>


RFID NFC Tap and Go Ring for Credit Card Payment - <AUTHOR> https://www.instructables.com/id/RFID-NFC-Tap-and-Go-Ring-for-Credit-Card-Payment <comment><USER2> I want this for my transit card</comment>


Linux Versus E. coli - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/05/03/linux-versus-e-coli/ <comment><USER3> This is certainly interesting; lately I've been wondering something similar: what software engineering techniques might also be found in genes or brains in nature. This could be summed up as "Does the brain have subroutines?"

I'm not sure you can take the conclusions in the article at face value, though: they seem to be hinting that Linux (or software in general) would be "more robust" if it were organized more like the control structure in the E. Coli genes, where there were many more "low-level" instructions with less "code reuse". But this is just a trade-off that is well known to any programmer: when you have a new situation, do you try to make existing subroutines handle the extra case, or do you cut/paste code into a new subroutine so that changes to it don't break existing things? One has to wonder how much of the difference here is due to different ways changes must be made: in the genes, random changes good and bad are sorted out by natural selection - there is extra pressure to keep things from affecting each other needlessly. (To be fair they do touch on this in the article.) In a program, a human has to go make changes manually, so there is a reason to not spread things out needlessly. What I'm getting at is this may not reflect whether one is "better design" than the other, but simply that they are the product of different circumstances.

But another concern I have is how do we know the design of the E. Coli control structure only reflects what is physically practical rather than what the genome would logically prefer to have: maybe it duplicates the lowest level worker subroutines not because that is a better design for it, but simply because further reuse is _not possible_ in this setting, lacking the range of abstractions available to a programmer. (For instance, imagine if the genes represent a language that has only goto for control and no stack (therefore no recursion): this may be the best that can be done under limited circumstances; limits we don't have in high level languages.)

On the Linux kernel side, I think the level of abstraction at which the code is viewed has a big affect. I think we are viewing the "machine code" when we view DNA, but the Linux code was analyzed at a higher level. Particularly, wherever there is an inline function or macro used, it will look like one low- level routine reused many times from a high level view, but if you looked at the machine code it would not be reuse of a low level routine - <USER2> instructions would be duplicated instead. Perhaps if the compiled binary machine code of Linux kernel were analyzed instead, it would show almost an identical structure to the E. Coli gene with far more bottom level "worker subroutines"!</comment>


Show HN: Hacker Feed – An iOS app for reading Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-feed/id1451386900 <comment><USER2> Looks really nice. I leave it installed but won't be my daily driver until it gets darkmode and ability to post replies.

<comment><USER3> What do you use instead?

<comment><USER4> Boreal is pretty good. Has dark mode and light mode. Allows to fold comments and reply. Nice and clean UI.([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boreal-a- hacker-news-client/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boreal-a-hacker-news- client/id925851179?ls=1&mt=8)).

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I downloaded Boreal on this recommendation and have paid the 99p premium upgrade because after trying a few clients it is far superior. Also after lurking for years long this is the first comment I've ever made!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice work! Please consider adding a dark mode.

<comment><USER7> I hope they hang on, actually. iOS 13 is rumoured to have a dark mode API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like it! I wish I could comment from with int app, it's basically everything I'd like out of an HN app

<comment><USER9> Have you tried Octal?

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/octal/id1308885491?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/octal/id1308885491?mt=8)

<comment><USER10> I just tried it, although it asks to upgrade to a premium version to post comments. I think I'll just keep the authenticated browser tab open to post comments for now. :)

<comment><USER11> Odd - I'm using Octal now, and it hasn't required an upgrade for comment posting.

In fact, I didn't even know there was a premium version.

<comment><USER12> Can confirm - using the base version to post this comment.

Now _posts_ are a different story - you can't publish a post from Octal.

<comment><USER13> Huh, didn't notice you can't post till now. Maybe it's in the works?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is awesome! I'll be trying it out for the next few days/potentially weeks.

Looks great, runs great. Fantastic job, OP! :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have just tried it. The idea is nice, but browser needs some fixes. I could not close cookie warning [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19813921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19813921)

</comment><comment><USER10> Well executed! There's already a comment requesting this, I'll just add to it. Ability to login and take CUD (I mean, we already checked off R from CRUD) actions would complete the circle.

</comment><comment><USER16> How does the App go past pay walls like the New York Times?

<comment><USER17> Separate Webview from Safari: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19824216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19824216)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Actually there are quite some app on hacker news now I aware of this. Just use safari and safe host page. Can export to pdf easier on top of login etc.

<comment><USER19> At some point, I built [https://tefter.io/~hackernews](https://tefter.io/~hackernews) so that I could read HN but also other feeds and keep them easily categorised and searchable. It's a progressive web app, so it's easy to install on most devices. Give it a try!

<comment><USER4> Personally I do not like feeds that take 1/2 page or more on my mobile to cover one item. Drawback of showing pictures for feed items.

HN is super nice because it is so condensed (for me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm fan. You have inspired me. Gonna write one myself to refresh my front end skills. What tools did you use to build this?

<comment><USER20> Any plans to open source the code? I bet you could get a PR that enabled native comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hey I just tried this out. I dont see any difference with and without compact story mode. Is it working properly?

<comment><USER22> The compact mode uses small thumbnails on right side instead of huge ones above the title. Doesn't look different if the article linked does not have hero image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Beautiful. Really impressed. I think a search function would be nice to have...

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks nice. Would you consider adding an option to clear cookies when opening a webview? That way paywalls cannot count my views.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hey this is pretty cool. Thanks for releasing this!

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice :) Found a bug for the text linkification (the first s3 link) here [https://imgur.com/a/hXHBTW0](https://imgur.com/a/hXHBTW0)

Also noticed the API ;)

<comment><USER27> Not sure that's a bug - there's a space in the actual post.

