Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High - <AUTHOR> https://www.tlnt.com/toxic-workers-are-more-productive-but-the-price-is-high/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a story about hen breeding:

 _Selecting the hen who lays the most eggs doesn 't necessarily get you the most efficient egg-laying metabolism. It may get you the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group, but a farm's productivity is determined by group outputs._

 _Indeed, for some strange reason, the individual breeding programs which had been so successful at increasing egg production now required hens to have their beaks clipped, or be housed in individual cages, or they would peck each other to death._

 _While the conditions for group selection are only rarely right in Nature, one can readily impose genuine group selection in the laboratory. After only 6 generations of artificially imposed group selection - breeding from the hens in the best groups, rather than the best individual hens - average days of survival increased from 160 to 348, and egg mass per bird increased from 5.3 to 13.3 kg. At 58 weeks of age, the selected line had 20% mortality compared to the control group at 54%. A commercial line of hens, allowed to grow up with unclipped beaks, had 89% mortality at 58 weeks._

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KE8wPzGiX5QPotyS8/conjuring-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KE8wPzGiX5QPotyS8/conjuring- an-evolution-to-serve-you)

<comment><USER3> > the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order > at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work > to the benefit of the group

but wait... our entire economical system is based on this.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's entirely true. I think the idea that the only way to "win" in business is by pushing others aside is incorrect. This thinking assumes that the economy is a zero sum game and there's plenty of reason to question that assumption. There are certainly elements in the economy that take value from others without creating any value in the process, but there are also people / companies that get wealthy by creating value, then capturing some of that value themselves.

Even at the most level of the most fundamental unit of the economy -- the worker -- being a team player is just as important as being a good individual contributor. For most jobs, "fit" is a huge factor in hiring.

<comment><USER5> US Productivity grows by 2% a year which suggests in aggregate, most people are playing a zero sum game.

<comment><USER6> I think productivity is better conceived as the first derivative of value wrt. time. So productivity growth is the second derivative. It's good news if that number is positive at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://news.harvard.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d...](https://news.harvard.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf)

It comes to a figure of 12k loss as the cost of replacing the toxic employee. Yes, replacing an employee is always a net loss in isolation.

It seems to be using a tautological definition:

defines a "toxic" employee as: "A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people." Yes, that causes a net loss. By definition.

They also state they don't consider "productivity spillover" because they found spillover can sometimes be negative so they just assume it all cancels out. If Bob rebuilds something and saves every other employee lots of time going forward.... this analysis just ignores it.

The news coverage makes it seem like a tickbox study tailored to HR interests in large orgs, so they can pat themselves on the back for 'proving' that teamwork trumps uncharismatic productivity, despite the study saying nothing about that.

If one wanted to truly study these costs, they'd also be looking at charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation.

<comment><USER8> I found the guy.

If I try as hard as I possibly can and output 20% of an amazing individual. do I have no place in this world?

Listen, this is the basic level of human interaction. manners are oil for bodies at friction, and respect is a gateway to team participation.

If you cant see the value in that, then you are the problem. You can output a million times the output of your team, but if you dont have a team then you have nothing except yourself. and if you are the only reason for success.. why arent you Jeff Bezos?

"charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation." \-- This phrase stinks of devaluation. if you have a team that you view every member of as providing nothing of quality, then again.. you are the problem. Everyone has something to provide, on many different levels.you are failing to see that, and that is your problem.

but carry on my friend. if you are as amazing as you say, then ill read about you in the news soon.

<comment><USER9> As someone proclaiming that "manners are oil for bodies at friction", the ridiculousness of your rudeness is only surpassed by the unbelievable strawman you just set up.

blue1379 brings up some very valid questions. If a snobbish, but highly talented employee builds toolkits/engines that double or triple the production of the average employee, does the same equation used in the study apply?

On the other hand, what constitutes a "non-toxic" employee? Does everybody's buddy who convinces half the team that 2-5pm is ping pong and beer time not disproportionately decrease productivity?

He's asking for _more nuance_ , which is never a bad thing. You seem to be demanding that things stay binary.

<comment><USER8> A talented employee can be rude and disruptive to a team? but lower valued employees play beer pong.

My unbelievable straw man is looking great in your yard. Along with the many things I "seem" to say versus the things I actually say.

<comment><USER9> I think you need to take a walk and cool down from internet conversation. If this is how you talk to your coworkers when confronted with disagreement then I don't think you're the "non-toxic" one in your office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just read the study itself and am kind of scratching my head. I think the authors really just fail to consider the concept that the real problem with toxic employees is that they usually figure out to have their productivity measured very positively.

The authors build their thesis around a dichotomy between "toxic employees" and "superstars" (not "rock stars" as claimed in the article summarizing the study). The authors rather woodenly make their way through various analyses that make productivity the dependent variable, while also delving into the question of whether toxicity is contagious within workplaces.

Overall I get the impression that the study authors have never actually spent time in toxic workplaces.

The most toxic employees are not those who "[engage] in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people" \-- as another commenter mentioned, this is a comically tautological definition. Rather, toxic employees are those _who convince their boss that they are a superstar while making the company a worse place to work_. A toxic employee isn't, as the study seems to imply, somebody who writes mean graffiti in the employee bathroom -- it's someone who berates junior staffers under the auspices of demanding excellent execution, and who finishes the year with sales growth in his division up 23%.

<comment><USER11> But from a company's perspective, isn't that 23% the only number that matters?

The point of the study (and I have some issues with it too) is that the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee, or at the very least 23% is still doable without them, even though it seems like it isn't because they're better than average.

<comment><USER10> I get the concept of what you're saying with, "the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee", but I think that unfortunately is not true in a lot of cases. There are a lot of really talented, hard-working people who are also toxic leaders (some maybe not fully intentionally), and the challenge of dealing with them in an organization is that, as you point out, measurable performance is often all that matters.

I think the cost-benefit in an example like this is usually not so much "replace the asshole and get a 7% bump in growth"....it's more like, "it'll cost you a point or two of sales growth but that'll more than pay for itself in terms of lower turnover because we'll save $200k a year in recruiters fees because we won't have to pay them to find replacements for miserable junior people who don't stick around for very long".

<comment><USER12> This isn't exactly what you were talking about, but one of the best pieces of advice I've heard was this:

It's never worth promoting a potentially toxic manager into a managerial role, even if they're great in their current role. If you do, the whole team suffers. If you don't and they leave because you didn't promote them, they weren't going to let you keep them as an IC anyway. Best case is you reform them, but do that _before_ and not after you promote them.

I've seen this pattern more than I'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have recently been labeled a "brilliant jerk" at a FAANG company and threatened with termination. In actuality I now know that I have acted like this (not always but sometimes) and I take ownership of it. In trying to come to terms with it, I've been doing a lot of research and I think the research is overly simplistic particularly when it comes to motivation. I am not a psychopath and I am not purely self interested. My motivations have never been money or climbing or anything like that. I've wanted to build cool stuff that people say can't be done but that is also successful. I have always pulled in the direction of the company and not my own (at least in my mind). I have never treated anyone badly simply to treat them badly to make myself feel better or to put them down. I always thought it was best to give people direct and honest feedback. It's almost never what I was saying that was wrong but how I was saying it. I was too harsh and I ignored emotional data. In trying to be objective, I tried to keep things logical and data based always; I would get upset when people could not follow a logical line of thought. I often used, in a modified way, the Socratic method to show someone that their argument was wrong. This led people to feel I was disrespectful to them because it would force a contradiction. By doing this, I meant to teach them but I was wrong; it simply made people feel foolish. I ignored the emotional side of things and that's a big problem for me. It's also not true that I would never concede I was wrong. You just had to have a really strong case.

Up until now this has also "worked" as it's gotten things done on time. In one case, my work saved a product line that would have failed entirely. It took a lot of courage to stick my neck out and said we had to change direction. The change in direction meant abandoning something I had spent a year designing. Nobody wanted to abandon that work and shift. It was the right thing to do though. I took a huge amount risk and flack at the time and probably was almost fired. So there is good and bad to this. I am working to change but something is going to get lost. I probably won't stick my neck out like that again.

I am also human. I make mistakes too and I'm trying to learn from all this.

<comment><USER14> I am not convinced you have actually learned your lesson here. You still sound extremely condescending. This sounds like a post from /r/iamverysmart.

Leadership and emotional intelligence are part of intelligence.

Have you thought that maybe, instead of all of your coworkers not understanding, that YOU are the one that doesn't get it?

> In actuality I now know that I have acted like this (not always but > sometimes) and I take ownership of it.

Have you taken ownership? In this post, you are still trying to justify your abusive behavior by building it up with some kind of pseudo-intellectual BS.

"As the genius-king of (random FAANG), I must be gentler with my subjects. I can see now why the NPCs were upset by my mental lashings."

Also, you still cast a lot of the blame on your co-workers for "not being smart enough" instead of owning up to your own antisocial behaviour.

> I was too harsh and I ignored emotional data.

Emotional data? Do you mean the feelings and thoughts of the people around you?

"Ignored emotional data" \- I didn't care about how my co-workers felt, just that I ended up being the person who looked the smartest in the end.

