Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@margotcodes/going-remote-why-remote-work-should-change-the-future-of-startup-culture-4803bc5a6bef#.jjzwqyuvs <comment><USER2> I've made a career out of remote work (10+ years working remotely), and I have to say this is a pretty poor article.

No, remote work is not for everyone, you need to know what you are doing at both ends or it'll not match your expectations.

No, it does not (necessarily) bring the best global talent, specially not if your motivation for remote is bringing down costs.

And no, you don't need to use any of the tools listed. Remote work has been done, and well, with nothing more than a VCS and email (both conspicuously absent from her list) for decades. Add to it any kind of real-time communication client and you're in business.

It seems to me "remote" or "remote first" have become buzzwords, yet another way for companies to appear fashionable. Witness the numerous companies that advertise non-existent remote positions, or that "will consider remote for the right person" (i.e. for no one).

Remote is not the latest fad, it's something we've been doing in this industry for at least two decades. Your company is not young and hip for doing it.

<comment><USER3> I agree. And I work remotely now. It seems the #1 requirement for remote work to work is ... mutual understanding. Otherwise you end up with communication gaps.

The case for VCS is interesting to me because I believe we could replace a number of complex tools in the stack with proper use and style on top of that.

Literally, we could do 90% of it all with just a VCS and _people paying attention to it_. You know: commit early, commit often, read commit messages, understand the code, run the tests. And so on and so forth...

<comment><USER4> Do either you @doozy know of a shared/multiparty merge tool? One thing I like to do is merge into a new clean branch rather than rebase, then merge that into trunk with zero changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I joined my startup 2 years ago on-site. After my wife and I had a baby it became very difficult to live in the bay area. Housing is obviously ridiculous there and I had to live an hour away from the office. I told my manager that we would be moving and I was interviewing for remote jobs. They ended up allowing me to work remotely, and I have been for almost two months now.

The whole transition has been much smoother than I could have ever imagined. My team relies on slack so I definitely feel just as connected to everyone. We do regular video calls on Google Hangouts, and even have a robot[1] that makes daily standup fun and convenient for everyone.

I feel like I am able to focus for longer periods of time being away from the office. There are no distractions to play ping pong and interruptions are fewer and farther between. I also have much more time since I'm not commuting ~2 hours a day. I have time to spend with my wife and 1-year-old and I have time to go to the gym. I feel much more well-rounded as a result and I feel like I'm a better father and husband, and a much better employee. Overall, I think my output has gone up and my productivity has increased, though I have no data to support it.

[1] [http://www.doublerobotics.com/](http://www.doublerobotics.com/)

<comment><USER6> Have you tried Slack's Screenhero integration? Being able to type

/hero @username

and start pair programming in seconds (with audio!) is a huge productivity increase.

<comment><USER7> Does this work in Linux ?

<comment><USER6> You still need to download the Screenhero client to work in conjunction with the Slack client. I don't think there's a Screenhero Linux client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I currently work remote for IBM Watson and I love it - I'm more productive, have more time to spend with my family, etc. My team and my direct manager are fantastic. I've worked remote before, and led remote teams with good results, but this has been my best experience yet.

However, my position is in peril due to management changes a few rungs up the ladder. While the previous guy in charge of Watson wanted the best people, the new one wants everyone on-site in about 10 cities. (Previously, folks were spread out across ~50 offices + remote workers like myself.)

I received a "temporary exception", and I don't honestly think they'll actually go through with it when that's up. But it's still a frustrating position to be in, and has caused me to start looking elsewhere. So far, I can't seem to find a combination of:

* Remote

* Comparable pay

* As much fun as my current job

I'm seriously contemplating just starting my own company again.

<comment><USER9> If you don't mind me asking, what is it like (going back to?) working for a large company after working for yourself.

<comment><USER8> There was a little bit of culture-shock, but honestly, it wasn't too bad. I had a few years at a startup in-between being self-employed, so it wasn't an instant switch, and my role at IBM provides a fair level of autonomy.

This is my first time at a big company (e.g. > 50 employees). IBM in particular is huge, almost inconceivably big.

It still surprises me how frequently I'm be asked for help/advice/whatever from people within IBM who I've never met before and who aren't on my team, or even in the Watson division. (This may be in part due to the fact that I have a more visible role than most.)

On the flip side of that, I frequently have no idea who to ask about a given issue. (Although this doesn't happen as often now as it used to.)

Nice points are that I don't have to worry about keeping up a pipeline of clients or having to be mindful of what's billable and what isn't.

It may be partially due to having more experience, but I find it a lot easier now to walk out of my office at the end of the day actually be done working. I might think about work a bit, but I rarely feel compelled to actually go and do work when I'm spending time with my family. When I was self-employed, there was always a nagging feeling that I should be working whenever I was doing anything else.

As an extension of the last point, paid vacation is awesome.

I also get to publish a lot more open source work now then I ever did before, although that obviously depends on your role.

On the down side, I'm supposed to get written permission from my manager for each open source project I want to contribute to. She always replies "yes" and usually quickly, but it still wastes time and feels silly. (I generally send the email, begin working on my change, and then wait for the "yes" before publishing it and sending a PR. That _usually_ works out well.)

Spending company money is also tricky. Placing an order from Adafruit is a convoluted process that can take several weeks. (To be fair, there is an internal shopping site that makes ordering more common things like a monitor less painful.)

Overall, though, I'm glad I did it. My time at IBM has been good and, assuming they'll keep me, I think I'll probably stick around for a while longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Several months ago I interviewed for a remote position with a startup based in NYC. The technical screening consisted of a project and of course a couple of phone interviews.

After I did well on all of that, I was flown up to NYC for a 'culture-fit' interview. Which I failed, apparently. As a mid-30s guy who was raised in the mid-west, I felt like I had very little in common with the 20-something urbanites with whom I was interviewing.

They didn't seem like bad people at all, and I didn't foresee any issues working with them (esp. remotely), but apparently I gave off a strong enough 'not-like-us' vibe to cause them to pass on a demonstrated technically-solid candidate (because if there truly is a shortage of good developers, this would be an incredibly silly thing to do).

<comment><USER11> This is definitely something that happens. It's valid, I believe, for the company to vet candidates for culture fit, but the go should not be hiring a team of "sames."

In a recent batch of interviews (four opportunities local, three remote), I was put through a specific culture fit step of the interview process at all but one company, and it was part of all remote hiring processes.

<comment><USER12> > It's valid, I believe, for the company to vet candidates for culture fit

I'm not sure what culture fit means. I have been passed over for culture fit and seen others passed over for culture fit and I have never seen it be because someone couldn't be productive with their peers. It seems, anecdotally, to just be based upon affinity, which seems stupid to me unless you're a lifestyle brand, like FitStar.

In the Army I learned culture can be taught. All of these groups who hire for culture fit seem like they want to hang out with other people like them. People who are nothing like me have been my best hires. I've indoctrinated them into our values, and only on rare occasions has that not worked out.

If culture fit isn't a "bro test" then why test at all? Why not just teach people your culture? Do companies expect people to come in off the street serendipitously sharing the same values? That smells to me like a leadership vacuum.

<comment><USER13> Navy (reserve) vet here - I definitely agree that culture can be taught but unfortunately you have to find someone willing to learn. And unfortunately, most software developers aren't of the military "situationally adaptive" mindset but rather the "I'm a hot commodity where the hell is the ping pong table" mindset.

It's far easier for most young companies with ping pong tables to hire developers that like ping pong than actually endeavor to build a company culture and attempt to instill those values into their hires.

<comment><USER12> We are remarkably malleable. Being "situationally adaptive" is universally human.

<comment><USER13> You're correct and I was mistaken to give the impression that it is a "military-only" sort of thing - far from it. That being said, the human tendency to optimize for laziness often overrides our adaptive capabilities and instead pushes for maximizing comfort. The military does tend to train against this mindset (to varying degrees of success) - yet they are far from the only (or even most successful) of that ilk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I spent the last 7 years working remotely. Never been a problem. The way I see it personally, is that I would pay to work at home. The money I save on transport, the time, the dinners, clothes, forced social activities. Not having to stand in the rain for half a year, late trains, queues, peoples annoying faces..... The list of positives = endless

<comment><USER15> As someone that also works remote, it's not all roses and daisies. Communication can be very hard at times without someone there to manage it, keep everyone in the loop, and make sure nobody is left out.