> give a direct s3 link to [https://](https://) s3 > .amazonaws.com/mywebsite/index.html.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great!</comment>


I think the equity a startup is offering me is very low. Am I crazy? - <AUTHOR>

Here's the story. Company A is a new startup with one person. This guy has already invested a considerable amount of his personal money (more than a million) to purchase the domain name and a few other assets from an old business.
He has great business/sales/management knowledge and is someone I've known for years, but has no technical background. I'm a developer, and he wants me join as a technical co-founder. There's a business plan, but no prototype yet.
I was offered 2% equity (vesting over four years) and a fair salary (less than I made at my last job) plus benefits to join this company.
I thought the equity seemed quite low for being a technical co-founder, even though the sole founder has already invested quite a bit. There's also less risk in the sense that he has the money to pay me a salary.
What do you all think about the equity being offered, given this situation? <comment><USER2> I think it means he is not looking at you as a technical co-founder. He's looking at you as an early hire. From his point of view, he has the expertise, the money, the assets, etc... you are just a resource.

<comment><USER3> I think that this is correct. Looking beyond money, this also means that he won't view you as an equal partner when it comes to strategic decisions either. He is the boss, and you are the employee with some stock.

I would only take the job if that is what you're looking for, and if you don't mind leaving with the title 'Lead Developer' rather than 'Co-Founder'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 2% equity in a $1,000,000 company is $20,000. Over four years of vesting at a 7% interest rate that's about $4,250 a year. It probably doesn't offset the pay cut you're taking...particularly if you consider the risk premium 7% return is nothing. It isn't a cofounder offer, don't kid yourself.

[edit]The domain name may not even be a company asset, and with the kind of control the founder has, even if it is, he is free to sell it to himself for a nominal price making your stock worth less.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would be dubious about joining a company that spent its first million of investment on a domain name.

<comment><USER6> Some domains are truly worth $1 million. If the guy has plenty of additional money to invest, why would it matter? A really great domain can increase your chances of success.

<comment><USER5> It's not necessarily a mistake to spend a million on a domain. What's alarming is when it's the first thing you do.

<comment><USER7> PG: What do you think of the equity offered?

<comment><USER5> I agree with the other commenters that it's an employee amount of equity rather than a cofounder amount. I don't know enough to say whether it's a good deal or not; that depends on the company. But what little we're told doesn't sound encouraging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This just came up in a thread. Jim Clark (who was hugely successful prior) invested $4M in Netscape to get it going. Andreessen got 10%. Now maybe this guy could argue you're no Andreessen, but you can point out that he's no Clark either, and hasn't put in $4M.

</comment><comment><USER8> You have an opportunity here if you think the business plan has legs. 10% is an upper bound for what you should expect, considering he's paying you a salary and benefits. 2% seems too low, IMHO, so I'd certainly push back on that amount. However, if you are in a position to forgo the salary and benefits between when you join and when the company raises capital (assuming that is in the cards), you should consider that in exchange for a larger equity stake. Depending on the amount of time between when you join and when you plan to raise, I'd say that number is somewhere in the 15-30% range. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're in it for the big exit: run away and don't look back. If you think the work is interesting, consider if working on the problem is worth the pay cut. Treat the offer as a job offer & nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you get a fair salary and you're given a piece of the company that's a pretty good deal when he's already invested that much, but that does not make you a co-founder, even though that might sound nice as a title.

A co-founder is someone that is carrying a good sized chunk of the risk and that is likely not going to be receiving a market rate salary for a long time. A co-founder would see the stock as their compensation and since it's risky stock there would be more of it.

I can't say much about the risk here, there is not enough info in your post to take a stab at that but unless the guy is very wealthy he must have thought through the risks himself and your risk is limited to a small fraction of what you'll make over those four years in salary.

If it's less than what you made at your last job then maybe you should shop around a bit and see what your real market value is, that will give you an idea of the 'hidden cost' here, which in turn will give you an idea how much that 2% should be worth to make this worth your while.

2% is not much at face value, but if this is the next Oracle or google it might still be worth your time. More info->better advice.

<comment><USER11> "if this is the next Oracle or google it might still be worth your time".... i think 2% of the next google or oracle is worth anyone's time unless you're on the fortune 500 list...

I think a somewhat plausible best case would be a $50 million exit and 2% would be a million dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 2% and a salary is fair in my limited experience... one of my friends had .5%, the company sold after 3 years for 60 million, he got 300k. He didn't get rich but the last company I was with I had options and they got bought out and my options were worthless.

Here is a decent article... seems consistent with what people tell me... [http://www.tonywright.com/2008/a-newbies-guide-to-startup- co...](http://www.tonywright.com/2008/a-newbies-guide-to-startup-compensation- or-stock-options-will-make-me-rich/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Think of it this way:

You start a company with him, and have an outside investor give you $1 million. That's a large angel/small VC round. Say it's worth 30% of the company. Would you split that remaining 70% at 68/2 with the guy if he _hadn't_ put any money in?

More importantly, it sounds as if he already considers you an employee (as opposed to a founder). If you want to be a co-founder, this wont end well.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't do it.

If you're being offered 2% on those terms then I'd rather do my own thing, but thats just me.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am in a similar situation, where I am 'founding' a company where my cofounder is fronting the money and has the sales contacts to make our venture happen. I am doing all the design, planning and development (hiring a dev team).

I require 10% preferred with up-to an additional 10% common in addition to a monthly salary (we are still negotiating the salary)

If I were you, I wouldnt take anything less than 10%

Here is what you should think about:

Assuming that you will need to go get a series A from VC if your venture gets momentum; you're really talking about splitting up 40% of the company. So at max - your share would be ~20%

As he is fronting the money - and may not need VC, therefore keeping the 60-80% yet your founding and BUILDING the thing, upto 20% is perfectly reasonable and fair.