> In trying to be objective, I tried to keep things logical and data based > always; I would get upset when people could not follow a logical line of > thought.

I seriously doubt that at a FAANG people "could not follow a logical train of thought." Maybe you just were not as convincing or clear as you thought you were.

Or maybe people were just tired of you and the way you treated everyone, and you burned all good-will when trying to get your agendas passed.

Also, here, you still make it other people's fault. "I would get upset because they were dumb." No. It is not their fault you struggled to communicate. It is not their fault you cannot control your emotions. That is your YOUR problem.

You can kick and scream all you want, but YOU have to go to the world, the world will not come to you.

> I often used, in a modified way, the Socratic method to show someone that > their argument was wrong. This led people to feel I was disrespectful to > them because it would force a contradiction. By doing this, I meant to teach > them but I was wrong; it simply made people feel foolish. I ignored the > emotional side of things and that's a big problem for me.

This is the big one for me. "using the Socratic method to show someone that their argument was wrong" is incredibly pretentious. You are not their professor, these are not students. These are adults with degrees and jobs. Who have been through tragedy and triumph and built up at least a nugget of wisdom ( hopefully ). Not your peons to whip with "Socratic method" that makes you feel oh-so-smart. People have pride, and what your describing completely ignores that. In fact, it seems like it is seeking to HARM their pride.

"using the Socratic method to show someone that their argument was wrong" \- Is that what you were doing? Or were you forcing people to play your weirdo sociopath games for longs periods of time? It sounds like you would trap them in a room and be an unpleasant sociopath instead of just explaining your reasoning like an adult.

You really do not seem to value other people or consider their thoughts AT ALL. You seem to think you are the only person with a brain. Me, personally: I would have seen through the Socratic method BS immediately, I would have found it extremely condescending, and it would have pissed me off.

> It's also not true that I would never concede I was wrong. You just had to > have a really strong case.

So you would just argue until you won. Contgratulations. You sound like a lot of fun to work with.

<comment><USER15> Although I understand your point of view, you are being as condescending as you claim he is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Toxic Workers Are More Productive"

Isn't this just an instance of Berkson's paradox? [0]

You might keep someone around because they're nice, or because they're productive. So if they're neither nice nor productive, then they wouldn't be hired/retained. So 100% of surviving not-nice people are productive, whereas the nice people is a mix of productive and non-productive people.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox)

<comment><USER17> I think you're talking about survivor bias, not Berkson's paradox.

Also the study intentionally focuses more on the cost-benefit of retaining a specific population - productive toxic people - and doesn't care about non- productive (toxic or non-toxic) people since they don't factor into that specific C/B equation.

<comment><USER18> I think the reference to Berkson's paradox is spot on:

> The most common example of Berkson's paradox is a false observation of a > negative correlation between two positive traits, i.e., that members of a > population which have some positive trait tend to lack a second. Berkson's > paradox occurs when this observation appears true when in reality the two > properties are unrelated—or even positively correlated—because members of > the population where both are absent are not equally observed.

But you are also correct, survivor bias can lead to Berkson's paradox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I liked the article, but I find the definition of a toxic worker difficult. It's more like the article defines a toxic worker by the result, not the symptom.

In reality, what are the symptoms of a toxic worker? What are the causes? What are the situations where someone might be labeled "toxic" but the real problem is something else?

<comment> move-on-by This is a good question. I think I was labeled the toxic worker in my previous job. I was a team lead and kept bring up concerns to my manager:

* 'this deadline is unrealistic'

* 'we can't continue at this pace, we have to have time to address some serious technical debt'

* 'I heard marketing saying that we can do X, but it isn't true and to add feature X would destroy our timeline'

* 'Adding more contractors isn't going to speed this up or improve the quality, we need time not warm bodies'

Of course none of those things were what my manger wanted to hear. When things inevitably went south it all came down on me and I was managed out of the company. I'm much happier now, as I see that the _job_ was what was toxic. My manager wouldn't listen to me and I wouldn't drink the kool-aid that all was well. In fact, I saw it as my responsibility to share these concerns and to not just go with the flow. Now that I've had time to look back on it, I just think that is his management style: grind people to the bone for all that they are worth, then throw them out and repeat to the next poor sap.

Anyways, the article is about toxic workers - but if the managers are the ones deciding what is considered 'productive' and who is 'toxic' then that isn't a very complete view of the actual environment.

<comment><USER20> Ironically, not drinking the kool-aid makes you toxic.

And managers are technically workers too. There's no reason to put them in an ivory tower and assume they can't hate their job, hate people they work with or want to exact revenge for some wrong done against them.

<comment><USER21> The truth is somewhat more nuanced IMO, and it's mentioned somewhere here — behavior is contagious. Keeping upbeat and positive to your coworkers will make them upbeat and positive even if they're not naturally. Positivity like negativity is contagious, but the latter is the steady state for many while the former requires continuous effort. The issue here is the won't/can't/stop/oh god in heaven. Showing up at your managers desk ready to listen and propose solutions and iterate is much more positively viewed. I'm confident the manager sees the issues for themselves, what they need are solutions.

Check out the difference a little wordsmithing makes:

* 'this deadline is unrealistic' — "id love to be able to get all this done for you, and with 8 weeks left, I'm only going to be able to get through half of this; let's sit down and figure out what we can deprioritize without compromising the core of our next release"

* 'we can't continue at this pace, we have to have time to address some serious technical debt' — "I've noticed im having trouble moving quickly in the codebase with the level of testing we have right now, I'd love to lead an effort to improve testing and testability. Let's resdefine 'performance' to include velocity, and with this new metric I'm sure we can find some time! Happy to do the leg work here."

* 'I heard marketing saying that we can do X, but it isn't true and to add feature X would destroy our timeline' \- same as 1: "I'd love to be able to get X out for you in the next release, and to do so requires we cut a few weeks scope elsewhere in the product — let's sit down and see what we can deprioritize without compromising quality!"

* 'Adding more contractors isn't going to speed this up or improve the quality, we need time not warm bodies' — what will? "Let's see if we can save the company some money by finding a way to work more efficiently! I've noticed x and y, and I'd love to take the lead on it. Let's define some metrics to show this is as good as or better than bringing in some more contractors! The finance team is going to love our proposal."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's good that we are finally figuring out what Prussian Field Marshal, Helmuth von Moltke (the elder) knew almost 200 years ago. He devised a system to evaluate soldiers, a very simplistic explanation and chart is included with the link below.

Essentially what we define as toxic, he defined as dangerous, and felt those people should be eliminated from the Army at all costs because they cause far more harm than good.

[http://soldiersystems.net/2012/05/27/kind- leader/](http://soldiersystems.net/2012/05/27/kind-leader/)

Von Moltke (the elder) is also considered as the creator of a new, more modern method of directing armies in the field, which is still used today. He also commanded by intention than by direct action, von Molkte felt that strategy needed to be adapted as battle progressed, so rather than having his staff officers be held to rigid direct action orders the had everyone working toward a series of goals, making adjustment along the way, sounds a lot like Agile software development.

<comment><USER23> A friend told me some time ago that in the German army every person is trained to be able to do the duties of anyone up to 2 levels above him. This is done so any unit, or even just individual soldier, can carry out their mission as intended, rather than as ordered, and so they can keep agile even when communications are down, i.e. they can plan their own strategy based on what the overall objectives are.

<comment><USER24> It's called auftragstaktik or mission command. I experienced it during my conscription (not German, but we apply it in my country as well), and it worked really good. Before the end of the service I'm certain my division could have retained most of its effectiveness, should you have removed all the ncos and the division commander.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission- type_tactics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Toxic" is a meaningless word used by people to identify themselves with particular social movements. I mean, of course it does have it's original meaning. But that's not in use here.

<comment><USER26> Exactly; happy someone said this before me.

'Toxic' is just a slightly more sophisticated way of saying 'big mean jerk' (i.e. something completely subjective and open to interpretation).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This just sounds like the same as the nice guy paradox. If girls are looking to date guys who are both nice and good-looking, you only date guys who are assholes if they are really good looking.

Same thing with a "rockstar" asshole engineeer. If you weren't an awesome engineer on top of being an asshole, you wouldn't even be employed and we're not talking about you.

It's not because there's this magical correlation between being a "rockstar" and an asshole. This is just an outcome of sampling.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about toxic managers? For example the ones that hire the wrong person, or allow toxic environments to build up? Or the ones that promote people based on optics?

</comment><comment><USER28> In the last few years, the metagame strategy of work politicking has evolved to include the act of labeling things "toxic." Article like this are just ammunition in that.

I get that this article is about the trade-off between productivity and a less-easily-quantifiable loss to morale. But only a sliver of the people hearing about the study from this article will be carefully applying the lessons learned in towards their personnel decisions.

<comment><USER29> Best to get ahead of the curve and self-identify as toxic.

<comment><USER30> The "safe space" work environment will end up becoming the new corporate behemoth style office type, and we'll start seeing 2012 style trendy startups looking for "toxic 10xers" or some sort of similar label. Having that edgy ground floor dev ends up being a new selling point.