We go into the office once a week, and i've found that on those days, just being in the office lets me overhear conversations about things that I can offer a solution to, or having a few people in the same area shooting shit often leads to a conversation about work and about a problem someone is trying to solve and often a solution is offered.

The biggest concept is that it's hard to "split" conversations while working remote. Either everyone is involved in the conversation (via phone or video meeting), or it's one-on-one. Getting the organic "handful of people in a group, and one conversation kind of breaks off to talk about something, then re-joins the group where someone else needed to leave for a call" kind of thing just doesn't happen. And that's where I find the most benefit from being in an office.

<comment><USER16> > As someone that also works remote, it's not all roses and daisies.

I spent the past two years working remote, and at this point I don't think I would ever want to do it again. Something I don't think I've ever really seen mentioned about working from home is that it can be incredibly isolating and overall mentally unhealthy. The isolation, lack of separation of work and home environment (in the physical sense), and even weird hours caused me to become very depressed and unstable.

In my case, my company was still located in-town and I even had weekly lunch/beer meetings. I pushed myself to get out and socialize with my friends, co-workers, and girlfriend several times a week. I still don't quite know what it is about working in an office with other people does that wasn't being replicated, but there's something there for me.

As far as the physical environment goes, I spent enough time reading different folks strategies. I tried many different strategies as well. I tried having normal office hours and a normal (home) office. I tried just floating about the house, working wherever I felt like. I tried working from coffee shops, bars, parks, and so forth. I tried working in blocks of time, all at once, having an inverted sleep schedule. As mentioned, I even had an actual company office I could work from. Still, I came to have a certain feeling of disdain, of wanting to escape the office at the end of a day of work. The only problem was my office was my home. You can't run from that.

I will say the convenience of having a flexible schedule is amazing. Being able to run errands as needed, or just go to the beach for a couple hours on a Tuesday because "why not" is great. However I always felt a bit weird about things, because "normal" people are in an office that I'm somehow doing something weird or wrong by being out and about during non-traditional hours. And of course among your friends and family there's always a little gentle chiding about how "You don't really work/have a real job", in a semi-jealous but not actually hostile way.

Working from home can be great, and I would enjoy the flexibility to do it a day here and there as needed. What I cannot do is work from home permanently.

<comment><USER15> The isolation never bothered me. I have a few close friends, and a wonderful wife, and i tend to be "introverted" in the sense that it's really draining for me to be in a social setting for too long, so working from home has been perfect for all these years.

That being said, the "you work from home so you should be able to handle X" really gets to me. I actually have less flexibility than it sounds like you do, it was never explicitly said, but most of us work 9-ish to 5-ish monday- ish through friday-ish.

It was something that my wife and I needed to work out on our own, because she would expect me to be able to run out and pick up prescriptions during the week, or would ask me frequently to go to the store to grab something for dinner. And I'd feel like an ass for saying no, because on some level she is right, I do have the ability, and it is easier for me, but it still impacts my day a lot to interrupt my work to run to the store.

We have found a good medium now, but it was a common argument for a while.

<comment><USER17> Haven't worked remote, but I homeschooled myself through highschool; the easiest way to deal is that work time is for work and make sure everyone knows this.

Doctor appointments and such may be worth breaking this rule, but picking up prescriptions or even your kids from school (assuming they have a way home) are unnecessary interruptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've worked remotely for 3 years, for 2 different companies, and as with most things in life, there are positives and there are negatives.

One of the biggest negatives for a remote employee, can occur if the entire company isn't remote: You're left out.

Regardless of how much code you produce, how well you communicate on slack, how attentive you are to emails, or how perfect you are at attending all the meetings... Bonds form in the office. If you're interested in forming relationships, making connections, and nurturing the social side of your career, be cautious of remote positions.

Either work for a company that is 100% remote, or, be aware that you may face a situation in which you don't feel entirely connected with the rest of your coworkers.

<comment><USER19> I've worked remotely for nearly 20 years in various configurations (all team remote, team collocated and I was the lead and remote, some local and some remote, as lead and as a team member) and this is spot on. My current situation is one where it's actually harder to be remote than it was when we all worked for a giant company that was openly hostile to teleworkers (If you're not in the office everyday, you're part of the problem). Even though I'm in a smaller company and an environment that brags about its startup culture and flexibility.

In my current iteration, information does not flow naturally, but rather 1:1 and in-person along restricted paths, making it much harder to work remotely. So to build up a picture of what's going on, I connect with several other teleworkers and we try to compare notes on "what have you heard about X" and "who's working on y."

If the whole team is remote or acts like it (open communications, info flowing visibly, etc.) then remote working, remote bonding, remote team-building is natural and easy. I know; I've done it for years, building high-performance teams that see each other once or twice a year.

If you're the outlier and most everyone else is local, it takes a lot more effort, and even then can be very, very hard.

Some places are just easier to work for than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One frustrating thing I have found about companies willing to hire remotely is that many refuse to be your _first_ remote gig; i.e. they only hire people who already have years of experience working remote. I understand the hesitation, but if good people really are so hard to find it should be a hesitation that can't stand up in the face of being unable to get things done.

Then again, neither should resistance to remote developers in general or the myriad of other, more bullshit things that go on in sourcing talent. Makes me wonder how self-imposed the "talent shortage" is.

<comment><USER11> Hiring teams that are just "getting their feet wet" with remote workers are going to be more hesitant. When there is an in-company precedent for what remote work is like, I find them to be more open.

For me, making the transition from on-site to remote work was difficult. Like any job skill, it's something I had to be able to demonstrate proficiency and/or history with before I could land full-time, remote employment exactly where I wanted.

<comment><USER20> That creates a chicken-and-egg situation, though, since it is not a skill you can develop on your own. There are a set of skills (remote work, TDD, pair programming, Agile, etc.) that, almost by definition, you need to do professionally to become proficient at. If all the professional gigs expect you to _already_ be proficient, you never get there.

<comment><USER21> I never worked remotely but I don't think it's hard and I want to do it in near future. The way to do that is to find a company that is open for new ideas. Start working on full time office job and after month or two if your job position allows for that, ask for day or two in a week of remote work. This will allow you and the company to test that solution and check it it's working for both of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've worked partially remote for the past two years. I had one horrid stint fully remote where they thought remote == 24 hour work days.

There are pros and cons to remote. It depends on your team and their culture. Some teams need a whiteboard and planning sessions. Others can just do a screen share and work on a flow chart together. If your team and culture is capable of remote it's a really nice perk for employees.

The other thing I hear about is lack of social contact working remote. This was an issue for me before I developed some outside hobbies. But the remote work spawned the hobbies, because I had more time. Where as working on site I don't have any time for hobbies due to travel and preparation for the day. I really haven't maintained ties with my prior co workers. The one I still do meet frequently we worked together on a primarily remote job, 3 days a week. So you can still maintain good social contact over the days.

The only real reason I see for not remote is management and culture issues. If your superiors can derive your progress from a dash board, commits, tickets, etc. Then it's feasible. Where as if the only way to determine progress is one one one meetings with a white board, then remote won't work. This also speaks to the trust of the employees.

I also find I get so much more done at home. This goes back to the culture. In person offices are from what I've seen largely instant gratification. I.E. coming over knocking on your desk asking a question, or pulling you in for a meeting. This provides so many distractions pulling you away from work. Remote would be an email or chat message. If it was extremely urgent a phone call. It was almost asynchronous. As we were planning out software we would just amend design notes and update the flow diagram in jira.

Lastly is the peace of mind of comfort. One of the common things I did when working remote was sitting in a gazebo at my nearby park. I tethered off my phone for the day, and just listened to nature. Being camped up in an office staring at walls all day is not ideal. Getting out being able to walk around and clear your head can make the day so much easier.

I really want to get back to fully remote.

<comment><USER23> "I.E. coming over knocking on your desk asking a question, or pulling you in for a meeting."

I'm curious whether you find hipchat / slack to actually be less intrusive. In my experience, working from home can result in protracted text conversations causing me to stay less focused for longer periods of time. In the office, I can usually stop, take off the headphones, resolve their problem, refill my coffee and then get back to work in less time.

<comment><USER24> I "solved" this by running Slack on a second computer (even being on the same one with the same notification feed was no good). I occasionally look at it, but try to avoid doing so unless I'm at the start of a pomodoro period (because Slack is work, it gets a work period).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have been mostly working remote since 1998 because I live in the mountains in Central Arizona - 2.25 hours from the Phoenix Airport. I find this article wildly optimistic.

I literally give a 50% discount when I work remotely because I believe that in general I am about twice as valuable to my customers when I work on site.