I would ask for a mix of common and preferred - with a set min of preferred that you want.</comment>


'Silicon cowboys': The underdog story of personal computing (2016) [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-10-01/silicon-cowboys-underdog-story-personal-computing <comment><USER2> This misses the main point for me. The 'openness' is what allowed the pc to succeed. If it had stayed IBMs platform it may well have dominated business for sometime, but something would have popped up to take its place. The 80s and 90s are littered with superior platforms that never got enough traction because the pc was everywhere.

I wonder when the same thing will happen to social networks.

<comment><USER3> Your comment resonates with me - it wasn't IBM that made the PC special, it was the lower cost alternative clones that made it accessible. Something that Apple shunned at the time and nearly became their death nail had it not been the investment by MS in the mid-90s.

<comment><USER4> > their death nail

Just FYI, the phrase is "death knell": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_knell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_knell)

This is a common 'eggcorn' ([https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/1130/nail/](https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/1130/nail/)) because 'knell' is an old-fashioned word virtually unused outside of this one idiomatic phrase.

<comment><USER3> Knew I was getting it wrong...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unconscious bias in Australian Public Services shortlisting processes - <AUTHOR> https://pmc.gov.au/resource-centre/domestic-policy/going-blind-see-more-clearly-unconscious-bias-australian-public-services-shortlisting-processes <comment><AUTHOR> Key points of the paper:

> _Overall, the results indicate the need for caution when moving towards > 'blind' recruitment processes in the APS, as de-identification may frustrate > efforts aimed at promoting diversity._

> _What we found is that de-identifying applications at the shortlisting stage > of recruitment does not appear to assist in promoting diversity in hiring. > In fact, in the trial we found that overall, APS officers generally > discriminated in favour of female and minority candidates._

> _It... means that introducing de-identification of applications in such a > context may have the unintended consequence of decreasing the number of > female and minority candidates shortlisted for senior APS positions, setting > back efforts to promote more diversity at the senior management levels in > the public service._

– Layman's article: [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment- tria...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to- improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888)</comment>


Why Open Offices? - <AUTHOR> http://acesounderglass.com/2015/07/27/why-open-offices-synchronicity/ <comment><USER3> IBM did a fair amount of research on this in the 1970s and 80s. They talk about some of it in their Santa Teresa design paper I think: [http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/9fe6a8...](http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/9fe6a820aae67ad785256547004d8af0/fb3c49ab2d463e1c85256bfa00685aec!OpenDocument)

The major takeaways I have from reading about this when I started in tech entrepreneurship are:

1) Knowledge workers need 30 square feet of desk to get optimal efficiency

2) They need 100 square feet of space

3) cubicles are as good as an office if the walls are over 8 feet high (!)

4) small teams tend to want to talk at the same time, and be quiet at the same time.

These together round up into recommended 400 or so square foot offices with doors that close and house teams of four people, all working on the same thing at the same time.

If teams are 2 or 3, they should have a smaller space. That's enough space for desks, a couch, a whiteboard area, etc.

I have found over the years that this tracks fairly closely with my own preferences. I really want to be able to talk and interrupt a team-mate when we're working if we're working on the same thing. We also often are hacking away and need silence, but instant access to whoever is in the know about a certain bit of code is undeniably great, and provided we aren't breaking each- other out of flow, is fine.

This system works really well when it's a small team and the team is working on the same stuff. It breaks down when there are multiple things happening or more than four or so people: interruptions abound, killing productivity.

I think you'll often see workers getting this situation when they really need to be productive by commandeering a conference room and shutting the door. But, it makes sense to provide it for teams in general, in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> _1) Knowledge workers need 30 square feet of desk to get optimal efficiency_

I expect this to be different now, and possibly more dependent on _screen_ space than on physical _desk_ space.

 _I think you 'll often see workers getting this situation when they really need to be productive by commandeering a conference room and shutting the door. But, it makes sense to provide it for teams in general, in my opinion._

There have been a couple big projects where we flew in the remote people just to get the whole team in a room together. So it's not only the workers that know this; management does as well or they wouldn't approve the travel budget.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a little different, but having a lot of physical desk space is still very important IMO. It feels great to have lots of desk space, it helps carve out more privacy since there are less possible closer places other people's desks can occupy. I dislike when people peek around my screen just because it is convenient to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the real reason is 'cost', and the loss of productivity isn't quantifiable anyway; so whomever makes the decision can put an exact number on how much he 'saved' while being able to ignore the side effects.

It's like people who buy solar panels in north england; they think it gives them 'free' energy and they are being 'green', while ignoring completely the carbon footprint of making that panel in the first place; while that panel will /never/ repay itself with the energy it harvests.

Going back to open offices (and I'm typing this from one!) I think it's a disaster. There are days when all I can really do is read HN, as there's about 3 loud conversations within 5 meters of me, including one Italian guy who's yelling into his skype microphone.

<comment><USER7> But couldn't that be solved through office culture? Simply telling people "skype calls happen somewhere else"? Though obviously it would take a lot of work to get everyone to agree that that is the "best" culture. Especially for people who talk for a living (customer service, sales)

Surely you have an empty conference room somewhere

<comment><USER8> Isn't that ironic? Advocating going to a _conference_ room so you can be alone and concentrate?

<comment><USER9> I read that as advocating going to a conference room to yell into your skype microphone.

<comment><USER10> Article describes author going into a conference room for quiet & isolation (also notes people coming in to ask if that's why he's in there).