I do wonder, if your whole team is made up of these "toxic" individuals, does productivity skyrocket as a result of the constant competition?

On an aside, isn't the end outcome of the article just an office full of mediocrity where no one really sticks out? How do you get natural leaders with that kind of situation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article doesn't say anything.

I'm left to imagine what exactly is a "toxic worker", what it means for them to be "productive", and how that definition of productivity allows some metal shop in Pennsylvania to become more profitable ("value of shipments per labor hour jumping from $85-90 to $123) after _losing_ these so-called productive employees.

No definitions of "toxic", or "productivity" are given, nor any concrete (or even vague) examples of behavior or work output from which these definitions could be deduced.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sadly, with our irreproducability crisis in research, p-hacking, and agenda driven media I've stopped taking articles like this seriously. Sad because you don't need a lot of bad apples to spoil the well and I'm sure more research is legit and intellectually honest.

<comment><USER33> You need not question their statistics to say the study is of little value. They define a toxic worker as someone who is harmful to an organization, and conclude with the tautology that organizations are better off without these harmful people.

In other news, red apples emit more red light than green apples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There will always be people with high ambition that want to perform and grow, and those people will likely be in contention with another type of person who wants a relaxing, stable, fun, and sustainable work environment. It's the job of leadership to match the right people together and set values and boundaries so that both of those employee types can satisfy their desires. It's lazy to just start labelling people as toxic. It's an oversimplification. Imagine putting a high performance athlete who is driven by the need to push themselves and compete with a bunch of lazy couch potatoes who just want to socialize and get a light workout.

</comment><comment><USER28> >A 2015 study by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor published by the Harvard Business School defines a "toxic" employee as: "A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people."

If this is how they defined toxic, then the findings of the study are simply tautological.

<comment><USER35> the study finds that

> avoiding a toxic worker (or converting him to an average worker) enhances > performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a > superstar worker

<comment><USER36> Per their definition:

>avoiding a (worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people) (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker

Well yeah, of course it does. A harmful worker causes harm. Duh.

<comment><USER37> It is _not_ obvious or tautological that removing a bad employee is more valuable than acquiring a superb employee.

<comment><USER38> A bad employee can affect the whole department quickly - its so easy for corrosive attitudes to spread. But a good employee? It takes time and effort to build goodwill and teamwork.

It is better to remove a bad employee, than hire a better one. More urgent anyway.

<comment><USER3> > so easy for corrosive attitudes to spread

citation needed

<comment><USER38> Lifetime of experience. If you have other observations, feel free to make them.

<comment><USER11> One person's experience is basically useless, statistically speaking.

<comment><USER38> How about one person, experiencing the same thing dozens of times?

<comment><USER11> Dozens is a drop in the proverbial bucket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What is a 'toxic worker'? Can the 'toxic worker' of somebody be the perfect employee for someone else? Does everyone refer to the same thing when referring to a 'toxic worker'?

I don't think that's appropriate. Flagged.

<comment><USER33> The word toxic is far too subjective to be meaningful. To a toxic boss, the employee who says "no I won't work 80 hours a week and lie on the reports" is being toxic (insubordination). If that employee tells other workers to stand up for themselves or act ethically, well know he's undermining his boss and sabotaging the company, and is considered really toxic.

When person A calls person B toxic, the only thing we can really conclude is that A really dislikes B. The study gets around this subjectivity by defining toxic to mean "harmful to an organization," but this definition make the study's conclusion a tautology: firing people who harm an organization is beneficial the organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Toxic Workers Are More Productive,

Not my personal experience. I have seen that they are perceived as better as they have less self-doubt and sound more authoritative. But, the ones I have work with were bad.

Usually toxic workers seen as more productive and bad/inexperienced management go hand with hand.

</comment><comment><USER41> > The findings show that avoiding a toxic employee generates returns of nearly > two-to-one as compared to those generated when firms hire a rock star"

Why do you need to choose between these two though? Can't an interviewer pay attention to both the technical skills and the attitude of a potential hire? This sounds like a forced dichotomy just to justify a study nobody needs.

> While toxic employees are more productive, meaning getting more things done, > the quality of that productivity often is less than desirable

If work is not up to standards then it's not done work and can't be considered productivity, can it? Again, do we really need a study to tell us that bad personality people who rush half done jobs to get that KPI are not what you want as employees?

<comment><USER42>
      > do we really need a study to tell us that bad personality
      > people who rush half done jobs to get that KPI are not
      > what you want as employees?

I suspect this is a rhetorical question, and what you may be saying is, "It's ridiculous that large swathes of business needs to be told this thing over, and over, and over again, and yet they will not learn."

That is my slant on this, because I observe that often times, the incentives in organizations are to do the wrong thing that leads to the local optimum, where we define "local" as, a particular manager's well-being.

If a manager is rated by the measured productivity of their teams, the will hire for the ability to make the number and manage to the number, regardless of whether the number reflects the overall good of the team or organization.

As they say, "You show me a metric, and I'll show you a game."

In a dysfunction organization, everyone can be individually aware that the organization's management is dysfunctional, but it can't be changed without an overwhelming majority of managers simultaneously cooperating.

<insert citation to game theory and cooperating vs. defecting>

Not only that, but some managers actually do better by "quelling rebellion" and enforcing the dysfunction. They will actively undermine any effort to organize change.

You don't need people to be ignorant of things like this, you just need people to be attached to their individual incentives, and you need a culture where those who try to make change are rejected by the host culture.

<comment><USER34> Leadership and management is probably the biggest differentiator between a successful, growing organization and an organization that is decaying or stagnant. They say people don't quit jobs they quit managers. I've found that the role of manager self selects for people with more ego than brain, or someone who desires to have power over other people. I really agree with that quote, "You show me a metric, and I'll show you a game." There's a book The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Muller that talks about this. Essentially metrics are the mapping of a complex high-dimensional system into (sometimes) a single number, so that some self-important manager can make an easier decision. Metrics are in my opinion an instrument of power (which could be used for good or ill). The book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott also has some interesting examples on how metrics and measuring things in general is used to control groups of people, and simplify complex systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm beginning to notice a trend with these kind of organizational pop psychology pieces. There is usually (especially in this piece) a bias towards overvaluing the risk contribution of an individual and a devaluing of the risk contribution and ownership of the leadership structure.

This piece is, to borrow a term, "not even wrong." There's no proof that "toxic workers" are more productive. By all accounts, toxic workers come in all shapes and sizes -- and what is a toxic worker, really? Is it someone who is physically and psychologically harmful to everyone in their lives and should probably seek rehabilitation before being reintroduced to society? Okay, that's one thing.

Is it someone who is not being managed properly, pushed into the wrong role, not given the right tools to do their job? Are they stuck in a dysfunctional culture run by sycophants, idiots and bullies? Are they unintentionally paving a road to hell with the best of intentions and the worst of consequences?

What I'm trying to get at here is the necessity of supervision. Organizations have command structures and hierarchies, whether implicit or explicit. The risks and consequences of those structures ultimately lies with management and leadership -- after all, it's with them that the true agency lies!

If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job? After all, it's not individual contribution. There's sales, marketing, fundraising -- but except for the last one (and even that's a stretch), these are all team efforts. You maximize output from your team by removing unnecessary friction. If that can't happen passively, active changes need to be made.

Of course, such a brain-dead thinkpiece never couches with such responsibility or collectivist realities. They're comforting kernels of individualist tactics, sold to give the illusion of control. They're as attractive as a trendy new diet built on poor foundations, but about as effective: that is to say, not at all.

Nothing can kill a company as quickly as poor leadership. As a company gets larger, logistics rears its ugly head. Pragmatic structuring can mitigate that, and good leadership can bring about directional change towards that. But, nothing can stop bad leadership until it wants to improve.

<comment><USER44> > If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or > fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job?

I personally agree with this.

But, there's this other school of thought out there (which I'm tired of, frankly) that seems to believe management is supposed to "hire the best", pay them well and stay the hell out of their way. The reasoning is that "all these geniuses we've hired" will create a vast new pool of profitability through unfettered innovation, deep insight, and wild creativity. Or something. I believe that Google and Facebook think they are doing this with their hiring practices.

<comment><USER43> I sympathize with your disdain. I prefer to reject this school of thought directly when I can, because it is a cultural abetting of incompetence. A company that practices this will atrophy and lose to a competitor which doesn't, even if that takes a while. Hiring the best requires hiring teams, not individuals. A group of star ICs that don't mesh well together could form a mediocre team, and a group of otherwise unremarkable (being a bit hyperbolic for the sake of discussion here) ICs who work well together could mesh together to form an all-star team.

Of course, I'm being hyperbolic when I say that because I think that part of what makes a star IC is someone who's good at assisting the team -- that's part of what makes great teams so devastatingly effective. That's part of what makes me very skeptical of that school of thought -- if you're really naive to believe that great teams come when you group a bunch of star ICs together (hint: it doesn't), how would you even know if you ended up screwing it up and it came out dysfunctional? You wouldn't, because you're not incentivized to. Your job as a manager and leader ended when you hired them.