I enjoy remote work, but I am honest with myself that physical presence when working with a team is more productive. That said, I save a lot of money working from home so my smaller consulting rate for remote work is viable.

Anyway, I enjoy my consulting business and don't plan on making any changes.

<comment><USER26> Regarding that 50% discount, do you also charge for travel expenses, in addition to the normal labor rate? If you had to fly to Los Angeles and stay for a week - who pays the travel and lodging?

<comment><USER25> Customer pays for airfare and lodging. I pick up incidental expenses like food and Uber rides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm an employer that allows near 100% remote work. Remote work comes with its own set of trade-offs that need to be managed. These are the trade-offs I see with my 10-employee company in India:

Pros:

a) I can hire experienced people from anywhere in India

b) My employees do not waste time in traffic.

c) I have fewer personality conflicts to deal with ... but this could just be a side effect of being really small (~10 employees)

d) Being in the services business with all my clients abroad, my employees develop better remote working skills

e) I save on office rent

Cons:

a) It is hard to hire junior people to fit into a remote-only team in India. The 0-3 year experience crowd in India prefer being part a group and have a collegiate culture. I do not blame them - I've seen the 'in office/onsite' culture work well for them. But it hurts me as a services business because I get better margins on more junior folk.

b) Many senior people do not want to join my company - it doesn't 'feel' busy, they would like to have better visibility into their direct reports, etc. This wasted so much time during the phone screens that I have had to list 'we are a distributed team' as a con on our careers page.

c) The lack of office space is a major downer for a lot of people who would like to bring their relatives and show off a fancy office with dressed up colleagues.

d) I have heard these genuine complaints often - "we do not really know our colleagues", "we do not get together often enough", etc. I sometimes worry that we may not end up being very cohesive.

e) Remote work in India is interpreted by some candidates as 'easy work'. And it is interpreted by many people in their social circle to mean 'no work'. E.g.: "I have this errand in the middle of a weekday. Come with me. You work from home anyway."

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been working remote for a number of years (both as an engineer and a manager) and it can be a challenge for everyone involved because the lack of norms around remote work.

We are taught early in our careers to show up early, leave late and look as if you are working hard. However, when it comes to remote work the look of working hard cannot be achieved so easily -- so instead of appearances you must focus on results above all else.

This mental shift takes time to achieve and is more easily said than done.

</comment><comment><USER29> If more startups allowed remote workers, would the salaries of developers fall in the bay area?

<comment><USER30> Possibly, if it were large enough scale to truly impact the supply of labor at a sufficiently lower price point to matter.

There are a variety of remote work arrangements: 1) local employees who have employers with liberal work-from-home policies (they're "remote" when they don't commute in), 2) employees who are always remote, but still in-state (located in the same state as the employer), 3) employees who are always remote but still domestic (located in the US), 4) employees who are always remote and located internationally.

The first two kinds of remote employee don't incur (much) additional cost to the employer. The third kind can incur non-trivial additional costs in the management of payroll (state income taxes, labor/unemployment fund requirements, etc.), especially if done at any scale. Larger companies can do this because they are already established in multiple states, but smaller ones tend to impose restrictions on where remote workers can live and even whether they're permitted to move to a new state and still remain employed. The last kind is a whole other ball of wax--it has the same tax and payroll management problems of the third kind, but additional complexity I'm sure.

Then there is the additional overhead of managing remote teams. Having experienced being an "individual contributor" and coordinating with project management to manage remote teams I can assure you this is not a trivial thing and involves its own costs.

So all these factors influence how much lower the salaries have to dip before they are worth it. Personally, I doubt remote work will impact salaries in this area much anytime soon.

<comment> jon-wood The last two in my experience are handled by treating the remote employees as effectively contractors. They'll incorporate as an independent company, and then bill themselves out for whatever salary they're on, taking on responsibility for their own taxes and other requirements.

<comment><USER30> For US workers that may very well run afoul of labor and tax laws (and in fact almost certainly does). For foreign ones it depends on their laws.

<comment> jon-wood Is that actually the case? As far as I'm aware in the UK at least its not that you're outright forbidden to work as a contractor under conditions that would otherwise be considered employment, you just have to pay tax on that basis rather than pretending you're really an independent company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Working remotely to me is not as much as work in office vs. work at home but being more accountable for you work and, as a result, being more productive.

The notion of working remotely forces us to rethink how we measure productivity and I feel the most push back comes from people who just realized they have little or nothing to contribute in this new environment and become fearful for their position.

To me, it's completely in line with the new economy where just having one skill is not enough anymore. If you want to be good at something, you need to constantly be entering new areas in order to bring enough value for companies to provide you a paycheck. For a very long time, just showing up to your job was good enough and I think it's a great thing this mentality has started to shift.

</comment><comment><USER32> With startups it's quite difficult - remote law, pay and equity. Law for contracts and equity in different countries vary. Buying power is inconsistent. Stock options in particular are strongly biased against holders with lower pay, since they will have to take greater risk to buy their stake at cost of many more years worth of salary. You got to make sure so many things add up in multiple places, otherwise it's just a matter of common sense for remote workers to eventually see themselves at disadvantage and act on it.

<comment><USER33> This may be the case, but I'd guess the vast majority of software work is salary only. Having remote workers working as self-employed contractors should actually make the paperwork a lot easier for the company.

<comment><USER34> Unfortunately in some legal jurisdictions (e.g. the USA) this would not be allowed. You can't simply declare an employee to be self-employed and compensate them by means of invoices/1099 filings. This arrangement is only allowed if, among other things, the employee performs work for a number (greater than 1) of clients.

<comment><USER20> > This arrangement is only allowed if, among other things, the employee > performs work for a number (greater than 1) of clients.

It's actually about capability, not actual number if clients; a contractor does not suddenly become an employee just because it doesn't have a second client at the moment. That said, you are right that legally hiring contractors is not nearly as easy as some people think it is.

<comment><USER34> You are correct, and I did not state that a contractor needs to perform work for several clients at the same time.

Conversely however, a contractor that has for some significant time, since leaving their previous employment only had one client (which is the parent scenario) is unlikely to be viewed by US labor law as not an employee.

There are other conditions besides this one: for example the contractor gets to set their own schedule and does not take detailed instructions on their tasks from the client. Again, hard to square this with the idea that you can just wave a wand and make what would have been an employee a contractor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We hire mostly remote workers at both of my companies. There are some challenges but if you build to make it work, it also provides a lot of advantages.

</comment><comment><USER36> As an iOS engineer looking for a remote role, I can tell you it's extremely competitive to land one.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've worked with several companies that have either tried remote or actively pursuing remote working and my general conclusion is that it's not for everyone. Managers who don't understand the nuances of remote work will struggle hard.

</comment><comment><USER38> The most important part of an early stage company is figuring out what the product is. This should usually be a deeply collaborative process that (IMO) doesn't lend well to being 100 percent remote.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's becoming more and more likely that my next job will be remote.

First, let me qualify: I love my current job, and I don't want to leave it. I have no immediate plans to send my resume around to companies looking for remote employees. And when I do decide to go remote, I'll attempt to convince my boss to let me be a remote employee of this company before I start looking elsewhere (this is feasible: we have other remote employees, including technical ones, I have VPN access, and I do 99% of my work over ssh to servers located in a datacenter somewhere).

As for why this is coming up, the short version is that I'm transgender, I'm a Texan, and the Texas state legislature has been promising up and down that next spring they're going to ram through a transphobic bathroom bill. If they make good on that promise, I will have no choice but to either leave the state or kill myself, and I want to live. So I'll likely end up having to find work elsewhere next spring, unless I can convince my employer to let me go remote here.

I've lived in my hometown my entire life. I'm not sure where I want to move yet, and I'm not looking forward to travelling for interviews. In order to interview for a non-remote job in another state, I'll have to burn every ounce of PTO I have, plus I'd have to fly in order to interview, which is something I'd rather avoid because the TSA is notoriously hostile to trans people (they've been known to detain, abuse, and otherwise treat as criminals passengers who have both breasts and a penis, as their scanners flag us). I'd also be in a position of not really be able to choose where I move to. I have limited PTO and I'd have a pressing need to get out of the state ASAP. I can't afford to travel somewhere for an interview and then turn down an offer if I get one. So my only option will be to apply at as many companies in as many cities as I can (limited to cities in blue states, because burn me once...) and then take the first offer I get regardless of where it is.