<comment><USER9> Yes, but this comment subthread is about rtpg's "Surely there's a conference room" reply to buserror, not about that part of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't buy the opening argument; essentially "rich people are smart". We've endlessly witnessed stupid corporate acts. To name a few that have nothing to do with open offices: Conglomerate building (if your name ain't Warren Buffett you almost certainly destroyed value), corporate raiders (destruction of value to line the raider's pockets), the 1999 bubble (let's throw billions of dollars for 'eyeballs'), off-shoring, American automakers (do I have to get into the details here), stack ranking, faulty risk assessment (nearly every NYC banking/investment firm). Waterfall (the stupid kind, not the way it was meant to be done, which is quite good for projects involving airplanes and such). Agile (as it is practiced, the manifesto is nice for _certain kinds_ of projects). Windows 8, or MS' ignoring the internet for a long time. I could type all day.

Companies do stupid things all. the. time. They fly in the face of all available evidence. People are put in charge that shouldn't be in charge. They are driven by ego, or other measures that lead to sub-optimal decisions. Sometimes they are really good, but just make mistakes. I'm a programmer, and my compiler tells me I make 100 mistakes a day; I don't fault upper management for the same. They just don't have that immediate feedback loop that we do. Of course they will make expensive mistakes.

Heck we see it in this thread. Evidence shows that productivity is _lowered_ in open office environment, yet we read claims that it is improved.

<comment><USER12> I kinda do. If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?

<comment><USER13> /off

Because one have a soul and may not want to rip off others?

<comment><USER14> Do you mean rich people don't have a soul and became rich because they rip off others?

I would think most rich people got there because they created something valuable enough for people to pay money for it.

<comment><USER15> Most rich people are rich because their parents gave them money.

<comment><USER16> That's so oversimplified that it's not true. mklim's comment is more accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am an old curmudgeon who hated working in an open office (at Google in Mountain View) for a few years.

My personal theory is that the open office trend at Google (and probably Facebook, and others) was initially driven by the fact that the founders jumped directly from school, and never had a "real job" with a normal, old- school office when they were first starting.

Thus they have never personally seen the immense value of a real office, but they HAVE seen the value to the "computer lab" sort of bullpen environment that was common in the 90s (when almost everybody had to show up to the lab to get their work done, as very few people had *nix machines elsewhere where they could do their assignments).

<comment><USER16> Yes, that's my theory as well. As noted in other comments, some studies have shown that an office of 4 people all working on the same project is the most efficient, and other studies have shown that a single office is best for companies with < 10 people.

And Zuckerberg and Brin and Page probably switched from mostly programming to mostly management by the time their companies reached substantially more than 10 people. They probably have really fond memories from their time when their companies were <10 people.

<comment><USER18> They also are probably smart enough to just seek the most efficient way? I don't think hypothetical founder nostalgia is a strong enough explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When a company hires you they are getting: your availability to work, and your capacity to work.

When problems are well defined (you have workable requirements) then you availability becomes less important, so your capacity to work becomes relatively more important.

When problems are not well defined or written down, then availability becomes more important, and capacity for work less important.

Given that most startups are working on simple CRUD apps, where their most difficult problems usually stem from their own poor organizational skills (poor build procedures, badly configured servers, technical debt in the code) rather than a difficult problem domain it seems clear to me that availability would become more important to employers than capacity for work.

Also managers prefer to be able to _see_ people working. (Never mind that the work being done in a bullpen is not productive.)

Open offices are like hives: filled with busy looking, low cost replaceable drones.

tl;dr: Maybe open offices are popular because most startups aren't working on hard problems.

<comment><USER20> > Given that most startups are working on simple CRUD apps, where their most > difficult problems usually stem from their own poor organizational skills > (poor build procedures, badly configured servers, technical debt in the > code) rather than a difficult problem domain it seems clear to me that > availability would become more important to employers than capacity for > work.

Yet these startups hire people as if they had very difficult problem domains to tackle, thus filtering for people who work better in the other environment you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sick of the circle jerk hatred about open offices. Yes, let's discuss the pros and cons and acknowledge that they don't work for everyone.

But no setup works for everyone. And we need to stop pretending that open office plans are some poorly thought out pranks invented by clueless managers that offer nothing to developers.

I am a developer. I am not an extrovert. I love working in an open office, and the one job I had almost 10 years ago that was rows and rows of offices made me MISERABLE. I almost quit but luckily was able to move to a team that had a team area with an open plan.

Fact: In today's age of agility, rapid development, minimum viable products, continuous deployment, and short iterations it is much more important that you can discuss things with your coworkers and stakeholders quickly and figure out if you are working on the right thing, rather than going away for 6 months into some basement, close the door, and come back with a finished product.

Fact: Distractions are cultural not physical. Provide the team with good quality headphones, shame people who have non-silent notifications on their devices, create a policy where people can indicate when they're deep in thought on something complex and would prefer not to be distracted (eg. Do Not Disturb status on internal chat that you check before messaging someone or tapping them on the shoulder), and provide flex space people can go to on a case by case basis for privacy. Do this and all the problems with "focus" that open-office haters complain about GO AWAY.

<comment><USER22> >Fact: Distractions are cultural not physical. Provide the team with good quality headphones, shame people who have non-silent notifications on their devices, create a policy where people can indicate when they're deep in thought on something complex and would prefer not to be distracted

Managers who deliberately create environments where headphones are mandatory should be brought up on charges.

Basic rule of thumb: If your headphones are loud enough to block out ambient conversation, they're damaging your ears. In 20 years, deafness is going to be associated with programmers in the same way we associate black lung with coal miners.

Also, I'm happy for you that your brain is only derailed by particularly loud ringtones or people tapping you on the shoulder, you lucked out on that one! But my brain is different: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia)

<comment><USER21> Oh for fuck's sakes. I wear headphones 90% of my day WITH NOTHING PLAYING IN THEM.