I find this kind of laughable, honestly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> They define a rockstar as someone in the top 1% of productivity. In order to know how many average employees that equates to, you need to know something about the distribution of productivity across employees. Only then can you judge whether the harm caused to normal employees by the "toxic rockstar" is worth the price.

</comment><comment><USER46> There seems to be a conflation of toxic and productive which I don't think is necessarily true. In my case the most toxic coworker I ever had was one who was notoriously unproductive but managed to kiss upwards and kick downwards in ways that made it take a while before management noticed.

</comment><comment><USER47> The mil caught onto this in a serious way somewhat recently, the commissioning sources really lean into preventing this. Great to see this catching on in the business world

</comment><comment><USER48> > Toxic employees don't care about a company's goals, nor do they care about > building relationships with co-workers. More than just self-centered office > bullies, toxic employees are actually strategic and covert.

This sort of describes the sociopaths of the Gervais Principle.

I don't necessarily see how this is a Bad Thing to be. If relationships help you through the day, sure, go for it, but it doesn't help you in your goals. Furthermore, your goals are, unless you are working for your own company, quite often directly opposed to what the company wants.

EDIT: let me expand on this:

Companies want (basically) the following:

\- You to do as much work as possible

\- You to require as little payment as possible

\- Be completely loyal to the company, ie: work whenever they need you to, don't even think about changing jobs, etc etc.

What you (should) want:

\- Have job where you'd be most content, which could be at your current job, but probably isn't. Let's be fair: your own ideas for projects would be much more fun to work on then whatever you do for the company.

\- Get paid as much for the work you do

\- Do as little work as possible, so you have more time for yourself, your family and friends.

I don't really see how their definition of 'toxic' checks all the boxes above. I don't care all that much for the company goals, since they are (to me) much less important than my own goals. I don't care too much for relationships with co-workers; they're my co-workers, they're not the life-long friends I already had before I started this job. Furthermore, given that on average they'll be gone in 2.5 years, spending too much time and energy into creating a relationship with someone who'll be gone by then seems like wasted effort. Furthermore, I am covert about this (since saying these things outright would be bad for my career prospects). However, my input in this company is still a net win (for both parties).

Their definition of 'toxic' is therefore inadequate.

<comment><USER11> This is precisely the toxic attitude talked about in the submission. Your goals shouldn't be opposed to the company's goals, and if they are, you're creating a problem on the team.

Doing "as little work as possible" in particular would immediately put you in the category of "toxic" here, specifically because it's completely unnecessary to living a balanced life. The _only_ person that helps is you, as opposed to what a healthy person does, and that's find ways to help both themselves _and_ the company.

It's not zero sum, and treating work like it is makes a person toxic.

<comment><USER48> > Your goals shouldn't be opposed to the company's goals, and if they are, > you're creating a problem on the team.

Wait, let's step back there.

I didn't say I'm opposed to the company's _goals_. That's something different. I'm not saying: "well, I think we should have no customers whatsoever, and lose as much money as we possibly can". I'm saying: "If you want me to do deployments outside of business hours, you will have to pay me extra for doing so, since you're eating into my time with friends and family".

> Doing "as little work as possible" in particular would immediately put you > in the category of "toxic" here

I said ' _want_ to do as little work as possible'. That's something different from doing it. I'm not sitting at my desk browsing the hours away on forums. If I could get paid the same for working 5 hours less a week though, I'd take that option in a heartbeat.

> specifically because it's completely unnecessary to living a balanced life.

Life doesn't come easy to everyone, and a balanced life even less easily. Some people need more time than others to recuperate from a week's work. If it comes easier to you, all the more power to you, but it doesn't to everyone.

> The only person that helps is you, as opposed to what a healthy person does, > and that's find ways to help both themselves and the company.

Sometimes there is no good way that helps you and the company at the same time.

<comment><USER11> > Sometimes there is no good way that helps you and the company at the same > time.

and

> I didn't say I'm opposed to the company's goals. That's something different.

Are in conflict. It's possible you only think of goals as in, "Grow by 50% this quarter" and not, "Maximize the productivity of my team," but that's incorrect. If the company has a goal of "deploy during off hours", it can be done in a way that benefits the employee and the employer. CI/CD for example.

The thing is, even the productivity goal can be done in a mutually beneficial way, but your philosophy doesn't allow for that, and that makes the "zero sum" or "as little as possible" philosophy a toxic one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> this is one of the very best articles i've ever found on HN.

it addresses the most important aspects of the toxic employee syndrome which i personally have encountered in multiple working environments. every manager should read this article.

</comment><comment><USER49> Net negative is the correct description.

</comment><comment><USER50> Can't you just have team made up of only "toxic" people? Do "toxic" people negatively affect the productivity of _other_ "toxic" people?

I personally wouldn't want want to give up entirely on all the socially inept assholes whose in-depth knowledge on crap that I don't care to know about (but rely on) seemingly knows no bounds. More specifically, I _do_ want to keep the IT department.

</comment><comment><USER51> The article seems to equate "Rock Star" to "toxic". Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)

<comment><USER52> It does the exact opposite of that. The argument is that the focus on finding "rock stars" who act as a positive force is less efficient than a focus on avoiding "toxic" employees who act as a negative force.</comment></comment>


Why does the IRS need guns? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-the-irs-need-guns-1466117176 <comment><USER2> wait until people realize that the Dept. of Education has a SWAT team...

[http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/06/beware-t...](http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/06/beware- the-us-education-department-swat-team)

</comment><comment><USER3> this gets around the paywall for me:

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-the-irs-need- guns-14661...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-the-irs-need- guns-1466117176)

<comment><USER4> It's not the url that gets around the paywall, it's the referrer. That link will work if comes from, e.g. Google News.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Geckoboard, AppointmentReminder and other recurring, how do you price? - <AUTHOR>

I am working on a project that will be charging companies monthly if they decide to subscribe. It will be a hosted platform. I'm not sure how to price it at all, however. Any thoughts on this? Some corporations that use it will be large, some will be small. It's inventory related, so some will have larger inventory than others as well. <comment><USER2> You should really think about your pricing. The cost of your app should correlate to the value the user is receiving. It's always easier to lower your price, start high and test.

If Large companies can use your app - please do not put a "ceiling" (i.e. unlimited plan) on the price.

 _Remember, larger companies typically spend 10's of thousands (or more) on software_

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're selling to businesses then it really does come down to value. Most businesses won't hesitate to pay much more than you might think is reasonable IF the product offers a value that exceeds that cost. If there's real value to your product then you should definitely start on the higher end of what you're considering.

</comment><comment><USER4> When Geckoboard launched, they had confusing per-device pricing. They changed it a month later - so don't feel like you're limited to your initial offering. Their changes ultimately made it cheaper overall - so start high and bring it down as you receive feedback.</comment>


Learning to Love Volatility - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html

<comment><USER2> > _The Romans forced engineers to sleep under a bridge once it was completed._

This is exactly what is missing from the banking system. The mortgage madness would never had occurred if banks were forced to retain a portion of every loan (and put that portion in the first-loss position.)

<comment><USER3> Many banks did retain a portion of their loans. WaMu, for example, and Countrywide. Typically they would sell off the AAA tranches of the loans to other banks (for use satisfying reserve requirements) while keeping the riskier tranches for themselves.

<comment><USER4> nah, the i-banks lost the skin in the game when they went corporate in the 1990s. leveraged loans of various stripes are not held by i-banks, as a rule. there is also the issue of derivatives, so bottom line is almost all fudamental underwriting is now a sales-job, a loss-leader and bait entre vous into a world of mirrors, assymetric information and, opaque market making. TLDR there is a reason glass-stegal was put in place.

<comment><USER3> Investment banks generally don't write mortgages, so asking them to keep some skin in the game is a little silly.

Glass-Steagal had nothing whatsoever to do with preventing savings&loan banks from making bad loans, nor did it prevent savings&loans from selling mortgages to third parties for securitization.

<comment><USER4> Not sure this makes sense. The example of leveraged loans is quite distinct from residential mortages, for example. Also, the credit risk of the latter is pawned off onto the federal gov't in the US. Either way, banks should be banks. They should be taking the risk they underwite. Shares and bonds are a slightly different animal than asset backed secured loans, but they are now essentially all treated alike: things to pawn off with zero net book exposure. Investment banks structured as partnerships also had downside risk -- that is one of the main structural differences in a legal sense -- and that also should not be overlooked. Lasltly, private capital being more illiquid does not display the option-like pricing response to Vol that comp tied to public equity does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Rule 1: Think of the economy as being more like a cat than a washing > machine._

This one made me smile, thinking of the classic characterization of a development manager's primary task: herding cats.

<comment><USER6> Except herding cats is easy, you just paint yourself with tuna fish.</comment></comment>


Squoosh: Make images smaller using best-in-class codecs, right in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://squoosh.app/ <comment><USER2> Squoosh does not use best-in-class codecs [1]. Lossless PNG compression is 5-15% worse on average and lossy PNG compression (color quantization) is limited to PNG-8, which is not enough to maintain image quality. Lossy JPEG compression is only tuned for 4:2:0 chroma subsampling and causes blurring of fine details because trellis quantization is guided simply by the variance in DCT domain.