But all that changes if I seek remote work instead. First off, interviewing will be less painful: I might be able to do phone interviews at lunch to avoid burning PTO, and even if I did have to take some time off, it might just be an hour or two in the morning instead of having to burn an entire day. Second, if I seek remote work, I can secure a job that won't require I stay in Texas _first_ and _then_ figure out where I want to move to. Hell, if my remote job pays enough to afford large amounts of travel and lodging costs, I could even try out different cities. I could take my laptop, spend a week in one city, and work out of my hotel room. A week or two later, I could repeat the process with a different city, and so on until I make a decision. Hell, aside from trying out different candidate cities, I could also use it as an excuse to visit my relatives who are scattered all over the country.

</comment><comment><USER40> Remote work is plan B. I don't do it unless I really have to. The reason is pretty simple, it sucks most of the times and is sub-optimal for most of the other case.

<comment><USER41> Could you share some experiences for the reasons you feel remote work is sub- optimal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> and everyone set your timezone on your computer and phone to UTC 24. You now have a standard 0-23 based incrementing integer to know what hour of the day it is globally. Force everyone to do this and get rid of the notion of my time or your time and when an integer means daylight or nighttime. It's abritrary that 23 means 11pm and nighttime. It doesn't. It just means 23.

<comment><USER43> Ok, now it's 23. It's 23 everywhere. You still have to know in what part of the world 23 means nighttime and what part means dinner time and what part means mid morning.</comment></comment>


The merger of Dell and EMC stems from the rise of cloud computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21673523-clouded-marriage-merger-dell-and-emc-more-proof-it-industry-shifting <comment><USER2> Although this merger seems to be mostly about infrastructure, I wonder how it will impact applications groups (documentum, captiva, etc) within the organization - there doesn't really seem to be a well defined place for them

(disclosure - I've spent most of my career competing with documentum, but I'm not anymore - I'm genuinely interested to see where they end up)

<comment><USER3> I'd say they are going to find it very difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The next step... is to merge the different components by using basic computers and have software turn it into servers, storage devices or routers as needed."

This statement is rather enticing because I have been executing this exact process for years using one of the free, open source kernel/userland options available for download. The "OS" is kept small and runs entirely in RAM. Works well enough for my purposes.

It is also interesting to juxtapose this statement against the usual negative comments on HN anytime the discussion turns to building home routers using "basic computers".

But maybe the meaning of "basic computers" by the journalist here is not what I think it is.

<comment><USER5> In this context, "basic computers" means Commodity/Off The Shelf. Instead of buying some high-end "enterprise" server from Sun / HP / Dell, using a regular cheap (enough) box and lots of them. This started with servers, but you now see standard x86 boxes being turned into high-speed packet processors ("routers") instead of paying someone like Cisco $15k for a switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well it was nice knowing all you Dell employees!

They tried this before with Ionix (ugh) and it was an unmitigated disaster. At the same time they bought Spring, and had absolutely no idea what to do with it, so they spun it off. Anyone who says that Joe Tucci has a good track record of acquiring companies and letting them go about their business doesn't know what they are talking about.

<comment><USER6> Tucci is being acquired, not acquiring Dell. Maybe your view still stands despite that - I don't have any views on Tucci personally (I know nothing about his track record).

<comment><USER7> That depends. I have seen a some acquisitions where the CEO of public company wants to go private and delist and a lot smaller firm buys him out using debt. Not on such scale though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not sure i get the cloud play here, are they trying to cater to people building their own private clouds, or are they planning to start from scratch and build an AWS competitor ?

Either plan seems like a poor one for 67B.

<comment><USER5> The former: private cloud all from one shop. Don't forget that Cloud Foundry is sitting right there next to them ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yet another cloud giant. The competition is over that direction. However, this is more to the Capex side. IBM moves to the services, Google and MS, as well. We will see how it will become.</comment>


Meteor Devshop: collaborative IDEs, hackathon wins and a preview of Meteor UI - <AUTHOR> http://meteor.com/blog/2013/05/06/meteor-devshop-3-3-collaborative-ides-2-hackathon-winners-a-preview-of-meteor-ui

<comment><USER2> I love Meteor and its ever-growing community! I went to a Meteor Show and Tell fairly recently and one of the core devs and I live coded a feature onto one of my meteor projects (<http://mypast.es>).

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of Meteor Components; looking forward to what comes out of this.

The forms work referred to: <http://forms.meteor.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> They get funding as a startup, right? What's their business model?

<comment><USER5> See link and discussion at <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4290797></comment></comment>


Competitive Programming Curriculum - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AhmadElsagheer/Competitive-programming-library/tree/master/curriculum <comment><USER2> "An acm day is a day at which you do nothing but pracitce, typically spending 16 hours in practice and sleeping/eating/doing other stuff in 8 hours. For sure, this is not reasonable for our daily lives, but we need to define such a day as it is suitable for feeling progressive."

I don't get it. If it is agreed upon that this acm day is not reasonable or practical, why do we still need to define it and why is it 'suitable for feeling progressive' ?

<comment><USER3> I was curious too, so I took a closer look.

The beginner/"pupil" curriculum is 28 "days", or 448 study-hours.

Conveniently for comparison, a college course is generally 15-16 weeks long. A 4-credit course would be 4×16 hours classroom hours, so a 4-credit course with 3 study hours per classroom hour would be 12×16 hours.

So the beginner curriculum is equivalent to two and a half of the hardest 4-credit courses in your degree program.

The intermediate/"specialist" curriculum is 37 "days".

I would imagine the "acm day" is both to not scare away the potential student and to actually make designing curricula of that magnitude feasible. (I used to write K-12 curricula professionally, and it's no small task.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Competitive coding competitions are useful because they force you to exercise some valuable real-world skills: shipping technical solutions on a schedule while prioritising problems of unknown size in order of your own team's abilities.

Under the clock, you push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of and usually learn something about algorithms. This sounds a lot like startups.

<comment><USER5> > shipping technical solutions on a schedule I strongly disagree. Competitive > programming (CP) simply requires you to solve, more often than not, > mathematical problems and puzzles. The main focus is on getting the solution > as quickly as possible with no regard for the code quality or maintenance.

<comment><USER6> > The main focus is on getting the solution as quickly as possible with no > regard for the code quality or maintenance.

That sounds like a startup to me.

<comment><USER7> You face the same problems though. Bad codes are hard to debug and a simple mistake can cause you big time penalty. Some solutions get too complex to implement in time if you write bad codes.

So no, it doesn't promote writing bad codes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious; what's the point of competitive programming? It strikes me as opposite to our actual goal of programming in collaboration/the metrics applied do not seem to further the general quality of our work and output.

<comment><USER9> It provides a great way to explore different areas of math and cs.

<comment><USER8> Which is why I enjoy the questions, but not the competitive mindset surrounding it. It's like casual cycling vs racing.

<comment><USER10> _> It's like casual cycling vs racing._

If you're offering up that analogy yourself, I guess I don't understand why you're asking, _" what's the point of competitive programming?"_

The point of " _competitive _anything_ "_ is The Competition itself. What's the point of competition running?!? Shouldn't running be a utilitarian function of escaping an angry lion in the African savanna? Therefore, what's the point of Usain Bolt competing in sprints?!? It's the competition. Same reasons for competitions in spelling (spelling bees), cooking (Iron Chef), etc. Humans just like to compete.

You don't have to enjoy those competitions to understand why other people participate in them.

<comment><USER8> Good conclusion. Yeah, I don't think I understand competition as a whole, and this is just another facet of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone here explain why is competitive coding used so much in the hiring process. I think while basic things like asymptotic complexity or binary search are sometimes used in real world, I am still to see a problem which uses advanced competitive coding knowledge. Why base so much on a test that is almost surely never used. I am generally good at competitive coding, and I think I will be on the gaining side once I graduate, but still.

<comment><USER12> Mainly because us interviewers tend towards the sadism end of the spectrum /s

Personally I use it to determine how a candidate approaches a problem. Most of these types of questions have an obvious solution that has a terrible runtime, and then have several optimisation layers on top of that.

I want to see:

* can the candidate reason about a complex problem that has multiple steps.

* are they able to offer a basic solution in pseudo-code (the dreaded "whiteboard" section).

* can they analyse their own solution, for example expected runtime, optimisations, etc (also how they handle criticism)

* how would they go about testing their solution - that is, what test cases would they use to verify their solution is correct (along with this, what error checking would they do)

There are no 'right' answers to these questions - it's about the process.