We need to stop treating developers like precious children. You do not need ABSOLUTE SILENCE to be able to do your work. 99% of us are not writing the next PageRank or inventing the next Djkstra's Algorithm. And even when we are 99% of the time is spent on build environments and configuration and plumbing.

This does not require absolute uninterrupted focus surrounded by silence. Making a mistake does not cause a bomb to go off or a plane to fall out of the sky.

Put on a pair of comfortable headphones and do not plug them into anything and 75% of the noise around you is gone. Turn on some white noise or some gentle ambient music of dozens of lyrics-free genres and it goes up to 95%. If the only way you can work is if you can't hear any other noise outside of your own head, you have failed as a human being because no other profession requires that.

<comment><USER23> It would appear that empathy is not your strong point.

No, most people don't need to work in an anechoic chamber.

But any distracting noise adds to cognitive load, and since you're being paid to use your cognitive abilities, productivity suffers.

If you're paying people to do something and then making it harder for them to do it, the problem is not with the people.

<comment><USER21> Everything is a tradeoff. Cognitive load decreases productivity. Open communication and easy collaboration increases it. The argument is that it makes up for it. The current popular opinion on HN is it doesn't.

I'm sorry I don't have empathy for bullshit rare disorders like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia)

<comment><USER23> Rationally, it doesn't matter whether you have empathy or not. But you need to demonstrate rational understanding of the issues, and I don't think you've done that here.

There's a lot of evidence that open offices destroy productivity, and almost no evidence that they increase it.

So whatever your reasoning hiring people, paying them a lot of money, and then making it harder for them to do their jobs is an irrational position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24>
      One possibility is some people genuinely prefer them.  I
      keep talking myself up to that, only to read another
      article about how everyone is miserable and unproductive
      in them.

Given the choice between open plan and private office in San Francisco (where office space costs ~$36/square foot) people say they'd rather have a private office.

Given the choice between open plan in San Francisco and a private office in Chattanooga, Tennessee (where office space costs ~$11/square foot) my guess is you'd get more job applicants for the job in SF.

Perhaps this is a revealed preference for living in SF, and people are willing to trade off private offices to get it.

<comment><USER25> Or option three: Given the choice between open plan in San Francisco and open plan in Chattanooga, Tennessee, they choose the job in SF.

There's just as many open plan offices outside of SF. I'm in the Chicago area, and I've never worked at, with, or interviewed with any company around here that didn't have an open office plan (with one single exception, and it was a game company, and they were split up into rooms of 6-8 people, no private offices except for management).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Moreover, engineers are really, really expensive, and making us less > productive is costly. The extra space necessary for doors or cubicles could > easily pay for itself.

The problem is, there is no good way to measure engineer productivity, but it's extremely easy to figure out the cost of office furniture. Modern corporations believe in optimizing what they can measure and completely ignoring what they can't.

</comment><comment><USER27> The one thing that kept blaring out at me to be addressed was that _your daily productivity doesn 't matter_. The incentive here is to make the company as productive as possible over the long term (relative to costs).

This is touched upon only slightly here when she considers replaceability.

I'm not saying that I think open offices are or are not great. But the issue of personal productivity simply has to go away in the discussion for me to take it seriously. Otherwise, you just sound like most software engineers I've known who love to write gobs and gobs of code at the expense of everything else.

<comment><USER4> _But the issue of personal productivity simply has to go away in the discussion for me to take it seriously._

And yet, nothing can possibly get done without someone doing it.

I see lots of _insistence_ that without open offices people woild spemd so much more time on wrong things that the lost productivity is more than made up for by better focus. I also see no _evidence_ for these claims.

<comment><USER28> I see this as businesses pushing off even more of their part of the early employment process.

We've seen how requirements for entry level jobs have risen, colleges work with businesses to try and produce workforce ready graduates but are met with ever increasing minimums.

This is companies deciding that personal productivity isnt something they need to worry about. If someone is not personally productive, then they aren't a good fit.

Why should the business spend resources trying to facilitate a productive environment when they can just hire people who will work in a disruptive environment? Just as, why should a business spend resources training employees when they can demand only employees with very specific experience.

With outsourcing, visas, and remote working a company has very little restrictions on the level of employee they can seek and find with little difficulty - especially when you include a weak economy in this whole mix.

I dont know, not something i've thought a lot about i could be totally off base, but seems like it could be part of a wider trend to me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Personally I like open offices and working with people. I think the problem is not with the idea but with the implementation. Great open offices have some place where you can go and where nobody will bother you. So you can have the alone time you need!

Unfortunately most open office have no such space. Not even the toilets (multiple cramped stalls? hell no!).

 _Everywhere_ you go and _at all times_ there are going to be people. I think that is the problem.

<comment><USER30> Open offices are like paradise for extroverts, and hell for introverts.

I think office design should favor more of a compromise between the two groups.

<comment><USER31> I think that depends what kind of introvert you are. I like big open offices because I feel "anonymous" there and it's very easy for me to disconnect from what's going on around me and do my own thing for hours, and then speak with anybody from my team when I need to. If there's some person around with whom you don't connect very well no bad atmosphere is going to occur unless you force it. I don't need a big bubble for myself, I can create a small one easily.

For me a small office with 2 or 3 people is more stressful, it makes me more aware about what's going on around me because it's a more personal space. If you don't connect with somebody in there, the bad atmosphere is going to fill the small office very fast. My bubble is going to trip onto somebody else's bubble more often than in a big space full of people because there's less neutral space around.

Not sure if that makes sense at all... but it does to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It is a pity there is not easy experiment that people can do to prove to upper management that they are more productive in individual offices.