[1] [https://optimage.app/benchmark](https://optimage.app/benchmark)

<comment><USER3> It's marketing hyperbole, no one really believes it's the absolute best-in- class.

The idea of this open source app from Google is to demonstrate a real world use case of porting legacy native code to the web via webassembly

<comment><USER4> The quality of a codec is easy to measure, and saying that it measures higher than others is not a hyperbole, but a lie. If you take something that's hard to compare, like developer effectiveness, and say he's the best, then it can be called a hyperbole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> JPEG-XL: Next Generation Image Compression Codec Open source / Royality free NEW public software repostory [https://gitlab.com/wg1/jpeg- xl](https://gitlab.com/wg1/jpeg-xl)

</comment><comment><USER6> Didn't this come out a couple of years ago? Is there a reason we are seeing it again now?

<comment><USER7> JPEG XT, JPEG XS, JPEG XL are all for completely different use cases and built with different technology. XT and XS are more mature standards, but less appealing for the internet use case than XL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They have also made a talk about the the design process of the squoosh webapp: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipNW6lJHVEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipNW6lJHVEs)

</comment><comment><USER9> How does it compare to Squash -- other than being browser based?

[https://www.realmacsoftware.com/squash/](https://www.realmacsoftware.com/squash/)

<comment><USER10> It has more tools and a GUI.

Squash is in the AppStore, so it can't contain any GPL-licensed compressors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For some actual thing which you can use in your projects to automatically optimise images, check this:

[https://www.gumlet.com](https://www.gumlet.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> I really like the UI design and PWA hints to add this to your mobile. Great work.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how much this will be obscoleted by JPEG XL.

<comment><USER7> JPEG XL reference codec includes a slower encoding mode for high density photography compression (iterating with butteraugli guidance like in guetzli). Of course there will always be some room for external optimizers, just I'd expect the gains to be smaller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I usually use TinyPNG, but its not open source, and does send the images server-side, so shouldn't be used for sensitive files.

</comment><comment><USER15> mb != MB.

<comment><USER16> Given that literally nobody has ever needed, nor will they ever need, to talk about file sizes in _millibits_ , there is no ambiguity involved.

<comment><USER17> Even though it's unlikely anyone will think it's referring to millibits, there's still a decent chance some will assume Mb (Megabits) due to the lowercase 'b' instead of the intended MB (Megabytes).

<comment><USER18> game cartridges used to be specced in megabits</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ghost in the Shell FUI Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2017/4/17/ghostintheshell-fui <comment><USER2> I couldn't easily find in the post what this FUI abbreviation stands for, so here's a reddit on it:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/FUI/top](https://www.reddit.com/r/FUI/top)

<comment><USER3> Subscribed to that so fast.

While it copped a lot of flack, visuals wise there was pretty much nothing wrong with GitS.

<comment><USER4> I disagree, although they created a beautiful vision of the future it just doesn't resonate with what GITS is to me.

The world of GITS never felt like a neon billboard strewn "Neo Tokyo", felt like it has always had a wider visual language than just that one note. Feels like the city is trying to demand presence as an entity in the remake while in the originals the city was mostly just an anonymous sea of sky scrapers that was then experience though more intimate close moments.

I realise Ash is a huge fan of Akira and I can't help but think how Neo-Tokyo plays almost as a larger than life character in that film has influenced his work in this.

Compare this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB-ik- Bpl0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB-ik-Bpl0c) to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixAHUWgBKsw&t=0m35s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixAHUWgBKsw&t=0m35s)

<comment><USER5> You might be interested in "Ghost In The Shell: Identity in Space" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw)

<comment><USER6> That video is very insightful and resonates with what I love about Mamoru Oshii's movie. The city is definitely a protagonist in that classic movie as well, but it's not garish like in the new movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was an absolutely stunning film. Love the sheer amount of design effort that went into it, it really paid off. So much polish at every level.

<comment><USER8> Loved every minute of it until the last 5 minutes, where they went so far away from the original story line, it would be like remaking Star Wars and having Luke turning to the darkside.

<comment><USER9> Only the last 5 minutes? Did we watch the same movie? The plot, to me, looked like it was written by someone who watched the original while drunk.

<comment><USER10> I remember thinking that whoever made this movie must have hated the original movie.

I guess it is a gamble the director has to take: to be remembered as a great director, you can't simply remake movies verbatim. You have to put your spin on it and hope people think you made something greater than the original.

The movie did not capture the feeling of the original movie nor did it seem convincing as a future reality the way the original does.

Btw, hologram ads featured in a COD Advanced Warfare Tokyo map a few years ago. Given the color scheme of the movie and that of the map, I would not be surprised if the map was a bit of inspiration for the movie's designers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And this blog is dedicated to Sci-Fi UIs [http://sciencefictioninterfaces.tumblr.com/](http://sciencefictioninterfaces.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I recall seeing a navigation app a few years back that copied almost perfectly the navigation views from Standalone Complex. Never did get the name of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> personally, I disliked all the holograms. They're in every movie these days and they are sooooo boring, not to mentioned impossible. The original Ghost in the Shell had none and the city was much more gritty and interesting without these silly "solograms." Really ruined the feel of the film in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER14> Thank you for sharing this. I have always loved FUI.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice. Thanks for the link.</comment>


Woo: Fast HTTP Server in Common Lisp - momo-reina https://github.com/fukamachi/woo <comment><AUTHOR> What is interesting here is to compare this one man's effort with "ancient tools" well-researched by two generations of old-school programmers with that amateurish hype and nonsense about node (author publicly stated in his blog that he has no experience with server side development on a POSIX system) and golang - a minimalist approach, carefully crafted by a rigorously trained "professionals". It is not just about KBs and milliseconds.

Btw, this "Hello world" example tells a little, basically, how efficiently memory allocation, and IO layer are implemented (that's why no one still could beat nginx).

Much more interesting comparison would be of some "real-world scenario", say, "implement an http look up for some public data-set, imported into a _persistent_ local storage, say, Postgresql" and then compare not just throughput rates, but also resource usage.

<comment><USER2> > _Btw, this "Hello world" example tells a little, basically, how efficiently > memory allocation, and IO layer are implemented (that's why no one still > could beat nginx)._

Actually at least on other guy just beat nginx just other day -- don't remember the name, it was some Japanese made server.

<comment><USER3> I think you might be thinking about Kazu Yamamoto and Mighttpd2? (Written in Haskell, incidentally.) I think this was the web server that beat out nginx on a largish number of cores (42?). For the life of me I can't find the original paper with the comparison graph, otherwise I'd link to it...

Anyway, a lot of the performance work which went into mighttpd2 is automatically shared by all Haskell applications. (Most of it went to optimizing the GHC VM I/O Manager which handles I/O in the Haskell runtime. It's sort of like libev/libuv only at the VM level instead of as a library.)

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/h2o/h2o](https://github.com/h2o/h2o)

<comment><USER3> I don't think that was the "Hey, look! Haskell beats nginx!" one, but very interesting nonetheless! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not really written in Common Lisp.

"built on top of libev"

The lisp part is a thin ffi wrapper on top of lots of C code.

Not than an ffi wrapper around C code isn't useful, but it's C code that does all the heavy lifting there.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, Node.js is a thin FFI wrapper on top of lots of C (and C++) code that does all the heavy lifting, but it is still useful. I think Woo is useful the same way.

<comment><USER7> the title implies "the heavy lifting" is written in LISP.

Every node user knows the net lib nodejs uses isnt written in javascript.And most also know that in order for node to be useful,scripts should do as little as possible and delegate any serious operation to C/C++.

<comment><USER8> >the title implies "the heavy lifting" is written in LISP.

Woo uses fast-http[0], quri[1], and http-body[2], all written in pure Common Lisp and very, very fast.

[0]: [https://github.com/fukamachi/fast- http](https://github.com/fukamachi/fast-http)

[1]: [https://github.com/fukamachi/quri](https://github.com/fukamachi/quri)

[2]: [https://github.com/fukamachi/http- body](https://github.com/fukamachi/http-body)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It makes me really happy to see projects like this for common lisp. I still relatively new to the lisp world but I have fallen in love with the language and development process.

</comment><comment><USER10> I see so many 'blazing fast' HTTP servers, in every language imaginable. Does anyone write a slow HTTP server any more?

The real challenge is in writing a useful, useable server which still stays fast under load. In contrast, you have to be writing terrible coding horrors for your home-grown static file web server _NOT_ to be wire-speed :)

(No offence to the writers of this particular server, I haven't looked at the code)

<comment><USER11> The reason people care about speed here is the reason people care about speed in all infrastructure projects: every millisecond of the timeslice spent doing work inside the transport is a millisecond you're not accomplishing application logic. Efficient http code lowers distributed system latency and saves power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I see someone doing benchmarks like this against localhost i get skeptical. Race conditions might very well be present.

</comment><comment><USER13> Lately I began to study information security in more detail. Isn't the "code is data" philosophy of common lisp a nightmare for a web server?

<comment><USER14> Classically, "code is data" is used upfront, in creating macros that manipulate Lisp code as data, before sending the result to the interpreter or compiler like normal functions and data. Ideally you develop your own Domain Specific Language that provides power in expression and execution for what you're trying to do.