> I am still to see a problem which uses advanced competitive coding knowledge

In my work I've found it's not about applying a clever hack: its about recognising patterns and learning which algorithm/data-structure is appropriate, and how to apply it effectively. Just like in a competition.

<comment><USER11> > There are no 'right' answers to these questions - it's about the process.

Isn't this the whole point of this. The answer is obviously correct or not. Yes, there may be more than one correct, but saying "there are no 'right' answers" seems plain wrong in this situation to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do I need to buy the Competitive Programming books if I want to participate? Most of the resources seem to be from them.

</comment><comment><USER14> sometimes, you just gotta prove it.

<comment><USER15> other times, you get hired. :D</comment></comment>


Douglas Rushkoff leaves Facebook. - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/nZUUDQO

<comment><AUTHOR> "Yes, I'm leaving Facebook myself - largely because the values and practices of the company running this website are just too inconsistent with those I've been espousing in my books, particularly Present Shock. Companies can misrepresent you based on your "likes", showing you in ads for things you may not even know about.

It feels inappropriate for me to be soliciting likes - and your vulnerability - particularly when I'm so busy arguing for people to maintain agency and authority over their digital selves. So I'm no longer going to use Facebook.

I have some readers who very much want to maintain a page for a Rushkoff community, and I am not going to stop them (any more than I'd stop a group creating an anti-Rushkoff community) - but please, proceed on Facebook at your own risk, and with knowledge that you are not in command of how your name and likeness are used here (much less the information collected about you).

I really do appreciate your willingness to find out about what I'm doing, and encourage you to visit my website or subscribe to my rss feed."</comment>


My weekend project - HackerDNS - <AUTHOR> http://hackerdns.com/

<comment><USER2> Would be nice to know a little bit more without having to dig into the Code. Update the readme perhaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll update readme. But, basically, its a DNS server written in node.js and the hackerdns.com page is an ugly UI for it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but I had to take a look at the Code / register to see what this project is about :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note that its pretty raw right now... any suggestions are welcome!</comment>


Skype integration for Slack now available for preview - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.skype.com/2016/01/14/skype-integration-for-slack-now-available-for-preview/ <comment><USER2> So the most comfortable way of using Skype is now through a third-party integration into a somewhat competing product?

</comment><comment><USER3> Good, but still waiting for ChromeOS integration.</comment>


The IP Bill: A Letter to My MP - <AUTHOR> https://mocko.org.uk/b/2016/03/12/ip-bill-a-letter-to-my-mp/ <comment><USER2> Any suggestions of a good base country? My company is registered in London but if this goes through I can see the argument for changing that.

<comment><USER3> Yep I'm registered in the UK as well. I'm not entirely sure how it will affect us. We have around 2000 users. Nothing out of the ordinary stored or any messaging service.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Search engine to find the best online courses on the web - <AUTHOR> https://coursesity.com <comment><AUTHOR> Coursesity is a platform to discover the best online courses & tutorials on the internet. Find the best online courses across hundreds of subjects including programming, design, marketing, business & more. Publish courses to reach to thousands of learners.</comment>


A hospital stay and MLB blackouts led me to RTL-SDR radio - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/hospital-stay-and-mlb-blackouts-led-me-rtl-sdr-radio <comment><USER2> nice work!

RTL-SDR is pretty cool, I highly recommend that everyone get one.</comment>


Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3azjp5/silicon-valley-has-a-caste-discrimination-problem <comment><USER2> I genuinely had no idea and surprised that caste discrimination is a thing in silicon valley companies, have readers here experienced this? I would have imagined that people got better things to occupy their minds with when there's work to be done.

<comment><USER3> I actually can't say I'm surprised. I've talked to a number of African businessmen who've spent time traveling and working in India on business, and they report that the discrimination and bigotry they faced there is a real cause for concern. One of the weird things about racism is that it's not just former colonial powers/white people discriminating against BIPOC, but also a vast complicated web of xenophobia that some POC exhibit towards other POC. There is a historically discriminated-against ethnic group in Afghanistan who have been persecuted by the Tajik and Pashtun majority, because they look Mongolian/Central Asian and are not Sunni [1].

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

I have personally seen discrimination in Pakistan, by the ruling elite class in the Islamabad/Lahore area, against darker skinned persons of different ethnic groups whose home area is in Balochistan.

<comment><USER4> I think it's good to be reminded that "POC" is a very coarsely-defined term that comprises a bunch of different groups, some of whom can be racist against other POC groups. Racism, even of the systematic kind, is not limited to white people oppressing non-white people.

It just goes to show you that people like having power over other people, and they'll find any excuse possible to turn some group into the "other" so they can feel justified in oppressing them. In the case of the Indian caste system, race isn't required for this. In Afghanistan, as you point out, it can have a big religious component (though race is part of it too).

It _is_ interesting to note that systematic racism against white people doesn't seem that common, at least in places I've visited (mostly Asia), where white people are in the minority. Discrimination there seems to be more xenophobia-based than race-based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the shocking thing is that even though Dalits are just 1% of the Indian population in the U.S. that other Indians still seek them out as victims here.

One detail I'd lean on is that South Asians are not just "engineers and coders" but in many companies play a big role in management. This is in contrast to East Asians which face more of a "bamboo ceiling". (e.g. a black or white person who goes to Harvard has a golden ticket; an east asian has a ticket to get into medical school)

<comment><USER6> In what scenario would anyone get to skip medical school? Or are you saying they can't get a job with a Harvard degree? Or maybe they don't get promoted?

<comment><USER5> I am saying that East Asians get funneled into detail-oriented jobs that are about learning highly complex skills that are well paid.

Other people who go to Harvard can get into bullshit-oriented jobs that outpay the jobs East Asian Harvard grads get by more than East Asian Harvard jobs outpay the average American.

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

For instance,

"As of 2015, less than 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Asian, although they comprise 5.6% of the total United States population, and about 30% of the graduates in the top 20 MBA programs in the last 20 years."

<comment><USER6> Thanks for clarifying,that sucks! Society should really get rid of this had practice where individuals are always seen through a "race" lens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would people be expected to leave their bias at home when they move? Born, raised and still living in silicon valley and can easily say there are biases here the same as everywhere, yet can seem more magnified by being in a small pond with too many others and people cutting necks to get ahead to nowhere.

</comment><comment><USER8> As with any form of discrimination, the individuals who subscribe to such a worldview are just shallow. They don't have an appreciation for the complexity and history of each human life.

</comment><comment><USER9> how hard would it be for a dalit to just lie? "I'm from X upper caste" , genuinely curious. Not that they have to but could they? Is there some cultural aspects that separate people of different castes that could be used to identify which caste a person is from?

<comment><USER3> There absolutely are, I'm no expert on it, but I imagine it would also be very stressful for the person creating a fabricated family identity. Imagine if you faked a thick Australian accent to get a job and then had to keep that up for years while at work, M-F. Not that it's accent based but the same degree of difficulty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has been a big problem in Silicon Valley. My first-hand experience has been in some of the older, "blue-chip" tech and networking companies like Cisco, Aruba, Juniper, etc.

I'm Indian American in my 30s -- one of the rare elusive Bay Area natives -- my parents have been in the states since the 1970s.

Both Engineering and Management in the companies I've worked at have been mostly South Asian Indians who have immigrated from India, not born here.

Management's modus operandi has typically been to only hire other Indians who are here on H1B visas or other work visas (or their Indian friends). Why? Well, the folks who are here on visas who have eventually settled down, taken out a million dollar mortgage, and enrolled their [Indian American-born] kids in local schools are essentially hostages -- captive workers who have learned not to speak up or stir the boat and to never protest for fear of punishment. They've rightfully tried to put down roots and they don't want to risk losing them.

I've witnessed hiring processes essentially being a good old boys club, tied to all forms of discrimination based on gender, race, caste, religion, and language. In my personal career, I've essentially been stonewalled and politicked and harassed because I'm not "Indian" enough -- I'm "American" after all. Meetings where managers joked that they should hire another Kannada-speaker, or meetings that were in Hindi only despite non-Indians being in the room.

Typically in all-Indian teams here in the Bay Area, I've been the only one to speak up and to be the lone voice of dissent. No matter how many facts or data or research you bring up, if you're the only one dissenting, you're looked at as crazy; management squashes your voice and ultimately makes major short and long-term mistakes because everyone else was afraid to tell the emperor [raja?] that he has no clothes.

I've witnessed tens of millions of dollars wasted in R&D and at least $100m in lost sales because our Indian management chain has been an echo chamber of "yes men" and friends and "good old boys" who never hold each other accountable and bide their time for their RSUs to vest.