<comment><USER33> There's no shortage of studies that have been done on the issue. Here's a great New Yorker article[1] from last year that references a number of studies. This blog post[2] links to a couple others and addresses costs/alternatives. A "study of over 40,000 survey responses collected over a decade has found that the benefits for workers are quickly outweighed by the disadvantages"[3]. Here's a Washington Post article[4] discussing Facebook's huge open office layout, another Post piece[5] on office furniture designers realizing (citing multiple studies) "open-plan spaces are actually lousy for workers." A TIME article[6] highlighted decades of research that associated open layouts with "greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment."

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office- trap](http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-trap)

[2] [http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open- flo...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans- in-tech-companies.html)

[3] [http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract- highest...](http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest- levels-of-worker-dissatisfaction-study-18246)

[4] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/g...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google- got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace/)

[5] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on- leadership/wp/2015/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on- leadership/wp/2015/04/22/office-designers-find-open-plan-spaces-are-actually- lousy-for-workers/)

[6] [http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a- ho...](http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-hotbed-of- stress/)

<comment><USER32> Yes I know there is a massive amount of studies that have shown this, but management often believes that these don't apply to their company. What is needed is a simple experiment that can be performed at your company that show your management how much money they are losing by using an open office layout. Even the most obtuse pointy haired boss can understand that losing money is bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I find this argument slanted towards the introverted programmer. Fact is, the introverted programmer is not the standard anymore. Our open office is a mix of different types of people.

I chose an open office because I worked at a company for 9 years. In the first 5 it was an open office. I'm sure some work was suffered, but we had a _culture_ , which is one thing the author seemingly deliberately avoids talking about. The remaining 4 years were stuffed in a cubicle and the office culture died. It became much easier to blame other people for faults because you no longer had a relationship with your co-workers.

I wouldn't say the author is wrong, just that he presents a slanted viewpoint that caters to other programmer introvert types and what their preferences are - but definitely not a fair assessment of the open office.

<comment><USER35> Everything I've read says that, in order to be maximally productive, software developers needs to have long periods of quiet time where they can focus (I've never seen anything to say this is true only of programmers who are introverts). This, not supporting programmers' introversion, is the reason people criticize open-office plans for software development work.

<comment><USER34> See, for me that's the problem. This sense that productivity rules all. Why did you become a programmer, or a designer? Was it to be "maximumly productive"? I sure as heck didn't. Productivity is important, but I have to wonder where you decided it was the absolute most important thing. If you dig a bit, I bet that idea didn't come from you - I bet that idea comes from your industry and the social structure around it.

On paper, the development of Color was productive, but in actuality it was a poorly thought out blunder that costed millions of dollars.

Office culture is more important than the product or service you're developing. There, I said it. And I stand by it. The fact of the matter is, I got into this work so I had something to wake to everyday that isn't a complete anti-social "productivity" sinkhole. Every cubicle, or siloed worker represents attrition to company culture. When we were the happiest in our work, we had community tied to it. Think about the classic examples of first economies - what did they all have in common? It wasn't productivity. It was a desire to build, or bake, or design - and it is these markets where happiness was at its height. Don't fool yourselves. You're being productive towards someone else's idea of happiness - not your own.

<comment><USER35> Last weekend I was at the Amiga's 30th Anniversary event at the Computer History Museum here in Mountain View. A lot of the original Amiga engineers spoke. A couple of things stood out that are relevant here. First, the culture of the company was so positive, and what they built was so impactful, that even 30 years later, they considered it the highlight of their careers.

Second was that the engineers had offices with doors that closed.

As a programmer, I want to build solid, easy-to-use, impactful products that delight people. In order to do that I need to focus, and in order to focus I need long periods free of distraction. It's also satisfying to be able to get into a state of flow. I don't need that all the time, but I need and want it some of the time.

As a (hopefully!) future tech CEO, I want to work with people who want the same. As as Amiga Inc (and many others) have proved, small groups of people with private offices can produce wonderful things and still have a great corporate culture. I also want to make sure I spend my company's or my investors' money wisely and efficiently.

(As an aside, the reason that the Amiga had line-drawing built into hardware is because one of the software developers had experience with line-draw algorithms, recognized that it could be easily put into hardware, and convinced the hardware designer to do so. Which I offer as a counter to the people who think that private offices means people won't collaborate).

Finally, I'm rather taken aback that the director of a design agency would get onto a public forum and announce that he doesn't really care about productivity. Productivity relates to money spent; don't your customers care about how much it costs to engage you?

<comment><USER34> > Second was that the engineers had offices with doors that closed.

And sometimes that works well. Othertimes it's a hinderance. In this case, I'm arguing that it removes culture from the workplace. There's hardly anyway to deny that. There are also indicators that suggest lowering social interaction is linked with depression; which would have some effect on company culture.

> As a programmer,...

You mean, "you, as an individual person with individual needs", right?

> Finally, I'm rather taken aback that the director of a design agency would > get onto a public forum and announce that he doesn't really care about > productivity. Productivity relates to money spent; don't your customers care > about how much it costs to engage you?

That's an oversimplification of my statement. Our clients pay for us to take our time, to welcome new ideas and research ways to innovate their message, goals or vision. They do care that we spend the extra time – in fact they knowingly pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've seen dozens of these discussions over the years, and it never ceases to amaze me when I see that the tax angle is being left out. At a prior company, the CFO flat-out told me that tax concerns were the driving factor. To put it simply, in many places the "open" space is subject to lower real estate taxes, and depreciation on the partitions etc. within that space can lower tax bills even further (out of all proportion to their actual cost). It's totally FUBAR, like most tax-related stuff, but it looks good on a balance sheet. When the benefits are in black and white but the drawbacks are nebulous - even if they're practically certain to be greater - it's pretty predictable which way execs and investors will go.