As implied in other answers in the subthread, nowhere in this paradigm does random input data get treated as something that can safely be executed. READ in Lisp Machines is mentioned because reader macros like #. allow data in the form being read to be evaluated, which in this domain is an obvious big no-no.

As early as 1983, I think earlier, it was recognized that things like eval servers were a bad idea if accessible by the outside world.

<comment><USER13> So, I am really just a beginner. To me it seems to be the case that attackers may find a way to break out of a particular data processing instruction and execute arbitrary lisp code.

If you say, this can't be so, you may well be right...

<comment><USER14> As I understand it, unless you're using a Lisp with an reader macro that calls eval, or your code calls eval, _and_ you allow arbitrary input into that code while running vs. loading/compiling, it's just not going to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How did you generate those pretty graphs?

</comment><comment><USER7> When doing a speed benchmark,I consider the memory profile to be as relevant as the number of requests per second.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not use libuv right away?

<comment><USER17> See [https://github.com/orthecreedence/wookie](https://github.com/orthecreedence/wookie), a fast app server that uses libuv (very much in the same vein as Woo).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the greatest barriers to lisp for me is the lack of free IDEs and better tooling. Having cut my teeth in programming using VB, I generally find any language that doesn't come with a GUI builder and a half-decent IDE with intellisense out of the box to be dismal.(Scripting languages is the exception) I really hope someone will improve on the tooling of lisp. I strongly believe in the mantra that you should not do something that the computer the computer can do better, I believe a smart intellisense autocompletion is much better than having to figure out the intricacies of emacs/vim/<insert your favourite editor here>. I really like the syntax of lisp, it would be really sad if I can't be productive with it. :(

<comment><USER19> Yes, there are a lack of non-commercial IDEs for Lisp that are purpose-built and give a great "Out of the Box Experience".

However, don't dismiss SLIME due to emacs. It contains all the nice IDE functions - symbol completion, attaching (and editing!) long running processes, function tracing, stack tracing, find references etc.

Access to a REPL in a running system image is an amazing and productive experience.</comment></comment>


Data Breach Exposes Thousands of Job Seekers Citing Top Secret Government Work - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/thousands-of-job-applicants-citing-top-secret-us-govern-1798733354?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Gizmodo_twitter <comment><USER3> Setting permissions on s3 buckets is absurdly complicated.

Though it's no excuse, it's not surprising people leave it open, it's too hard to figure out how to lock it down.

Amazon needs to share some of the blame here and create a sane UI.

<comment><USER4> Well, I've used S3 on many projects since it pretty much came out. TBH, security is not much harder that in any &nix based systems.

Default settings are usually NO public read, and it actually takes more work to make stuff publicly readable on S3 than to just leave it as private.

I am thinking the biggest stuff up with this vendor is that they made the entire bucket or bucket key available publicly, which is a pretty dumb, and _deliberate_ thing.

If you wanted people to access resumes on an individual basis via a known web link, then just make the documents individually publicly readable, but don't make the entire bucket readable by default.

Better still, use Amazon's 'one time' or time based permissions to make sensitive files only available to a certain person or for a limited time.

Re: UI - Amazons new S3 console is spades better than their old one - <USER2> of auditing and analytics tools there too which can prevent silly mistakes like this.

<comment><USER5> > _Default settings are usually NO public read, and it actually takes more > work to make stuff publicly readable on S3 than to just leave it as > private._

While true, and a very sensible default, this misses one crucial point.

Setting _granular_ permissions for an S3 bucket is hideously difficult. Want to limit access to a whitelisted set of users or origins? Write a bucket policy. This is where the UI completely fails.

0: The policies can become awfully difficult to understand even for straightforward use cases.

1: You can have policies with sensible rule sets, but the S3 UI doesn't allow to pick-and-attach any of them.

2: The "permissions" tab has a very convenient and _extremely_ dangerous option as the top item: "allow access for any logged in user"

I'll let the last one sink in. It's not "any logged in user in MY organisation", it's really " _ANY_ logged in AWS user". Putting the bucket essentially world-readable by accident is far too easy.

<comment><USER4> Point taken. Granular policies ARE a royal PITA to try and build. I wish their policy editor had a nice easy ARN selector, and a 'policy building' GUI that would help you with syntax and grouping.

Most of my projects use either totally restricted buckets, or buckets with access to a particular IAM, which is basic, but works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well if Google Reviews are anything to go by, McDonalds is more pleasant than working at/with TigerSwan.

Also, it's amusing that they're blaming this mysterious third-party "TalentPen" whose search results are so scant that they have this very article as one of the top hits. Wouldn't TigerSwan be equally liable for vetting their vendors?

</comment><comment><USER7> AWS S3 storage, as mentioned previously in this thread, are a real treasure trove of leaks and breaches. I have been scanning them as part of a project and regularly have to reach out to businesses to tell them they're leaking information publicly.

You name it, I've probably come across it - lots are for hosting static content of websites which is pretty common, but there are also website and database backups, user uploaded content (from a sensitive 'dating' website), development and staging environments with sensitive internal information, a sea of CVs etc.

The hardest part is trying to responsibly disclose this stuff to the businesses - trying to find a security contact is often impossible, leaving it up to info@ or support@ emails.

And obviously AWS aren't the only cloud storage provider out there... there is more to be found with the other providers.

</comment><comment><USER8> S3 is awesome. You can find all sorts of interesting stuff by adding site:s3.amazonaws.com to a google search. You'd seriously be amazed (or not) at the stuff people leave in open S3 buckets.

</comment><comment><USER9> Time Warner Cable also had the same data breach. I wonder by passwordless did they mean someone was able to do a ls command on the bucket and was able to download as a public/anon user (direct s3 link)? If this was done I bet you someone probably didn't have time to implement secure link, just decided to make the bucket open.

<comment><USER10> > someone probably didn't have time to implement secure link, just decided to > make the bucket open.

That sounds more likely. AWS permissions are tricky, but not so tricky that it's easy to leave a bucket wide open like that. In my experience, they're much more likely to lock out someone who should be able to access them than to allow someone who shouldn't. Just bad practice to give up and allow anyone in.

<comment><USER9> Another possibility: someone was doing testing (and at thr stage too lazy), they made it public, and forgot about it even after they implemented authorization at the application level. Could have used trusted advisor...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Putting top secret anything on the Internet seems like the opposite of a good idea.

<comment><USER12> 4 million people have top secret clearance. what is and isn't a good idea given this state of affairs is ummm...

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/12...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/12/top- secret-clearance-holders-so-numerous-they-include- packerscraters/?utm_term=.583c7cee7e89)

<comment><USER11> Holy smuckers. Thanks for that link. I hope this mark everything secret mentality is not to get around FOIA...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you are a spook I wonder how you give references? And if you've done anything good you can't write it on your CV without breaking the law.

<comment><USER14> If you're getting another job in intel, you send the references over email on a secure network.

If you're leaving the intel community, chances are your references are really pertinent. All the "I can't say" responses will derail a lot of interviewers though.

<comment><USER15> >>> All the "I can't say" responses will derail a lot of interviewers though.

Not so sure about that.

The majority of interviews in the HN bubbles is hours of technical questions and quizzes, where the interviewers will not ask a single question about your resume.

Outside of this bubble, the more mature interviewers, who did hundreds and hundreds of interviewers, are not moved by a "This is confidential... I could talk about -other thing- instead".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> URI or GTFO. What use is "reporting" on the snake oil industry's own FUDmongering press releases? "Permissions are hard, let's go shopping!"

Let's see some independent analyses of this dataset. Start turning on the right lights and the roaches will scatter.</comment>


If Japan Can, Why Cant We? (1980) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.deming.org/2015/11/if-japan-can-why-cant-we-1980-nbc-special-report/ <comment><USER2> Quote: "Throughout "If Japan Can, Why Cant We?" executives and front line workers talk about how important it is to involve workers in improvement efforts."

That's it in a nutshell...incentive-driven continuous improvement...

"Thinking About Quality" by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, though written 20 years ago, is still very much worth a read...

The older one gets the more one becomes aware of the fact that "new" ideas are simply old ideas, re-labeled...

<comment><USER3> Even more, Toyota recently went back to it a bit by opening a plant where the work is done by people instead of machines. Got significant improvements in a short-time from worker innovation. Concept still works.</comment></comment>


When saying 'No' can payoff - <AUTHOR> https://www.gobankingrates.com/personal-finance/13-million-dollar-businesses-turned-down-shark-tank-deals/?utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_966575 <comment><USER2> You've got to have a real belief in your company to go on National TV and turn down a millionaires offer

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm designing a similar show, not so pleased to see that contestants might turn down initial funding.</comment>


Why Bother With Cucumber Testing? | Jack Kinsella - Rails Developer London - <AUTHOR> http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/09/26/why-bother-with-cucumber-testing.html <comment><USER2> As someone who enjoys writing cucumber tests, I think that point about using websteps are completely valid.