And what's funny is that the only teams I've actually been able to get meaningful work done has been with "minority" teams, led by white American or European managers, who themselves face an uphill political battle against the Indian teams.

Lastly, the other fight I've gotten in trouble with has been advocating for women engineers. I've witnessed so many senior, experienced women engineers be given dead-end projects or grunt-work, versus new male hires straight out of school getting the best projects (for which they are under-qualified for). Repeatedly. I've brought it up to management and as expected, nothing changes.

With 10+ years of experience, every team I've worked with that had an Indian manager has essentially thrown my work in the trash, reprimanded me, put me up for performance issues, and/or eventually laid me off.

It's been a nightmare. I'm tired. Exhausted. Whenever I think of all the time I've wasted because of the inane politics, it brings me to tears. This is most certainly not now my parents raised me, nor how they adopted and integrated themselves into the American Dream. I am constantly ashamed that the caste system, racism, and sexism in the Indian demographics of tech are so alive and well in the New World, where they should have been shed and discarded so long ago.

P.S. Throwaway since my real account has my real real name and I'm currently knee-deep in a job search. Wish me luck!

<comment><USER11> One weird thing I noticed at a particular FAANG was that there were many teams that were either overwhelmingly Indian or Chinese. It seemed very unlikely that these could be random, as they were minorities. I made sure to avoid any team like that. Although to be fair it also happens with white people, but at least they are the majority so it seems more likely to occur randomly. I've even overheard certain teams having technical discussions in other languages beside English, which seemed weird because if I was in the team it would make me feel very uncomfortable or excluded.</comment></comment>


Can I download a video of the YC Startup School 2012 anywhere?  - <AUTHOR>

Is there a legal torrent or the like? I missed the live stream unfortunately! <comment><USER2> It should be up on <http://www.justin.tv/startupschool> sometime in the next few days.

<comment><USER3> Was it live streamed via justin.tv? I ask because I thought it automatically archived what was streamed as soon as the broadcaster goes offline.

<comment><USER4> I checked, it wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like they tell here [http://www.quora.com/Startup-School/Where-can-I-find- videos-...](http://www.quora.com/Startup-School/Where-can-I-find-videos-of- the-talks-at-Startup-School-2012) It will be in about a few days.

In the meanwhile, here a recap: [http://nowaternomoon.com/post/34062996874/my- key-takeaways-f...](http://nowaternomoon.com/post/34062996874/my-key- takeaways-from-y-combinators-startup-school)

</comment><comment><USER6> all "Startup School" videos from the past: <http://lanyrd.com/series/startup- school/>

for example:

"Startup School 2011" : <http://lanyrd.com/2011/startup-school/coverage/>

"Startup School 2010" : <http://lanyrd.com/2010/startup-school/coverage/></comment>


Goop's controversial health claims are coming to new Netflix show - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-05/gwyneth-paltrows-goop-wellness-company-to-get-netflix-show/10780946 <comment><USER2> You don't need to show an ad in your tv shows if the whole show is an ad. I'll bet Goop pays Netflix to show this. I hope this is not where Netflix is headed. Netflix has a widely disliked feature of showing previews of shows without giving users the ability of pausing or stopping the preview. Are they going to force everyone to see a preview of this Goop show? Is this how they are going to start showing ads?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I want to get on my moral high-horse and question why Netflix would give a platform to this... snake oil, but I don't know if that's just because my expectations of Netflix's integrity are / were set too high (probably because they were disrupting industries that sorely needed it, so I assumed a higher calling... no, doesn't entirely make sense).

Netflix appears to be aiming to profit off a company profiting from its consumers' gullibility, and in doing so increasing the reach of said company in finding more gullible consumers.

I hope it's a case of giving them enough rope to hang themselves (or giving them enough jade eggs to give themselves yeast infections), but I think it's purely business - attracting a previously un-tapped or under-served consumer- base.</comment>


Netflix: Use Less Chatty Protocols In The Cloud - Plus 26 Fixes - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/12/20/netflix-use-less-chatty-protocols-in-the-cloud-plus-26-fixes.html

<comment> brown9-2 Discussion on the original article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004998></comment>


Ask HN: Tools that can notify us when our REST API call fails - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I have just observed that my production REST API calls are failing (timeout or error status codes) even though the server itself is running. I am not sure since when. As I have very limited user base, no one reported the issue.
I am looking for tools that test our REST API calls continuously and report to us if those calls start failing. Also, are there any other solutions such that the above scenario does not happen again?
Edit: I will/can debug what the issue here is. I am looking for specific simple tools/products that can take my GET API request, call it every n minutes, and notify me if the api request fails. <comment><USER2> Runscope ([https://www.runscope.com/](https://www.runscope.com/)) is a service that does this. The founder, John Sheehan, was an early Twilio employee and he lives and breathes developer APIs.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a lot of possibilities as to why it's failing. For debugging error codes, it is easy - you can attach something to your error handling code, or in some frameworks you can just install a module/gem/etc that sends your error data off to a service like NewRelic or Opbeat (there's tons of these providers). Using these kinds of things you can understand not just the stack traces of errors but sometimes also the data the user submitted. You can also set up your own infrastructure that does the same, of course.

For timeouts, it may be tougher to do. If you use some kind of reverse proxy to spread the load to instances of your API, then this might be a nice place to start investigating your problems, and there is where you're going to want some tooling. If you're using Node.js, it could be possible the code for a specific endpoint does not send a response (maybe only under certain circumstances) - so you will need to debug that particular aspect of it and ensure that a response is sent, otherwise timeouts will happen.

As for actually sending test requests to your API, the difficultly with this method is that if, for example, you're posting a new user and your tool posts once every 5 mins, then you will have 12 garbage users after an hour. Not to mention that you will need to write a test for each error possibility as well, since it could be that a validation error is causing the timeout. So for this it probably makes sense to write a test suite, and include a test for each of the possible scenarios, or paths through your code.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using Node.js express. I am not worried about what the actual error is. I will figure out if the tool just tells me that the REST API call is failing.

Regarding POSTing a new user every 5 mins, I will not test such an API call. I will test a simple GET call which does not need any authentication.

So, I am looking for a simple tool that takes my GET API request, calls it every n minutes, and notifies me if the api request fails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For something simple you could just catch the error and write to your logs. If you're using something like Papertrail you can setup filters to watch for and alert you of specific events like API failure. It can notify you via email, Slack or other things. Then you can simply login to papertrail and review the logs, hopefully with messaging that includes why it failed so you can investigate.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can use Pingdom[1] to make regular requests over a period of time and have it alert you whenever it fails. I would also suggest an error reporting tool such as Sentry[2] to keep track of common errors and why a request might have failed.

[1] [https://www.pingdom.com/](https://www.pingdom.com/)

[2] [https://sentry.io/](https://sentry.io/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Assertible ([https://assertible.com](https://assertible.com)) can do this. Designed to be a simple API testing solution with flexible automation and monitoring. Disclaimer - I am a founder.

<comment><AUTHOR> I went ahead and created a free account in assertible. This is definitely doing what I want (test a simple GET rest api call). I will check further (if it is notifying me when a call fails).

@Others: One minor point to note here is that the free account allows only one hour Scheduled Monitoring, not more frequently.

<comment><USER6> Awesome, glad to hear it. Definitely email me (Christopher - admin at assertible dot com) if you have any other questions or requests. I'd love to hear more of your feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shameless plug, for something simple and visual we built Servsup a while ago.

[http://servsup.co/](http://servsup.co/)

It's fully open source

</comment><comment><USER8> StatusCake is nice. Also Zabbix.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe something like pingdom?</comment>


Amazon Echo Begins Shipping - <AUTHOR>

Thought I'd start a thread here to see if anyone has pulled the trigger. Mine is coming next week according to Prime estimates! What are everyone's thoughts on it? <comment><USER2> Seriously? Why would you bother with a dog turd. If you want to listen to music literally any other speaker is better.. if you want to use it for idk what even cause it's just a novelty. Waste of time and money.

<comment><USER3> I think it has the potential to be really useful for purchasing things, which is certainly what Amazon excels at.