</comment><comment><USER14> Communication is probably the most important factor to success for both small and large companies. Most things that go wrong is a direct consequence of bad or no communication.

If everyone is inside his or her own office, your company depends on having good email or message communication. Everyone should include the right persons when sending emails, planning meetings, etc ... . This is not impossible of course.

When you have an open office plan, your communication becomes 'in your face'. You might overhear things that are also relevant for you. You see or hear a lot more than through official communication channels alone. And that is probably the reason to their success. Of course interruptions etc are disadvantages, but nothing beats having good communication.

<comment><USER33> > You might overhear things that are also relevant for you.

The key word is _might_. I remember a similar HN discussion a few months back someone mentioned that because they happened to overhear a conversation between two engineers they were able to save weeks of them working on the wrong thing.

Anecdotes like that aren't signs that open offices are successful or result in "having good communication" \- it means you have _horrible_ communication and you got lucky. What if that conversation happened while the person who serendipitously overheard it was in the bathroom? Or on vacation? Or in a meeting? Or wearing headphones? _Good_ communication means not relying on chance to prevent engineers from wasting their time.

<comment><USER14> You are correct, but how many companies you worked for had 'good' communication? I worked for 5 companies, and have been outsourced to an extra 2. Communication is a real issue in companies, and the ones that already get this partly right will win over those who don't get it right.

Like I said, it is possible to get communication right without having an open office plan. But at least with an open office plan, you have the bare minimum set up. And for big companies, the bare minimum is already better than average.

The same for small companies. If you are with 5 to 10 people, not everything will be officially communicated through email. You know stuff because it happened in the same room as everyone is sitting in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does fogcreek still give everyone private offices? I remember years ago Joel Spolsky writing something similar. Wonder if they still stick to it.

<comment><USER38> They aren't "private" like you're probably thinking, they're more like rooms that 2 or 3 people share with glass walls on one side.

<comment><USER39> See for yourself: [https://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#](https://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> You won't catch me defending open offices, but they're even worse when they're full and the meeting rooms are booked all the time. I even frequently can't attend a standup or other meeting because someone is in the room who shouldn't be. And of course they're always on a phone call with a customer, or some other thing that can't be interrupted.

I used to work from home, for 4 years. It's hard to deal with all the stupid shit you put up with in offices.

</comment><comment><USER41> > And yet everyone, including some exceptionally profitable companies, use > them. Why?

Because they are cheaper to build and outfit.

This will always be attractive to management incapable of looking beyond the current expense period. All other reasons are simply marketing to the captive audience.

</comment><comment><USER42> Sadly, I think a factor of why smaller orgs do this is simply because larger orgs do. I was working at a smallish company that had a wonderful layout. The customer support team had an open layout of mini cubes (walls between desks but not extending past desk), which worked great for them, and the engineers had a closed off room that was basically off limits to anyone who wasn't an engineer. It was wonderful and productive. Then, the owners decided to change everything to intermingled open for everyone. No more walls, just flat desks everywhere. Why? All because they visited a couple other companies such as Facebook, etc. And that is how they saw it done there. If it works for them it must work for us, right?

</comment><comment><USER43> I pretty much stay out of the whole Open Office debate since I seem to be pretty much unaffected. My powers of concentration are obscenely high so even without headphones I have to work to be interruptible.

I actually liked Open Office plans _because_ there were more interruptions. When you have a family to get home to there is something wrong with realizing it's nearly 10pm and the last thing you remember before you started coding was eating lunch. The open office plans gave just enough background distraction to allow me to surface every once and a while.

</comment><comment><USER44> It really doesn't matter. Successful startup X could have began in a coffee shop, apartment, dorm room, open office...it was still going to be successful. People with the right drive are going to create and be productive despite their working environment, not because of it.

It's only later on in the process when the company can buy office space and do some hires, when people start to get picky about where they work. I've had some of my most productive days on a borrowed old laptop and a folding table in a breakroom.

</comment><comment><USER45> Also, add total hot desking to this for another bump down the productivity scale. Then, to make things worse, they usually oversubscribe the people to desks because at any one time quite a few people would be in meetings or not in the office. Net result, huge saving on rent. After a few days of sharing a desk with another guy and swapping power points to keep both our laptops charged, I complained and they looked at me like I was a freak of nature.

<comment><USER46> It's amazing how many managers to this day are hell-bent on repeating the Chiat-Day fiasco

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat_pr.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat_pr.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Open offices are not my favorite - I prefer silence or music of my choosing when I'm working. There's nothing worse than a loud sales meeting going on 10 feet away from you when you're trying to code.

</comment><comment><USER48> Maybe it's because developers don't run companies in general. For management cost and control would be more important considerations. I know of a local software company that's owned by 2 developers where they have individual offices. While 37 Signals kind of have an open office, it's meant to be as quiet as a library to avoid disruptions. People who manage probably don't need to concentrate as much as the people who create the stuff. I suppose my point is that people at the top call the shots, not the people at the bottom.

<comment><USER49> That comment is just a way of saying 'they' are not like 'me' (but trying to make it sound general).

Facebook, led by a (former) dev, has gone all-in on open plan offices - <USER2> is a direct counterpoint. That people at the top call the shots is tautological.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/08/25/facebook-u...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/08/25/facebook- unveils-new-campus-will-workers-be-sick-stressed-and-dissatisfied/)

<comment><USER33> > Facebook, led by a (former) dev, has gone all-in on open plan offices

As another comment[1] pointed out it may have been founded by a developer, but it was one who never worked anywhere other than the company he founded and grew. Things that work well for a company of ten or twenty don't necessarily work best when it grows into the hundreds or thousands of employees.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9968367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9968367)

<comment><USER49> My point was to refute the assertion that it's "because developers don't run companies in general." If we're going to add lots of caveats to what 'developer' means, then we're essentially making a 'No true scotsman argument' \-- (i.e. Zuck hasn't worked anywhere else, and is ostensibly a manager now).