Points about how cucumber somehow adds another layer of testing etc, I just don't buy it and from my experience instead of doing request specs, which I will do if rest of the team is for that, cucumber is way-way better solution. However it is awesome what we can have multiple ways of doing things so we can argue which one is better. I would stick with cukes, it makes things better.

I also have to agree with point about organization for complex projects, however I did work on really complex projects and didn't feel too much pain, Ack finds things quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see how some of that criticism might be valid, but I was missing an alternative suggestion for integration testing frameworks</comment>


Demosaicing on Fujifilm X-Trans Sensors - <AUTHOR> http://www.public.asu.edu/~cdchapm2/2016/07/02/Generalizing-AHD-to-X-Trans/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. I've seen some other work done on gradient-aware demosaic using directional masks, and the devil appears to be in the details: it can reconstruct a lot of sharpness when images are aligned with masks, but it also tends to take images that aren't aligned with the masks and "forceably align" them -- e.g., circles get turned into polygons, etcetera.

Perhaps the additional green resolution on X-Trans sensors can help avoid this some. But I'd be interested to see how well this ends up doing on trickier images...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm looking forward to any improvements he can achieve. I think x-trans was overall a bad idea from Fuji.

Higher megapixel sensors have allowed the removal of the low pass filter in traditional Bayer sensors, without all the post-processing troubles caused by x-trans.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love my fuji. But x-trans processing is a real pain point, so this is cool. Case in point; google photos won't process any RAF files uploaded. Someday, I assume. But, not ideal for someone who shoots raw.

<comment><USER5> I have an X-100s. I really like the physical design of the camera. The fact that they did firmware updates that gave new features was also great.

However, I shoot RAW and x-trans seems to be an issue. I noticed quite a few of my photos have weird color issues. Objectively my old, cheap Nikon DLSR was producing better photos.

<comment><USER6> Adobe products are known to have bad X-Trans processing. There are tons of debates about this on Fuji forums. Other products handle X-Trans better like RawTherapee, Iridient and Capture One.

<comment><USER5> I usually use Darktable. RawTherapee, Lightroom and even the in camera processing seem to have color issues with certain photos. Maybe it is not xtrans but my old Nikon DSLR and my new d750 don't have these issues.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. Never heard about that. The typical complaints are about sharpening, especially foliage.

<comment><AUTHOR> I bet they're trading off detail for color accuracy. If only we knew how they made that tradeoff...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> someone is wasting a phd scholarship to solve a problem that only exist because people keep dumping money on a company that damages their own product by now releasing source or specs?

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, you're right and it's even worse than you say. After my brief literature review I'm starting to suspect that the entire problem of demosaicing is ill-posed in most of the ways it is studied (certainly including this little side project). Some of the survey papers I saw talk about this. The color image pipeline is basically ignored in all the analysis I've seen, and to the best of my knowledge the common assumptions are based on dubious heuristics.

On the other hand it works well enough...</comment></comment>


Hardware Security (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://scl.engr.uconn.edu/courses/ece4451/hs.php <comment><USER2> _Hardware security_ nowadays almost always means "security implemented in software that you aren't supposed to be able to tamper with".

<comment><USER3> What I learned recently is that, at least in the open source world:

1) there is a very tiny number of mcu that you can use without NDA, and thus there's little choice and you often have to trade off between features

2) having crypto in hardware reduces exportability and thus increases cost

For example, in making Solo (open source security key) [1], we were planning to use NRF or SAM L11 chips, but gave up because of power consumption or flash available. We ended up with STM32L4, and we had to go for L432 that doesn't have AES in hw because it's cheaper and easier to find than the L442 with AES.

Conor recently spoke about this at Shmoocon 2019: [2].

[1] [https://solokeys.com](https://solokeys.com)

[2] [https://youtu.be/fVgUwHr2RUU](https://youtu.be/fVgUwHr2RUU)

<comment><USER4> What was wrong with nRF52840?

Any plans on integrating things like GPG features (GPG/SSH key storage)?

<comment><USER3> NRF consumes too much for powering it via NFC.

GPG/SSH are in progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my hardware security course we were recreating state of the art cache side channel and rowhammer attacks (at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the final project was to reimplement an attack published by the VUSec group).

They don't seem to be quite prevalent here, I wonder what gives.

</comment><comment><USER6> No required reading for the following has been mentioned there, while everything else has. If anyone has anything interesting required reading in mind for the following 5 items, please contribute.

1) Application layer

2) Life cycle of an SGX enclave

3) Review session

4) Power side channel

5) Kleptography</comment>


Conquer: The Debit Card That Builds You Credit - <AUTHOR> http://tryconquer.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Build Credit With No Risk. If you have the funds, we extend the credit.

Every time you make a purchase, we check to see if you have the funds available. If you do, we extend the line of credit and immediately deduct the funds from your account. You build credit without ever going into debt. It's that simple.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not a bad idea - in fact, it's much better than a secured credit card.</comment>


JVM Language Summit Call for Participation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.headius.com/2009/07/jvm-language-summit-call-for.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The most interesting part:

"We also welcome non-JVM developers on similar technologies to attend or speak on their runtime, VM, or language of choice."

Anyone from the Arc community interested?

</comment><comment><USER2> Ooh... these are the kinds of things I do miss in the US. I'd love to go to this.</comment>


Did I Choose the Wrong Career? - <AUTHOR> https://thj.no/posts/2019/05/did-i-choose-the-wrong-career/ <comment><USER2> Programming can be a tough job. People are attracted by the pay and the great working conditions but the career is not for everyone. True you're not in the middle of a construction site with the sun shining in the middle of the summer but the constant pressure to produce will eat you up. There's a point where you just burn out if you're not careful.

Yes, if you are getting sick because of work then yes it's the wrong job for you.

What do you do now? Look at what you like and find a job that has many of the characteristics you like. You won't find the perfect job at the start but you can slowly evaluate the new job and move towards what you like. Volunteer if you can. Find a career coach to help you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The constant pressure to produce makes me feel like I'm a horse who has accidentally been hooked up to a milking machine, and they were actually looking for something with udders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope you can find rest in writing about it, like you're doing on your blog. What's the problem exactly when you say you're just staring at the screen, impossible to write a single line of code? Impostor syndrome, fear of not getting it perfect, not enough energy to even start a project, inability to concentrate and fiddle-around all day, defaitist thoughts about the uselessness of it all, or is the job simply too easy and unmotivating for you? With your background, maybe you can turn it around and find satisfaction in devoting your time to help out those who are addicted to their smartphone use, as a mental advisor or as an innovative app writer/designer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

I'm deliberately leaving the explanation blank, because I've learned from experience that such explanations are often just something you make up after the fact.

What I can tell you is that I consistently reach a point where I simply can't find the will power to continue. I can only find the will to do something else, to go somewhere else. The underlying reason for a feeling is always difficult to pinpoint.

My feelings when I'm in the situation are a mix of stress, anger and hopelessness. I want anything but to perform the task that has been assigned to me. I want to get the hell out of there.

Whenever I attempt to address the problem with the people around me, their proposed solutions are always very plain: Take a walk. Take a vacation. Get some rest. Don't worry so much.

To some extent, taking a very long break does resolve it, but I can't take 3-6 months off from work every year. I have considered working half-time, but this leads me to ask why I want to work half-time in the first place? Why do I want to work less?

Possible answers:

1\. I am doing something wrong.

2\. I'm a fundamentally broken person who can never hold a job.

Option 2 isn't exactly what you call a constructive or positive attitude, so I'm betting on option 1.

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Some kind of tension, stress or resistance builds up over time, I procrastinate more and more until nothing gets done, and then I have to shake things up somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are asking the answer is probably YES!</comment>


Foursquare Signs a Deal With Zagat - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/foursquare-inks-a-deal-with-zagat/?ref=technology <comment><USER2> Incredible article, good to see how far Foursquare has come.</comment>


China is weaponizing online distraction (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/10/01/china-is-weaponizing-online-distraction/ <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: The title of this article might be slightly biased against China. I have no stake or interest, for or against, in what the Chinese Government does or what the Chinese Government doesn't do. I have Chinese friends. They are good people.

So, what I'm going to say is not intended to relate to China, Chinese Government or otherwise, in any way.

I think this article is interesting, because it introduces (to me at least!), two new terms, "friction", and "flooding", (aka, "Weapons Of Mass Distraction" (I made that one up myself!)) as relate to Internet Censorship.

To quote the article:

 _" "Friction," or censorship through inconvenience, uses technology to make information more difficult to find by throttling or blocking websites, removing social media posts, or rearranging search results. Similarly, by "flooding," or censoring through distraction, governments use armies of people or bots to overwhelm social media platforms with posts that distract from current events. The idea behind both friction and flooding is that because Internet users are for the most part impatient, making certain information slightly easier to access and others slightly more difficult can have a big effect on what users read."_

So, "friction" and "flooding".

Two new words for your 2020 thesaurus/lexicon/urban slang dictionary...</comment>


A Review of Time Series Databases - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dataloop.io/top10-open-source-time-series-databases <comment><USER2> Dear HN, recently time series DBs appear to have become very popular on HN but I'm confused. What are they for?