The only obstacle they'll need to overcome when they introduce voice purchasing is that I don't want to listen to a list of prices and descriptions after asking it for toothpaste. I want it to figure out that, no I don't want a case of 24 toothpaste rolls, just one will be fine. It should be as simple as "Alexa, I need more Crest toothpaste." and it's on its way.</comment></comment>


How to telnet into an iOS app and get an interactive console. - <AUTHOR> http://probablyinteractive.com/2010/8/20/ios-interactive-console.html <comment><USER2> I recommend people also check out Cycript (what we use on jailbroken devices to introspect into running applications these days; I know that the wax guy has actually been learning a lot from the Cycript project).

<http://www.cycript.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see how this would work. How can you dynamically create a UIViewController and add to the app after it has been compiled?

<comment><USER4> Objective-C is pretty dynamic and has support for querying and altering classes at runtime. [http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/R...](http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html)</comment></comment>


Cost of universal health care in California bigger than state's budget - <AUTHOR> http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article151960182.html <comment><USER2> TLDR; $400 billion total, $200 billion is currently spent on subsidies and medi-cal, $150 billion is already spent by employers.

The state would need to "find" ~$50 billion or ~$1,300 per resident more to fully fund this.

Personally, this seems like a relative bargain and some modest extra taxes should offset the difference. Article reads pretty poorly and sensationalist.

Not to mention that the missing amount is less than most people have in various deductables and co-pays already.

EDIT: Turns out in 2015, per capita health spending was $9,990 already, which translates to ~$390 billion for 39 million Californians. So $400 Billion is cheaper than what we already spend in 2017, assuming modest growth since 2015.

Further, if we assume that this money already gets spent, just not very evenly, we'll end up with a much fairer system and a lot smaller downside for people if/when they get sick.

Personally, I'll gladly trade some immediate savings for long term protection from not having insurance when I need it most. The data seems to imply that I won't even have to pay all that much more.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. An alternative view on this:

> _The state would pay for almost all of its residents' medical expenses — > inpatient, outpatient, emergency services, dental, vision, mental health, > and nursing home care — under the plan, and Californians would not have any > premiums, copays, or deductibles._

> That's an incredible deal for just 15% of GDP, which again is lower than the > US as a whole already spends on health care.

[http://mattbruenig.com/2017/05/22/californias- surprisingly-c...](http://mattbruenig.com/2017/05/22/californias-surprisingly- cheap-single-payer-plan/)

<comment><USER4> Single payer would be a great improvement on the current nightmare of American healthcare, but let's not kid ourselves that this is an incredible deal. The UK spent 8.5% of GDP on healthcare in 2013 (life expectancy in the UK is marginally higher than in California.) Most European countries spend around 11%.

<comment><USER5> Single payer != universal health care.

Single payer is likely no not work in the US, but there are plenty of other solutions out there.

Europe has universal health care, not every country has single payer the UK and France do, NL and Germany do not.

Also in all honesty unless you have cancer or something else which completely degenerative the NHS is garbage that no one outside of the low income brackets wants to deal with.

<comment><USER6> > the NHS is garbage that no one outside of the low income brackets wants to > deal with.

The various patient surveys and patient satisfaction scores disagree with you.

The fact that almost no-one uses private insurance is also proof that most people like and will use the NHS, even with all the problems it has. And the numbers of people with private health insurance has reduced, not increased, since 2011.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Few know this:

The United States _currently_ spends more money per capita on socialized medicine than any other country except Norway:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita#/media/File:OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg)

In fact, the US spends more on socialized medicine than Japan, the UK and Finland spend _in total_ , private and public spending.

The US healthcare system is totally out of control. Nothing will fix it until there is a collapse.

<comment><USER8> Wow, I'm surprised. So doctors/hospitals are extremely expensive in USA? What is spend monthly very roughly on health care in USA (if you're have one)? I'm originally from Germany and I always assumed we pay more for health care generally.

<comment><USER9> One aspect that makes care in the US cost more is our culture of being highly litigious. We seem to believe that if doctors make honest mistakes, it entitles the patient or their heirs to a large settlement. So doctors/hospitals need expensive malpractice insurance and that cost gets bundled in with the cost of care. To add to that, settlements encompass both medical costs and compensation for pain and suffering, which is usually a multiple of the medical costs. So the cost of lawsuits increases the cost of care which, in turn, increases the size of settlements which, in turn, increases the cost of malpractice insurance which increases the cost of care. It's a feedback loop.

It's not the only reason why our health care costs are spiraling out of control, but it is a reason that will naturally continue to increase over time unless we cap malpractice claims.

<comment><USER10> Allow me to play devil's advocate...

Medical negligence is the third leading cause of death in the United States. We have an epidemic of "honest mistakes" like scalpels left in patients after surgeries,[0] often leading to deaths, or amputations of the wrong limb[1] leading to enormous harms to the patient. Something as innocent as 'forgetting to wash your hands' has outsized consequences in this industry, forgiving 'honest mistakes' is not a safe standard.

It's also not generally true that plaintiffs in tort cases receive exorbitant damages, this is a popular myth because there are a few outlandish examples. The most popular examples, such as the "Stella awards," are completely made up.[1][2]

States that have capped medical malpractice have seen no difference in medical costs, and it has not been found to be a significant contribution to costs in the industry.[3] Meanwhile, capping costs hurts patients - some mistakes end up costing millions in additional medical costs throughout an injured patient's life, and most importantly for getting improved care over time, it lightens incentives for billion dollar hospitals to actually correct underlying procedures that make harms more likely.

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

[1] [http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/default.asp?pg=mcdonalds_ca...](http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/default.asp?pg=mcdonalds_case)

[2] [http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp](http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp)

[3] [http://www.decof.com/decof/wp- content/uploads/2015/12/five-m...](http://www.decof.com/decof/wp- content/uploads/2015/12/five-myths-about-medical-negligence.pdf)

[4] More on handwashing as a challenge to health in hospitals: [http://annals.org/aim/article/712481/compliance- handwashing-...](http://annals.org/aim/article/712481/compliance-handwashing- teaching-hospital)

<comment><USER6> > We have an epidemic of "honest mistakes" like scalpels left in patients > after surgeries,[0] often leading to deaths, or amputations of the wrong > limb[1] leading to enormous harms to the patient.

I thought "wrong site surgery" was rare.

[https://www.ecri.org/components/HRCAlerts/Pages/HRCAlerts111...](https://www.ecri.org/components/HRCAlerts/Pages/HRCAlerts111815_Joint.aspx)

> Wrong-site, wrong-patient, and wrong-procedure surgery continues to be the > sentinel event most frequently reported to the Joint Commission, with 1,196 > such events reported through September 30, 2015, according to recently > updated statistics provided by the accreditor. The next most frequently > reported events include unintended retention of a foreign object (1,072), > delays in treatment (1,035), suicide (932), and operative or postoperative > complications (904).

That's way too many, but in 2009 there were 48 million inpatient surgical procedures carried out in the US.

[https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-clinics/surgery- clini...](https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-clinics/surgery- clinic/patient-resources/surgery-statistics.html)

I don't think you can call 0.007% an "epidemic".

<comment><USER10> > I thought "wrong site surgery" was rare.

It is, but that wasn't the entire sentence, nor really representative of the total harm from medical errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Separate from the cost debate, the bill is labeled a "job killer," I assume because of all the insurance and related jobs lost.

Which would be bad for the people losing their jobs, but they're only employed because they work for an arguably unnecessary middle-man industry. There's no "right" to those jobs, and if we can find a way to deliver health _care_ , as opposed to health _insurance_ , to close to everyone, we should figure that out, regardless of insurance jobs.

<comment><USER12> How is this supposed to kill jobs? Total money spent should be no different. It just shifts from out of pocket to taxes.

<comment><USER13> If you read the other parent comment in this thread, total expenditures on health care would actually drop by close to 50% overall (with a few fraught assumptions, of course). In the best/worst case, that's a $350B economic blow to those who rely on insurers for their employment. Given the complexity of the health care system around the US, I'm sure any move to universal health care will be extremely economically disruptive and render quite a few people jobless without competitive skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really weird talking about how expensive this is. Whether you pay through it out of pocket or through taxes what difference does it make? Why do Americans think there is somethink inherently more difficult with paying taxes than paying other expenses.

Weird how these people talk about health care as unaffordable but somehow there are always money for wasting trillions in wars like Iraq and Vietnam.

<comment><USER14> You should look into how much the federal and state governments pay to Medicare and Medicaid and other medical programs than compare it to the budget for the various military expenditures.

Also, although iraq and Vietnam were failures on the surface, I challenge you to put a dollar value on the pax Americana that American military spending has enabled in the last 70 years, a dollar value on the various technologies developed through military funding over the years, and a dollar value on a thriving capitalistic economy that was saved from fascist and communist takeovers by military spending.