<comment><USER33> Oh sorry, I certainly didn't mean to suggest he isn't a "true" developer - I'm sure he could code circles around me. I meant only that you were pointing to Facebook as a "direct counterpoint" to the suggestion that "developers don't run companies in general" \- and it's not a great counterpoint because he's not going into the office every day and writing code, and hasn't since Facebook was a small/early-stage startup (where open layouts make the most sense).

i.e. he isn't making the decision as a developer, he's making it as a manager and the comment you were originally replying to was suggesting "for management cost and control would be more important considerations." [Though I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, as pointed out in my own reply to that comment]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Battle for open office is lost and irrelevant. Now it is about location independence and working remotely.

<comment><USER51> Followed in some number of years by people in Africa doing the former jobs of people in San Francisco. If you in America can work remotely, there's no reason why someone with equivalent skills and 1/20 the cost can't work _really_ remotely.

You might point to stories of Indian contractors like Tata, and how badly that works out for anything that's not Telco CRUD. (Note, I'm talking about the business model, not individual Indians.) But that was just the first attempt. Software will figure it out, just as textiles figured it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Personally I feel that with varying degrees of effort I can work in either end of the spectrum: closed offices, cubicle farm, open office, coffeeshop, etc. Some people can't. Some people need a desk and a door to close.

So for me from a founders perspective, the best kind of environment to get things started would be a company space that encourages setups like a cafe/lounge/coffeetable-style area for laptop users and those who need to be comfortable, focused, and relatively available with ease for discussion .. as well as areas of the workfloor where there are offices, for example, for those who need them, or hackylab environment for where its needed, etc.

Alas, this kind of mixed-format personal workspace organization is not so economical, and it usually requires someone be responsible for the estate, rather than just having a cubicle-cleaning service, etc. etc. All kinds of legal hoops, too, whatever.

But in my experience, this seems to be the case: the nicest 'kind' of workspace for a modern startup company in my opinion, is your average McMansion.

(If you can fit and find one local to everyone else who has to commute to it.)

I've seen great mixed-format startup scenarios in your average American mega- house, cubicle farm in the 4-car garage, massive lounge/rec-room space for the hackers, room #? of (4..6) bedrooms converted to shared office rooms, 2 or 3 to a room, for those who want 'a desktop' and a way to isolate themselves from the rest of the team, and so on.

Of course, this works if the house is clean and maintained as a work environment, and indeed if people don't live there but rather treat it as their place of work. That can be difficult to do in some neighborhoods.

Wouldn't it then be interesting to see some sort of 'office space plan' revolution occur in the broader sense, which accommodates all of these modes of operation, to implement a model you could name "Big Family Home"?

Instead of cubical farms, you find interior spaces analog to a modern home plan, s/beds/desktops/, centered around a common room/kitchen/meeting area, etc.

Generally the way I feel when I walk into a very large organization and its just endless row of cubicle, mind-numbing soviet khaki walls lit by brain- sucking illumination standards, all I want to do is go home.

That is a hard impulse to resist all day. If, instead, I'm in a place that accommodates a large number of peoples needs with some consistent attention to variety, usually its pretty hard to go home at the end of the day .. I really like going to a business where people are working and comfortable because they know where the kitchen is, and someone is making lunch for everyone while code gets written, clients are met, teams are having meetings out on the deck in the sunshine, etc. I'm sure there are movements towards this; but the cubicle- farm seems to have persisted for decades, alas, and for this I guess we must thank the bean-counters.

<comment><USER53> I think the McMansion idea is great.

I had a flashback of playing the board game Clue ([http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/clue_%282002%29.pdf](http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/clue_%282002%29.pdf)) with my siblings when I was younger. Specifically, I imagined a small team of developers in a large McMansion-Office trying to debug a large application saying things like, "I suggest the bug was commit'd in the kitchen, by Tom with his Custom Arch Laptop."

<comment><USER52> Clue and Arch, incongruous. ;P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This piece nails it down.

</comment><comment><USER55> One factor of open offices that is seldom counted, but remains very important, is "fitting the organization to an image". If you're bringing bankers or investors or other external parties through, what is more "impressive": A floor full of hard working bees, a buzz of energy filling the air, whiteboards full of complex diagrams (that probably haven't been erased in months if not years) and quirky and crazy "personalizations" on all of the desks, or walking down a hall of quiet closed doors. Or, worse still (and the #1 reason why many companies don't allow remote work), no office really at all because everyone is everywhere.

That "show off the empire" thing is absolutely a function of decisions. I was recently part of such a decision process where a group was looking to become startup-y, and cargo culting the media image of what such organizations look like reigned supreme.

<comment><USER56> It seems to be common to do that... A friend of mine who was at a unicorn company in SF before it was a unicorn, had nice tables, furniture, and overpowered computers everywhere around the pathway from the entrance to the conference room. So when VCs and business angels came it looked very nice but everybody out of the pathway had nothing like that.

<comment><USER57> Potemkin office! I'd never really considered the office as a form of stage set for the performance of the appearance of work before.

<comment><USER56> Ya I know... Like people in the front were able to have a budget of ~2000 dollars per person (hello Thunderbolt Displays!) but for others it was not even more than 300 dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Open Office + Home Office works for me. If i can choose 3 days to work at home and then come to work for meetings, brainstorming etc then it's ideal.</comment>