I understand the idea for, say, physics experiments. Lots of parameters sampled thousands of times per second, gotta store that stuff somewhere. But this is HN, not an experimental physics subreddit, so I must be missing something.

What do people on HN who care about this stuff use time series databases for? Why are there 20+ competitors?

<comment><USER3> Google basically does all its monitoring through time series databases.

Basically the record response times, error rates, and internal health metrics from all kinds of services and service instances all as time series, and then define rules on top of these to define when to generate alerts.

Other things you typically want to record are all kinds of resource usage metrics, like disk usage, RAM usage, number of processes, network traffic and saturation etc.

<comment><USER4> Interesting to uncover data that's not _directly_ related to a requirement: get some search results. Of course it's humans sitting at the laptop, so time matters. But the other data you mention also has the nature of "the thing we care about" along with "time associated with the thing we care about."

I wonder what other extra-dimensional (totally made up term on the fly) data we might care about. Power per query. Temperature per query. Water consumed per query. Water consumed per current activity level of trending topics.

<comment><USER3> Money earned per... is usually a pretty big thing :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dataloop develops DalmatinerDB. Guess which database won first place.

<comment><USER6> it's developed by @heinz_gies from Project FiFo, they may pay him to do changes on it, but it wasn't started there and AFAIK heinz doesn't work there full time.

<comment><USER7> Mariano is correct, DalmatinerDB is build and maintained by Project-FiFo. Dataloop (the authors of the blog post) is currently the biggest user (as far as I know at least), using it in their SaaS.

They have however been excellent open source citizens and contributed back improvements, bug reports and suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> KDB+ is the number 1 time-series database, no question. Per-core, it's 10 times faster than any other time-series database. Seems like an odd omission.

[http://kparc.com/q4/readme.txt](http://kparc.com/q4/readme.txt)

<comment><USER9> As noted in the scope section along with some other omissions:

> Only free and open source time series databases and their features have been > compared. Therefore if someone asks "have you tried Kdb+ or Informix?" the > answer will be no. They are probably awesome though.

Article could have been titled "Review of the Top10 FOSS Time Series Databases" since that's what it is.

<comment><USER10> The 32-bit version is free.

I agree that any comparison skipping it is meaningless, it is the "standard" in this space, to the extent there is one.

<comment><USER11> > The 32-bit version is free.

Only for non-commercial use: [https://kx.com/2015/09/19/32-bit-kdb-for-non- commercial-use-...](https://kx.com/2015/09/19/32-bit-kdb-for-non-commercial- use-only/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It seems there is a never ending supply of time series databases being > written on top of Cassandra. Unless any of them are significantly better > than KairosDB I'm not going to change the top 10.

I really appreciate the work Brian Hawkins has done with KairosDB. We settled on KairosDB at work after having a bunch of trouble with InfluxDB. At the same time, it's very much stuck in the Cassandra 2.1 world* . There have been some significant advancements with Cassandra for this particular use case (new storage engine, TWCS) and KairosDB is missing out.

*Yes, it can be run on 2.2.x by enabling the now-disabled-by-default Thrift, but that feels like a last gasp.

<comment><USER13> I'm evaluating InfluxDB for work and was wondering what issues you ran into?

<comment><USER7> Blind guess, lack of clustering and a history of changing file formats so you loose your data every few month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I decided to pen a magnum opus of my own opinions

"magnum opus (noun) a large and important work of art, music, or literature, especially one regarded as the most important work of an artist or writer."

Considering that this review has a word count of 3708, describing it as a magnum opus (something I associate with a work that takes close to a lifetime to complete) rankles.

<comment><USER15> I only counted 3705 words. I might need to count them again, damn fingers.

Did you include the comments? I didn't myself, but thats sure to bump up the count. We should investigate what the cutoff limit is, maybe 10,000 words would qualify?

I'm struggling weather to classify the work as art or literature, maybe both? Its definitely a seminal piece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To be more precise, this is a review of more than 10 free and open source time series databases, wherein the author chooses 10 favourites, by some metrics.

<comment><USER17> What do you think is missing ?

Because those are probably the 10 most popular and well known.

<comment><USER18> Well, for one thing, this isn't even attempting an objective comparison. The article basically grabs whatever third party benchmark numbers are available and pretends all the metrics are comparable. In many cases, the external benchmarks are testing entirely different things, so it's meaningless to give those numbers in a "review" of all the options.

It's really just a "top ten list according to my arbitrary thoughts", which is fine. But it's not really a useful comparison at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Question:

Does it make sense to use a time-series database if you're not too sure that you can trust the "time" in the series?

For example, let's say you're logging user's locations on a jogging app and using the system's clock as the time record (I understand this may not be ideal). Someone could log a run 2 years from now, for example.

<comment> chaotic-good It is usually a good idea to discard late writes. It should be possible to write data with some time-stamp skew but if skew is too large data should be discarded as erroneous. It's totally depends on an application so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What is a good TDB for collecting data from home automation sensors and that can run on a little PC like a Raspberry?

<comment><USER17> InfluxDB is perfect for these use cases. It's a single Go binary with excellent performance and use of resources.

[http://www.aymerick.com/2015/10/07/influxdb-telegraf- grafana...](http://www.aymerick.com/2015/10/07/influxdb-telegraf-grafana- raspberry-pi.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For a similar comparison but that encompasses commercial databases as well see here: [http://www.timestored.com/time-series-data/column- oriented-d...](http://www.timestored.com/time-series-data/column-oriented- databases)

</comment><comment><USER22> What about BTrDB from Berkeley? [http://btrdb.io/](http://btrdb.io/)

<comment><USER23> It's in the spreadsheet. I've not tried it and there wasn't much info available at the time of writing the blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm on my phone and my eyes are not so good as it is.

Does he say what the architecture of the platform he was testing this on?

<comment><USER24> Never mind, I found it in the Gist...

[https://gist.github.com/sacreman/b77eb561270e19ca973dd505527...](https://gist.github.com/sacreman/b77eb561270e19ca973dd5055270fb28)

1 x DalmatinerBD server GCE n1-standard-16 (16 cpu, 60GB memory, 1 x 375G local SSD disk)

I would assume that is the same setup they used for all the other tests, though not clear about that yet

Anyone know the network bandwidth on these instance types?

<comment><USER23> Hi, I'm the original author. I think that GCE instance has 2Gb per core but I'd need to check. It wasn't bottlenecked on network bandwidth though.

The other benchmarks are linked in the spreadsheet to their respective details. It's not an absolute, direct, fair comparison. However, we wanted to start somewhere with information available right now and try to collect better results over time as the respective interested parties benchmarked and blogged about their databases.

I'd like to spend more time benchmarking every database in the spreadsheet but it feels like something the project owners should do themselves. I'd probably only get the setup wrong.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the clarification, good to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What specific features a time series database offer over mongo or redis?

<comment><USER10> Well one advantage compared to Mongo is they actually keep your data safe.

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't trust on all of them to do that reliably. If you look at a large group of database systems, some of them are going to have bugs or bad defaults as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox Upgrades Pro Plan to 1000 GB - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/plans

<comment> dj-wonk From [https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/08/introducing-more- powerful-d...](https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/08/introducing-more-powerful- dropbox-pro/)

> Already a Pro user? Dropbox will update automatically in the next couple > days. You don't have to do a thing.</comment>


Salman Khan: Let's Use Video To Reinvent Education (Must Watch) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sokanu.com/salman-khan-lets-use-video-to-reinvent-educat

<comment><USER2> "Let's Use Video To Reinvent Education "

That is exactly what I said should happen with Qwiki, in a comment I made on Quora recently - and people thought I was nuts.</comment>


What Young People Don't Know - <AUTHOR> http://betashop.com/post/28856491173/5-things-young-people-dont-know

<comment><USER2> I also agree with 2-5, but don't agree that specialists always get further than generalists. I'm very much a generalist -- within the fairly broad realm of infrastructure architecture, that is -- and I think that's served me very well. To understand the whole thing, whatever it is, is very valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Within your world you may be a generalist, but the OP is not a programmer and many if not most of the people he is talking about are not either. To them and most people you are very specialized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Specialists get farther than generalists." I think this is a statement of very dubious veracity.

<comment> B-Con I thought it was odd as well. I think that he meant that the guy who knows a subject very well is more likely to be advanced in responsibility/seniority quickly.

<comment><USER4> If I wanted to promote somebody to be the lead developer for a small project, I might be satisfied with someone who knew the code for that project very well. But if I wanted to promote someone beyond that level, I'd be looking for somebody who knew different parts of the company's products and how they worked together (e.g., the UI and the back-end), and who understood the needs of the customers to some degree -- someone who could see the "big picture".

<comment><USER5> He's talking about the "jack of all trades, master of none" type person.

Just because you are the absolute best at one thing does not mean you are incompetent in all other areas.

To take your example: of course you wouldn't want to promote someone who only knows the code of one project very well and of course you want to promote someone who understands how all the parts of the product work together. However, the person who knows how all the parts work together and is the absolute _best_ at shipping code, get a lot farther than the person who knows how they all work together, but doesn't execute any given function well enough to handle on his own

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think that any of those 5 things are particularly restricted to or more commonly found amongst young people.</comment>