Than maybe it won't be so strange to you why the us spends so much on the military.

<comment><USER15> No one is disputing that the US needs a military. What everyone is questioning (and rightly so) is whether the levels of investment are warranted. Especially when the US has such a pitiful social safety net compared to other Western countries.

And let's be serious here. The rest of the world has done more to save the world from fascism and communism than the US has. And entrepreneurship has done far more for innovation than military spending has.

<comment><USER14> The other western nations can afford to spend more on their safety net because of the military strength of america and the protection it provides against foreign invaders.

America defeated japan essentially by itself while providing enough food and supplied to keep the russian army alive while also providing the majority of the military strength to the western front, essentially being the primary factor in the defeat of fascism.

As for communism, it was the us vs ussr while Europe and China and japan rebuilt after the destruction of world War 2, again, the us provided the bulk of the force against communism.

Your statement about the rest of the world doing more to save the world from fascism and communism is blatantly false.

<comment><USER16> > America defeated japan essentially by itself while providing enough food and > supplied to keep the russian army alive while also providing the majority of > the military strength to the western front, essentially being the primary > factor in the defeat of fascism.

Where to start? The US did most of the work in beating Japan but they also got a lot of help from Russia toward the end. Once Japan had lost Manchuria to the Russians they gave up on a conditional surrender, they had nothing to bargain for.

And the primary factor in defeating fascism? If it wasn't for the British holding out in the west that front would have been lost before you guys even got involved. But more importantly on the Eastern front, the tide had already turned before lend lease to Russia made any difference. It sped the war up but it didn't decide it.

<comment><USER17> "Once Japan had lost Manchuria to the Russians they gave up on a conditional surrender, they had nothing to bargain for."

Most people think that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was what made Japan surrender unconditionally, not the loss of Manchuria.

"But more importantly on the Eastern front, the tide had already turned before lend lease to Russia made any difference."

I'm sorry, that is simply not correct. The Lend-Lease pipeline was in full operation by early 1942, well before the tide turned at the Battle of Stalingrad in early 1943. In fact, the Germans moved on Stalingrad _specifically to disrupt_ the Persian Corridor portion of the Lend Lease operation.

<comment><USER16> > Most people think that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was what made Japan > surrender unconditionally, not the loss of Manchuria.

Most people have never even heard of the battle of Manchuria. Japan were already putting out feelers for a peace before either, they new they couldn't win by then. They'd already had cities destroyed by conventional weapons, the nukes weren't that big a deal.

> I'm sorry, that is simply not correct. The Lend-Lease pipeline was in full > operation by early 1942, well before the tide turned at the Battle of > Stalingrad in early 1943. In fact, the Germans moved on Stalingrad > specifically to disrupt the Persian Corridor portion of the Lend Lease > operation.

First of all, much of the early contribution was british and Canadian rather than American ([http://www.historynet.com/did-russia-really-go-it-alone- how-...](http://www.historynet.com/did-russia-really-go-it-alone-how-lend- lease-helped-the-soviets-defeat-the-germans.htm)).

Lend lease was under way but no where near the total contributions ([https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/BigL/BigL-5.html](https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/BigL/BigL-5.html)), chart 6 has a yearly breakdown. The biggest effect was that it allowed the USSR to counter attack after Stalingrad because they didn't have to throw everything into defending the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, signle player, universal health care provider also means one powerful actor with the weight and leverage to aggressively pursue economies of scale and optimizations and preventive care.

As an individual you're just a sucker, a sitting duck to be plucked one feather at a time

</comment><comment><USER19> If your universal health care system is some variant of "single payer", which is what I think is proposed here, then the fact that it is really expensive is largely irrelevant, and for a really obvious reason: You may be paying a lot of money for government funded health insurance, but you are _not_ paying all that money to a private health insurer like you are now.

Essentially you are just writing a check to the government rather than a private company.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why all discussions about healthcare reform revolve around money to pay for it? I am sure this is the wrong side of it. Whatever money you pay, you have a limited supply of doctors. So in the end, more money just raises prices, redistributing who gets which care, anyway.

Why not start with supply side? Automatically recognize diploma of doctors from all developed countries (you may start with a limited list - very rich countries with life expectancy higher than U.S. - start with UK, France and Germany, add a few more if it's not enough - no one can say that their doctors are not 'good enough') - and make them instant immigration papers - literally, hand out green cards right at the airport on arrival. Millions will flock and quickly saturate the market. Then you will not have a problem with either new single-payer, or old system.

</comment><comment><USER21> As much as I'm a proponent for free markets & lower taxes, I want universal healthcare in the US. When big pharma companies & hospital systems are forced to negotiate with the government for rates, costs will go down. My 5 year old's type 1 diabetes quarterly supplies are billed at $6,000 per shipment. Looking at what's in the box, I'm hard pressed to guess there's more than $100 of material costs. The technology has been around forever, and yet these companies continue to extort these exorbitant prices because nobody had said 'Enough!' Same story with a friend's Gleevec. $14,000 per month. It's time to put cost controls in place. If universal care is how that's achieved, then so be it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't that a given? I mean, do people not realize that the money has to come from somewhere? Of course it's going to be _insanely_ expensive to insure everybody.

Edit: I'm not arguing against Single Payer, I'm just surprised that this is something so shocking an article was written (and then upvoted) about.

<comment><USER12> If you pay 200 dollars today per month for health insurance but instead have to pay 200 dollars in extra taxes tomorrow for health insurance, what difference does it make?

<comment><USER23> Can you name an Obamacare-compliant plan (even just bronze) with a total (unsubsidized) $200 premium for the median or mean adult? One?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This headline is really misleading and clickbaity. It makes it seem as if the state is facing a budget shortfall. The cost they are referring to is a hypothetical number crunching of possible future healthcare systems.

<comment><USER25> And even further, they are misrepresenting that somewhat. They admit further down the article that after offsetting from the existing employer based tax that "total new spending to implement the system would be between $50 billion and $100 billion per year". They make it sound like it's $400b more, rather than total.

There is also no discussion of the kind of external savings this might create. Usually that kind of thing is included in budget office analysis.

<comment><USER26> More good analysis here too: [http://mattbruenig.com/2017/05/22/californias- surprisingly-c...](http://mattbruenig.com/2017/05/22/californias-surprisingly- cheap-single-payer-plan/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It will also provide excellent cover for California's pension shortfalls.

</comment><comment><USER28> These discussions rarely include a discussion about existing extortionate pricing models do to distort the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps they should not accept healthcare cost as is? Wages of physicians are insane in the US (because the price of the education is insane?), as are the prices of medcine. Just think of what Pharma has to spend on commercials in the US. All that money is a big waste.</comment>


How Garbage Collection differs in the three big JVMs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dynatrace.com/2011/05/11/how-garbage-collection-differs-in-the-three-big-jvms/

<comment><USER2> This describes the state of GC like it was 10 years ago (and in a few places incorrectly), at least in Hotspot. Shameless promotion: try out the new G1 (-XX:+UseG1GC), better to use the latest EA JDK7 build.

<comment><USER3> Is there a better document that explains how the GC works in the latest Java 6 releases (particularly Hotspot)?

I'm doing some GC tuning these days - and there seems to be a lot of false/stale information out there. Something this readable, but accurate, would be helpful.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/gc- tuning-6-14...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/gc- tuning-6-140523.html) is the canonical source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A fascinating jvm they missed is azul. They claim they can handle 300+GB heaps with pauses < 10 ms by radically changing how gc works. Skim this: <http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/azul_pauseless_gc.html> Essentially it continually compacts the heap, but simply doesn't remap all pointers to an object. They then tool the OS vm system / TLB with memory barriers and fix up pointers on access instead of fixing up pointers on relocation/compaction.

Also, this is a pretty interesting talk about what exactly goes on in a modern jvm. Worth listening to [http://jeremymanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/cliff-click- in-jvm-...](http://jeremymanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/cliff-click-in-jvm-does- what.html) The speaker works for azul systems.

Regarding the article, I wonder if it's worthwhile or if there is any research into recycling objects or something like c++ placement new? I guess it doesn't really make sense because in java objects are mostly just a collection of pointers, whereas in C++ objects can themselves be fairly large.</comment>


Visual Studio Team Services - <AUTHOR> https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/ <comment><USER2> This is a great offering from Microsoft, and it's getting new features all the time.

I think they have big news planned for VSTS during //build so keep an eye out next week.</comment>